We had a trifecta this week at our Capitol Club Toastmasters meeting - all three speakers used PowerPoint and they all used it effectively.
PowerPoint has a plethora of defaults and options. For his first presentation a newcomer may start with some ineffective defaults. For the second presentation he might add options like clip art, or using all the possible slide transitions. The result could be almost completely ineffective. Eventually he will settle down and deliver a clear presentation with his own personal style.
Back on June 16, 2008 I mentioned Don McMillan’s hilarious 4-minute comedy video on Life after Death by PowerPoint. He updated it last year to a 10-minute video called Life After Death by PowerPoint 2010. Don claims that PowerPoint caused the mortgage meltdown. He discusses SAOD (Severe Acronym Overload Disorder), which I have called DIA for Drowning in Acronyms. At 7:02 he shows a line graph of # of line graphs. (Stay tuned, because that curve shape will show up again in one of my posts). Also, at 9:10 Don refers to those almost useless 3D pie charts as cake charts.
There is an excellent recent white paper by Ellen Finkelstein called From Death by PowerPoint to Life by PowerPoint that you can download for free here.
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