powerpoint 1

PowerPoint.  It’s common that people have a love-hate relationship with PowerPoint.  I think PowerPoint is a fantastic, liberating tool.  I’ve been doing presentations for a sufficiently long time that I recall needing to have my slides ready days before leaving for a conference because I needed time to shoot them to film and have the film processed — yes those were real slides, the 35mm kind.  With PowerPoint I can revise and tweak a presentation until I have to give it; what a fantastic capability for when you are inevitably generating data until it’s time to catch a plane to wherever you are presenting.

That’s the “love” part.  What about the “hate?”  We’ve all heard about “death by PowerPoint” and how to avoid it by listening to the good people who have advice on how to prepare and give good scientific and technical presentations.  They say it better than I can so I won’t belabor those points.  Another thing that frustrates me about PowerPoint in a research organization is how much information can be hidden away in PowerPoint slide decks, again it’s not PowerPoint itself but how people use it.

I’ve found through experience that no amount of organizational structure can solve the problem of information getting lost in PowerPoint presentations.  When you’re working on a team (even a team of one) each person’s way to organize will be different.  Who is to define the organizational structure? and will it make sense to anyone else? and who will enforce the structure?  I think all those questions lead to a waste of time and mental effort.  That’s one of the reasons we developed slideboxx: don’t worry too much about where to put the information, we’ll search for the slides!

In closing, I want to ask you: what are your frustrations with PowerPoint?  particularly in the culture around PowerPoint and how people use it in your organization?  Please leave a comment with your thoughts.  Thank you!