Posts Tagged “powerpoint”

How many slides must a man present before he must stop and vent?

Lately, I’ve become bored with creating and giving presentations. (I know, you’re thinking, “what took you so long?”) People in the office say I’m good at it, and I’ve certainly done enough to feel comfortable and competent, but after a while, it just gets old. So I decided to try a different approach.

I’ve been reading Presentation Zen for a while, and I’ve been interested in typography for a long while. After fumbling around with some ideas myself, I found this 18-month old post on PZ about the Takahashi Method and the Lessing Style of presentation, which led me to this inspiring (in form if not in content) preso by Dick Hardt, which led me to try some radically minimal slides in a recent presentation to one of the product teams on the theme of “What is Corporate Communication?” Here are some samples:

It was a rush job and certainly not my best work in sides or in delivery,

but I got my message across and was at least as interesting and engaging as the other presenters

I used 55 slides for a 15-minute time slot, and I think there was time to spare.

As the number of slides goes up and the time you spend on each goes down, the slides almost merge into a flip-book or a film. I wonder if in the future, more and more presentations will be more like movies or flash animations that run while the presenter talks?

It makes you think of D.A. Pennebaker’s Bob Dylan proto-music-video for Subterranean Homesick Blues from his film Don’t Look Back. Maybe I’ll do a preso like that some day.

So I’m working on the slides for my upcoming appearance at Baptie’s Direct Focus marketing conference in San Diego. It’s hard going of course, this will be a tough audience. And you know what happens when the going gets tough… the tough geek out on some unrelated topic to procrastinate.

Over the past month I’ve traveled thousands of miles and given hours of presentations. My constant companion has been an excellent gadget that I’m going to take a moment to recognize: the Mobile Edge Slim Line Wireless Presentation Remote, pictured here a bit larger than life-size.

I was shopping for a different remote, one recommended at Presentation Zen, when I found this one by chance. I can’t say enough good things about this device. It’s small (stores in your laptop’s PC card slot!), it’s simple (only six buttons), it works anywhere, anytime (with a usb thingie built in), and it has a “laser!” What more could you want? Check out the engagingly cheesy flash demo on Mobile Edge’s site.

My only critique would be that the buttons make an audible click when you press them. It’s likely that this is audible only to the presenter, but you never know. I guess the slogan “bring it on” printed on the device is also a bit creepy, but I can forgive that bluster because the whole kit is so nicely engineered. What really makes this device sing for me is the form factor - the USB dongle stores inside the remote itself, and the whole thing stores in your laptop’s PC card slot, making it nearly impossible to lose.

Unless, like me, you forget that you put it in your computer’s PC card slot in the first place. Funny how things are always in the last place you look for them.