Death by PowerPoint

By on December 11, 2009 in FEATURED, FUN

Did you know that fear of pub­lic speak­ing ranks above fear of death.  Seri­ously the top three fears are pub­lic speak­ing, death, and spi­ders.  Who knew?  Maybe one rea­son we all fear speak­ing in front of peo­ple is that we don’t want to look fool­ish.  Sadly, the use of Pow­er­Point as a pre­sen­ta­tion tool often results in just that.  Speak­ers look bad, audi­ences are bored, and pub­lic speak­ing remains some­thing scary — wooohaa­haaa­haa.  Fear not!  It does not have to be this way.

This morn­ing I got to deliver one of the more enjoy­able pre­sen­ta­tions I have done in quite some time.  The audi­ence — 50 or so mem­bers of The Cir­cuit, an orga­ni­za­tion based in Cincin­nati, Ohio that brings together Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy pro­fes­sion­als from around the region.  The topic — Death by PowerPoint.

I opened the pre­sen­ta­tion with an orig­i­nal song enti­tled Death by Pow­er­Point.  I must say I was a lit­tle ner­vous about start­ing the event by per­form­ing a song I wrote two days ago — and never played in front of any­one but my wife and kids.  Hap­pily the song went well, and I didn’t mess it up too badly.  Every­one seemed to find the humor in it, and it proved to be a great segue into the pre­sen­ta­tion.  Right after I was done singing it, I jok­ingly said that the 4 minute song con­tained just about every point I wanted to make — which is not far from the truth.  Ahhh music.  How I miss you.  Maybe I was miss­ing the boat all those years of play­ing until 2:30am in bars?  Per­haps my future is 7:30am in con­fer­ence rooms?  A post for another day.

Any­way, for your enter­tain­ment, here are the song lyrics and a video of my rendition.

Death by Pow­er­Point
All around the world today and all across the nation
Each & every busi­ness and major cor­po­ra­tions
Some­thing we’re guilty of is caus­ing such frus­tra­tion
End­lessly endur­ing awful Pow­er­Point presentations

Pow­er­Point doesn’t have to stink
Great pre­sen­ta­tions can be eas­ier than you think
Don’t drive the peo­ple out there right over the brink
Don’t let bad Pow­er­Point cause your ship to sink

Bul­lets they were made for guns, and guns were made for fight­ing
Bul­lets in your Pow­er­Point slides are just not so invit­ing
Stand­ing up there read­ing text is sim­ply not delight­ing
We assumed that you were lit­er­ate; please give us some enlightening

Car­toons are made for fun with com­plex ani­ma­tions
Crazy spin­ning graph­ics can ruin your pre­sen­ta­tions
All that extra non­sense just causes irri­ta­tion
Replace that silli­ness with expert observations

Pow­er­Point doesn’t have to suck
Great pre­sen­ta­tions ain’t got noth­ing to do with luck
Don’t leave peo­ple say­ing what the heck?
Don’t make us suf­fer through, yet another awful death by Pow­er­Point train wreck

Tem­plates, logos, crazy fonts, and teeny tiny text
Clip art, bro­ken hyper­links, goofy sound effects,
Give some­thing they will love not some­thing they’ll reject
Think about your audi­ence and treat them with respect

Pow­er­Point doesn’t have to stink
Great pre­sen­ta­tions can be eas­ier than you think
Don’t drive the peo­ple out there right over the brink
Don’t let bad Pow­er­Point cause your ship to sink

Pow­er­Point doesn’t have to suck
Great pre­sen­ta­tions ain’t got noth­ing to do with luck
Don’t leave peo­ple say­ing what the heck?
No mat­ter what you do, Please tell me it’s not true, Don’t make us suf­fer through, yet another awful death by pow­er­point train wreck

The pre­sen­ta­tion focused on the fact that Pow­er­Point (or Keynote) is a great tool, that is often mis­used and mis­un­der­stood.  As Seth Godin so elo­quently put it “Pow­er­Point could be the most pow­er­ful tool on your com­puter… but it’s not.”  I drew on ideas from Seth, Guy Kawasaki, Garr Reynolds, and oth­ers whom I have learned from over the years, and tried to show some sim­ple ways to make Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tions bet­ter.  Let me be clear that in the 10 — 12 years that I have been using Pow­er­Point, I have prob­a­bly made every mis­take I cover in the pre­sen­ta­tion 100 times.  I am far from per­fect, but work­ing to get bet­ter every time.  Here is the slide deck from the event, com­plete with speaker notes if you want them.  Please feel free to bor­row, pil­lage, and steal them as you see fit.  I hope you find them use­ful, and maybe just a lit­tle enter­tain­ing too.

Death By PowerPoint

8 Responses to Death by PowerPoint

  1. Artie Isaac December 13, 2009 at 9:25 am #

    Bril­liant. I love this! David, you are great.

    You MUST set the song to Pow­er­Point slides!

    This week­end, we’ve been pre­sent­ing A Pow­er­Point Yule­tide Cel­e­bra­tion in our play http://XMASwithArtie.com. We squeeze the Dick­ens out of our Mac!

    – Artie

  2. cara December 13, 2009 at 3:36 pm #

    You need present this to edu­ca­tors. They are the worst about read­ing Power Points word by word, includ­ing 10,000 bul­let points!

  3. Seth Godin December 14, 2009 at 8:34 am #

    well done

    I agree, you need the lyrics on the slides!

  4. David E. Bowman December 14, 2009 at 8:55 am #

    Looks like I am going to be adding set the song to the slides to my to do list. Thanks for the com­ments and sug­ges­tions. I think I might have to cre­ate some new slides and change the sequence so that they make sense together. I will work on it and let you know once com­pleted. Per­haps a “stu­dio ver­sion” of the song? We shall see…

  5. Brian Clifford December 14, 2009 at 11:41 am #

    David —

    Thanks for a ter­rific pre­sen­ta­tion — we cer­tainly were not dying. Enjoyed it so much, had to make it a blog topic myself: http://blog.rowhymarketing.com/blog/ro-why-marketing

    Best,

    Brian Clif­ford

  6. Ellen Finkelstein December 14, 2009 at 11:40 pm #

    Lots of fun, great points, and I’m sure peo­ple will remem­ber your pre­sen­ta­tion for a long time!

  7. davidebowman December 15, 2009 at 11:38 am #

    Thanks Ellen. It was a lot of fun to put together.

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