The PPT Presentation

I hate Powerpoint presentations.  Invariably PPT presentations are dull.  When a teacher plugs his laptop in while standing at the front of the room, that is the first clue that the class isn’t going to be very interesting.  I’ve never been able to find it in the help section, but it must say somewhere that slides are really just virtual notecards because everyone does it.  Whether it’s a teacher or a student presenter or a boss at a meeting, there is an almost unbroken tendency to read right off of the screen.  As if it wasn’t bad enough to have to sit through a class I already knew was going to be boring, but to know exactly what the teacher is going to say before he says it, that is a recipe for a nap.

Now I realize I am not being fair to all Powerpoint users.  Some people don’t read from their slides, but instead try to cram every word possible onto each screen.  These kinds of presentations aren’t much better because at some point you have to make a choice: either you listen to the speaker or you read the slides.  You can’t do both and by choosing one you lose the other, thereby reducing the overall effectiveness of the presentation.  But the question remains: is Powerpoint an inherently dull creation or is it just that few people are actually trained to use PPT properly?

Up until this Friday I would have answered that powerpoint is tool that can only produce two kinds of slides: boring or overly animated and cheesy.  Then something extraordinary happened.  Eric Berlow, the director of the SNRI, was invited to go to the TED conference in Britain as one of the short presenters about his work and how it relates to the world.  For those who don’t know (and I didn’t until just recently), the TED conference is a place where innovative people come to share and exchange their ideas.  It also happens to be a place where people give, for lack of a better word, awesome presentations.  Instead of inviting speakers with no strings attached, each presenter must submit his presentation a couple of months ahead of time and then the organizers work with each speaker to fine-tune their speech.  This leads to some pretty awesome presentations.  I totally recommend checking out the website (www.ted.com) whenever work becomes too dull or you don’t feel like studying.  Some of those guys will knock your socks off.

But back to the topic, this past Friday we did a speaking workshop to help us prepare for our research presentations at the end of the summer.  During the workshop, Eric came in and gave us his powerpoint that he used when he was in London just a few weeks ago, and it was amazing.  In three minutes, he went through 38 slides and absolutely blew everything I thought I knew about Powerpoint out of the water.  His slides we simple and free of clutter, they changed at exactly the right time to emphasize his words, and no slide stayed on the screen for more then 15-20 seconds.  But the most amazing thing of all was that, rather than distracting from his speaking, Eric’s slides enhanced his speech through pictures and single words to emphasize his points.  I wish I had recorded it because there is no way to describe in words the effect that a well-executed use of powerpoint can have.  I have been inspired.  I have truly been inspired to break out of the default templates and create a presentation that people will walk away from awake and enthusiastic about my research.