Will death by PowerPoint soon be a thing of the past?
April 14 2009 by 
Jim Knight
A revolution is taking place in the way we use PowerPoint and Keynote. In fact, I believe that three years from now, the way these tools (collectively referred to as slideware) are used during presentations will be dramatically different than the way they are used today.
The revolutionaries leading this charge are Nancy Duarte, President of Duarte Design and author of Slide:ology, and Garr Reynolds, author of Presentation Zen and the very popular Presentation Zen blog. Recently, I had the chance to attend a one-day workshop offered by both of these revolutionaries, Presentation//Reboot, and I came away a changed man.
Rethinking how we use sideware is an idea whose time is due. Just about everyone has had a near-death experience sitting through endless, cluttered, confusing slides. We've watched people read from their slides rather than communicate with their audience; we've cursed what seems like an endless stack of slides coming at us in a one-way talk, and we've probably begun to question whether or not PowerPoint is a good idea at all. "Turn on the LCD, turn off the brain," seems to be the pattern. As Garr Reynolds concisely puts it, "What is the sound of one room napping?"
Duarte, most famous for developing the design of Al Gore's Academy Award-winning An Inconvenient Truth presentation, and Reynolds, whose book was selected as a top ten business book on many lists last year, beautifully show that slideware can be used to enhance communication, not impede it. I won't try to summarize all I heard and learned from Nancy and Garr. You can read more about Presentation//Reboot here, here, and here. I suggest that if you give presentations, you should buy their books and devour them. I will share a few big ideas I heard at Presentation//Reboot:
- To make good presentations we need to think like designers.
- When we prepare slides, we should remember that the visual sense is dominant. Use pictures, color, contrast, and simplicity to communicate your message.
- Our audience is either going to read our slides or listen to us, not both. People have a hard time listening and reading. If we put too many words on our slides, they'll be reading, and we want them listening.
- Each one of our slides should convey one idea and one idea only.
- Handouts that are made directly from slides, or slideuments, should be replaced by proper handouts that complement our presentations. The presentation should not be directly reflected in the handout. We want people to listen to our presentation, not read our slides at their tables.
- We should think about our presentation as a movie, with each slide being a scene.
- Stories are an incredibly important part of presenting; people will remember our stories, not our data.
- We should develop our presentations by using Post-Its, white boards, and pen and paper. Remember Alan Kay's quotation, "Most ideas you can do pretty darn good with a stick in the sand."
- The goal of an effective slide is simplicity. As John Maeda states, "simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful."
- According to Nancy, the company that communicates well will win.
- Be very careful to have a clear structure. Everyone thrives when a presentation has structure.
- Strive for naturalness during your presentation. Garr quoted John Coltrane in stating, "You can play a shoe string if you're sincere."
- When I asked Nancy how a beginner should start to think like a designer, she suggested we start by surrounding ourselves with beautiful things, reading books about design, viewing great photography, and visiting galleries. οΎ
Maybe the best way to start understanding Garr and Nancy's work is to check out Garr's presentations on Slideshare. You can get a sample of his work by looking here and here. My first stumbling attempt at a presentation based on their ideas is posted here.
You can follow Jim Knight on Twitter or on Facebook. He writes a blog on instructional coaching and updates a Delicious web site. You can download free teaching manuals developed at his workplace, the Kansas Coaching Project, at www.instructionalcoach.org. His e-mail address is jimknight@mac.com.
Posted in Jim Knight | 
22 comments
Apr 14, 2009 at 6:51 PM
great summary!
and in response to your title question...
well, the art of rhetoric has been around for a few thousand years, nevertheless there are too many not so great speeches out there...
of course in the case of powerpoint, there was no real guidance before these pioneers did something. Hence, the possibilities of improving a deck now is way easier. Additionally, every good deck raises the bar a bit, but then the good gets common...
Apr 14, 2009 at 9:37 PM
You're right about that Bernardt. I'm think we are at a point comparable to when people were switching from overheads to PowerPoint. At that time, any PowerPoint seemed pretty impressive, but after a while everyone was using it. Of course the message will always be much more important than the slides--though the slides can get in the way for sure.
Apr 15, 2009 at 2:06 PM
Jim,
Thanks for the great summary. You had mentioned a little about this last year and I have been anxiously awaiting an update. I also enjoyed looking at your first attempt at Zen PowerPoint...I like it! I have seen several of your presentations and I will have to say the graphics you have chosen add a great deal to the content.
Apr 15, 2009 at 3:28 PM
Love the summary here, and another jolt to make me pick up Garr and Duarte's books that keep calling my name.
While not quite as slick as Garr's pieces, Ian Jukes did a nice job of making 80 slides feel like 10 or 15 in a recent presentation I saw. He did a great job of weaving in images in place of text, and like we see in the examples highlighted in Jim Knight's post, the subtle combination of text and images are so powerful.
Thanks for the post.
Apr 15, 2009 at 5:08 PM
The design of your presentation and the ones of Garr andDuarte speak so much more in so much less and touch the emotions while doing so. You have remotivated me to pursue practicing the art. Time is the obstacle--the time to conceptually identify and find the right image(s) for the critical idea(s). I'm guilty of keeping the noneffective powerpoint alive. Your summary and model work effectively together to ensure that the answer to your question is...if you want to remain alive as a presenter, as an effective communicator of ideas, the traditional powerpoint must die. If I'm in the audience, the answer is I hope it dies sooner than later.
Apr 16, 2009 at 9:36 AM
Hello Jim,
How thrilled I am to hear that a revolution is beginning to take place that has the potential to end "death by PowerPoint!" I am motivated to learn more about this by exploring the resources you provided and to share this with many others.
Thank you for the post and for your presentation based on the ideas of Nancy Duarte and Garr Reynolds. Thanks also for the outstanding leadership you are providing us with instructional coaching.
Apr 16, 2009 at 5:51 PM
Great News, Jim! How exciting to see and hear about this revolution taking place. In my opinion this innovative idea (designer)is surely needed to provide a more "advanced" presentation.
Thanks for sharing this information and for your expertise which you have shared with me in the past.
Apr 17, 2009 at 5:23 AM
Great post - thank you!
My top three books to get my hands on:
slide:ology
Presentation Zen
Brain Rules
Also, I have to say, your first stumbling attempts are pretty impressive!
Jun 6, 2009 at 1:40 PM
Very interesting. Will we get to see some of this at the Coaching Conference in October?
Jun 7, 2009 at 11:03 AM
Hi Betty, I will do my best to use slides that are consistent with the ideas here, but I'm just developing my skills. I do hope what I share at the conference is consistent with these ideas.
Jun 28, 2009 at 4:35 PM
good summary, I guess death by powerpoint will not fade away, but the bar for quality presentations will be raised with every day, since it becomes more and more common knowledge.
What might be great presentations today, could be common in the future. Yet, rhetoric is also an old art form, but boring speeches are still pretty common.
Oct 31, 2009 at 12:37 AM
Is this true?
Nov 16, 2009 at 10:13 PM
Well this is very interesting indeed.Would love to read a little more of this. Great post. Thanks for the heads-up&This blog was very informative and knowledgeable
Jan 20, 2010 at 4:53 AM
Great Work !
Regards
Feb 5, 2010 at 7:58 AM
Nice tips. I'll try to remember about them when I prepare presentations. It is right to add more pictures instead of text. In such a way it will attract more attention.
Jun 27, 2010 at 2:24 PM
Nice tips. I'll try to remember about them when I prepare presentations. It is right to add more pictures instead of text. In such a way it will attract more attention.
Jul 24, 2010 at 3:40 PM
it will defenetely will be used when we prepare presentations&can add more of pictures.
Aug 4, 2010 at 11:44 PM
it will defenetely will be used when we prepare presentations&can add more of pictures.
wansantg3hy
Sep 1, 2010 at 5:15 PM
Perhaps this is one of the most interesting blogs that I have ever seen. Interesting article, Funny comment. Keep it up!
Sep 1, 2010 at 5:53 PM
Nice post.Thank you for taking the time to publish this information very useful!
Im still waiting for some interesting thoughts from your side in your next post thanks
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