I rather liked the stories last week about the APPP (Anti PowerPoint Party) in Switzerland. The APPP estimates that Powerpoint presentations globally waste Euro350b a year. This was taken up in the excellent Lucy Kellaway column in the FT today – Anti Powerpoint revolutionaries unite. Well worth the read – as always.
Back in 1968, when I joined Hoskyns, the Induction Course included “How to make a Presentation on Flipcharts”. We were told what angle to hold the ‘magic markers’. My career – and indeed the whole IT industry – seemed to develop quite well using flipcharts and, their new-fangled successor, the overhead projector. Indeed I preferred flipchart boards as they gave me something to hold onto when my knees were shaking in front of audiences.
When I started my first “State of the ICT Nation” speeches in the 1980s I used Powerpoint. But I had to send my presentation off to a bureau weeks in advance for conversion into 35mm slides. I learnt to reuse slides as much as possible – something I still do to date. I still have those early ppts – they rarely exceed 1mb. My latest pptx is over 20mb!
Every speech (and there were thousands) I gave until last year was with ppt. But in 2010 I was asked to give several speeches where ppt was not appropriate. I was asked to speak to 1000+ youngsters at my old school’s Commemoration day. I was asked to give an after dinner speech at ITNEA. Indeed, I agreed (reluctantly) to several other after dinner speeches.
Without being big-headed, I reckon these ‘non-Powerpoint’ speeches were the best I have ever given. The audience looked at me rather than being distracted by what was on the screen. The ‘connection’ was much stronger. I told far more anecdotes. I could go ‘off-piste’ when I introduced a topic the audience was obviously interested in (and vice versa). Something you just can’t do when your presentation is pre-ordained. Apart from that, the preparation time was greatly reduced.
Mind you, I have always had my own rules on Powerpoint. I remember a Powerpoint course at Ovum which seemed to concentrate only on hierarchical bullet points. In my rule book bullet points would be banned. If you use Powerpoint, only use them for charts, diagrams and pictures – NEVER bullet points.
There will always be some situations when Powerpoint works best. But if I had a straight choice now I might well join the APPP.