For some time now I’ve wanted to do a thoughtful and impressive blog post on PowerPoint. As many of you know, I create PowerPoint presentations pretty much every time I do a presentation. I think PowerPoint can enhance any presentation. OK, I will admit the PP show with 53 slides on "Introduction to Fantasy Football" for our 12 year old boys and their dads FFB league meeting wasn’t that well received. But I probably just needed to tweak it a bit more.
By now you have already figured I that I rethought writing that "thoughtful and impressive blog post idea." Instead, I decided to clean out the "potential blog posts on PowerPoint" file. So I have to lead off with a link to a You Tube video, Life After Death by PowerPoint featuring Comedian Don McMillan. If you haven’t seen it, watch it. Trust me (and the 500,000 other people who have watched it.)
It’s really trendy to criticize poor PowerPoint presentations. We’ve all seen them. More and more lawyers are using PowerPoint presentations in court. That creates some responsibility on their part. It’s one thing to treat your friends to 158 slides of your summer vacation pictures or to include the entire text of a dozen federal regulations on the slide show for your Continuing Legal Education presentation. But if your client is paying you to show a PowerPoint to a jury, it probably should be good. Evan Schaeffer rides to the rescue with a post linking to several examples of PowerPoints used at trial, including Dave Swanner’s offer (now over two years old) to send a CD packed with over 100 PowerPoint examples to plaintiff’s lawyers. Dave does ask you add to wealth by contributing your own examples for the next edition of the CD either now or when you figure out PowerPoint.
But you need not be a plaintiff’s lawyer to check out this collection of 70+ PowerPoint and Presentations Resources and Examples. Hat tip to Matt Homann.
Cliff Atkinson has made quite a name for himself writing about PowerPoint with his Beyond Bullet Points books and Beyond Bullets Blog. Recently he has decided to transition away from the free blog to a new user subscription website, BBP Online. At some point he says this will cost $25 per month, but for now charter subscribers can sign up at a rate of $25 per year.
If you want to think in depth about your presentation skills, you can always visit the Presentation Zen blog. For an example of a PowerPoint tips there, check out this post.