Sticky Rocks; Memorable Points

The topic of PowerPoint and it’s detractors made me want to go into the Way Back Machine.

Do you know the WayBack Machine? A web service that keeps an archive of the internet

We read two articles about the pros and cons of slide production software, Microsoft PowerPoint, most pointedly in this week in the AAU course Technology in Education. The two articles, PowerPoint is Evil by Edward Tufte and Learning to Love PowerPoint by David Byrn were published by Wired Magazine in 2003. It made me wonder what Peachpit was publishing on PowerPoint that year. Peachpit is a creative technology book publisher that I worked with for fourteen years. I was doing corporate sales and marketing for Peachpit in 2003.

The WayBack Machine does not always offer a complete picture but I was able to see Peachpit had at least two standard PowerPoint books that year, Creating a Presentation in PowerPoint and PowerPoint for Windows 2003Visual Quickstart Guide. The Visual QuickStart Guide would be a very straight forward guide to using the software without any attempt to help with a good presentation. Creating a Presentation in Powerpoint would offer ideas about making a good presentation. As a Visual QuickProject guide, it was probably a pretty bare bones look on the subject.

Maybe what is most interesting is that was the year that Apple came out with it’s competing slide software, KeyNote. Apple’s KeyNote product would bring more of a design sensibility to the software but from my point of view it was ultimately the same tool. The challenge is educating a user to use prescribed design elements to support but not overwhelm a presentation.

The issue has seemingly been around for as long as slide presentation software has been heavily adopted by institutions from corporate america, education and even xthe military. According to Wickipedia. even the United States Military lean excessively on the software. Junior officers can spend a majority of their time preparing PowerPoint slides. While useful for briefings it may not be the best approach to decision making which lead some Generals to limiting the use of the software.

Ultimately my research lead me to a book that focuses on good presentation skills, Presentation Zen: How to Craft a Presentation with Messages that Sticks By Garr Reynolds. A key chapter shared online from Reynold’s book focuses on how to make a presentation ‘stick’. His ideas come from Made to Stick (Random House) by Chip and Dan Heath. He uses their acronym for creating a sticky presentation, SUCCES, Simplify, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotion and Stories.  Each of these elements play an important role in making a successful presentation.

Simplicity gives your presentation with the basic elements that people want to know. It does not mean dumbdown your prevention. Unexpectedness keeps your audience on the edge of their seat. Concreteness reduces the abstract qualities that can creep in as we try to communicate our ideas. Credibility shows you know what you are talking about, giving a grounded context to your presentation. Emotion brings a human connection into what you are presenting. Stories are also very basic to our instinct to communicate.

I created a powerpoint presentation about teaching styles. This lesson came from AAU Online course, Teaching Audiences in a Diverse Society. The lesson is about teaching styles. I started the lesson with the fundamentals of multimedia in mind. I wanted to engage more than one of my student’s senses. I found some images to support my concepts including an antiquated lecture hall for the subject of surgery. I began imagining the image presented in a museum with an audio back drop.

My ideas about the presentation progressed after watching some examples of effective presentations including  Death by PowerPoint. The best of these were fast paced slides with only a few words on each. I added another image with some audio and then played with how the words appear on the screen over several slides.

Sticky Rocks, Big Sur California

I did not have a chance to use Garr Reynold’s ideas about making a presentation stick. After reading his work. I’d like to spend more time on a future presentation. I think creating and delivering effective slide presentations is an art form that takes time to develop. Time that presenters and teachers often don’t have. This leaves us with age old question; Where’s the Art?

What do you think?