Saved by PowerPoint

Ahsan Saleem – March 2014

Agenda

PowerPoint casualties

How to protect humans from PowerPoint?

and .. I will use PowerPoint for today’s talk

We have been there ..

More Serious Stuff - US Strategy in Afghanistan

wtf!

NASA Shuttle Columbia Disaster 2003

Columbia Shuttle – Death by PowerPoint

Edward Tuft (Information Visualization Specialist) analyzed NASATeam’s presentation on a launch incident with Columbia Shuttle and concluded that a bad PowerPoint presentation was one of the major reasons why NASA could not assess proper risk

Growing dislike for PowerPoint

“The use of presentations has been a disaster. It should be ditched”

Research by University of New South Wales

Bill Gates and his Slides: Too much content and a sleeping audience!

PowerPoint is the Devil!

Who will save PowerPoint and Presentations – and Us?

Less and meaningful content on slides

Jobs to Audience: Ever wondered why we had this small pocket in pocket ?

To keep iPod Nano!

How to make audience realize how super thin and light MacBook Air is?

Who is a visual artist here?

Al Gore – An Inconvenient TruthUsing a crane to show the really high CO2 Spike

Randy Pausch – The Last lecture‘You will get arrows in the back pursuing big dreams in life’, and ‘I have Cancer but I am still strong’

Jane McGonigal

Jill Bolte

Maysoon Zayid

Some Amazing TED Speakers made it personal and people remembered

PowerPoint – Angel or Devil?

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What’s wrong these slides?

Slide

• This page contains too many words for a presentation slide. It is not written in bullets, making it difficult both for your audience to read and for you to present properly. Although more words will not convey anything extra but now it looks much more complicated. In short, your audience will spend too much time trying to read this paragraph instead of listening to you.

Slide

• Using a font color that does not contrast with the background color is hard to read

• Using color for decoration is distracting and annoying.

• Using a different color for each point is unnecessary– Using a different color for secondary points is also

unnecessary• Trying to be creative can also be bad

Slide• Avoid backgrounds that are distracting or

difficult to read from• Always be consistent with the background that

you use

Items Sold in First Quarter of 2002

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Can you read me

THIS IS NOTHING IMPORTANT BUT I LIKE TO USE CAPS KEY AND HUGE LETTERS

Font Size

OMG! This presenter can use animations

I can not focus what the presenter is saying as these animations are totally distracting

OK now! Stop bouncing and let me read

Finally!

Animations – Important?

Karma For Presentations Focus on telling a story and not teaching

PowerPoint is a visual aid NOT a document

Look at audience not your slides and hold their attention

Learn PowerPoint and do not use default templates for new slides. A plain empty slide is the best canvas

This is the Canvas you want to start creating your presentation

What Really helps Overcome fear of public speaking

Love your topic

Know your topic

Have fun

‘Never be boring’

Thank You!