Comments on: Powerpoint http://www.timelysnow.com/2003/12/18/powerpoint/ Occasional observations by Kevin Miller Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:24:19 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 By: Chris http://www.timelysnow.com/2003/12/18/powerpoint/comment-page-1/#comment-16 Chris Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.timelysnow.com/?p=88#comment-16 "Think of your presentation as a series of newspaper stories, each the length of one slide. Without room for long copy, only three things matter. They're the same three things you get from a 3-second read of the lead story in a newspaper: headline, picture and caption." This is an interesting idea (and certainly far from Tufte's data-rich urgings). The strength of that strategy is that it doesn't allow for text-heavy speaker's notes slides, which seems to poison every graduate student's presentations (i'm guilty too). Lately i've been thinking of some guidelines that will help me focus on the presentation rather than the slides... I'll only use a slide if it has one of the following functions: - visual representation of data (charts, tables, etc) - embedded multimedia (video) - visually portray the structure of the presentation ...I think everything else in a presentation can be spoken. “Think of your presentation as a series of newspaper stories, each the length of one slide. Without room for long copy, only three things matter. They’re the same three things you get from a 3-second read of the lead story in a newspaper: headline, picture and caption.”

This is an interesting idea (and certainly far from Tufte’s data-rich urgings).
The strength of that strategy is that it doesn’t allow for text-heavy speaker’s notes slides, which seems to poison every graduate student’s presentations (i’m guilty too).

Lately i’ve been thinking of some guidelines that will help me focus on the presentation rather than the slides…
I’ll only use a slide if it has one of the following functions: – visual representation of data (charts, tables, etc) – embedded multimedia (video) – visually portray the structure of the presentation

...I think everything else in a presentation can be spoken.

]]> By: Kevin Miller http://www.timelysnow.com/2003/12/18/powerpoint/comment-page-1/#comment-17 Kevin Miller Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.timelysnow.com/?p=88#comment-17 One problem with Powerpoint as used is that slides serve two functions -- as a guide to the speaker and as a guide to the audience. "Presentation mode" in the newer versions of Powerpoint allows one to differentiate these roles, although even fast laptops have problems when video clips are involved and there's no easy way to structure the speaker's view. There used to be writers' tools (e.g., something called "Writer's workbench") that would show different views of a piece of writing, including (I think), just the first and last sentences of each paragraph to facilitate checking continuity (I never saw this in action, so I don't know how well it worked). It might be interesting to set up a slide show where you saw each slide for 3 seconds and then it flashed on to the next one. I often do something like manually that before I give a talk, and I think it does help in identifying the main points and getting them fixed firmly in your head. One problem with Powerpoint as used is that slides serve two functions—as a guide to the speaker and as a guide to the audience. “Presentation mode” in the newer versions of Powerpoint allows one to differentiate these roles, although even fast laptops have problems when video clips are involved and there’s no easy way to structure the speaker’s view.

There used to be writers’ tools (e.g., something called “Writer’s workbench”) that would show different views of a piece of writing, including (I think), just the first and last sentences of each paragraph to facilitate checking continuity (I never saw this in action, so I don’t know how well it worked).

It might be interesting to set up a slide show where you saw each slide for 3 seconds and then it flashed on to the next one. I often do something like manually that before I give a talk, and I think it does help in identifying the main points and getting them fixed firmly in your head.

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