Beware "PowerPointification"
PowerPoint is everywhere—in business, in government, in non-profit agencies, and in the military. Whether it has been a force for good or evil, I won’t speculate.
I will say, though, that sometimes I think we should require that PowerPoint users be trained and licensed the same way that automobile drivers and gun owners are licensed. The burden of bad slide decks is nearly impossible to calculate, but everyone who has had to endure “death by PowerPoint” can testify to it.
The critics of PowerPoint are legion: For example, in 1997, Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, instituted his famous ban of PowerPoint, saying that PPT files were clogging up their network. “And do they communicate anything?” he asked. “No.” Edward Tufte implicated bad PowerPoint in the Columbia shuttle disaster. The accusations go on and on. (This Wikipedia article does a good job of summarizing the arguments against, and for, PowerPoint.)
I’m not going to say that you should not use PowerPoint when you give presentations, but I can’t emphasize strongly enough that you have to remember that, while it can and should enhance your presentation, a PowerPoint slide deck is NOT your presentation. You, standing up and communicating with your audience, is your presentation.
Presentation Zen offers this tidbit about another ban on PowerPoint (quoting Thomas Ricks, author of Fiasco):
One of the things I admired most about Col. H.R. McMaster — [one of the] smaller things, but it pleased me as a writer — he banned PowerPoint in his command. If you wanted to talk [about] something, if you wanted to make a briefing, you were to write it out in plain, understandable English that had verbs and connective tissue inside it.
Proving yet again that it comes down to the ability to write well. Not that you have to be a Hemingway, or a King, or [insert your favorite best-selling author here]. But you have to be able to use words well.
Roy Jacobsen
in Good advice from here and there, Writer's toolbox
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