
The best presentation is the one never shown - makeramen
http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/145/
======
eitally
I take some umbrage at the ubiquitous slighting of PowerPoint, et al. The vast
majority of "business" presentations are for an internal audience that is
already partially pre-briefed and the presenter just uses the slides to jog
his or her own memory of the important points to review in the meeting. It's
essentially pre-written agenda+minutes, and it doesn't have to be anything
more.

This is easily contrasted to the kinds of professional presenters you see at
TED, or someone like Steve Jobs, but those are public presentations of novel
content. Not at all the same, and it's not fair to directly compare the work
these folks do to prepare and rehearse their presentations to what 9-to-5ers
do. Nearly zero internal business presentations need to be so polished, either
in formatting or delivery.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_It's essentially pre-written agenda+minutes._

This is very insightful. Powerpoint is a prop for establishing the _structure_
of a meeting. It is -- as pointed out by many -- a lousy tool for conveying
actual content. (Of course, in a world with cheap printing, and now cheap
email, cheap blogging, cheap e-text, cheap recorded audio, and cheap online
video as well, live lectures in general are lousy tools for conveying
content.)

Meetings need agendas. Otherwise every meeting ends up being about whatever
the best schmoozer at the meeting wants it to be about.

Of course, as with many tools, the use of Powerpoint is most noticeable when
it is being terribly abused. People use it to force incredibly _boring_
agendas. People use it as an excuse to lecture.

------
sz
The rest of the site is good too. "Time makes things worse" I liked
particularly.

------
dgudkov
Good point about being forced to make visual presentation in the form of
slides. It's too restrictive sometimes. Does anybody know good presentation
tool that allows creating animated presentations not in the form of slides?

UPD. Discovered prezi.com - it's amazing!

------
edw519
_145\. Pointless presentation_

More like "146. Pointless Blog Post".

From the title, I was expecting to read what one should do _ahead of time_ to
make one's slide presentation unnecessary. Something like "How to build a tag
line so compelling that people will get it immediately," "Show everything a
first timer needs to know on your front page," or "How to hit the reptilian
brain in the first 10 seconds".

We already know that most presentations suck and want to learn what to do to
avoid suckdom. That's advice I'd be interested in learning. Alas, it never
came from this post.

~~~
borism
_Something like "How to build a tag line so compelling that people will get it
immediately," "Show everything a first timer needs to know on your front
page," or "How to hit the reptilian brain in the first 10 seconds"._

See, that's exactly something ArtLebedev and we Europeans object to in
American business culture - do you REALLY need to get your "point" out
immediately, does "hitting reptilian brain in 10 seconds" is really all that
important? Maybe if you didn't need to brainwash us into business relationship
in the first place, it wouldn't matter whether it took "immediately", 10
seconds or 10 minutes.

~~~
edw519
_...we Europeans object to in American business culture..._

Be thankful for being able to insult us Americans in English, because if it
wasn't for us, you'd probably be doing it in German.

</stock response to any illogical European insult of the U.S.>

~~~
borism
See, taking objective criticism as an insult and reacting strongly with a
false sense of pride ("if it weren't for us in the WWII!!!"). Dealing with
american here, no doubt about that.

~~~
Vivtek
And then there are Americans who agree with your point of substance - yet
still don't think HNN is the right place to flame about nationalism.

~~~
borism
Pointing out differences between national business cultures != nationalism.

Handwaving with WWII outcomes = nationalism.

~~~
Vivtek
"Dealing with american here, no doubt about that" = nationalism. I downvoted
both of you, but not your first post, which I agreed with. My point was that I
am also an American, yet capable of agreeing with you.

~~~
borism
Sorry if that looks like nationalist to you, but it obviously doesn't look
that way to whoever downvoted you. I'm definitely not pretending I know
everything about americans or that you're all the same or that we can't agree
on anything.

But bringing up scars of war is definitely not something we europeans like to
engage in. Especially not as a response to criticism.

~~~
Vivtek
Well, yes - if I could have downvoted that one more, I would have. It was in
incredibly poor taste.

------
zbanks
As much as I agree with his point, his America vs. Russia shtick is grating
and distracting.

~~~
2arrs2ells
I just help couldn't turning every sentence into something like "In communist
Russia, you do not make presentation, presentation make you" in my head.

~~~
te_chris
tbh i lold at this.

------
elithrar
It seems he hasn't read Jason Santa Maria's article on presentations:
[http://jasonsantamaria.com/articles/make-yourself-
presentabl...](http://jasonsantamaria.com/articles/make-yourself-presentable/)

~~~
chrisbroadfoot
a) The author is Russian, and his article translated. He probably doesn't
speak or read English.

b) The linked article predates Jason Santa Maria's article.

c) The linked article is still interesting, even if a and b weren't true.

~~~
obiterdictum
A correction: as far as I recall the author studied in US at some point of
time.

~~~
chrisbroadfoot
Interesting. So why does he get someone else to translate his articles? Maybe
he's not _that_ confident with his English skills.

~~~
obiterdictum
He runs the biggest design studio in Russia, so I suppose he does not have
that much time to translate his entire website into English.

------
sliverstorm
He seems to be describing mostly bad presentations. I've seen good ones that
don't suffer these problems, though they can be rare.

~~~
obiterdictum
I've noticed that for the most part quality of a presentation rests on the
skill of the speaker, rather than the quality of slides.

~~~
sliverstorm
This is true, but it does take certain qualities in the slides, such as not
re-stating what is being said word for word, and including relevant &
enlightening graphics that show what the speaker cannot say.

Of course, you could argue knowing how to make such a slideshow is part of
being a good speaker, because it is all about creating a slideshow to support,
augment, improve & fill the holes in your talk.

~~~
ams6110
I fortunately have not been in a position to attend a large number of
presentations. Of the ones I have attended, the best have been by well-
prepared speakers who use a whiteboard and no slides. The diagrams tend to be
crude but hand-drawing on a whiteboard hardly ever outraces the ability of the
audience to follow along; with slides the opposite is often the case (for me
anyway).

