PPT - Powerful Presentation Techniques

Presentation Tidbits - Geeks to the Rescue

ReadWrite Web has an interesting post "Geeks Makes Presentations Fun Again" that references some of the interesting tools that are being used to defeat death by PowerPoint.  Among the techniques referenced are:

• Pecha Kucha (20 slides in 20 minutes - something I've covered before)
• PowerPoint Karaoke (another topic I've covered before)
• Presentation Tennis Using Slideshare

Presentation Design Tennis

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: tennis design)

Presentation Cartoons from Vlad Kolarov at BetterCartoon.com

Since presenters are always looking for ways to enhance their presentations visually,  I thought I'd share the work of professional cartoonist, Vlad Kolarov.  He has 1000+ business/office cartoons and illustrations that can be a nice addition to a presentation.  He also creates custom cartoons.

His clients include Yahoo Inc., Reader's Digest, CHUM Limited, Renaissance Cards, McGraw-Hill, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, etc.

Check out his cartoons at BetterCartoon.com

PowerPoint Karaoke

The Boston Globe reports on the growing interest in PowerPoint Karaoke, a spoof that originated in Germany a couple of years ago.  The karaoke program works by having a person give a "presentation" from a slide deck that they have never seen before.  In the article, it is suggested that to have your own PowerPoint Karaoke event, all you need to do is the following:

1. find PowerPoint slide decks online (.ppt)
2. download them,
3. serve beer
4. distribute the slide decks to karaoke presenters
5. use a LCD projector to display the slide
6. have the presenter generate a story with the slide deck

I'm game and ready to try it out.

For more tips on PowerPoint Karaoke, see Heathervescent's posting following last year's Barcamp LA.   

Slideshare has created a tool to help you pull together slides from the Slideshare repository.

Humor in Presentations and training

Humor Consultant Malcolm Kushner has a new book out called "Don't Worry be Funny".  According to an article he wrote for Sales & Marketing Management called "The Funny Thing about Training", the book  provides links to web sites that can be used to create humorous images that can be downloaded into PowerPoint.  Among the sites referenced in his article are the Einstein Dynamic Photo Generator, Dictionary Picture Generator, Pointless Scientific Fact Generator and Warning Sign Generator.   

I tried them all out and thought they could be an interesting way to generate a custom image or in the case of the Scientific Fact Generator, a humorous conversion of a measurement - how many 747's is it from Milwaukee to New York City?

PPT in Cartoons - Doonesbury

Doonesbury had a cartoon this week that shows how PowerPoint has even invaded cartoon strips.  I'm always intrigued to see PowerPoint in cartoons and have clipped several over the years including cartoons in The New Yorker, Foxtrot, Dilbert, Bizarro, Working it Out, Break Time and Six Chix.  Interestingly enough the cartoons rarely paint the software in a favorable light with most of them focusing on the deadly aspect of the software.

Reader Contribution - Alec Baldwin Rant PPT

"Your blog, particularly the Power Point resources, is very helpful. I work on Wall Street and get stuck doing power points frequently. In my spare time, I write and perform comedy. I decided to see what I could do with Alec Baldwin's rant and created a rant against Power Point and a Power Point ranting against Power Point on my blog."

Cathleen Rittereiser

Humor in PPT

Presentation Zen has a humorous posting on presenters using PowerPoint humor to make their points.  The posting includes 4 video clips showcasing the use of PowerPoint combined with humor including:

1. Is there life after Death by PowerPoint?
2. Mankiws 10 Principles of Economics
3. Chicken, Chicken, Chicken - about using one word in a presentation
4. Motivational business presentation

In another article on humor, Humor Power has a good posting offering 16 tips on opening your presentation with humor.  Among the tips are a humorous story, humor in your speaker introduction, a contest, a poem or limerick, a quote and audience participation.  The danger with humor is that unless tested your idea of humor might not always connect with the audience.    

PowerPoint Humor

We've seen PowerPoint referenced in several government reports about the Iraq war.  This has led Dateline Hollywood to spoof how Bush in trying to catch up to the hoopla surrounding Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Proof" has decided to release is own documentary using PowerPoint.  The posting showcases some of the slides that might show up in this documentary covering the economy, the war in Iraq, Global Warming and dealing with Britney Speers.

Gettysburg PowerPoint

Lincoln Memorial, Early Light
Originally uploaded by Foto Blitz Color.

From one of the comments on the Washington Monthly, Political Animal blog posting about the use of PowerPoint in Iraq war planning, I came across another interesting example of PowerPoint abuse or humor.  In this case, Peter Norvig imagines what Lincoln's Gettysburg address would have been like if he had used PowerPoint.

Dilbert & PowerPoint

Dilbert has been running cartoons taking on PowerPoint usage in the croporate world.  In today's strip, Dilbert is asked to create a PowerPoint presentation and deliver it in 4 - 5 minutes.  He claims not to have enough time and that it will diminish the message.

In yesterday's strip, Dilbert asks if his PPT presentation has been reviewed only to be told it is too long and full of jargon.  Sounds familiar doesn't it...

If you like the messages on these strips you can buy the cartoons imprinted on t-shirts, mugs, as a large print at their online store.