Slides? Slides? You don't need no stinkin

Meet Richard Forno over at Infowarrior.org.  He likes Power Point. Loves it, in fact.   Loves it so much that he wrote a PowerPoint Manifesto that probably should be required reading.  If you've seen this before, sorry, I'm just getting to 2002.

Excerpts:

• If I decide to do slides and provide them in advance (which is rare), I pledge to let you know and send them to you promptly. If I don't plan to use slides, you will be informed just as promptly - please be mature and don't beg for them.
• If I decide to use slides - either a full presentation or a few slides as visual aids - that does not mean you are entitled to a copy because of the fact I'm using them at your event.
• If you want to 'take notes' during my presentation, and I've not provided slides, relax - hotels cheerfully provide no-cost pads and pens at your seat for just such applications. Feel free to use them.
• If I am using Powerpoint and provided slides to the conference organizers, but they don't match what I'm talking from, it's because the stuff I sent to the conference organizers was sent in well in advance of the event, and the world may have changed in the interim. You don't want to hear old stuff, do you? So quit grumbling.

And:

Powerpoint is simply "business television" - doing to the business community what television did to the person; namely, creating a passive environment where viewers can shut their brains down and become mesmerized by images projected in a one-sided, non-interactive, and often inappropriate fashion. Powerpoint, like television, speaks TO an audience, not WITH an audience; and doesn't engage them in any interactive, memorable manner. As a communicator, I have a fundamental problem with that.

The full rant is here.  If you are looking to truly see a master in action, there is none better than Seth Godin. He is the only person alive that can go on a 45 minute tear with hundreds of slides in the presentation all of which make sense and are totally appropriate.  Total magic.

Comments

[Don Dodge]

Rick, You have been posting some great stuff lately. I really enjoy it.

Seth Godin is good, but have you ever seen Dick Hardt do a Powerpoint presentation? He is a fellow Canadian, and the master of all Powerpoint masters. Look up Dick Hardt and his company Sxip Identity. Amazing!

Don Dodge

[Keith Glover]

PowerPoint...you might just as well use a stone tablet! People need to wake up and smell the Flash!

[/pd]

I think the person who can ripe thru 4 hrs of ppt is TOM PETER's !!