Innovating presentations – death of PowerPoint

by admin on April 18, 2007

Gettingdrunk1

A couple of private conversations have sparked this idea. John Taschek, currently at Salesforce.com is a highly respected ex-journalist now serving as an SFdC marketing exec. The backdrop is that Google appears to have acquired a PowerPoint substitute in TonicSystems as it fleshes out its alternative on demand business applications service. This comprehensive report from Garret Rogers is good value. John posed this question:

I thought of Tonic as viewer technology rather than content creation technology. It didn’t really have much traction either – so Google knows something I don’t. All I can say is that word, excel, email – they’re all very clonable to me. Powerpoint is very tough to beat since it combines almost desktop publishing capabilities with a huge community of supporters. I’m looking forward to seeing what Google can do with this.

But is it really that important? I’m terrible at producing visually appealing graphics – I just don’t have that talent. My site has plenty of visual material – 99% blagged. Like the one at the top of this post.

So what if the presentations of the near future consist of YouTube clips, cartoons from people like Hugh MacLeod or Dilbert and blagged bits and pieces from other places? Better still, what if traditional PowerPoint was simply banned? I know this will get up the noses of the All Nighter brigade because they get paid by the weight and beauty of their presentations. The Getting Drunk In First Class lot might giggle as well. But then when they come up with these pearls (the pic comes from there), you’ve got to admit that some people’s talents are going wasted.

Now take this one step further. Most presenters turn up on the day, do their thing and then get rated by those who attended the event. What if you could engage the intended audience beforehand through something like WetPaint and/or Ning? Here are the advantages:

  1. Attendees have a good idea what they’re in for so they should come armed with great questions.
  2. Since attendees are invested in the content, the drop out rate is likely to be much lower – typical dropout rates are 25-30% for marketing events.
  3. Everyone has a pre-event learning opportunity
  4. There is no real need for ratings – the people that attend have already rated the presentation through their contributions. So what if your delivery is less than sparkling. Attendees are already attuned to the content stuff so are likely to be much more forgiving of your stumbles, stutters and slide projector problems
  5. It represents a wholly cost effective idea in co-creation.

The downsides. What if:

  1. No-one cares?
  2. They hate what you’re likely to talk about because it is way beyond their experience?
  3. They’re scared of what you’ll say and so shrink back from involvement?
  4. They don’t speak your native language?

This is an idea I hope to put to the test very soon. If it comes off then I’ll blog it here. I won’t claim this is a PowerPoint killer – but it might be.

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Tagged as: Innovation

  • http://www.gdifc.com/ Getting Drunk in Fir

    This is a very interesting idea for a PowerPoint replacement; unfortunately (as you might have found out from reading our blog) consultancies use PowerPoints more as documents rather than for actual presentations. No sane executive wants to read a word document full of content; they want to see the net net net net net on a PowerPoint slide.

    We should write a post about this on our site an elaborate on the extremes consultants go with PowerPoints; its unbelievable.

  • http://www.accmanpro.com Dennis Howlett

    OK – so we don't get rid of PowerPoint per se – but maybe we just end up rendering it somewhat irrelevant as more sophisticated and useful forms of media come available. Remember also I am contextualising this in delivering on a specific type of scenario – one to which I am exposed on a daily basis.

  • http://www.accmanpro.com Dennis Howlett

    So if the day ever comes when the last 2 commenters and I share a stage – the audience might be thoroughly confused. Alastair and his immaculately slick PPT presso, Richard serenading them unaccompanied and me with a Mac doing YouTube. I’m not sure it bears thinking about too closely.

  • alastair

    "No sane executive wants to read a word document full of content; they want to see the net net net net net on a PowerPoint slide."

    lot of nonsense – they care as much about Powerpoint as they do about Word.

    Powerpoint is much abused – mainly as a prop for either poor presenters or poor presentations.

  • http://w Richard Murphy

    I've virtually given up on PowerPoint

    In January I wrote a presentation and it got distributed in advance, so on the spur of the moment, having discovered most people had read it I gave a talk on the next steps that followed on from it. I got great ratings for this impromptu performance.

    Then in march I sent my PowerPoijt for a presentation to 300 people – and they lost it. I didn't take a copy, so did another impromptu, and it went better than it could have done with PowerPoint.

    OK, I've been talking in public for 30 years but the point is this. Powerpoint is not an aid to good communication. A good speaker with some clear points to make, delivering them with some passion is about communication.

    So, I'm now in a 'use it reluctantly' mode

    Richard

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