Here is an excerpt from the biography of Steve Jobs, sent to me by “sales resultant” Ron Martin, who dislikes PowerPoint as much as I do:
One of the first things Jobs did during the product review process was ban PowerPoint. “I hate the way people used slide presentations instead of thinking,” Jobs recalled. “People would confront a problem by creating a presentation. I wanted them to engage, to hash things out at the table, rather than show a bunch of slides. People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.”
I’ve seen hundreds of presentations which were driven by PowerPoint. Six of them were good. One was about the universe. Another was about an organic vegetable farm on the Big Island. One I saw yesterday was about Chinese dance performances. They were comprised of 95% images and 5% words.
If you’re going to use PP, start and end with YOU, and tell us how many slides you’re going to show. This way, you start with connection and you end with connection. And we know how much brain space to reserve for the PP portion of your presentation.
