Just over a year ago, I wrote a post here entitled “I Hate Presentations” in which I railed against some of the terrible things that audiences of PowerPoint presentations (specifically, me) have had to endure over the years. The endless dreary reading out of bullet points, the tiny fonts, awful clip-art, etc. etc. I wrote the post in the context of a struggle to perfect a presentation about Virtual Worlds that I had to deliver it at an internal IBM UK conference for IT Architects the following week. The presentation was a success – it went down very well, and it showed me that you can get away with tearing up the PowerPoint rule book – you don’t need bullet points and corporate templates to delight an audience.
Last month, a full year after these events took place, I gave a talk called “Rethinking the Presentation” at the 2008 incarnation of the same conference. The purpose of this was to try and overturn some of the bad old assumptions about how to make slides. What I have learned is that there’s a real desire in the world to do better at this, as well as a lot of room for the hoped for improvement.
This is a slidecast of my presentation – I hope you find it worthwhile. I’m very interested to hear people’s comments and feedback – feel free to leave them here, or at blip.tv.
Edit: iPhone version added.
I suggest you watch in the fullscreen mode 
{ 4 comments }
Hi,
Just watched your presentation and had to tell you I think it is excellent! I’d love to show this to everyone I work with.
I really hope this has a positive impact for you … every person responsible for delivering presentations should be forced to watch this before starting.
BJH
@1 Hey
Thanks for this – and feel free to show it as widely as you like! It would be great to feel that I had made a difference with this.
Ok… I do have one question… what’s “BOVVERED” in non-British English… ??
Ah, the joys of communicating with my friend – we are separated by a common language!
Ann
@3 Hey Ann
“Am I Bovvered?” could be loosely translated as “Do I care?” – it’s actually a catchphrase of British comedienne Catherine Tate performing the character, Lauren from her show.
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