What are the expectations for conference PowerPoint presentations? At every research, practice, and teaching conference I have attended over the past 5 years, the norm and acceptable standard for PowerPoint presentations is to slap all of the content on the slides and read it to your audience. Rarely does the audience receive a hard copy of the slides. In European and Eastern European conferences, it’s not unusual to structure one session with 5–7 short presentations broken up with a 5-min Q & A after each one. These sessions are repeated throughout an entire day. It is possible to sit through 30–50 PowerPoint readings per day. Plenary sessions are just lengthier versions of the same format. This conference practice gives new meaning to the expression “Death by PowerPoint.”
May I ask you a couple of questions? “Sure.” Here's a mini-Q & A:
1. Q: How does the current PowerPoint practice differ from overhead transparencies?
A: Standard PowerPoint without slide transitions, custom animation of letters and words, and little or no color is a neat, higher tech version of overheads
2. Q: How does PowerPoint differ from presenters traditionally reading their papers?
A: Basically, in PowerPoint the paper content is on the wall in outline bullet format instead of sitting on the lectern in running text format
Clearly, in its simplest, albeit most common, form, PowerPoint doesn’t add a lot to a typical presentation. The talking head, sage-on-the stage, lecturer and PowerPoint are a match made by Microsoft.
Unfortunately, the potential of the technology is rarely used to defibrillate the dead words. Creating movement with slide transitions and custom animation of letters and words and integrating color, graphics, pictures, videos, music, and sound effects can change a deadly, boring presentation into a spectacular engaging and riveting production.
So, given the conference standard described above, why deviate and break that mold?
Rather than reiterate the rules of PowerPoint 101 and 201 and suggested presenter guidelines proffered by conference organizers, which you probably already know, the next blogs will recommend a few minimally invasive procedures to improve your presentations.
COPYRIGHT © 2009 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
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