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Recently between meeting with some perspective clients and a presentation I am doing next week, I have been in PowerPoint Hell for the last couple of weeks. I have never been a fan of PP and it amazes me that with all the technological innovations we have been accomplishing recently and just how fast things are moving, there is not a comparable product to PowerPoint for the PC?
There have been rumors that Google will be coming out with a PP type product just as they have done for Word and Excel and I absolutely welcome that. I also hear that PP 2007 is suppose to be much better, but I am not holding my breath for that.
Question: For your presentations, do you use anything other than PowerPoint? And yes, for all you Mac people out there, I know you use Keynote and Keynote is so much better, blah, blah, blah. That does not help me as I use a PC and that will not be changing.
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It’s more how you use it than the software. Eliminate lengthy bullet points and just stick to picture stories as a background to your verbal message.
PP is just a tool. Some design decisions in PP are OK, some are bad.
Tired of PP?
Check out “HD Presentations” with Spresent Glass (Beta 3).
User-generated presentations are coming within the next couple weeks.
Microsoft Powerpoint is like Microsoft Excel. It’s extremely powerful and the average users rarely use more than 5% of it’s features so they never learn the shortcuts and how best to make it work for them. It is the communication tool “de riguer” in our organization - used more than MS Word, so I’ve had to become somewhat skilled at using it, but even so it can be a pain. I never use the hokey design template though. 2007 is an improvement on the last version. People also suffer PP fatigue - from seeing too many presentations with too much text!
It remains to be seen, and anything’s possible, but I would be interested to see if Google can come up with a competitor to PowerPoint. We’d never adopt it for a business app, and I think I’d miss all that I’ve come to expect in PP, but still it’d be nice to see.
Ken - You are absolutely right, that is what I am trying to do, thanks.
Sasha - I will have a look.
Britgril - So do you have any interest in publishing an article on your tips and tricks on PP? I know I would be very interested in reading it.
Thanks for the comments folks.
Hey. Keynote is WAY better. Buy a Mac.
(running and ducking)
As a sadly titled “PowerPoint Queen” due to endless hours in corporate america on PPT — I have to defend it. Once you get to know it ya love it.
But then, when I escaped corporate heck…I had the freedom to choose a new life. One with a Mac!
Since I also love your blog, you’ve been tagged:
http://blog.spaclientele.com/2007/04/finding_balance.html
Do I have an interest in publishing an article on my PP tips and tricks? In a Word (no pun intended) - no.
But I’m sure if you go online and Google PowerPoint tips and tricks there is sure to be something out there from someone probably written about it far more lovingly than I ever could.
Failing that, there are several books on PowerPoint… the popular “…For Dummies” series comes to mind, because they really do break complicated things into easy to follow steps.
Yeah, sorry, I’m a Mac user, but yeah, it is better.
Anyway, I’m also writing this to let you know I’ve been emailing you, but I’m not sure if you’re getting the email about that little project. Maybe check your spam filter or something.
Let me know if you’re getting my messages
Sean - I know, I know, Macs are sooooo much better, but I don’t see me switching.
Heather - I don’t think no matter how much I use PP that I will ever love it. Thanks for the tag.
Britgril - Why don’t you want to post a PP tutorial?? It would be of interest to me and a bet a whole lot of other people. Come on!
Dave - I got your email from Thursday, sorry I have not replied, been swamped. I should be sending something out to you tomorrow.
Thanks for the comments folks.
About Macs: Most of the time PC users have opinion about Macs without trying … I bought Mac 2 years ago and use both.
Q. Is anybody out there who wants to go back to PC after switching to Mac?
The same can be true about PPT and KeyNote.
Q. Anybody wants to go back to PPT from KeyNote?
Anyway, Web 2.0 makes a platform choice irrelevant. So the future is Web - not desktop, not PPT or KeyNote.
I’m still using PP for all my presentations. Some places they specify presentations should be in PP.
Hey MC Silverstein,
Good luck… I’m trying to find this great presentation by the ceo of an identity mgmt company… I thought it was linked from Seth’s blog. It was a story on trust and identity, and was a great pace… almost one word on a slide, and he’d go through them very quickly.
In searching for it, I did see these as well. Good luck, and i’ll post if I find it.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/10/listen_to_this.html
http://www.presentationzen.com/
Charlie
Found it:
Dick Hardt’s Identity 2.o presentation:
http://www.identity20.com/media/WEB2_2005/
Just a bit of inspiration.
Also found this site: http://www.beyondbullets.com
Soon we’ll find out if we can do better than powerpoint.
Google announced they’re adding a PP clone to their current web suite.
I don’t think it matters what the software is. What matters is the content and style of presentation. If you have some corp type with no imagination and nothing but 200 bullet points… you will be bored to tears. To often the only thing that interested me in the meeting was the bagels.
One of the best presentation I’ve seen recently involved a simple flip chart which got projected on a screen behind the presenter. It was alive, exciting, and fun. The conversation went all over. It felt more like a brainstorming session then a presentation.
That is what we need; excitement.
To all you who use PP and have been for a long time:
My complaints about PP don’t come in from its lack of usability. They stem from the fact that the transitions are dull, and haven’t been updated in years. There’s nothing really cool about their transitions, and no way to get new ones.
My ideal presentation software would be open source, and allow users to create custom transitions that would be posted on the website. If anybody knows of any software like THAT, let me know! I’d LOVE to get my hands on it!!
I never liked PP and back in 2004 I was using Macromedia Director. It could do everything and more than any other, probably still can. It was being used more for developing video and games, but you can everything else with it, including much nicer “interactive” presentations.
I do also use Macs and I guess I’m one of the few Mac users who prefers his PC. There was a time when Macs were faster and better than PCs for multimedia, but times have changed (sorry Mac lovers, but it’s a fact, not an opinion).
There is no need for you to switch to a Mac (especially since 90% of people are not using them)… and keynote not being PC friendly either. Serious Magic’s Visual Communicator 2 was good, but has been taken over by Adobe which I think is making something new for presentation software now.
The best thing to do now is to just use the tools at hand and try different things with them. So if you’re on a Mac, use Keynote. On a PC, use PP.
Alternatively you could try installer applications to do your presentations (indigo AutoPlay Menu Studio is good). I found someone doing that for his business cards (mini CDs) and people were quite impressed.
Good luck (this was too long, sorry).
Macs are flaming bundles of homosexuality, made for people who don’t want to know how their computer runs. Look into Open Source software and how to use google efficiently. Macs are horrible, they just can’t seem to shut up about “how much easier” their baby computer is. Easier? Yes. More Powerful? Depends on what you’re comparing it to, frankly, every mac-pc comparison I’ve seen has compared 3000$ overpriced steve jobs pieces of crap to 200-500 dollar PCs, if you put as much effort into a PC the pc wins even more.
Open source software, all free, always. Maintained by the people for the people, not corporate dirtbags like steve jobs. I know I’ve been a little off topic but all these ridiculous mac users offer less usable information than I do, all they can do is brag.
-ShadowAtlan