Bruce R. Gabrielle

Bullet points well-used can:

• improve the clarity of a presentation

• encourage listening to the spoken detail

• ah, bugger it, who am I kidding...



Reading off bullet points on a slide tells me nothing because I am quite capable of reading myself.

I once did an interview for a post, and was the only one of everyone interviewed who didn't use PowerPoint for my presentation. Although there was nothing in the interview requirements that said you had to use PowerPoint, I was apparently marked down for not doing so, even though one of the interview panel in feedback later said that most of the interviewers were clear I'd done the best presentation and that it was also by far the most interesting.

I have been to so many boring and just plain bad lectures and presentations by people using PowerPoint that I am reminded of Spike Milligan's pithy and rather non PC phrase, "the handrail of the crippled mind" in relation to the wretched program.

Germans find it wildly unprofessional if you turn up to give a presentation with a flipchart and markers, or even worse nothing at all, even if you know your data inside out. They think it means you haven't prepared. If you think PP is bad you should try having to work for company which is full of people who think fucking Visio is the pinnacle of human communication (I used to love Visio. Then I got better). Excel. I've seen it with my own eyes!!

I do think part of the problem with presentations that use PowerPoint is that people use PowerPoint and assume that it will do the work for them, while the best presentations are the ones are where they are properly planned out and used in tandem.

Having said that, one of the best presentations I ever gave was my first ... I'd only found out the night before that I was presenting and didn't have access to a computer, so I had to think very carefully about what I was going to say. No pressure! It was quite exhilarating! After the presentation people came up to me and said it was the first time in ages that they'd actually listened to a presentation because there was nothing to distract them, just me. To this day one of the best I've ever given!… (mehr)