The Good, the Bad, and the Really Bad Power Point

It’s the last day of the Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit in the city I call home, Philadelphia, and Neill Archer Roan’s continuing posts (here, here, here, here, and here) on planning a good presentation seem apropos. Also see Presentation Zen, Guy Kawasaki, and Really Bad Power Point by Seth Godin.

As is typical, the Creative Economy Summit had its great speakers, and it had its Really Bad Power Point. As if to drive the point home, author Daniel Pink started his presentation by literally teaching the crowd how to give a good presentation, and the former speechwriter for Al Gore proved himself much more magnetic than his old boss. Yes, he used Power Point, but only for key phrases and iconic images (see photo). Talking of icons, other great speakers included Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Everyone could tell they’d given variations on their dog and pony show countless times (after all, the bulk of their work consists of convincing city councils, zoning committees, private landowners, and even the German Parliament to OK their monumental projects), but their humor and generosity kept it fresh, and the details of their work process were fascinating.

Ed Tettemer of Red Tettemer told funny stories that illustrated campaigns like Philly’s More Fun and groundhogchase.com (and supplied numbers that showed the campaigns succeeded), but his talk skirted around the issue he raised at the beginning: people don’t like advertising and are avoiding it in increasing numbers through Tivo and other options that allow for interruption-free content. His solution seemed to be simply: create more entertaining ads. Uh… which people will see… when? Entertaining or not, they won’t see your ad if they’re using Tivo, or watching popular series like Lost on DVD, or downloading shows with Bittorrent, or even dividing their attention as many do – keeping the TV on while they surf, IM, and talk on the phone.

The best speakers told stories. You’d expect the young founder and president of AgileCat to use some kind of bleeding edge technology in his presentation, but no. I think he used index cards or perhaps notes on a napkin. But he told great stories. Speaking about Web 2.0, Matt Fisher of Night Kitchen and Ian Cross of I-Site organized their presentation around a day in the life of a multitasking young creative and they rocked it by doing it all live online with Web 2.0 technology.

Thank you again to Innovation Philadelphia for creating this conference full of smart people with big ideas, and for the opportunity to volunteer and attend for free.

UPDATE: via Todd at 800ceoreadblog, coincidentally, Presentation Zen has posted videos of Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, and Tom Peters. (I posted on the Godin video here, but the others are new to me, and maybe you, too).

Comments

[Ed]

Hey Annie, have you read any Tufte? He's got some great critiques of power point. His work is interesting to me since I'm in the biz of marketing science so there's lots of numbers to deal with...

[Maryann Devine]

Ed, I have to admit, I haven't looked at Tufte in quite some time, not since my time at the Preservation Alliance. It IS interesting stuff, and I didn't realize he talked about Power Point. Can you recommend anything in particular? Thanks!

[NG]

Tufte has a critique of Powerpoint style and "usuability" on his site. Here's the link: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint

If you wanna rock free content, check out the "Ask ET" forum of his site. Contributors have discussed Powerpoint quite frequently: http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a?topic_id=1

[Maryann Devine]

Wow, thanks NG. I'll take a look.

[Matthew]

Hey Maryann,

Thanks for the kudos on our 24 hours of web 2.0 presentation. Anyone who wants to catch up on what they missed can read a transcript at http://www.citycreatives.com/blog