Great point, you are right, One non-interactive aspect of PP is that it makes it easier for people to not listen.

I would add that if PP is able to attract audience attention to this extent, then it also surely calls into question the presenting skills of the person giving the presentation.

Thanks for your comments,
Niall

Thanks!
Nathan

Firstly, I would suggest that your profession puts you in the category of expert. Take out PP and you remain a professional performer, in this case a business speaker. If we make this your starting point, it then becomes easy to see how you could utilise PP to support and even (dare I say it) add to the structure, education and entertaintainment values of your talks.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of presenters do not possess a similar starting point, if anything, they are uncomfortable with even the idea of having to deliver presentations. This means that rather than using PP to support the presentation, its the presenter that ends up facilitating the PP. You end up with a situation where the presenter allows PP to become the focal point of the exercise. Because of its limitations, PP used in this way (crutch) becomes destructive rather than construction.

I believe that the vast majority of presentations are delivered in this manner. I also believe that If you take away the crutch, you have to start to learn to walk. So take PP away from the presenter and the presenter has to learn to present. Once these skills are learnt and honed, PP can then absolutely be used correctly to support the person doing the presentation.

Often presentaion training merely serves to confound the above problem, in that it is guilty of exactly the same thing, focusing on delivering PP slides rather than skills needed to present. Ironically, I often wondered about some presentation trainers, what if you took away the PP, could they actually present?

There is an opinion out there, that’s its a kinda nessecery evil which I completely disagree with. I don’t want to have “sit through a presenation”, I desperately want to be be educated, entertained, and involved but most presentations Ive attended just never gave me the opportunity.

Thanks so much for your comments and input.
Cheers,
Niall

I am a professional speaker who spends most of his time across Ireland, the UK and recently mainland europe doing motivational talks and talks on Guerrilla Marketing, Networking and Presentation Skills. You’re absolutely right………. Powerpoint can put people to sleep and bore even the most determined attendee, it’s whats called in the trade, death by powerpoint.

But lets not throw the baby out with the bath water, I use it for 99% of my talks, simply because I have a terrible memory (haemachromatosis suffer!) and the powerpoint keeps me on track.

I would also add that (in my humble professional opinion) my presentations and colourfull, relevant, interesting and they add to and support that which I am saying.

Keep up the good work, enjoying your blog.

Gerry