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I made my living (in part) from PowerPoint in the '90s, playing a key role
in a traveling Great Oz show. The two companies for which I worked spent a
great deal of time in researching what constitutes an effective
presentation. This included such things as color schemes, typeface choices,
font sizes, handout generationâyou name it.
I've let my client know that their decks are abhorrent, supported by a
weblink I sent them:
No doubt we are trying to convey a lot [read: WAY too much] of information
in our slides. The deck I delivered last week was 180 slides based on the
client's scope (our presentations range in size from 30 to 300 slides).
Therein lies the problem: Our slide presentations are for myriad clients
with different needs but the central requirement is that [they] convey
information to readers beyond our verbal presentation.
Decades ago, our reports were done exclusively in Word in a standard
business report format (complete sentences and paragraphs, supported by
charts, graphs and figures, with footnotes). We switched to PP at the
request of clients, but the need for a lot of detail didn't go away. We
tell a market story in complex specialty <*redacted*> markets, and people
pass our slide decks onto their colleagues months later.
Given our additional background, I am open to your suggestions for
improvement to our process. Is it simply a matter of your revising our
template, according to best industry practices for PP? Or should we
rethink the way we are presenting?
So... clearly they need a method of supporting (not delivering) a live
presentation, which PPT(x) does well. But what about three months later?
Record the presentations and offer them on disc (cloud)?
