Re: The Rewards of Not Using PowerPoint

Subject: Re: The Rewards of Not Using PowerPoint
From: Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 15:07:53 -0700


David Neeley wrote:

The problem generally is not the tool--whatever "the tool" is for a given situation--but how the tool is employed.
I hate to argue with such good sense. However, although I partly agree with this sentiment, I'm going to.

First, although a medium is partly what you made of it, some media encourage triviality more than than others. It's hard to discuss a complex issue, for example, when you're limited to a ten second sound byte on the daily news. In the same way , it's hard to develop in-depth when you use a slide presentation, because the slides are designed for summary.

Second, giving a slide presentation is much harder for an experienced speaker than simply speaking. The audience's attention tends to be focused on the slides. As a result, all the usual speakers' tricks, such as making eye contact with audience members become much more difficult. Often, what happens is that the speaker starts to focus on the slides, too, so that the speaker and the audience interact through the presentation, instead of directly. Once that happens, the speaker tends to confine comments to those on the slides, instead of looking at the audience to see if a point needs to be expanded upon or can be condensed.

Sometimes, you can overcome the limitations of a medium, but the medium itself works against you. You have to be an extremely good speaker to overcome the limitations consistently, and most of us simply aren't.

--
Bruce Byfield bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com 604.421.7177
http://members.axion.net/~bbyfield

"I'll be riding stolen horses when you don't see me no more
I'll be riding stolen horses on some distant shore."
- Ray Wylie Hubbard, "Stolen Horses"



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References:
Re: The Rewards of Not Using PowerPoint: From: David Neeley

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