PresentationZen – in video format
Garr Reynolds, author of Presentation Zen and Presentation Zen Design, gives a one-on-one talk on presentation design, based on the basic points in his books.
Trying to find a slide manager
Even though I’m a pretty structured person with a visual memory, I spend way too much time looking for slides in my directories. I can have a clear memory of how I solved a visual problem on a slide but then be lost when it comes to what project it was for, when it was. And even though Google Desktop can do wonders when it comes to searches – you still have to open up your presentations, find the slide, move it, reorganize it. So I’ve been looking around for a slide manager – at first hand to use for my workstations but maybe for all my coworkers since a lot of the work we do are in forms of presentations.
This can’t be a unique problem – it must be a problem every organisation has. I decided to try out Slide Executive and PPTShare Desktop and Slideboxx. Slide Executive is priced at a hefty $355 for one license and PPT Share Desktop and Slideboxx at $99 (PPTShare being currently reduced). None feels like the perfect software. Oh, how I would love this to be an integrated part of PowerPoint – maybe something to hope for in Office 2010?
I’ll give them each a week (if I’m not falling sleep during the lengthy indexing phases) and see if either is up to the task I want to complete.
And isn’t it interesting how all three use Blue, orange and white in their text focused logos?
Why do people love PowerPoint?
One of the topics that were up for a session on the recent PresentationCamp in San Francisco was “Why do people hate PowerPoint?”. In the end it never materilized as a session – but it really got me thinking. In my professional consultancy life my main problem isn’t that people hate PowerPoint, but actually that they really love it. Love it as in adore it, idealize it, put it on a pedestal love it. PowerPoint can be used for anything, any situation – regardless of a presentation actually taking place. Word has been put out of business by PowerPoint that is the solution to all problem.
When I read Garr Reynolds’ PresentationZen last spring I almost had an epiphany. Slideuments. What a great word. As he writes:
The creation of the slideument stems for a desire to save time. People think they are being efficient and simplifying things. // The slideument isn’t effective and it isn’t efficient, and it isn’t pretty. Attempting to have slides serve both as projected visuals and as stand-alone handouts makes for bad visuals and bad documents*.
Unfortunately I’m beginning to think I have become a Master of Slideuments. And it’s not a title I want. So actually, I could do with a little more hate of power point and a little less love. In the meantime, I’m trying to get out of PowerPoint hell, one .pptx file at a time…
*Garr Reynolds, PresentationZen, 2008.