05/06/2007
My continuing fascination with PowerPoint presentations
First off - my apologies for the lack of posts in the last few days. I've been battling a fierce cold, so I'm spending a lot of the day laid out, listening to my sinuses drain. The rest of the time I stumble around in a self-pitying, mucosoid daze, doing laundry and whatnot.
And someday I'll do a masterful PowerPoint presentation about my piddling ills. I suppose I'm interested in good presentations because, like everyone, I've sat through some horrors. The bar in the graph slowly becomes bigger and turns color, and then sits there for a minute.... two minutes... longer..., while whoever it is drones on, and the air conditioning hums in the background. Undoubtedly, they're patting themselves on the back for that great move of having the bar turn color. Aaaargh.
Later for that. We come to praise PowerPoint, not to bury it; and we have two fine examples of zingy preentations full of content and style.
First up, Dick Hardt illustrates a barnburner of a talk on digital identity, which may not seem so thrilling, but give it a few minutes; it grows on you.
Lawrence Lessig gives another stellar presentation about free culture and free software, with his usual killer style.
I realize this may strike some people as rather geeky material. What can I say? I've been giving a few talks myself, and I hope to give a few more. I don't want to turn into some kind of high-tech song and dance man, but I'd like to be able to make a few vital points without resorting to the dreaded pie-chart.
Thanks to Lars for turning me on to these. I look forward to his first presentation.