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Presentation software.
Today's presentation programs have made it so easy to produce bullet charts and graphs, that virtually all corporate speakers have turned to them, whether or not they really need to. In too many cases, presentation software has detracted from speeches, not enhanced them.
(Incidentally, before I receive death threats from the speakers that I hire for my CorelDRAW User Conference, I do not include them in this group. I hire specialists whose presentations involve actually working the software, not just standing up and speaking. I distinguish between product demos and training seminars, in which the audience is watching the software, and a speech or an address, in which the audience is watching the speaker.)
This is not like the problems that Internet publishing has created this year, or desktop publishing caused a decade ago. This is worse. Electronic publishing has invited amateurs to advertise their lack of skill in public, often with embarrassing results. But the tyranny of presentation software is what it does to skilled speakers. It takes good speakers, able to carry an audience with their voice and their language, and it dummies them down. Now that I have your attention, I want to say what I like about presentation software, because there is an awful lot of good things to say about it. In fact, it is very rare that I give a talk or a presentation without turning to PowerPoint (and now that Corel has an entry worth discussing, maybe WordPerfect Presentations [scott, pls check actual name]). An on-screen slide show is the perfect way to illustrate the framework for your ideas or to show visually a relationship that would be difficult to describe with just words. It is also helpful to share your hierarchy of ideas. |
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