A Powerful Tool Poorly Used…
Last month we asked the community “PowerPoint: A powerful tool poorly used or a poor tool overused?“. We got a great set of responses and several people even took the time to craft some great posts on the topic for their own blogs.
Blog Posts:
For Successful PowerPoint Presentations, Look to Cartoonists – Austin Kleon
Bad PowerPoint, Bad! Bad! – Dick Carlson
On PowerPoint – Neil Cohn
Why PowerPoint Rules the Business World – Dave Gray
PowerPoint – Good or Bad? – Dan Rose
Highlights from our comments:
As a long time client of mine says, “A fool with a tool is still a fool.”
It takes wisdom and discernment to choose the right tool used in the right way to achieve a specific purpose. Don’t blame the tool, but don’t make it the only tool in your toolbox.
It’s funny that people don’t blame word for crappy documents or Corel Draw for clipart… wait they don’t right?
I used to work at a design firm 10 years ago that once they found out they could make PDFs go full screen made all their presentations in Quark Express. It didn’t help them make better presenattions.
Content is always the king…
…whatever the tool.
Tools don’t maketh an interesting presentation…
- Jaideep Jagasia
One of the reasons PowerPoint became successful is its ease of use. It automatically creates a new presentation when you open the program. You click on the New Slide button and start typing your title and bullet points. With little effort (well, for some people even this is probably a lot of effort, but…), you’ve created a “presentation.” If the default setting were a blank slide, people would be forced to think (at least a little) about what they’re doing before subjecting the world to ‘death by paragraphs masquerading as bullet points.’ Now that the toothpaste is out of the tube, though, I don’t think there’s any way to go back.
- Robert Newcombe
Visit the original post to read all the comments.
So Who Won?
We were thrilled with the response to this month’s question and after a lot of deliberation we decided on Austin Kleon’s post “For Successful PowerPoint Presentations, Look to Cartoonists” as the winner for this go around. He not only had an interesting take on the topic but his post actually spun off a good amount of discussion on his own blog and beyond.
Congratulations Austin!
What’s Next?
Next month we’re going to take a look at Mind Mapping. We’re still working on details but we should have some exciting webinar and podcast announcements in the coming weeks.
One interesting phenomenon with Mind Mapping is all the different uses people have come up with for the technique – from document outlines to personal planners & contact management solutions people seem to be able to bend Mind Mapping to do their bidding in almost any context.
As part of this month’s topic we’ll be looking to the community again for your thoughts and comments on Mind Mapping – this time we’ll be looking for your examples or discoveries of the most unique uses of Mind Mapping.
We’ll have more details in the coming days on how to respond, what prizes are up for grabs and who to expect on our podcasts and webinars in the coming weeks.
Liked this article? You may also enjoy:
- PowerPoint: A powerful tool poorly used or a poor tool overused? Let us know your thoughts and you could win!
- Free Web-Based Mind Mapping Usage Survey
- Webinar with Nancy Duarte on June 17th
- Mind Mapping: Share your unique uses of the technique and you could win!
- [Webinar] Creating Powerful Presentations with Nancy Duarte
