When I was The Western Producer’s copy editor, I used to take advantage of the editorial department’s annual all-staff meetings and make a presentation about writing.
For the 2001 conference I decided to go a little more high-tech than usual and make a PowerPoint presentation. Anyone who has attended a farm meeting in the last 20 years knows what they are.
The computer program, called PowerPoint, is used to place visuals and words on slides that are then projected onto a screen during a presentation. It was a significant advancement from the old overhead slides, which required content to be placed on those flimsy plastic sheets that had to be manually moved on and off an overhead projector.
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Twenty-one years ago, I decided to join the PowerPoint era.
The meeting was scheduled for Sept. 18-19, which was a Tuesday and Wednesday, and I decided to dedicate the Tuesday before the event to learn PowerPoint and prepare my presentation.
As it happened, however, that Tuesday was Sept. 11, and while the rest of my colleagues spent much of the day glued to the TV set in the boardroom watching the latest developments from that terrible day, I was stuck at my desk sweating over a computer program.
I don’t think I ever made another one, and I became a watcher of PowerPoint presentations rather than a creator as the technology rapidly ushered in a new era.
I recently read a newspaper article by author Benjamin Errett who has taken a look at this era and how PowerPoint has influenced society.
Errett argues that while many people like to hate PowerPoint presentations, the technology has dramatically democratized the business of sharing information.
He made some interesting observations about technology’s impact on society, but a couple of points in particular stood out.
When a company decided to restrict PowerPoint presentations to only three slides in an effort to shorten meeting times, employees ended up cramming so much information into those three slides that it took more time to comprehend them than it would have with more but simpler slides.
And then there’s this nugget from tech guru Guy Kawasaki: “Divide the oldest (meeting participant’s) age by two, and use that font size.”
Wiser words were never spoken.
