I've been doing a number of presentations in the past few months and so was very interested when I came across an newspaper article  saying:

"The use of the PowerPoint presentation has been a disaster. It should be ditched."
                                                   — John Sweller 

Sweller's key point, far to often we repeat the words on the screen. So people read them and then ignore what we have to say. If we don't want to go as far Sweller suggests then use fewer words. Up until last week I thought I was doing pretty well on this front. My slides have tended to be a few key sentences - but now I realize that my audience could read my key points and so didn't really hear me. The litmus test a copy of my PowerPoint slides was useful without me.

Reading Presentation Zen's "Is it finally time to ditch PowerPoint?", Seth Godin's "Really Bad PowerPoint" and Guy Kawasaki's "The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint" has caused me to radically change my presentations.

Now a typical slide contains a title a picture and four to five words. From an upcoming presentation on Agile Methods:

Problem

• Late
• Buggy
• Change?
• Burnout

Just enough information to pique your interest, but no more. To get the beef you have to listen. Do you want to know what's behind this slide? Come to my presentation "Requirements flux driving you insane?". (Wednesday May 30th - 100 Queen St Suite 500 Ottawa).

BTW No you don't have to take notes - I will hand a set out - after the presentation.

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