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RE: The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint

• To: 'Liam Quin' <liam@w...>, XML Developers List <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 14:11:10 -0600

But of course, now the audience has to take 
very good notes because the presenter has 
left them nothing to hang their memories on. 
Result:  entertaining show with little content 
left to share.  The speaker makes the gig 
and protects their act for a future engagement.

So, given a really important presentation, 
and in accordance with the sharing ethic 
of the Internet, speakers who choose this 
style should be compelled to provide a 
paper as well and if that paper is simply 
pictures, should lose half their fee.

Chet Atkins used to do an act where he 
would play two tunes simultaneously. He 
would have his hand covered with a handkerchief 
to keep other guitarists from imitating his 
technique.  It worked for awhile but eventually 
some did figure it out and bettered it, but 
while it worked, it was a great act.  So 
I put such presentations as are being described 
here in the entertainment category.

One way to take good notes is to turn on your 
cellphones and cellphone cameras. :-)

len

From: Liam Quin [mailto:liam@w...]

On Mon, Dec 15, 2003 at 02:29:36PM -0500, David Megginson wrote:
[...]
> I'm with Tim on this one.  Except when constrained by a customer contract,

> my slideshows have never overlapped much with the content of my 
> presentation -- I design them to supplement, not to duplicate.

Agreed - the best talks I've heard (and I like to think given) don't
rely on bullet points.  Sometimes I do use bullet points to try and
help an audience that's not too familiar with the content, so they
can skim, so to speak, and pick out what is relevent to them, but
that's relatively rare.

The slides need to add interest.

Sometimes the idea of "write once, publish often" is more of a myth
than at other times :-)

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