I wish I'd been there...

Just catching up on my mail and came across this... - it's a report of a meeting in which attendees were taught how to make presentations lasting no more than 20 slides and each slide lasting only 20 seconds....

In recent months I've endured some awful presentations - often of hundreds of slides, all with 60 million bits of information on each one.

Is it because I think about this stuff that I know long and boring PowerPoint presentations are long and boring?  Why don't other intelligent people see it as well? Maybe they don't hear the voices, but perhaps that's another posting?

Which reminds me of a very strange meeting I had a client's office the other week when I was explaining to a consultant from one of the finest consultancies in the world why 60 slides might take more than 20 minutes to get through (he was hoping for some discussion as well in his allocated 25 minutes).  So I suggested we start by asking....

"As a result of this presentation, what do we want our audience to KNOW, to THINK and to DO?"

To which came the reply...

"This 'Know, Think, Do' isn't our model, is it someone else's model?  I don't think we should use a new model...."

...and there I was thinking it was just common sense.  I wonder if I can pose as a guru now by creating insights such as "don't lick power cables" or "texting whie driving is not a very clever thing to do".

Liam