Why PowerPoint should be banned

PowerPoint is a slideware operating system which forces the presenter to contort the content into its low-resolution format. This necessarily makes the content less understandable, unless the content happens to be photographs and your topic is something like art history. It's easy to say it's the fault of bad presenters, but other formats don't necessarily make your audience dumber; with PowerPoint it is the rule rather than the exception.

"The average number of numbers on a powerpoint slide is 12. This is slightly better than communist propaganda (Pravda 1982). For comparison, see the sports page." --me, poorly paraphrasing

Discussion of how slideware led to 2 space shuttle explosions: PowerPoint Does Rocket Science--and Better Techniques for Technical Reports http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...

Tufte's textbooklet on powerpoint (an excerpt from his book Beautiful Evidence): The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint

If they miss the talk, send them straight to the more detailed docs, and they can ask questions.

On the other hand, there's definitely some merits to the format. It forces people to be concise and boil their commentary down to the essential insights. It lets people use structure more in their text: nested bullet points, different font sizes, dedicating a whole slide to one statement, etc. It also lets non-textual elements take equal prominence. It prompts readers to think about the implications of a statement for themselves rather than just skimming sentences. Basically it gives people more flexibility than just writing a report or an email. I can see why they are popular.

I do think better training so people could emulate Steve Jobs if they wanted to would be very welcome.

But I also want to point out that all or nearly all of the hopelessly complicated wire diagram slides (such as the PRISM slide or JSF org chart slide) are supposed to look that way because the briefer is trying to show that something is too complicated and that you, the person being briefed, should do something about it. They're being used ironically, in other words.

It's actually become an overused rhetorical technique and some people will call you out if you use it. "Why is the FBI on this slide?" "Uh, we emailed them once a couple years ago so we connected them with a dotted line..."

Thar said, presentation training is worthwhile and too many presentations have too many words.