Somewhere on the web it states that there are 30 million PowerPoint presentations created daily. Now I haven’t seen them all but I can tell you with a fair amount of certainty that perhaps 95% of them are horrible: text-heavy slides, vast wastelands of number-filled charts and presenters that rely on reading the slides as if it were a 3rd grade book report.
Businesses are not going to stop using PowerPoint just because we abuse it. It is the standard for business presentations in government, schools, military, industry, non-profits and even houses of worship — around the world!
This smells like an opportunity to me. The standards are so low that if we just but push out of the norm a little we can stand far above the crowd. It won’t take much. Maybe if you just get the full sentences off the screen and stop reading the slides you will become a legend, a presentation superstar.
You peers will hoist you to their shoulders, carry you to the boardroom and demand at least a tripling of your salary. You will be on all the talk shows. Oprah will love you and little children will ask you for your autograph.
You will become rich beyond measure. Just please stop reading the danged slides.
