In Seven Steps to Better Presentations, Jeffrey Veen acknowledges the complaints against PowerPoint, but explains that the real problem is “bad content delivered poorly.”
His seven points have a lot more detail that what I’m quoting here:
- Tell stories.
- Show pictures.
- Don’t apologize. Ever.
- Start strong.
- End strong too.
- Stand. Away from the podium.
- Pause.
My own opinion is that Veen and Tufte would agree more than they disagree. Tufte too, for example, suggests using PowerPoint to show pictures. Tufte goes on to suggest presenters should offer their audience hand-outs with detailed information that can’t be represented on a PowerPoint slide, and I wonder what Veen’s thoughts on that are.