In the past, I’ve blogged about "PowerPoint Out of Context" – where someone sends me a PowerPoint presentation instead of talking to me. For example, if I ask, "What does your company do?" you should be able to tell me in 30 seconds or less. It's called an elevator pitch, and it's a critical part of the sales and marketing conversation.

In fact, over at eWeek, columnist Jim Rapoza writes that he doesn't much like the notion of saving PowerPoint presentations (You can read why in his article "How to Save a Meeting") Mr. Rapoza’s main beef is that saving PowerPoint saves the talking points, but not the actual talk.

Point taken. So why is that people want to download PowerPoint files so badly? I have solid proof that they do: people actively download my past presentations every single day. They seek them out. They download in mass quantities. Provided with alternative to downloads (pdf files with show notes, for example) -- they still prefer the original PowerPoint presentation.

And each person who downloads is looking for something different. Some look for content, some for design, some for programming -- and some look to put PowerPoint presentations into their own context, for their own audiences. So, I'm not ready to give up saving PowerPoint presentations: if people want them, I'll keep saving them!

My responsibility is to save them wisely: to reduce PowerPoint bloat, to keep the files slim and trim as possible. And to provide a context for the content.

That's it. I rant about it a little in this 9.5 minute podcast. I also refer to the release of version 2.0 of PowerShrink (you can download a free trial at www.powershrink.com) .

ps-The PowerShrink people didn't pay me to review their product -- I just tell it like it is. It's a fast and easy way to reduce PowerPoint file size bloat without mucking up your original file.

¶ 8/29/2005 12:35:00 PM