Tuesday, June 20, 2006
The PowerPoint-Free Business Presentation
We are twenty days into June, and twenty days into my Open Office experiment. This means that since June 1, I have been PowerPoint-free. I have designed all slideware-type presentations in Impress by Open Office....and for the most part, I have found that designing in Impress is remarkably similar to designing in PowerPoint.
However, today I touched another milestone -- I used Impress to deliver a presentation to a business audience. I walked into the conference room with nothing but Impress loaded on my notebook computer -- hooked up my laptop to my host's ViewSonic data display...and let 'er rip.
I presented for over an hour, and I doubt the audience had any idea that the slides they saw were not designed or delivered by PowerPoint software.
And this is exactly as it should be, of course. If I am doing my job as a presenter, I want my audience to focus on the message, not the mode of delivery. Makes no difference to the audience what kind of software I use to develop and deliver the slide portion of the program...as long as I inform, entertain, and/or persuade.
Shouldn't any presentation software be invisible to the audience? ¶ 6/20/2006 01:06:00 PM
We are twenty days into June, and twenty days into my Open Office experiment. This means that since June 1, I have been PowerPoint-free. I have designed all slideware-type presentations in Impress by Open Office....and for the most part, I have found that designing in Impress is remarkably similar to designing in PowerPoint.
However, today I touched another milestone -- I used Impress to deliver a presentation to a business audience. I walked into the conference room with nothing but Impress loaded on my notebook computer -- hooked up my laptop to my host's ViewSonic data display...and let 'er rip.
I presented for over an hour, and I doubt the audience had any idea that the slides they saw were not designed or delivered by PowerPoint software.
And this is exactly as it should be, of course. If I am doing my job as a presenter, I want my audience to focus on the message, not the mode of delivery. Makes no difference to the audience what kind of software I use to develop and deliver the slide portion of the program...as long as I inform, entertain, and/or persuade.
Shouldn't any presentation software be invisible to the audience? ¶ 6/20/2006 01:06:00 PM
