Who writes about better Powerpoint presentations, says most are bad

December 18, 2008 9:25 PM

Who writes about better Powerpoint presentations,and says most are bad? Seeking book and/or author about how to do PowerPoint, by a woman who spoke on Minnesota Public Radio (or NPR) about a month ago, before Thanksgiving. I've Googled, and searched MPR/NPR to no avail She did the Ppt's for Al Gore's slide show and movie. She said most presentations were awful. and Sounded convincing. That's most of what I remember. And there are lots of PowerPoint books. can anyone help?
posted by judybxxx to computers & internet (10 comments total)

Edward Tufte has written about this.
posted by xbalto at 9:29 PM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

You could try writing to the Search Help people at NPR. I did that a while back and got the information I was looking for. The staff wrote back very quickly to tell me they were working on it and someone was able to find what I described. Just give as many details as you can when you write to them.
posted by cooker girl at 9:31 PM on December 18, 2008

A side-note: Gore's presentation is done in Keynote, not Powerpoint.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 9:36 PM on December 18, 2008

It's slide:ology by Nancy Duarte.
posted by carrienation at 9:38 PM on December 18, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I know it's not who you are looking for, but I read a neat book on PPT called Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds that was about simplicity and and impact instead of information cluttered slides.
posted by CoralAmber at 9:44 PM on December 18, 2008

2nding Edward Tufte.

Among other things, he talks about how cluttered powerpoints may have contributed to the Columbia shuttle disaster, and he talks about Norvig's hilarious Gettysburg Address Powerpoint.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 10:24 PM on December 18, 2008

The book is slide:ology. Nancy Duarte also has a website and a blog.

The book is really, really good, and has many examples of how to use shapes to convey meaning, etc. She used Keynote for Gore's presentation, but the book is about presentations in general so you can apply what you learn to PowerPoint or Keynote. I very much recommend it.
posted by Houstonian at 3:34 AM on December 19, 2008

Great Info - thanks to all
posted by judybxxx at 6:53 AM on December 19, 2008

Tufte's praised by many, but if you read his stuff just try to visualize how all that stinking information is going to look from the fifth row. The term TL;DR comes to mind.
posted by advicepig at 8:49 AM on December 19, 2008

I was just asked to clarify, TL;DR = too long; didn't read.
posted by advicepig at 7:43 PM on December 24, 2008