Comments on: Who writes about better Powerpoint presentations, says most are bad

Question: Who writes about better Powerpoint presentations, says most are bad

judybxxx — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:25:37 -0800

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?

By: xbalto

xbalto — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:29:48 -0800

Edward Tufte has written about this.

By: cooker girl

cooker girl — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:31:55 -0800

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.

By: Fuzzy Skinner

Fuzzy Skinner — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:36:12 -0800

A side-note: Gore's presentation is done in Keynote, not Powerpoint.

By: carrienation

carrienation — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:38:07 -0800

It's slide:ology by Nancy Duarte.

By: CoralAmber

CoralAmber — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:44:19 -0800

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.

By: qxntpqbbbqxl

qxntpqbbbqxl — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:24:46 -0800

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.

By: Houstonian

Houstonian — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 03:34:13 -0800

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.

By: judybxxx

judybxxx — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 06:53:09 -0800

Great Info - thanks to all

By: advicepig

advicepig — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 08:49:36 -0800

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.

By: advicepig

advicepig — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 19:43:55 -0800

I was just asked to clarify, TL;DR = too long; didn't read.