{"id":50,"date":"2007-01-26T09:14:33","date_gmt":"2007-01-26T08:14:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elementally.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/2007\/01\/26\/%e2%80%9cmy-boss-says-ive-got-to-powerpoint%e2%80%9d\/"},"modified":"2007-01-26T09:14:33","modified_gmt":"2007-01-26T08:14:33","slug":"my-boss-says-ive-got-to-powerpoint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/my-boss-says-ive-got-to-powerpoint\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00e2\u20ac\u0153My boss says I&#8217;ve got to PowerPoint!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You&#8217;d be amazed at how many times I&#8217;ve heard that in the introductions of our <a target=\"_blank\" title=\"pubplic presentations training\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tellingpeople.co.uk\">public training sessions<\/a>: sometimes it&#8217;s even true. While it&#8217;s true that sometimes your boss will tell you \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to PowerPoint\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (interesting how it&#8217;s become a verb, isn&#8217;t it \u00e2\u20ac\u201c rather like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to Google\u00e2\u20ac\u009d). It&#8217;s at least as common for people to be told something like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I need you to do a presentation on&#8230;.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but for them to be so inured in the PowerPoint culture that they <strong>assume<\/strong> they&#8217;ve got to use PowerPoint without thinking about it.<\/p>\n<p>While I have nothing in particular against the idea of using PowerPoint (though it has some technical issues which mean I think there are better alternatives) I always advise such people to do the Fuse Test. This is something I&#8217;ve mentioned before, but it bears repeating, I think. If the fuses went in the room where you&#8217;re about to present, could you find an alternative way to make your presentation: is the PowerPoint absolutely essential? If it isn&#8217;t, why are you using it in the first place? Consider the alternatives!<\/p>\n<p>What alternatives?<\/p>\n<p>Well, I&#8217;ll talk about the technical alternatives another time, but for now, how about you consider the <strong>radical<\/strong> alternative of no presentation software at all?   There&#8217;s a bit of a fad for saying &#8220;I don&#8217;t use PowerPoint in my presentations&#8221; as a macho declaration, rather like saying &#8220;I don&#8217;t use brakes when I ride my bike.&#8221;.  Macho, but stupid.  Sometimes it&#8217;s the right thing to do to use your brakes\/PowerPoint&#8230; it&#8217;s just that you should automatically use them without thinking about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You&#8217;d be amazed at how many times I&#8217;ve heard that in the introductions of our public training sessions: sometimes it&#8217;s even true. While it&#8217;s true that sometimes your boss will tell you \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to PowerPoint\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (interesting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-key-posts","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}