Face time
Edward Tufte's diatribe against PowerPoint, which I wrote about six months ago, is back in the news thanks to some recent exposure in Wired.
Tim Bray articulates something important about this subject that I learned several years ago: Slides should complement a talk, not replicate it:
| | ...You have to get away from the idea that what's in your slides is the content of your presentation. Slides aren't big enough or rich enough or smart enough to themselves contain any presentation worth listening to for more than about ten minutes. Instead, your slides are a visual auxiliary to your material; no more, no less. |
You can build slides as a set of illustrations to parallel what you're saying, or even offer a comic counterpoint to it. Some really adept speakers use slides as a sort of loose score, creating a riffing rhythm between slide and speech (Lawrence Lessig is a master of this technique). The single deadliest thing a speaker can do is read from his own slides.
In an age of information overload and telecommunications abundance, the simple fact of a speaker and audience sharing a physical space and real time is precious. A speaker owes listeners the courtesy of turning to face them and giving them something of herself. If all I wanted to do was read your slides, I can download them, thanks.
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