“Moritatenerzähler” — image from Wiki Commons
I think I have watched hundreds of presentations: Presentations during my studies, on conferences, online at TED.com — there are a lot. But strangely enough, most are more similar than different. I’m not talking about the topic or the quality — that varies widely — but about the style. While some talk unassisted by any media, usually it’s a person standing in front of a huge presentation, talking and flipping through the slides.
Why?
Sure, you need to visualize, get the audience to all “see” the same thing, bring them on the same “page”, but why is it done this way? Why is it still a projector and some images, or perhaps an animation or the like, why this style? There is not that much difference between a slide projector, an overhead projector, and now using projectors with notebooks running PowerPoint or Keynote. You could even go back to the Cantastoria’s pointing to the images they carried with them (see image at the beginning of this posting).
So, why are we still using this method?
Because it works? Or because we lack the imagination to come up with a better way?
Perhaps it’s time to stop and take a step back an think about what presentations are supposed to accomplish — and come up with ingenious ways to accomplish this without resorting to “here I stand and point” method. And I don’t mean ‘ways’ like Prezi where you need a barf bag when you watch the unnecessary animations. I mean something different …
It’s something to think about …
