[Novalug] Presentation over Power Point?

Peter Larsen plarsen@famlarsen.homelinux.com
Mon May 2 19:51:56 EDT 2011


On Sat, 2011-04-30 at 22:23 -0400, cmhowe@patriot.net wrote:
> 
> Does anyone use ooPresentation? If so, how does it compare with Power
> Point?

 [...]

> He has a low opinion of Power Point.

There are two issues here. First presentations with slides in general
and then there's Libra Office vs. others. Reading Nick Danger's response
about the first, I can only agree. I see so much "abuse" and boring
presentations using slide decks where it's clear that the presenter
isn't able to communicate his message to the audience.

So let's face it - slides are a tool. And even before power points, we
had slide projectors where we wrote with pens or the real fancy ones
where you could use a xeros and put text on a page and expose it on the
projector. And I don't think anyone who like me went through that would
say we needed computer generated slides and animations to prove the
point. 

There's a lot of do's and don'ts with presentations. As a matter of
fact, there's whole industry out there teaching how to do it right. So
there's no way a simple email on this list can do that justice. And I
think Nick did a good job at describing that side of things. To me the
bottom line is, the slide is for the audience - NOT the presenter. It's
to SUPPORT what the presenter is saying, not to divert og be a
teleprompter for the presenter. Personally I find that it gets in the
way at times, and using a white board or paper is a better way to
illustrate a point.

Personally I only use Libra/Open Office. And I have no problems doing
that (at least no more/less than I have had with others). But I also
stay away from excessive animation and slide transition use. 

But Libra/Open office has a lot of great features that PowerPoint
doesn't have. The first is the price point :)  But also, in presentation
mode you can get your own laptop to give you some guidance such as
timing, show notes and upcoming slides or even an index of slides so
it's easy to navigate through your deck to a specific slide if the
conversation turns to something you have "somewhere in you 100 page
slide deck" you can easily find it without browsing and confusing
everyone with stuff flying over the screen.

Btw. do not judge Impress (the Libra/Open office presentation tool) on
it's ability to migrate PowerPoints. That wouldn't be fair. At least, be
fair and judge how well PowerPoint imports Impress presentations too ;)

Another feature I am trying to use more than I do is the timing issue.
The tool will help you to keep yourself within the allotted time. I'm
lousy at that, but getting better. So you can practice with time and
you'll be told as you go that it's time to move on to the next slide (or
it will do it for you). Remember, the slides are all a matter of
supporting what you say. If you're doing interactive presentations,
timing is a real B*tch because it's unknown how long you stay at each
slide. 

Anyway - it's a tool. If used right it's very powerful. Used wrong, and
you would done a lot better without any slides at all. And you know the
difference when you see it. Look at professional presenters and how they
use it. You'll see their slides are mostly pictures and a few words.
It's not a long list of boring bullets. Nobody wants to READ - they came
to HEAR a presenter. They can read at home. Making a good presentation
is a bit of an art-form - but as I said earlier, there's actual classes
you can take to get better at it.

-- 
Best Regards
  Peter Larsen

Wise words of the day:
If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot
of different places, just write a Unix operating system.
	-- Linus Torvalds
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