A post on the Emergic blog pointed me to a fascinating article on Doc Searls’ website. The article dealt with the subject of making effective presentations, but starts with an intriguing account of Doc’s endeavour to build a house that’s uncommon in design.

I am enclosing some key points here, but urge you to give the entire article a good read :

Presentations are as much about slides as poetry is about handwriting. Again, David Ogilvy: “What you say is more important than how you say it.”

“The world is full of beautiful presentations that never leave the screen,” Larry says. Why? “Because they’re just prosthesis. They’re speakers’ notes. Reminders. They exist for the benefit of the speaker, not the audience. They work so well as a substitute for the Real Thing that when it’s over, the speaker feels like he said something and the audience feels like something got said; but in reality nothing got communicated at all. It’s all just a simulation. And that’s if things go well. More often than not, all anybody remembers, including the speaker, is that a bunch of slides got shown.”

Begin with the end. In the newspaper business they teach you to put the least important stuff at the end, so if your story was cut for length the reader wouldn’t miss much. But in a presentation, it helps to start with the end, because that’s when the results should start coming in.

The presentation you want is a series of stand-alone stories, each with its own headline. Look at a daily newspaper for guidance: “Transit strike causes traffic jams.” “Teachers return to work.” “Bulls win in overtime.” Note that every headline works as a sentence. Note the verbs. You won’t find them in “Sales Projections” or “The Market.”

Full of insight and entertainment, the piece is a must-read for any one who wants to make an impression using Powerpoint (or not using Powerpoint, as it turns out).