PowerPoint Bullets Kill

The New York Times ran an article this morning about the above PowerPoint slide.  It was used in a military briefing to "help" leadership see our current strategy in Afghanistan.

The Enemy is PowerPoint

Seth Godin then wrote a nice blog post about how bullet points are used by almost everyone in the same manner: poorly.

In order to break from the pack I have worked hard to do two things.

1) Use big pictures and very few words in PowerPoint or Keynote to make my points.  I use just enough to set the stage for the information or story I will tell.  This approach comes from the book Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds.

2) The second approach is voiced in Beyond Bullet Points by Cliff Atkinson.  He takes a storyboard approach to scripting out your presentation.  This is very interesting as it helps you tell a visual story which really connects to the audience.  Levenger makes some nice desk pads for storyboarding.

So there you go - move away from the PowerPoint, reach out and learn some new ways to present information and don't forget, "You are the show, not the slides!"