PPT - Pre-Planned Torture

We have all seen numerous presentations - loved a few but mostly suffered because of them. What is it about them that makes them so lovable as well as highly irritable? All of them are made on MS Powerpoint so lets not blame Bill Gates for this one.

There was time when these powerpoints had a point. Now whenever I see another ppt I literally go "WTF ! Not another retarded ppt. Please God. Please !" Most PPTs can serve their purpose by using just the handouts since the presenter is simple reading out from them. No added inputs from him. You sit there and wonder if you are in a nursery school and the teacher is reading out the lullaby to you.

Powerpoint has been given this cult status mainly by MBAs especially the ones plying their trade in the Consulting trade who live by the motto "If you cant convince them, bore them". They show all sorts of graphs, throw in all sorts of numbers/facts and excruciating details in the introduction which the audience doesnt care two hoots about. Why dont those morons get to the real part of analysis and the recommendations? 

Marketing guys are not far behind but better only because they are trying to con us and not bore us to death. Their idea of pain is making fancy names and terms for simple tasks. Pasting brand posters is called "Activation strategy". Profit making is called "Value Capturing". The list is endless.

All said and done you can put any presentation in the world under SmackD's 2x2 matrix of PPTs. 

There are two aspects to any presentation - Presenter and Content. A combination of both determines what we gain out of the PPT.

1. Cool Hand Luke (Good Presenter :: OK Content): The presenter would keep his audience engaged through jokes and some neat articulation. But at the end of the presentation you would heaping praises on the presenter but in reality you do not have much of a take-away because he/she just entertained.

2. Master Yoda (Bad Presenter :: Good Content): Totally opposite of the above. The Presenter in most cases would be outrightly boring but if we are able to look past that you would find that whatever he is presenting is really good and you walk out richer in terms of understanding/knowledge. If only he/she could articulate they would leave you with a positive after-taste.

3. Death Angel (Bad Presenter :: Bad Content): They are the ones chosen by the devil himself to deliver "Death by Powerpoint". Boring content. Lifeless speaker. You would prefer being flogged ass-naked in public than sit through a minute of such presentations. To make matters worse these presentations will be longer than any average presentation and the pace would be painstakingly slow.

4. RockStar (Good Presenter :: Good Content): These are the ones who make a powerpoint presentation orgasmic and leave you wanting more. They are clever, funny and articulate well. They keep it simple enough and the PPTs are usually written in spoken english as if every point was speaking to you.

So where do in SmackD's do you wanna be?