Just 25 years???

Who remembers OHPs? Those giant humming behemoths that, with the power of light, superseded cave drawings, blackboards and whiteboards (in that order) as a means of translating and mass producing an idea from a presenter's head to an audience? No? Not surprising really, given the dominance of the masterful piece of kit that knocked it off its perch.

The concept of PowerPoint was born 25 years ago - and has had the power to move us, inform us or bore us silly through its use or abuse for the past quarter of a century. The first public laptop PowerPoint presentation took place in 1992. By 1993 it was the market leader in PC presentation programmes. It now has an estimated 95 per cent share of the presentation software market, and it is hard to imagine the meetings industry without it.

According to Microsoft, businesses make an estimated 30 million PowerPoint presentations each day, with the average session running for 250 minutes. That's an awful lot of PowerPoint. No statistics, unfortunately, have been kept on how many of those presentations were actually successful, memorable or inspiring.

Because, for all the excellent ways that PowerPoint can get your message across, there are myriad ways to commit ‘death by PowerPoint'.

For a start, for many concentration-deficient Gen Y-ers, an average 250-minute presentation is already 230 minutes too long. Then you have those who cram too many words on the screen, or use tiny weeny print that renders the whole concept useless. Alternatively there are those who condense the entire history of their company down to a few over-simplified bullet points and expect to get the full message across.

Even if you get the slides right, there are those who end up 'talking to the slides' quite literally, offering the audience a fabulous view of their posterior and rarely their face.

Most cringeworthy, however, are those who have still not figured out how to move on to the next slide (cue much embarrassed shuffling and coughing by the audience). Ultimately, of course, the PowerPoint is in the presenter's hands. Alas, those using it do not have to pass a test before unleashing their skills on a hapless audience.

And for all the tweeting, Bluetooth, audience response technology, large screen projections and techie gadgetry now available, PowerPoint is still holding its own. Let's see what happens in another 25 years!

Editor
www.meetpie.com
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