A cobbler’s children are
always the worst shod kids
on the street. The computer
industry suffers a similar fate
when it comes to corporate
presentations material. This
is without doubt, the worst
showcase for what
technology can do for you.
Very few presenters seem
able to master simple
computer commands to flick
through the slides, and
there’s always a stray dialog
box that flips up somewhere
along the line, confusing the
poor duffer handling the
controls. Sometimes, to
relieve the mediocrity, the
computer crashes
completely. Good on it.
Two conferences this year
have only made me feel
more frustrated. At Milia in
February, presenters
apologised for the quality of
their slides and one even
hoped that we’d “forgive
him”. Well, frankly, no, we
won’t. This a meeting of the
best minds in worldwide
multimedia, so you’d hope
the presentations material
would at least be
presentable. So, no, you’ll
not be forgiven. You can’t
give a piano recital to a
group of professional piano
players and keep
apologising for hitting the
wrong keys.
At the IDC European IT
Forum in September, things
were just as bad. Presented
to some of the most senior
IT professionals from around
Europe were the same jaggy
typefaces, bitmapped
images and blue
backgrounds.
One IDC analyst had a slide
simply composed of the
symbol font; he explained
that he didn’t know what
was wrong with this slide
and that analysts didn’t
really know anything about
“the technology”. This is
simply sloppy from an
organisation that expects
you to pay good - and large
- money to attend. You
might not be able to take a
motherboard to pieces, but
at least work out how to run
a slide presentation.
Is it that presentations
programs are just so crap?
Or is it that the people who
create slides are not
designers but insist on
“doing their own slides”
because the programs
“make it so easy”? These
programs must be able to
produce anti-aliased type.
They must be able to import
graphics without bitmapping
them. And it really can’t be
an excuse that they’re being
shown on a massive screen.
Yes, the resolution on these
projectors is not great , but
no one’s asking illuminated
type or complex graphics.
Like life, there are limitations
you work to; you don’t
ignore them.
Perhaps our expectations of
presentations material has
been dragged so low after
10 years of “desktop
presentations” that most
people just don’t care any
more. Well, I do.
So, if you can’t do it
properly on screen, get a set
of OHP acetates designed
in QuarkXPress and a
projector and present hightech
in a low-tech way. At
least then the technology
won’t be made to look like a
pile of knob.
Stuart Price.
MacUser ll Nov. ‘97
Thank you Stuart for letting us reproduce
this. Our full response is in
the article 'Presenting Presentations'....
Art in the Corporate Environment - To learn more about this author, visit Paul Cruse's Website.
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