Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Thomas, no way anyone wins and Oscar and a Nobel with Powerpoint. Gore uses Apple's Keynote. See http://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2006/05/inconvenienttruth/ for more.

Good PPT, not just PPT. Somehow I doubt he'd have anything but sleeping audiences if he were reading from standard issue bulleted lists.

Speaking of PP-fu. Have you heard of the "Lessig Method?"

http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/10/the_lessig_meth.html

Best exemplified by the Identity 2.0 presentation at OSCON2005:
http://www.identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/

Just wanted to point out that Al Gore is a big Mac guy (he's even on the Apple board) and he used Keynote, not PowerPoint to make his movie. If you haven't tried it, you should check it out. It's Apple's PowerPoint-killer that Steve Jobs uses for all his presentations. I lived in it for my thesis defense and never regretted it once. And the latest version is the best yet!

Gore wining oscar and nobel, is a good slap in the face of Bush for
being completely anti-enviroment. preserving the enviroment and
human's destiny should be in the hand of humans and not the market. when to increase the rate of profit is the base to determine
policy,we have no choice but to sacrfice the enviroment.

Actually, a little correction... Gore *used* to use Powerpoint and has been happily using Keynote from Apple for some time now.

I agree. Without the persuasive use of presentation software, neither happens. And, Keynote has a lot of strengths. With each new version, Apple is making a solid alternative to PP. But, as we all know, Tom's great use of PP is what drew many of us here. Of course, a good presenter can make excellent use of other tools, like say a flip chart.

I have learned to embrace PPT in my new career. In my previous life, I was a graphic designer and by our very nature, we were taught to despise PPT. Fortunately I have had some opportunities to push the limits of PPT.

BTW, not sure if you have checked out David Byrne's Powerpoint as art book.
Here is a link:

http://www.davidbyrne.com/art/eeei/index.php

I sort of knew that and have considered going all keynote, but two problems:

1) my PPT creator, Bradd, needs to stay with PPT for everything else he does, and

2) when connectivity fails at talks with my Mac (always the host's fault), backup is fact I can hand over PPT on memory stick.

Simply put, on both points money is still an obstacle.

When I've played with Keynote, I don't find the functionality all that different or better, to be honest, but that may be a matter of my sporadic exposure.

Clearly, Gore can do whatever he wants, since he takes his own massive road show with him wherever he goes.

I can only wish for that level of freedom at this point.

PPT is on its way out. I'm not implying that it wasn't a good tool, at least in "its time." But that time has past. For those who still dearly embrace it, I'm truly sorry, but you'll find yourselves repeating the mistakes of those before us who embraced card catalogs when computer systems arrived, and typewriters when word processors were developed. Linear learning, which defines PPT's structure, is being swapped for robustly linked forms of presentation which are inherently non-linear. Out with the old, in with the new.

For those of us who haven't been blooded into the PPT cult yet, care to name a software program or two, Jesse?

i get the impression that Jesse is not talking about software, but about a style more akin to multimedia-linked html where the reader/viewer/whatever decides what they want to follow. it almost has to be chosen by the reader if its non-linear, right? and i infer that he's inveighing against linear presentation of information from presenter to audience. but that's just a guess...

Programs I have used for "non-linear" presentations include Flash MX and Director MX. I have used quite a bit of audio/video and these programs support that rather easily. These can also be integrated into an html format and place on the web if needed.

Of course these are great tools, but I have found that many companies prefer the MS PPT to these types of programs. I am sure it is b/c of cost and ease of use.