Death by PowerPoint — Mission 1: Rescue the Presenter

Death by PowerPoint? Or should it be death by bad presentation? Is the most ditched slide show software indeed responsible for sleepy students, employees, or — even worse — clients? Obviously, PowerPoint is not perfect, but blame-shifting won’t help improve performance.

Presentations are — if not necessary — a good way to convey ideas and introduce new products and services. Just imagine the Apple brand without Steve Job’s keynotes. Presentations were given long before any slide show software was invented. And there were great performances and miserable ones, just like today.

Life before PowerPoint

PowerPoint and its ilk made preparing visual aids for presentations and their content management easier. This Quora topic is a great reminder of how big companies once relied on in-house design departments and ad agencies to create presentations using 35 mm slides, transparencies, overhead projectors, etc. Once the presentation decks were ready, not a comma could be edited afterward.

The board of directors was usually well assisted. Great clients were impressed by a team of designers, illustrators, and photographers who prepared the presentations well in advance. But in those days, Joe Bloggs had to get by on his own: with a flip chart, blackboards, and hand-drawn transparencies. And trust me: wedding reception slide shows with embarrassing photos that nobody looks back on fondly also existed before (but were probably not as widespread as today, and not with spinning slides).

Maybe the biggest and most common mistake was/is to assume that having presentation software would replace the need to craft those great presentations professionally and much in advance. Today, while there are still creative agencies and professionals who are responsible for conceiving great storytelling concepts and slide decks, most people have to get by on their own. And, despite all the animations the new tools offer, audiences still find it hard to be engaged; in fact, they’re even more distracted.

It is also true that Steve Jobs and TED talkers have raised expectations and standards, and this doesn’t make it easier, especially for non-extraordinary public speakers (people like me, Joe Bloggs, and you) faced with day-to-day business presentations.

The wrong strategy

There is no need to deliver a huge “show” every time, but there is always an important purpose behind these presentations, and there is more than one message. When we present, we feel exposed, evaluated, criticized. While talking about figures, facts, and concepts, we are also saying something about ourselves. Presenting helps to build credibility for a product or project, and, at the same time, it shapes our professional image. For both reasons, failure is not an option.

That’s why people invest so much time in their presentations — mostly, unsuccessfully. The “Death by PowerPoint” has a reason: presenters tend to spend most of their time creating slide decks and visual aids (graphics, charts, etc.), and relatively little of it conceiving the presentation as a whole and preparing themselves: learning, rehearsing, focusing, and resting. This is a doomed strategy.

To the rescue

PowerPoint, Keynote, and all the other slide show solutions are indeed useful resources that can make presentations more readable, interactive, and engaging. However, no tool is a guarantee of success. And slide show tools fail to solve two main problems: preparing visual aids is still time-consuming and, in order to amaze, a slide deck still requires the work of skilled designers.

These are the two problems Vizzlo tackles, as a supplemental tool to any presentation software. More than facilitating beautiful and effective presentations, we want to save time and energy, rescuing presenters from exhausting, senseless work so they can focus on what matters. That’s why our graphics are professionally designed to convey messages effectively and impress audiences. And they are easy to create.

We’ve been building a broad portfolio to fit nearly every presentation need. We’ve also been listening to our early subscribers and enhancing the user experience. Soon, we’ll release new charts and features. Everything is happening on a rolling basis, but this is taking us to a new level as a tool and a business. And it’s exciting!

This blog is a part of this new phase. However, it’s not just another corporate blog: the last thing we want is to waste your time. Yes, we want to communicate with you, exchange ideas, and give practical tips about using Vizzlo as a handy tool for your daily professional life. But we also want to grow with you. Behind these computers there are professionals just like you, searching to evolve and develop skills for their own careers and lives.

Follow us we’ll keep you posted with inspiration, useful information, and topics on your professional growth, as well as Vizzlo updates.

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