During the first few years of my professional carreer, I enjoyed visiting technological congresses. I remember the annual GI conference in Vienna in the early 1980ies. We spent three nice days packed mostly with well-structured and interesting presentations. Later, I enjoyed workshops held by universities. And, thanks to excellent speakers and small groups, I often learned more in a few days than I had as a student listening to the lectures of an entire semester.
At some time, a strange development started. The number of congresses sufferd from inflation. Every association, most technological enterprises, but also some editors of technological magazines and federally sponsored initiatives suddenly thought they now had to fill the conference rooms of all the world’s hotels with congresses, technological conferences and X days of all categories. Replace X by any technological term you like.
More and more universities and faculties started offering seminars on all varieties of topics. Road shows and inhouse fairs sprouted. And a series of presentations were always part of the program.
To make up for the inflationary number of these events, the presentations got worse and worse. This is how the great slide battles were introduced. They replaced a qualified tradition of handing down knowledge. And so the free fall into the open-at-the-bottom spectrum for poor presentations started.
And PowerPoint is always among them.
Far too many speakers read their message like a litany. If you are lucky, you will find them in a concise, mostly magniloquent German style on power point slides that have been recycled a zillion times. Mind you, they still often contain quite obvious orthographical mistakes.
They switch slides totally at random. In between, you see columns of numerals in excel look. They are supposed to add weight and significance to what are allegedly true statements. The beamer is abused for displaying complex graphical images to the screen which then someone hectically travels over with the laser pointer.
In this manner, the speakers manage to let very simple things look complicated in an impressive way. The listener will get totally confused yet will not dare to say anything. After all, who wants to look stupid? Mind you, the speakers themselves made up their mind about the listeners long ago, always using similar opening statements and even more stupid “thank you for your attention” or “any more questions?” written in slides. These slides are meant to signal to the listener that his misery is close to its end.
Why do I hate it?
When attending these kinds of conferences, I am almost always bored. After some time, however, my boredom makes room for the urge to flee the conference room. My mood turns aggressive and I am tempted to interrupt the speaker and ask him to terminate his presentation or, even better, go and speak elsewhere (for example at Munich Marienplatz) where nobody is forced to listen (this was a description of the polite version).
And looking right and left, I discover comrades in misery. They all, however, stay seated and acting nicely, pretending to be listening and understanding. Of course, this is not true for the mostly not small number of persons who have already gone to sleep.
How do I cope with it?
If I am a visitor and listener:
I learned to resist even the most tempting invitations for conferences. Even gifts and a free meal and soft drink can no longer seduce me towards attending these kinds of events. I only attend very specially selected conferences. They are few and far between, but then, they are really good. But they are my personal secrets and I will only tell good friends about them.
When attending one of those, I enjoy a few but really excellent presentations. They include open discussions between free persons who have experience, knowledge and a set of values. And the speakers are prepared to open themselves.
These are the kinds of meetings where presentations are given without scripts to assist the speaker. Visual or haptic aids are used sparsely, just to not loose the thread and to highlight special aspects.
You can also hope to watch good presentations if you see the words barcamp, Pecha Kucha or Open Space on an invitation. These terms usually mean that you will see good speakers who prepared entertaining presentations on important issues. And you will be part of discussions and debates that are both exciting and well-structured. You will personally really benefit from having been there.
If I am one of the speakers:
I no longer use powerpoint at all. If I have to talk about something really „important“ with a large audience, I have background pictures made – mostly be Johannes, our chief designer. I use them in order to emotionally underline the message of my presentation. If the audience is less large, I prepare flipcharts for special points of my presentation. Or else I use the whiteboard interactively, or the good old blackboard. But I always only use these methods in order to underline, accentuate or point out something I already said with words
And if, once in a while, I give a poor presentation or tell a lot of nonsense, it is quite possible that I cannot convince my audience. But, as far as I know, I have never been boring.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
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