Managed World

Yup, I said it. PowerPoint as a teaching tool? It's broken. It's broken badly. And unfortunately, there is a good number of people out there who either don't realize it, or don't care.

First of all, thanks Seth Godin. Seth gave a presentation at GEL 2006 recently (link via PresentationZen, via Chris Sells), where he talked about things that are broken. He mentioned in the video that from now on out, we will start making the same observations and share with him one of his annoyances. Well, he didn't lie. It's only 24 hours later, and I'm starting to think of certain things as "broken".

This concept of "PPT As A Teaching Tool" that people seem to like? Again, it's broken. Now, as a Technical Evangelist, I think education is a big part of our job. We not only need to educate ISVs and other business partners, we need to educate other Microsoft employees, and we need to educate the community. Using PPT as a major "Teaching Tool" though? Broken. Borked. Use the right tool for the right job. If you are wanting to provide "a resource" to educate people though, don't use PowerPoint, please!

Don't get me wrong, I like PowerPoint, and it definitely has its place. But as a major resource for educating people? That is not one of them. In my opinion, PowerPoint is a means to an end, not the end itself. If you really want to educate people, don't give them a PPT deck and send them along their way. Why? Because of a phrase Edward Tufte loves: Information Density.

There is only so much information you can convey in PowerPoint because the information density of the PPT medium is so low. If you _are_ (miraculously) able to cram enough information on a slide to make the information density "almost worth it", then the PPT deck is basically useless for presentations. And if you use the PPT at a presentation that I attend, I may very well walk out the room. If there is a pet peeve that really gets to me, it's presenters that just read their slides for an hour. I'm wanting to attend a presentation, not a live PowerPoint reading. So, speak to ME, not to your slides. Involve, interact, and engage your audience.

As I've been researching various topics getting up to speed here at Microsoft, I've noticed a disturbing trend. I would say that 95% of the PowerPoint decks that I've grabbed from previous events are flooded with information on the deck, and ZERO speaker notes. If I was a speaker wanting to reuse that deck on a technology that I'm not the most familiar with, this would be almost useless for me. We need to change this. In my humble opinion, the majority of content you find when opening a technical PowerPoint deck should be located in the speaker notes, _not_ in the slides themselves.

I'm not here to just ramble though, I also want to brainstorm on ways to fix it. In my role, it is import to be able to educate as efficiently as possible while giving other employees the tools to empower them to do the same. So, if not PowerPoint, then what?

One of the possibilities that I've been dwelling on is the combination of screencasts (or podcasts) and white papers. Rather than simply handing off a PowerPoint deck to you, what would you think if I gave you a White Paper with very deep and rich content for you to use to truly dive into the content with. Then, on top of the White Paper, I give you a Screencast of a "light" PPT deck + a presenter riffing on it, or even just a podcast of a presenter riffing on the content of the White Paper at a higher level. For me, at least, this would be way more valuable in learning new subjects when compared to a bulleted-list via PowerPoint. What about you, though? Would that be a good way for you to learn?

As a side note, when did PPT decks become the replacement for a good white paper. When I'm trying to do research on a topic now, it seems like internet searches are starting to yield more and more power point decks. Well, if I'm digging in deep to do research, I don't want a PowerPoint deck! I want a resource with some meat to it that I can dig into. It goes back to my opinion that a PPT deck is not an end, it's a means to an end.

So, I challenge all of you to challenge yourself the way I'm trying to challenge myself. When you find yourself opening PowerPoint, ask whether it is the right tool for you to be using. And if it is the right tool and you're preparing a presentation, remind yourself that people are going to be there to hear you talk, not to read your slides. Remember, if you write complicated PowerPoint decks, not only are you communicating in a drastically inefficient manner, frankly, you're wasting everyone's time as they can read a heck of a lot faster than you can speak.

Challenge yourself! Improve yourself! I know I'm trying to. And tell you what, I have a LONG LONG way to go before I feel that I can even consider myself "decent" as a presenter and educator.