Le Grand Tour D'Asia: Day 4 of 58

proof that you shouldn't drink and drive powerpoint

Monday, January 11

Learning Moment: Singapore

Yeah, I admit it. This is bad. But I couldn't help myself.

Angie and I were eating dinner at Prego, a favorite Italian restaurant of ours in Singapore.

At the table next to us, a woman was sipping a glass of wine while creating an awful PowerPoint presentation.

I had to sneak my camera out and take a shot of it.

Just about everything is wrong with this slide:

• It's got a terrible, noisy background
• The title is meaningless
• Baaaad clip art
• Red lines that are hard to see against the dark blue background
• And you can't see it, but don't get me started about the animation (everything flew in from somewhere)

The worst part of it?

She spend two hours of her life making small adjustments to this, as if the small adjustments would improve the presentation! That doesn't count the hours she spent before I saw her.

There really isn't any excuse for this. I wanted to shake her by the shoulders and command her to buy "slide:ology" or "Presentation Zen".

On the other hand, ever crappy presentation out there makes me look better.

So, let others keep making bad presentation, I say.

As long as I don't have to watch them...

Five Reasons: Why Laser Pointers Suck

Here you go...

1. Laser Pointers are Gods way of telling you that your slide designs are shitty. If you need to point at something, take that as a hint to rebuild the slide.
2. I really don't need to stare at your butt. Your face might not be a match for Brad or Angelina, but it's very likely better looking than your ass. When you take out the laser pointer, you turn away from us.
3. Every time you turn your back, the jackass next to me pulls out his text-phone and starts 'tap-tapping' away. I hate that. Don't encourage him.
4. I get vertigo from your swirling of the 'dot'. I gave up video games years ago. I hated "Blair Witch Project". And I'm not an ADD-inflicted feline that's mesmerized by red light.
5. You look like a dork when play with your pointer. You're going to drop it, or scratch your head with it, or rap it on the table, or do some other equally distracting thing. 

Seriously, throw away your laser pointer and two things happen.

My IQ goes up by 30 points, and my perception of your IQ goes up by 60 points.

Build Better Slides with Nancy Duarte's slide:ology

That's me stealing valuable camera space from Nancy

As I mentioned yesterday, I attended the slide:ology seminar at Duarte Designs today.

Author Nancy Duarte facilitated most of the session, and injected it with obvious passion.

Using "An Inconvenient Truth" and the TED conferences as examples, Nancy believes that Power Point and Keynote can change the world. By the end of the session, she'll have you believing as well!

This 'one-day degree' in design is destined to become a 'must-see' in corporate training, so get ahead of the curve and ahead of your competition.