RemarkablyCreative.com

Virtually Boring

How do you make a bad Powerpoint presentation worse? Give it in Second Life.

Yesterday, I attended a seminar held in Second Life. Our host greeted us, walked us across the virtual boardroom to a virtual screen, and then cranked up her virtual PowerPoint slideshow.

Dozens of bullets per slide. Tiny, tiny fonts. Unreadable charts. Worse, all of these design mistakes were actually amplified by the Second Life environment. Slides that are unreadable when projected at full screen are even MORE unreadable when projected on a virtual screen within that screen.

About half-way through the program -- a presentation extolling the virtues of virtual meetings in Second Life -- the audio stutter became so bad, the presenter gave up, turned off the microphone, and dialed her audio in via speakerphone. Worse, when one of the presenters tried to "teleport" into the room to greet us, she arrived about six seconds before her clothes did.

Six seconds is a long time to stand naked in front of thirty executives, even if you're just an avatar.

It makes me a little sad, frankly, that, given all the theoretical potential of a virtual environment, the first impulse of business people is to recreate the kinds of spaces -- and the kinds of presentations -- that all of us would prefer to avoid in the real world.

Dazzling Zero-Effort Slideshows with Animoto

In a nutshell: Animoto.com generates slick, eye-catching slideshows edited to match the pace and tone of music you select. The result isn't always perfect -- but any service that delivers this much dazzle for this little effort deserves a place in the creative worker's bag of tricks! Sign up using discount code huvtxyne, and you'll get five bucks off.

The End of Slideshows?
There are dozens of software titles out there capable of converting your photos into a slideshow. With a click of a mouse, you can add music. Another click, and the "Ken Burns effect" will set your photos into motion. Dressed up with some lively music and eye-catching animation, even your Uncle Ed's fuzzy vacation photos can seem to tell a story.

Automatically generated slideshows are convenient, but they have their limitations. Because the software doesn't know what's in the picture, it may pan away from the focal point of the photo or -- worse -- zoom in for a close-up of the wart on Aunt Edna's nose. A poorly chosen soundtrack can transform bland slides into a truly disturbing multimedia experience.

And -- until now -- the number one problem with automatically generated slideshows has been this: due to their limited set of transitions and their dreamy pace, they all tend to look alike.

That's where Animoto.com comes in.

Larry Lessig's Dazzling Visual Presentations

I've seen great presentations ruined by bad presenters ... and bad presentations saved by good presenters ... but here's one of those rare moments when a great presentation gets paired with a great presenter:

The fireworks start about forty-five seconds into the clip. I love the speed of the presentation -- the rapid-fire flow of ideas and images -- but also the way Larry Lessig uses bold, screen-dominating images to identify and reinforce key information.

This approach simply isn't possible when a presenter:

a) wants someone else to advance her slides for her

b) doesn't know the material well

c) is imprisoned by a bullet-point mentality

d) thinks people actually want a hundred-page print out of the presentation to take home.

Insight: an effective presentation -- one that makes great use of the medium's ability to capture attention by catching the eye -- simply can't be replicated on a printed page.