You don't have a presentation



You don’t have a presentation


As I prepared to deliver my presentation I told the AV guy that he could turn off the computer projector – that I would not use PowerPoint.

His response was, “Oh you don’t have a presentation.”

I grinned at him and said, as I pointed at my head, “Oh yes I do, and it is all in here.”

Isn’t it funny how some people equate presentation with PowerPoint. I guess that congratulations are due to Microsoft on the power of their marketing. Microsoft has trained a generation of managers that believe that presentation = PowerPoint. Poor managers and especially poor presentation prisoners.

Many PowerPoint presentations are so bad. It is often just the speaker’s notes on the screen. Sometimes the PowerPoint is the speaker’s presentation – word for word.

A good presentation is about connecting with your audience, about delivering stories and about moving them to action. PowerPoint does none of those things. I’m sure that if George Orwell imagined the possibility of PowerPoint he would have included it in his novel of Big Brother’s torture “1984”. Dante’s Inferno would have surely included a gate in hell marked “PowerPoint”. You belong there if you commit the PowerPoint Sins.

My question to you – do you have a presentation or do you have a PowerPoint?


George Torok

Speech Coach for Executives

Presentation Skills Training

Motivational Speaker

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