When PowerPoint Goes Bad

The projector crapped out halfway through a presentation I attended a few nights ago, leaving the speaker without her PowerPoint presentation. She stumbled for a moment, took a few minutes to gather herself, and then a wonderful thing happened. She started just talking. No graphs, no regurgitating exactly what was on the screen. She walked around and shared her expertise off-the-cuff, taking questions along the way--without slides, there was no need to hold them to the end and there was no need to stay behind a podium, out of the sightline between audience and screen.

It was terrific. The second half of the night was far more engaging than the first half, and she posted her slides to a website the next day so we could all access them. She also shared that plan with her audience as soon as the screen went dark, so we all stopped scribbling notes and taking photos of slides, and just listened. And I went from checking my watch every 10 minutes to fully and happily participatory, because she was no longer talking at us but participating in a conversation with us.

What a revolution. Food for thought...