This is the presentation Larry Lessig gave at the Brennan Center’s Campaign Finance Reform forum last week.  It is well worth your time.
Also? The next time you’re tempted to use PowerPoint in a presentation, think about this.
Also? The next time you’re tempted to use PowerPoint in a presentation, think about this.
Plin
That was excellent–both in content and (mostly) presentation.
I work with my students on presentations quite a lot, and dynamic text is one of the forms I often recommend. I generally think it works best on shorter presentations, or as part of a larger presentation. Lessig did break this up with images and even video, which makes it work.
You know that this presentation was probably made in PowerPoint or Keynote, right? The problem is poor use of the tools, not the tools themselves.
Scott Nolan
Thanks Mark, I am sharing this as well as it is brilliant and needs a signal boost.
I do not understand that last bit about PowerPoint, though I am not a PowerPoint user.
MB
Plin, I’m pretty sure it was Keynote (Lessig’s a Mac guy). And funny, this is actually a tying together of 3 different presentations that he often gives.
I wasn’t taking aim at the use of PowerPoint as a rule. Rather, I was holding this presentation up as a reminder that PowerPoint presentations *don’t have to suck.* Unfortunately, they do about 98% of the time. I have to suppress a strong desire to get up and walk away every time an adult reads me the text I just read on the screen.
Plin
Oh, right there with you. Some of the conference presentations I go to are infuriating that way. My students know that they could *never* get away with anything like that around me–the problem is, most of them have never seen any other kind of PowerPoint, so in the beginning it’s just never occurred to them that there are other ways. By the end, they come up with some amazingly creative presentations.
So I’m doing my small part to limit the needless suckage of PowerPoint presentations of the future.
MB
Make sure you carry this mission to the ROTC corps at your school, Plin. For the good of the country. (Seriously, military/DOD PP presentations are lethal weapons in and of themselves. Maybe even WMDs.)