PowerPoint Jedi
-Improving Technical Presentations
Strong visuals, less text, no bullet points and a clear story-like structure are some of the steps on the journey to become a PowerPoint Jedi. I recently watched a Q&A session with Garr Reynolds where he was asked how best to give a technical presentation. His answer was something like "Give the audience a copy of the printout". (Due to the low image resolution of PP-slides). I agree that this is a good idea but don't think it should be the final word.
Heart of Darkness
It is not uncommon that a detailed technical printout is at the heart of the presentation. Normally this would mean an audience familiar with most of the technical terms. If you're giving a presentation of this nature it still needs to be as effective as possible. It is important that you lead the audience so that you all focus on the same details at the same time. This is where the Rebel Alliance can help!
Attacking the Death Star
When attacking the Death Star, rebel leaders had to communicate the technical details to a crowd of pilots. They could have just handed out printouts of the thing and given a standard PowerPoint presentation. Luckily they didn't. If they did, the emperor would already have won. Instead they split the information into smaller chunks, focusing on one piece of the puzzle at the time. I suggest you do the same.
Death[star] By PowerPoint
Use the Force
By all means, let the audience have a printout of
the technical information and begin the
presentation-segment with the same image. Then you
can start focusing on the details. I reckon you don't
have an R2-unit to help you, but you might
should have some sort of image-processing program and
a high-resolution scan of the information you want to
share. Create separate images from parts of the
high-resolution image, detailing different parts. It
is easier to show and tell, than just tell, so I've
tried to give an example below.
A quick and dirty Keynote example
I've borrowed the blueprints from
The Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels (Star
Wars)
Update: When exporting to flash a lot of the transitions etc. was lost on the way. I have therefore included a Quicktime-version where everything should look as planned. Macusers can also download the original Keynote-file, if they're interested(?)
