I recently had the chance to take part in an all-day brainstorm at the top of 30 St Mary Axe (also know as the Gherkin).

Somehow, a camera fell into my bag on my way out of the house and, as I was there, it seemed rude not to take some shots.

You can see a selection of the photos here.

How many times have you sat down to a presentation only to be faced with War & Peace on each slide? Bullet following bullet only separated by some sub-bullets and a graph in a font so small that it looks like braille?

Then there’s that moment just before the presenter switches to full screen mode when you notice that this is slide one of 128. And you think to yourself: this is time I am never, ever going to get back.

Lifehacker points to a deck by Alexei Kapterev highlighting where so many presenters go wrong:

While the points are not particularly new, to my mind they cannot be made often enough.

Beyond this, the next port of call for the repentant PowerPointer has to be Presentation Zen. From there to TED and Pecha Kucha (see here for examples). And on to Amazon to order Jon Steel’s excellent Perfect Pitch and Guy Kawaski’s The Art of the Start.

Guy’s 10/20/30 rule has to be the one we should all aspire to: 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point type – and then a really good conversation. While I’m not there yet myself, if you see me doing the kinds of presentations in Kapterev’s deck, do me a favour – stop me and slap me. Thank you.

Take a look at this.

The stills don’t do it justice, but it comes from the chronotext site that “is a growing collection of software experiments exploring the relation between text, space and time.”

Essentially it runs a selection of text around a spiral that’s laid on top of a topographical map. And it’s awfully pretty. download the Java app and see it in action.

Nice.

Source: NOTCOT