8 More PowerPoint Train Wrecks

Before you begin viewing the PPT carnage, you must always remember the cardinal rule of presentations: “PowerPoint Doesn’t Kill Presentations. People Do.” Learn it. Know it. Live it. (If you missed the first installment, see 8 PowerPoint Train Wrecks.)

I spy some white space at the top there, just under that insanely catchy “Stakeholders and Communities with Web 2.0 +” headline, where you could add some more text. (For more on what not to do, check out 5 Ways to Ruin Your Next Presentation.)

When attempting to read this slide, it helps if you can turn your head (or eyes, if possible) in a continuous, circular 360-degree motion. I can easily envision Steve Jobs using the same type of slide. (For more on Jobs, see CIO.com’s The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs.)

If this slide doesn’t define irony, then I don’t know what does.

Oops! I spoke too soon on the previous slide. This slide attempts to explain the details of an online survey on “what annoyed audiences most about PowerPoint presentations”: 120.7% of respondents said: “Slides Are Too Complicated.” Math and English extra help anyone?

The color coding is nice and maybe this was all germane to the audience, but—OMG—that’s a lot of tech acronyms in one slide. (Reminds of me of Jeopardy: “I’ll take ‘RDFa Semantics’ for $400, Alex.”)

Good seats still available for this presentation! (Sometimes, the minimalist approach to slides can go horribly wrong.)

The photographer of this slide states: “Note the use of every possible crime against taste: clipart, wordart, caps, initial caps and even comic sans—oh, and every single one of the three words on screen is meaningless jargon. It got worse.” Yikes! (Also see: 10 PowerPoint Tips.)

Mind you, this slide aims to help people: “Effective Presentations Using PowerPoint” is the title, noted at the bottom. Also be sure to note that, purportedly, 76 slides come before this one.

To document his enjoyment of this presentation, Daniel Greene took a photo of himself with his MacBook’s built-in camera. Citizen journalism can be harsh, people. (See 5 Key Audience Questions to Help You Read the Room for more on this topic.)

…and not Microsoft BulletPoint! This satirical image—in its own way—pays homage to and mocks the disastrous consequences of too many bullets in presentation slides. (If you missed the first installment, see 8 PowerPoint Train Wrecks.)

Also see:

How 10 Famous Technology Products Got Their Names