I don't think powerpoints are inherently bad, but they're misused enough that I wouldn't begrudge anyone who wanted to ban them outright.
The two best ways to use them, from experience, seem to be:
- Super dense slides. These slides have a lot of text and are information-rich. You're not expected to read them, and the presenter will just skim over them, presenting a high-level view of each topic, but definitely not reading off of the slides. The slides are there as a rough guide to the talk, and as an in-depth resource afterwards.
- Super spare slides. These slides have few-to-no bullet points, and are heavy on pictures. They're pretty much there to guide the speaker's narrative, and nothing else. At worst, there might be an inherently visual data element, like a graph.
The common element being that the slides are there to guide the talk, not be the talk. The reason powerpoints are so reviled is because people tend to just write a speech, put a bullet point in front of each sentence, and read it off a projected slide.
My preferred powerpoints support the talk. They provide things the speaker cannot- pictures, tables, graphs. Sometimes bullets are nice for openings and closings to summarize.
I did a presentation recently regarding Git and git-enabled workflows to a room of people with SVN and TFS backgrounds. The only slide I relied on was the git-flow workflow graph. Everything was a live demonstration of the workflow by actually using git live on the screen.
A projector during a presentation should be used to show what you cannot say or to clarify a point graphically.
Quite, the problem isn't powerpoint it is that people don't know how to give presentations (or often why they are giving the presentation). Consequently they use powerpoint like a drunk uses a lamp post.
Of course they aren't inherently bad. Powerpoint is a tool. There are good ways and bad ways to use it. It's easier to use Powerpoint ineffectively than with other mediums.
I don't know about that. I've seen a lot more bad power points than bad speakers. In my experience truly good power points and truly bad speakers are both rather rare.
The two best ways to use them, from experience, seem to be:
- Super dense slides. These slides have a lot of text and are information-rich. You're not expected to read them, and the presenter will just skim over them, presenting a high-level view of each topic, but definitely not reading off of the slides. The slides are there as a rough guide to the talk, and as an in-depth resource afterwards. - Super spare slides. These slides have few-to-no bullet points, and are heavy on pictures. They're pretty much there to guide the speaker's narrative, and nothing else. At worst, there might be an inherently visual data element, like a graph.
The common element being that the slides are there to guide the talk, not be the talk. The reason powerpoints are so reviled is because people tend to just write a speech, put a bullet point in front of each sentence, and read it off a projected slide.