By Annabelle Joynson
Guest Contributor
Death by PowerPoint.
Despite having a certain ring to it, the phrase most likely conjures up flashbacks to the mind numbing presentations of yore… and of yesterday.
We’ve stuck by it through it’s clip art phase of the 90’s, the special transition effects of the noughties, and for some reason our abusively dull relationship with PowerPoint has kept people all over the world hanging in there right up until now.
But surely in the age of Musk’s flying Tesla in space, and there being an app for everything, we could have come up with something better than a zooming Prezi headache?
Why are we like this?
Instead of actively looking for a way to make PowerPoint easier, the market has been flirting with other alternative forms to PowerPoint—with Keynote, Google Slides, and the aforementioned Prezi lead as the main culprits. But to use these visual communicators on a large scale, we’d need a serious gusto injection from the business community.
When presenting, we’re conscious that whatever we’re saying needs to make an impact, but also not create a technical crisis before the first word has been stuttered. PowerPoint is a pretty safe option to avoiding this malarky. Everyone has PowerPoint, it’s used in every office, and it’s even available online. No technical fears or internet mlems can get in the way of PowerPoint. Besides, even if it did people would sympathise having struggled themselves, and definitely let us off, right?
What do people do?
Some people have had enough, and switched to a whole new piece of software to present. Others, struggling to control the plethora of PowerPoint files riddling their servers have switched to using a CMS platform. Whilst the researchers out there have found out what others are doing to make presentations manageable, and gone with the best solution for them.
But there are some clever sages out there who decided to stop with all this nonsense and created a new thing called a slide library. These are like the best presentation decks, but better. With hundreds of them neatly categorized in one place, taking the faff out of making presentations, but putting in crispy professionalism with some saved time to boot.
This may be a godsend for the corporate world, with topics seemingly being pretty consistent around numbers or reporting, but what about the designers, educators, and academics out there still flailing due to poor presentations?
Well, for them google slides seems to be their pseudo-saviour for the moment. With the ability to use all the features in the google suite to show data and design whilst working simultaneously with others on one project, things can get done quickly and professionally without fighting PowerPoint, or battling a pricey punch.
What about the future of PowerPoint?
We’ve been speculating on the pointless future of PowerPoint for years now, and it seems that no matter how many TED talks we make, or many strongly worded articles we collectively write, PowerPoint just keeps coming back, even pointier.
I think we need to accept our fate. PowerPoint is here to stay. But perhaps we can start using new technology to make it more than bearable to a point where we’re once again smitten. If not, waiting until AI makes us all redundant as workers might work too.
Annabelle writes the blog over at SlideCamp.
When she’s not trying to lifehack her way through the world,
she’s attempting to keep up with the global political arena.