The misuse of presentations

Well decked formatted presentations have become a fashion these days. Every meeting, discussion you are at people expect you to carry a presentation and sit through hours of rigorous task of looking at bland slides that are designed in a tasteless way to convince you that the plan they have sketched on the screen is going to work. People even wince when I ask them to skip a slide because I hardly take little over 15 seconds to get what is written on the slide and all they want is an appreciation for the design on the slide.

The worst part is that these presentations require hours and hours of man power to type, edit and format the content. Sitting inside darkened rooms with all eyes focused on the lit up screen listening to the voice is old fashion. Come on now, you got to agree that the time is very less and I don't want to sit down and waste my time with some PowerPoint slides.

I recently saw a presentation created by a designing graduate which had her signature written all over. I couldn't but compliment for the effort put-in in designing the slides but had to tell that the content was poor and if half the effort was devoted to the content, it would have made wonders.

Let me ask you a question here. Do we need long presentations? Let me refine the question. Do we need presentations at all? If you insist, how about a two slider? A crisp one with just the summary. For the background and design, how about a plain subtle one that accentuates the content and theme rather than dominating the whole scenario? If you want to spend hours and show me your creativity, spend it on the content for I am there to see the content and not the design.

Seriously, think about it. Do we need presentations?