Response to Gettysburg Address

In response to the question "How to make presentations: techniques, handouts, display technologies" Edward Tufte responded:

"For a devastating parody of PowerPoint, see Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in PowerPoint, by Peter Norvig (http://www.norvig.com or a mirror site which you can easily track down in Google)."

The rest of the answer is good also, and I have found all the questions and answers informative in this series of question threads.

-- Rick Barraza (email)

Peter Norvig now has an animated version of the Gettysburg Address in PowerPoint: http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/index.htm with a link at the bottom of the page. Still another way that PowerPoint makes people stupid.

-- Edward Tufte

As I mentioned to Mr. Tufte yesterday during his wonderful lecture, a friend of mine has started up a PowerPoint competition (between her and another colleague) at Click to Add Title. There are several rounds, each involving a particular style/topic and the goal is to see who can produce the "best" worst example each round. So far, it has been terrifyingly hilarious since I have seen many similar presentations meant in a serious vein.

-- Yun Joo Shin (email)

How to Use PowerPoint

Regarding the previous question on how to use PowerPoint in presentations:

Might I suggest people follow the example of a mentor of mine, Dr. Craig Feied, Director of the National Center for Emergency Medicine Informatics.

Dr. Feied uses only pictures in his PowerPoint presentations and only the *highest* resolution pictures he can find. *No words*. No bullet points. No titles.

He shows a new picture about every 10-15 seconds. Each picture further elaborates the point which he is making. The speed of picture change is slower than TV commercials, but much faster than the yawn inducing speed of 2-3 minutes per slide typically taught.

His lectures are enthralling and I have not used a bullet point since.

-- Michael Gillam, MD (email)

Another twist on the "PowerPoint is evil" theme:

-- Irwin Anolik (email)