Companion Term for Slideument

Last week I shared my thoughts on Kashi's confusing use of slides to present what was essentially a document. In retrospect, I might have been a bit incorrect using the term 'slideument' which more accurately applies to a set of slides that read like a document.

Two great examples of slideuments are 8 Keys to Effective Lecture by Terry Doyle at Ferris State University, or How Do I Use PowerPoint to Teach by Patrick Crispen (links are direct downloads to the PowerPoint files).

While the content in both of these presentations is valuable, presenting it in slide form does not make sense, since they were dense with text, did not use many visuals, and flowed much more like an essay.

On the other hand, Kashi's Yearbook celebrating 25 years was designed as a document but presented as slides... docuslides?? With this practice becoming common with online services such as SlideRocket and Slideshare, maybe it's time to coin a new term to use in conjunction with slideument.

Docuslides. I like it.

What do you think?

Do you want to see a great presentation?

It's not often that you get to see a presentation and think, "Wow." I'm not talking about the "whoa dude! That was so awesome!" kind of reaction. What I'm talking about is when you know that the message you just heard was exactly what the presenter meant for you to hear, and that the whole experience was simple and clear. I recently had this experience watching the keynote at Apple's World Wide Developer's Conference. Go ahead, chuckle, snort, you can even post a snarky comment about me being an Apple fanboy. It's alright. Because it's true. I love Apple and everything they stand for. I'm not saying that they are a perfect organization or that this presentation didn't have any flaws (in fact, there were two obvious errors in this keynote). It's just that their simple, direct approach to business, product design, marketing – and presenting – make it so that little, if anything, is misunderstood.

Go ahead and watch just a little bit of it.

Notice how there is rarely any text on the screen. Beautiful, high quality images are used in place of bullet points. Simple, easy to read graphs. Transitions are used appropriately to create emphasis. Not to mention a clutter free stage, large projector screen, the use of light humor, repetition, seamless transitions between speakers, and more.

Seriously, just watch a bit if you have some time.

Watch the Presentation

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