As many of you out there may have noticed, apple has just published a new version of its PowerPoint-killer called “Keynote.”
And even if you don’t like to use a Mac, you probably still have to admit that it does produce beautiful presentations, not? Kutti over at jungfreudlich will probably agree the loudest (and still owes us an upload of his latest presentation), but is this kind of eye-candy necessary for scientific presentations? Do we need eye-candy, or clear presentations? Do we need numbers and facts reduced to upper-management-level-key-performance-indicators? Simplicity versus complexity? Aesthetics versus crude “getting the job done”? buy viagra buy propecia food nutrition free pets weight loss buy viagra
There is enough talk on the web and the blogosphere about “death by powerpoint”, but many hints for doing “good presentations” strive for reducing complexity — something scientists doing presentations don’t really like. Or try to hide by creating animations or skipping slides… you probably all have seen those species out there.
Others are trying completely new things, like mindmap-based slides for presentations. Any experiences with that?
What are your favorite tools? What is your “philosophy”?
I still prefer PowerPoint. ‘Points’ is my best way to illustrate ideas. However, mind-map slides also sound useful when you need to display the logical relation among the points.
I don’t like just putting isolated diagrams into several slides and talking about them one by one. You must have your points listed first for those diagrams to support.
PowerPoint seems to prefer its user list all the points out with several levels of indentation. It is not suitable, of course, for ‘brain storm’.
I use MindManager regularly for presentations. It has a presentation mode which removes the toolbar clutter and drives you around the map. However you are still able to use all the tools to add notes to the map during your presentation or visit linked documents and web pages.
I also use MindManager to prepare presentations which are exported to PowerPoint. This allows you to remain in the content mode for as long as possible before worrying about presentation. It is also useful to prepare a map about your audience and their needs. You can use a printed copy of the map as guide for yourself during the presentation.
Sometimes I present using a mix of the two. See this page for some videos of that happening.
http://www.cabre.co.uk/presenting.html