Microsoft's presentation software -- PowerPoint -- is almost universally used at scientific (and other) conferences, but not everyone is a fan. Many scientists have criticized PowerPoint's static and often overcrowded bullet points.
As reported by Peter Sayer in an article published yesterday in CIO magazine, Swiss public-speaking trainer Matthias Poehm dislikes PowerPoint so much that he founded a new political party -- Switzerland's Anti-PowerPoint Party (APPP) -- and is gathering signatures to call for a referendum on the ban of PowerPoint around the country.
Poehm admitted to CIO that one ambition of the initiative was to promote his book on how to do away with PowerPoint. But his aim is also raise "the awareness of ... people who still don't know that there is an alternative to PowerPoint," Poehm told Sayer. "The alternative, for Poehm, is the humble flipchart, which he values for the creativity it encourages, and the appeal of seeing the presentation created live," Sayer writes.
You can read the full article at CIO.
Poehm is not the only one who is trying to find creative solutions to Powerpoint presentations. In June, freelance science writer Sarah Reed described on Science Careers how trained biologist Leticia Britos Cavagnaro used scenes from Charlie Chaplin's 'Modern Times' in her Ph.D. thesis defense at Stanford. She used software called Prezi that "is based in the cloud and is more akin to a scientific poster than a traditional oral presentation," Reed writes.
"With Prezi, users put all of their content, including embedded video footage, onto one digital canvas.... Users can then move around and zoom in to different areas of that canvas during the presentation. In essence, Prezi helps presenters build a mind map of their ideas, then lead the audience through the various parts," Reed writes.
Just be aware that la petite difference is not always celebrated. "The PowerPoint genre remains the de facto standard, and deviations might not be tolerated," Reed warns.
