Comments on: No bullet points

By: Tony

Tony — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 23:44:34 +0000

Losers with too much time on your hands!

By: fragman

fragman — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:45:19 +0000

you will be deserted by keynote or powerpoint or what ever your using, your line of text will just look normal, regular and un-important
AND
you’ll have to put a full-stop at the end of your sentence!

By: htmlmekani

htmlmekani — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 16:08:13 +0000

thanks aral super site

By: شات

شات — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 06:03:39 +0000

Nice Info

Thanks

By: john c

john c — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:36:26 +0000

Your a fool turning your back on bullet points, what happens when you really really need to make sure your audience sees that line of text, your summary, YOUR BULLET POINT! you will be deserted by keynote or powerpoint or what ever your using, your line of text will just look normal, regular and un-important
AND
you’ll have to put a full-stop at the end of your sentence!

By: Phillip Kerman

Phillip Kerman — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:08:11 +0000

@Jeremy I watched the Rheingold talk. It had very few slides–and nearly all were either distracting (because they made me think what the connection was… like the movie stills which I didn’t recognize)… or just there for a quick laugh–which is totally fine. 99% of the time though, you were watching him.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:46:49 +0000

I can certainly agree that bullet points have a purpose–sometimes even a rational one–in presentations . . . but Aral is the most right when he says that your slides should be your bullet points.

PP and Keynote are great document creation tools. That’s when bullet points are great. I’ve been given handouts of presentations that were so comprehensive (bullet points and all) that I didn’t really need to attend the presentation itself. At that point, it’s no longer a presentation. It’s a book-reading. I’d rather just have the book. That’s a document.

A presentation, however, is the thing that happens somewhere between the speaker and their presentation deck. (If you’re going to go with visuals–and I lean heavily in the direction of using them more often than not, but using them WELL.) If you have any doubts about this, go spend 18 minutes watching one of the presentations at TED (http://ted.com/).

Or peruse the example decks at Duarte (http://www.duarte.com/).

@Phillip Kerman, I have to confess that when you asked me to think of the best presentations I’ve ever experienced, I thought right away about Hans Rosling’s first presentation at TED: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/140 and Howard Rheingold’s presentation about collaboration: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/216 .

The challenge is, it takes work–and hard work at that–to create powerful, meaningful graphical decks that enhance presentations instead of weighing them down. You should see Nancy Duarte’s presentation ecosystem. Actually, you can: http://wiki.vizthink.com/files/NancyDuarte/EcoSystemv1.jpg .

For my part, I’ve long since abandoned bullets in presentation decks, and I always push the folks around me to simplify and beautify in order to create deeper meaning.

By: Keith Peters

Keith Peters — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 15:13:32 +0000

“No bullet points” or “bullet points are evil” just sets up another system of rules to follow that isn’t necessarily going to help you make a better presentation. Bullet points aren’t going to ruin a good presentation, and lack of them isn’t going to make a bad presentation good. It’s far more about the material and the speaker’s ability to communicate. I’ve seen speakers have a page full of bullet points and sit there and read them line for line. Horrible. I tend to use bullet points of one or two words to give structure to what I’m talking about.

- do this
- then do this
- finish with this

And I explain verbally each point in detail. If you are presenting a technical subject, I see this kind of thing is very helpful to give understanding of key points or sequences. Helps users to take notes. On the other hand, another speaker might be able to do a better job without them.

By: Gareth

Gareth — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:55:58 +0000

Adding this to my Q1 review presentation.

By: Michiel van der Ros

Michiel van der Ros — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 08:33:38 +0000

I think the amount of text on each slide is a bigger problem than the use of bullet points.

There was this one guy presenting at FITC with literally one slide for each sentence he said. No bullet points. One fancy transition every 2 seconds. The most annoying slides I’ve ever seen.