PowerPoint...Good or Evil?

There are those out there who are convinced that PowerPoint has "dumbed down" corporate America and has become an insulting process where presenters read their slides to the audience.

On one side, you've got Edward Tufte who HATES PowerPoint. He goes so far as to suggest that a poorly done PPT presentation had something to do with the Columbia disaster. He makes some good points about how people just toss a ton of info up on their slides and the audience gets lost.

Isn't it true that by the time a presenter has finished reading his slides to you, you are well done? Something to think about.

On the other side of the debate is Cliff Atkinson, who argues that PowerPoint is really like a Hollywood storyboard. If you use it to tell a visual story, you are going to get the results you want, but you have to plan it out beforehand. That's the hard part, of course, but something to think about when trying to persuade an audience.