I found the “The Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation” by Peter Norvig to be the most interesting in this week’s reading. I write for a professional tips and tricks blog, and two of the most common questions I receive are 1.)how to make a PowerPoint and 2.) how to make a PowerPoint interesting. I loved the issues brought up in the Making Of.. section of the site. Many tribal secretaries (for whom my company’s blog is aimed at) are concerned that their presentations are detracting from the point they are trying to make. Does making a list of what you’re going to cover in your presentation enhance or obscure your point? Will making bullet points on your slides make it easier for you listeners to follow along or make it easier for them to tune out?

While I am personally a fan of PowerPoint (though I prefer Prezi), it took several years of school and writing about making slides professionally to fully utilize PowerPoint presentations. I loved the way the author turned “four score and seven years ago” into a graph (which the author described as gratuitous ((which also made me laugh, because rule #1 in my latest blog post is avoid unnecessary graphs and charts at all costs))). I also appreciated the terrible green slides and annoying font colors. In short, it is extremely easy to make terrible PowerPoint presentations, and I owe several paychecks to answering questions on how to improve presentations.