When a conference is providing archives of their sessions online the consistent templates can make it all seem more buttoned-up. That being said, I also agree that images should rule the day – not text – and a full-screen image will obscure the template anyway. One of the problems I have been seeing is a consistent confusion between a presentation and a leave-behind. Many times presenters cram a lot of text into their slides so that they make sense to someone who didn’t hear their presentation – a critical mistake and an obviously poor use of PPT.

I’d like to see them present to images and illustrations, and make available a transcript or supporting paper for later review. I am also a big supporter of online audio or video archives of any live session – that way the speaker can do the talking – not the slides.

I hear you about insisting on association branding on PPTs, Mickie — but there’s a reason why we do that, and it’s pretty simple: we just want the attendees to associate the presentation with an event we hosted so when they refer back to handouts later, they’ll recall where they originally saw the speaker.

We provide templates only when we have several speakers in a short period of time; templates help them to stay on topic and within a restricted time slot.

But overall, we remind our speakers that PowerPoint is a visual medium, and that it should be populated with images rather than text. Seems simple and obvious, but clearly many speakers haven’t thought of their presentation support in this way.

It’s not the PPT, after all. It’s the speaker and what the speaker has to say that’s important.

I’d also like to see a moratorium on speakers reading the PPTs to the audience. Believe it or not – I can actually read. And, I bet the rest of the audience can too!