I did a presentation yesterday using PowerPoint (truthfully, it was Keynote, but I don’t want to confuse people). I put the slides together in about thirty minutes. It was easy. The program lasted for an hour and I had 25 slides.

I didn’t use ANY words in the PowerPoint. NONE.

I’ve done this before, but only with the 60 Tips in 60 Minutes program. That program is basically a walk through 60 websites and the slides are all screen captures of the sites. Putting 60 Tips together requires recording 60 seconds of what each site looks like and how it works. This program – 15 Ways to Take Your Practice to the Next Level – is different, it’s more substantive. It’s also 15 and not 60, that’s pretty different right?

Instead of website walk-throughs I had to find interesting images if I wanted to avoid words. I really wanted to avoid words. I hate words on a PowerPoint. The speaker is the words part. The PowerPoint should, in my opinion anyway, be the pictures. It’s like a children’s book – words plus pictures – not words plus more words.

My slides were partially pictures and partially videos. I flipped around on Google images and found the photos. I hope the attendees don’t alert the copyright authorities. The videos came from YouTube. I’ve got a plugin for my browser (Firefox) that lets me download the videos. Each image was an attempt to be relevant without being overly literal. For instance, one of the topics discussed related to making costs variable. For that slide I put up a video shot from the front of a roller coaster. Get it? Sort of?

Developing a PowerPoint presentation is fun using this approach. You’ve got to turn on your creative side and come up with some ideas for each image. Finding the images is easy once you’ve got a good idea.

I hope you’ll adopt my approach next time I come hear you speak. You’ll be more fun to watch. And you’ll have more energy since you didn’t have to move those words round and round trying to get them to look just right on the screen.