I've been mulling over presentations and how to communicate messages in general. One of the things I'm trying to come to terms with is how to create a presentation that works well as a live show and also works as a not-live show.

By live I'm talking about those presentations where you stand up in front of an audience and present. These presentations should be simple, clean, light, content filled but not wordy, distracting or (most importantly) as boring and mind numbing as a treatise on tax law and it's effects on carrot growers in Peru.

Not-live audiences are those people who will open your presentation after the show is over and read through it at their leisure and follow along at their own pace. Powerpoint is being used more like a documentation tool than a presentation tool.

I'm starting to think that one of the reasons most presentations are hideously flawed and as much fun a root canal while having ingrown toenails pulled is that people try to create one presentation to cover both audiences - it's less work after all.

Why do we do this to ourselves and our fellow human beings? We don't try to use reference manuals as marketing brochures, we don't try to use our offices for our bedrooms, we don't try to use our toothbrushes for our toilet brushes, so why do we try to use one powerpoint show for both live and offline audiences.

Bite the bullet. Create one presentation for your live audience and one for your not-live audience. Even better, use something else for the not-live audience. Record the voice over and make a movie of it, use Flash, use whatever, just don't try to cover both audiences at the same time.

Oh, there is one other reason why presentations suck, and that's because the presenters don't know their own material so the presentation is written as a way to prompt the presenter on what to say. I'll leave that for a different subject...