Baby steps...the presenters used YouTube video clips

In the past week or more I have attended a few informational events. It's great to see and hear what people are doing, especially when they are passionate about their work. The biggest disappointment for me has been something I feel almost personally, like I'm just not getting the word out and helping enough people step outside the trap of business communication norms. "Step away from the PowerPoint templates people, everything is going to be okay."

I've watched time, and time again, individual and corporate representatives swing at lobbed serves and miss (or marginally return). The people in attendance to most of these sessions have paid to be there. They want to be educated and engaged; in all respects a captive audience. In each session I've watched slide shows with bulleted lists; some suffered the "too many words" demise while others struggled with just enough words but no compelling reason to look at the material.

What's interesting though is that I am seeing evidence that we are taking baby steps in the right direction. At least twice in the this last stretch of events a presenter used a YouTube video clip. Each time they achieved focused attention and great responses to those moments in their presentations.

I can't help feeling that these presenters could have captivated us all, I mean really hit the ball out of park, if they would just allow themselves to move out of the PowerPoint Time Warp. ("It's just a jump to the left, And then a step to the right.")