I am attending the Burton Group Catalyst Conference and listening to the morning sessions in the Identity and Privacy Strategies track. Jamie Lewis and Mike Neuenschwander are fantastic speakers but I am finding myself less than satisfied with their presentations. The content of the presentations is first rate. I highly recommend the Burton Group and the Catalyst Conference. However, at times, I am finding their talks hard to follow and they seem more than a little mechanical (ok, I'll use the word, they're a little boring).

The problem I am sensing doesn't have anything to do with Jamie or Mike. Both of these guys know their stuff and have perspectives on these topics that are hard to match. But, their Powerpoint slides seem to be getting in the way. The best part of both of their presentations happened when they went "off-slide." Jamie was fantastic when he started riffing about Brown and Hagel's recent book and how it supports (even overlaps) the Burton Group's approach or when he talked during slides that have no bullets (like the Identity Management Architecture, In Context slide). Mike is a funny and engaging guy but seems to get slipped up at times when he (almost reluctantly it would seem) returns to looking at the slides showing on the monitor in front of the stage.

In short, it felt like these two presenters' personalities were tied behind their backs because of their slides. It's because these two guys have loads of personality that I noticed the problem.

I probably felt this disillusionment before but never had an informed opinion until I read Cliff Atkinson's "Beyond Bullet Points." I tried, with admittedly limited success, applying this to a presentation at the CTC conference last month. But, the first two presentations from Jamie and Mike are great examples of how slides full of bullet points clearly get in the way of the message.

It seems that the use of Powerpoint is trying to serve two uses. The first is the person who takes slides home, prints them out, and then distributes them to others in their company. The second use is for the person in the room watching the presentation. I think the problem with these presentations is that the slides are trying too hard to meet the needs of those people taking them home. However, from my perspective, they are clearly failing with the people in the room.

Atkinson provides an approach for addressing both needs. He says to use simple, bullet-less, slides for those in the room (this is a gross oversimplification of the methods Atkinson prescribes, read his blog for more information). For those taking the slides home, you should provide Acrobat versions of the slides printed in the 'Notes Page" view augmented with additional narrative in the Notes section of the slide.

It's interesting to note that Burton provides a page to download both Powerpoint and Adobe Acrobat (PDF) versions of the files. This web page would be a great place to provide both versions of the presentations.