Low tech presentation

On Saturday, April 28 our local paper, The Press Democrat (A NY Times paper), published a front-page article titled, "Pen and paper trump tech: In a world of impersonal gadgets, techies are turning to tactile pleasures" by Meg McConahey.

For example:
"Moleskine notebooks, classic bound journals into which Matisse poured his sketches and Hemingway his prose, have become almost "a fetish" among techies, said Rich Gibson, Internet mapper and database programmer from Sebastopol."

This parallels the experience that I often have when a participant in a presentation skills workshop or coaching session turns to the flip chart or white board.

The use of the hand-written media often draws more attention than PowerPoint. In addition, the human touch of a crudely drawn figure or flow chart has more charm than a carefully crafted, slick presentation slide.

The additional advantage is that such a graphic can be quickly drawn on the fly with minimal preparation whereas an intricate flow model can take hours to construct in PPT.

This reminds me of Polish director Jerzy Grotowski's arguments for a low-tech theater in "Towards a Poor Theater." Grotowski argued that theater should be stripped down to it's essence: "a theatre in which the fundamental concern was the work of the actor with the audience, not the sets, costumes, lighting or special effects ... 'Poor' meant the stripping away of all that was unnecessary" according to the WikiPedia entry on Grotowski.

Often, presenters become so enamored by (or addicted to) their technology that they lose the human connection with their audience.

As my mentor David Henderson used to say, "They won't form a relationship with your slides."