Topic #3

I believe Bumiller brings up a very interesting point and uses a prime example, via the military, to show how power point can be misused. Powerpoint is a very powerful tool, but only if you utilize it in the right way. During many meetings in today’s culture, powerpoints are used as a visual aid to the speaker. In order to maximize the effectiveness of a powerpoint, one must remember that its purpose is to supplement the speaker and highly main points, not give a visual representation of everything you are planning to get across. Therefore, powerpoints should contain only minimal information deemed important by the speaker. One should keep the audience in mind using an audience-centered approach when creating a powerpoint to use in a presentation. It is said that the human mind only retains about 20% of information while sitting through a presentation or lecture. To help assure that the audience retains important information, a powerpoint is very helpful. However, it is not effective is the powerpoint is covering so much information that the audience cannot retain the information. Also, too much information in a powerpoint takes the audience away from listening to the speaker and focuses their attention of the powerpoint. One must remember that the audience will not retain but about 20% of what they are presenting anyways; the powerpoint will either help assure certain information gets retained or it will hinder any information at all from being remembered.