Interesting discussion of presentations. I agree with your point about reading a paper and too much detail. (I have probably been guilty of that myself.) I do have a problem with power-point vs. overhead or handout. My preferred method is handout since I can mark up handouts and I can refer back to sentences in handouts during the discussion. Power-point tends to be the worst method mainly because the little gimmicks people usually use distract from the claims and the argument. I do not want to see bouncing bunnies in the corner, dropping texts, flying bullets, or any of that garbage. Also the power-point setup seems to encourage sentence fragments and it is hard to evaluate these as they are not actual statements. Finally (and this can be a problem with overheads too) powerpoint presentation format can encourage bullett-point mentality which involves fragmentation of knowledge and a failure to recognize how ideas are organically connected. All of this (except for the bouncing bunnies) can be overcome by a good extemporaneous talk, but the medium sometimes is the message. You say that powerpoints are “more engaging” but I wonder whether they are really more engaging or whether people just think they should be more engaging and so they go along with the idea that they are really more engaging. There seems to be a kind of will to conformism in the idea that “of course power point presentations are more engaging.” Anyway I find them soporific.

Cheers,

Tom