NO matter how “bad’ they say things are economically, most people enjoy Christmas. We get a huge kick out of the frenzied excitement from the vendors, large and small, trying to poke the last cent out of our pockets. The air is crisper, the plazas are gaily decorated, party-crashers are on a roll, and except for the permanent Ebenezer Scrooges, people tend to be more kinder and considerate. That is until, January the bill paying season hits us squarely in the pockets.

Well, I just have two communications Christmas wishes this year. I pray that jolly St. Nicholas (my almost name sake) will lean his ear this way and put these two small packages in his huge Christmas bag. I am not by nature ‘gravalicous’ and so I will be satisfied if the Santa man can afford me even just one of my two wishes. So, here goes.

My first wish is really a small one but I can guarantee that it is one that many of us in corporate life have pined and longed for over many years. Yes, we have suffered long enough in silence and it is about time that we get what we want. Our wish is a simple one: make presenters stop killing us with poorly designed Powerpoint presentations (PPT). I don’t know about you, but if I have to sit through one more Powerpoint presentation chock-full of words as if I am reading a Stephen King novel, I will be forcibly asked to leave the room by two burly security guards. I think by now everyone should understand that the PowerPoint presentation is here to help us speak with our audience. To the best of my knowledge, the PPT software was not supposed to be a crutch nor a tether. The future of your presentation should not depend on whether or not the projector works and the thought of this should not cause you to break out in cold sweat.

PPT was originally developed as an aide for knowledge sharing for professors making presentations. Remember those bad ole days of using transparencies or slides and all the time it took to prepare them for public consumption? Although they very useful then, the world I am sure, heaved a collective sigh of relief when in 1984, Bob Gaskins and Dennis Austin from Berkley, California, developed the PPT precursor, the Presenter. I am almost sure that later when Microsoft acquired the start-up and re-launched the product as PPT, integrating graphics and animation, they did not mean for it to be a weapon of mass destruction on the human minds. They did not mean for death by Powerpoint to be another method of population reduction. The truth is that we should come to our audiences with the content of our presentation fully rehearsed and in place. They have come to see and hear us – not the PPT.

I am not advocating the abolition of this useful communications tool as it is meant to help us in making our presentations. It is not meant to slay the audience’s consciousness, putting them to sleep or making them flee the room in terror. There are some persons who even encourage that we get rid of all the fanciness and frills that PPT offers. So they say, get rid of the dissolves, the swishes, the sound effect and the flying content. Just KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Everyone loves a kiss so your audience will love you for it.

My wish to Santa Baby is a simple one – can you help to launch a movement that will encourage PPT users to be more responsible in preparing their presentations. Santa, send a reminder (via e-mail, snail mail, YouTube, FaceBook and Twitter) to each human being who prepares presentation to be kind.

Make speeches shorter. It was the ultimate Bard, Shakespeare, who wrote that brevity, is the soul of wit. I, myself, long for the days when those of us who make speeches will keep them as short as the mini-skirt: definitely making a statement; revealing enough to tantalize but brief enough to be decent. Speech makers and writers need to say more using less words. Right now we are suffering from information overload in every part of our lives. It is increasing our suffering if speakers deliberately speak ad nauseum, flogging a subject to death, resurrecting it and clobbering it to death again in full sight of an anguished audience. Santa, I think that time has arrived. You have to post-haste send out that memo, complete with sanctions directing that we keep speeches, presentations short and sweet.

My list is short Mr Santa Claus and contrary to the penny-section I have been a good girl. I do not expected to be disappointed on December 25.

Yvonne Grinam-Nicholson, (MBA, ABC) is a Business Communications Consultant with RO Communications Jamaica, specialising in business communications and financial publications. She can be contacted at: yvonne@rocommunications.com. Visit her website at www.rocommunications.com and post your comments.