Happy 25th birthday to Powerpoint

On August 14, 1984, Powerpoint was born, the brainchild of Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin. Initially called Presentation, it was originally developed just for Apple Macintosh. It was renamed PowerPoint in 1987 due to a trademark problem and in August that year, Microsoft bought the company the two inventors worked for. It was initially aimed at managers, professionals and salespeople but it has become the standard tool for anyone to explain something using a projector. Some interesting facts:

• The first PowerPoint presentation took place in Paris on February 25, 1992, to Microsoft employees.
• By 1993, it had become a market leader in PC presentation programmes.
• It is now estimated to have 95% share of the presentation software market with 500 million users wordlwide.
• Annual sales are now estimated of over $100m.
• 30 million PowerPoint presentations are made by businesses globally on a daily basis.

However, despite this success, PowerPoint has some critics.

• Presentations can be boring and just full of bullet points
• Information can be too simplified
• It makes communication presentation-orientated, not audience orientated.

Click on the link below to read through the problems of using PowerPoint in presentations and how you can overcome them.

The Problem with PowerPoint