What if you gave a presentation and – gasp – didn’t have a laptop in the room?

You may think it heresy that an IT professional would advocate going technology-naked (I’ll explain that one later but I’m sure I now have your complete attention), but now may be the time for us to follow MTV’s example and go unplugged.

The seed was planted for me in a New Yorker cartoon depicting Satan in job-interview mode. He’s looking across his desk at a candidate and says: "We need someone well-versed in the art of torture. Do you know Powerpoint®?" Ouch. That one stung.

At the time, however, I had been doing a lot of reading about the noxious levels of the overwrought, poorly-used blunt instrument we call the "slide deck" in corporate life. Regardless of the kind of content or the depth of the problem or the size of the prize, it must fit into six slides, three bullet points each, no less than 20 pt font. Or the dictate of venture capitalist icon Guy Kawasaki and his 10/20/30 rule -- no more than 10 slides that take 20 minutes to discuss and no less than 30 pt font.

When did high tech get high handed?

Recently a colleague involved me in planning a meeting for 28 business leaders in Information Technology. The objective he expressed for this meeting was to review 16 strategy drafts and get great collaboration and feedback on each of them. All of this would take place in one eight-hour day. Just the thought of eight hours of presentation slides made me break out in a cold sweat.

Let’s face it, hours upon hours of presentations is like having anesthesia administered. The goal, however, is not to dull the pain, but eliminate it. It was time for the revolution to begin. I made a daring recommendation: why not declare the meeting "presentation and technology-free." The VP looked at me quizzically, "Presentation free? How would that work?"

A logical question to ask at this moment is" "Do I have a bias against Powerpoint®?" No. I simply feel that it is frequently not the right tool for the job. Edward R Tufte, the famous theorist of information presentation states that Powerpoint® is "infused with an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch," and that "there are many true statements about complex topics that are too long to fit on a Powerpoint® slide. And for some complex topics, there’s no true statement that will fit. We shouldn’t abbreviate the truth, but rather get a new method of presentation."

I’m feeling you, Eddie.

And so we began. The actual deliverable for the strategy assignment had already been established as a presentation slide format. All of the completed strategies would be consolidated into a single "deck." So, how in the world could we do this assignment without using tech-laden presentations? By getting creative.

Each person or group would have to present their material so that their listeners gained understanding and they got the feedback we were seeking. About three days prior to the meeting, people began to panic. Some didn’t understand that the instructions said "presentation and technology free." You could smell the fear in the halls. Shock. Disbelief. And then the tremors….oh, no ….. I don’t have my crutch.

True enough. We were going technology naked. The emperor would have no laptop.

Fortunately, a few creative types embraced the idea and their enthusiasm began to spread. Rumors of their ideas began to circulate. A prop? Sure! A costume? That could work! A poster? I remember those! The creative juices began to flow.

Meeting participants began taking a hard look at their topic areas. What does this mean? How can I depict this point? How can I find a metaphor for this? Fear became energy. And holy moly -- people were looking forward to the meeting!

Meeting Day

We assembled early, completing an "ice breaker" that was fun and got the interaction and energy moving early. By the 8:15 opening remarks, everyone was curious and on alert. Hey, there’s no projector in the room. No one is on the phone; everyone was present. Not worried about being near a microphone or web connections or harmonizing presentation fonts. The VP welcomed everyone and the facilitator provided the ground rules and agenda review. It was really important that we stayed on schedule; we had a lot of ground to cover. But, we were not going to sacrifice a good discussion for the clock.

The first presenter was raring to go. When the agenda was released and she knew she was first, she came to me and said, "We’re first. We need to set the stage and kick the meeting off. Here’s my idea." It was magic.

She and her partner put on aprons and chef’s hats. Their prop was a large onion (made from an exercise ball and tissue paper accompanied by a large knife made from cardboard and aluminum foil.) They talked about peeling away layers, as they removed sheets of brown paper from the outside of the "onion." On each sheet was written one important point. Everyone was engaged, interactive, amused, listening.

Another presenter had a huge key ring like a building superintendent may use. She threw it on the desk with a loud clamor. "This represents our security issues," she declared and proceeded to explain how we have a lot of security, but too dang many different keys. Right away we got it!

Another one explained architecture by showing a house plan and how you wouldn’t build a house two rooms at a time. The water main ends up in the wrong place, the structural beams don’t exist and you haven’t accounted for a second floor or a back door. From a technology standpoint, this was a great analogy to some of our "phased approach" syndrome that ends up costing us big bucks in re-architecting existing systems and solutions.

For my own discussion of digital archiving, I disemboweled a number of magnetic tapes and tangled them around me, hung CDs from a hat, stuffed my jacket to make me look big and bloated and then basically trailed trash around the room. "I am the archiving problem," is how I started my talk. I doubt they will ever forget me traipsing around like a digital Pig Pen from the Peanuts cartoon.

To add to the feedback process, we provided individual "scorecards" so that meeting participants could record thoughts and observations. They could write down any additional questions, comments, points of confusion and interdependencies they noted. Finally each topic was scored on a scale of one to 10 for their buy in. After the meeting, the scorecards were sorted and distributed to each topic leader for their editing process.

And more importantly, we listened to each other. Really listened. No zoning out. No glazed eyeballs. No Blackberry prayer.

How do we measure if meetings are successful? Changed behavior? Nods all around? Who knows? We conducted anonymous meeting evaluations and the results were extremely positive. The meeting ran 10.5 hours including our lunch break. While breaking up at 6:00 (only to head to a planned team dinner!), the room was electric. People were energized, excited, and inspired by the day. They had made connections - both with the material and the people who served it up.

Looking back, I feel confident that if we had gone the most traveled road – using presentations, reading the bullet points and asking the glazed-over participants for input – we would never have had the personal investments and creativity brought forth. There would have been little-to-no preparation for the meeting – presenters reading slides and trying to remember why they constructed them that way. The interactions would have been more forced and probably more about wordsmithing the slide than understanding or appreciating the point.

Lesson learned was that for meetings where you expect and must encourage a high degree of interactive sharing, leave the safe, predictable world of slide presentation and the accompanying technology, and turn on the creative process.

Death to Powerpoint®? No. Just give it an occasional vacation.