Paul Ryan’s PowerPoint

This is unusual, a politician doing a PowerPoint in front of the press. You can see his full presentation here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NREYTR5HUyA

Here are a few observations:

• The slide design is actually OK: consistent, good use of color, balanced, not a spectacular TED talk, but still a lot better than your average corporate bullet point deck
• The screen is too small
• He is a pretty good and confident presenter
• Het gets the start wrong. A super technical summary slide with what they are going to do, without having presented the logic of why they want to do it. I think most people switch of in the first minute (See some reactions here).
• Later on, things get better. But it is almost as if the slides are holding him back. First he presents a statistic or a quote, turning towards the slide, then he steps away from the screen and explains what it actually means. And it is here where he does a pretty good job.

I watched about 10 minutes of the presentation. The key change I would have made, is to change the framing of the presentation. Leaving my own political views aside, if I were trying to make the case for a script, it would: “Hey, from the outside Obamacare looks pretty good, because of 1, 2, 3. BUT, people are missing a few problems 1, 2, 3,. Our plan offers the best alternative. And here is all the technical, legal stuff we are going to do to make it happen.

Originally published at www.slidemagic.com.