Visualization

Today, after several days of writer’s block I had a topic dumped in my lap.

I didn’t really want it, but there it was. There are so many other things to talk about, but this one has suddenly come to the forefront.

I’m rethinking my position on the death penalty.

Not for capital cases. Not even for felonies. I think that it should be an option for certain seminar speakers who make ridiculous PowerPoint slides as a part of their presentation.

After public floggings.

Most professionals have to do some type of continuing education. In my case, it’s twelve hours a year. That’s not onerous; there’s usually some topic that I could stand to learn a bit more about.

The people who run those seminars have quite the racket going. You will end up driving to some (hopefully) nearby city and going to a conference room in a hotel where, along with between 3 and 200 of your professional colleagues some “expert” will expound upon the topic at hand.

For the pleasure of attending this, you will pay somewhere between $250 and $400 per day, coffee and sodas included but lunch is on your own.

In today’s case, the room was cooled to about 40 degrees and, having reached the point where comfort conquers vanity, I immediately returned to the truck for my “don’t freeze to death beside the road” sweatshirt advertising the Dirty Shame Station in Carnegie, Oklahoma.

Most of these events are pretty decent. They offer “nuts and bolts” information that you can use every day, along with lots of forms that mean you can copy their work and incorporate it into your own practice. There is a manual or handouts involved.

Today, however, we had a former preacher turned lawyer who was the first speaker. He was obviously competent in his topic, was a decent speaker, and knew his stuff.

From him, we learned absolutely nothing.

Why? Because, according to him, his wife and daughter decided that his PowerPoint slides were “too plain”.

They helped him out and spiced them up by putting a variety of backgrounds on EVERY SINGLE SLIDE. We started with flowers, then went to kittens and had an assortment of wildlife finishing up the set.

Unfortunately, they also had either white or grey print on the face of them.

The attendees in these classes tend to be well over 40. Reading glasses are almost universally in use.

Contrast is a big issue for us. Black on white, white on black is fine. The occasional line graphic or shot of a single color on a slide keeps it plenty interesting for us. Legibility is far more important than aesthetics.

In this case, the issue was Laws related to Elder Care.

No puppy or kitten in the world was going to make it interesting. Instead, all it did was mean that we had to turn out the lights in the room to even begin to see the material being offered on the screen.

Material which, incidentally, he didn’t bother to hand out. And now it was dark enough that we couldn’t see to take notes, either.

I like seminars. I like learning about things that keep my practice alive and vital.  I get to meet other professionals and chat with them, to exchange ideas and network.

Unfortunately, all I learned from this one is that you have to have an independent person screen your PowerPoint slides before you inflict them on some poor unsuspecting audience.

And bland isn’t always a bad thing.