"You down with ppt?"

Last week I participated in something I've never done before: Powerpoint Karaoke. This is when you stand up in front of a crowd and present a deck from slides you've never seen. My friend Bob at One Half Amazing organized the whole thing and made up the decks.

The rules are:

1. The presentations last approximately 4 minutes each.
2. The slides are programmed to advance automatically every 20 seconds.
3. The participant must not have seen the slides in advance.
4. The last slide is noted with a red "L" so the participant can conclude.
5. Participants are judged on humor, execution and something else that I can't remember.
   

So I just went to the event one evening after work to watch. Some of my local twitter friends were going to be there. I thought it would be a fun evening and I wanted to support Bob. But he kept HARRASSING me about presenting. He had two empty slots to fill but I said no, no I just want to watch.

I watched several participants and I was surprised to see that the slides were not actual business decks. They were meant to be funny and sometimes the slides within a presentation didn't even seem to be related. I guess that's the challenge of it. For instance, a slide might have nothing more than a large pie chart that shows "88% Bears" and "12% Battlestar Galectica." I think the girl that got that slide said, "You have a better chance of getting laid if you're a bear than if you play Battlestar Galectica."

So after watching several people people make a go at it, I thought, "Well this doesn't look so hard." I mean, if anyone can talk out their ass, it's ME. So I said, OK, I'll try it.

Ahem. Let me just say, in my defense, it looks a whole lot easier when your sitting in the audience facing the slides than it is when you're up there trying to present.

I sucked it up, but it was my first time! No one ever does anything good their first time! Although damn. My hair looks good.

So here I am, doing my thang. Ya'll be nice now.





You can see all the videos from that night here.