Person/Peter Norvig/Article/00/The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation

• The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation

  • Summary

    • Peter Norvig imagines what Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address might have looked like if it had been delivered as a corporate PowerPoint presentation.
    • The presentation turns Lincoln's speech into agenda items, bullet points, objectives, an organizational overview, a summary, and a gratuitous graph.
    • The satire shows how presentation software can preserve the speech's keywords while stripping away its flow, eloquence, and force.

  • Notes

    • Norvig made the presentation after sitting through too many meetings where visual aids obscured the point.
    • He used PowerPoint's Company Meeting (Online) template and its Autocontent Wizard, then amplified the template's poor design choices.
    • The related essay explains that the joke is about PowerPoint and presentation habits, rather than about the historical significance of Gettysburg.

  • Links

    • The Making of the Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation
    • Download the original presentation