PowerPoint Karaoke: Yes, Really

This trend combines two of the most boring things around, PowerPoint and Karaoke so maybe it would be funny. Now I cannot sing at all but I can do PowerPoint from my large firm consulting days. Fortunately you do not have to sing or even create new PowerPoint. As the Boston Globe writes, a contestant, “launches into a completely impromptu talk from a PowerPoint slide deck she has never seen before. The results are openly, gleefully absurd.” The Globe goes into says, “The phenomenon has been spreading geek to geek and conference to conference since it was invented by a German artists' group in 2005. PowerPoint Karaoke sessions have been held at last year's E-Tech conference in San Diego, the Chaos Conference in Berlin, and at smaller tech gatherings in Los Angeles, London, and Montreal. In a typical event, a few brave people volunteer to "present" a random deck of slides pulled off the Web, or borrowed from friends or employers.”

The Globe also links to a PowerPoint version of the Gettysburg address to show how PowerPoint can make even the most inspiring talk dull. Now can extract revenge on PowerPoint by making fun of the slides. It is up to your creativity on how effective and entertaining this revenge is. I think it would be fun to give it a try and you do not have to sing. The Globe said that in traditional Karoake, the singers are compared to the professional who first did the songs. With PowerPoint Karaoke, you can only go up over the original. Thanks to the IF team for pointing this put.

Comments

[Sarah Elkins]

That sounds like a lot of fun! I've sung karaoke before, and I've given PowerPoint presentations before,so I'd probably volunteer to see what I could do with a new-to-me set of slides. Maybe I'll suggest it for Penguicon 2009 (it's probably too late for Penguicon 2008, coming up in a month). Using Creative Commons slides would tie in well with the con's open source theme.