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Kids and Powerpoint…

Here’s a blast from the past. Nancy Duarte of Duarte Design (who worked with Al Gore to produce the famous Inconvenient Truth slideshows) has posted a video of Sky’s 2006 Comic-Con presentation on the then-upcoming Making Comics 50 State Tour. She was 13 years-old at the time.

Duarte’s book Slide:ology features Sky in a two page spread, examining the fast-moving approach she uses when presenting. Although she was obviously influenced by her Dad’s style, it’s important to point out that Sky created what you see here without any help from us. I told her how to make a new slide in the first five minutes she had the program and she just took it from there.

I also need to point out that this was her first time doing the presentation. Sky would add to and refine her slides as she went on to present at MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, Google, Adobe, etc. By the time we got to Albuquerque, her timing was almost inhuman.


Discussion (5)¬

  1. Mike L says:

    Wow, that was a lot of fun! Easily the best paced powerpoint presentation I’ve ever seen. She has a great way with pacing and humor. It really keeps things moving. This was her first time? You’d never know.

  2. Ben V. says:

    Easily one of the best Power Points I’ve ever seen!

  3. Numpty says:

    Isn’t it a criminal offence to make anyone under 18 use PowerPoint?

    • Scott says:

      Nope! It’s a criminal offense that so many people of all ages have so routinely misused Powerpoint.

      Like any tool, presentation software has provided an excuse for some terrible crimes of bad design and sloppy thinking—AND an opportunity for some wonderful, creative visual communication.

      Obviously, I think Sky’s stuff falls into the latter category, but so could most people’s presentations if they just saw some examples of what could be done.

      (Ha! Bet you weren’t expecting such a serious answer. ^-)

  4. genji_339 says:

    awesome with lots of awesome sauce!