How Many Types of Meetings?

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

Although experts frequently suggest that effective PowerPoint presentations should not include “bullet points” or that presenters should only be using less than 15 slides – these rules are just guidelines that vary depending on the type of meeting. If you have an hour to persuade an audience of 500 that your Fortune 500 company is a good investment, that is a different type of meeting than if you have 10 minutes to pitch your new startup to a group of angel investors.

The type of meeting is an important factor which helps determine the content, number and type of slides that will help you get the results you need. I thought I’d try and come up with a comprehensive list of types of meetings. Please comment or email me if you can suggest additional meeting types. Here’s my list:

Types of Meetings by Marsh

1. Board Meetings

2. Brainstorming Meetings

3. Breakout Meetings

4. Combination Meetings

5. Conference Call Meetings

6. Emergency Meetings

7. Evaluation Meetings

8. Event Planning Meetings

9. Feedback Meetings

10. Financial Review Meetings

11. Financial Update Meetings

12. First Meetings

13. Holiday Meetings

14. Information Sharing Meetings

15. Introduction Meetings

17. Investor Meetings

18. Keynote Speeches

19. Large Conference Meetings

20. Leadership Meetings

21. Management Meetings

22. Manager Meetings

23. Meetings to Plan Bigger Meetings

24. New Business Pitch Meetings

25. New Product Launch Meetings

26. Online Meetings

27. Organizational Meetings

28. Party Meetings

29. Pitch Meetings

30. Planning Meetings

31. Political Meetings

32. Problem-Solving Meetings

33. Production Meetings

34. Project Planning Meetings

35. Religious Meetings

36. Research Review Meetings

37. Sales Meetings

38. Shareholder Meetings

39. Small Conference Meetings

40. Staff Meetings

41. Stakeholder Meetings

42. Strategy Meetings

43. Termination Meetings

44. Training Session Meetings

45. Trip Planning Meetings

46. Update Meetings

47. Year End Meetings

48. Year Beginning Meetings

49. Family Meetings

50. School Meetings

51. Class Meetings

52. Public Relations Meetings

53. Sports Meetings (and Events)

54. Team Meetings

Birth of a Baby PowerPoint

Friday, November 5th, 2010

An actual email last night at 10:11pm to eSlide:

“Russ, We’ll call you in a few minutes to discuss the edits here.

FYI – I may or may not be heading to the hospital with my wife who is expecting our 2nd child any day now. Please send all of the updates requested going forward to me and Andrew when they are done so that if I’m not here, he’ll get them.”

Then at 11:51pm in response to sending him his requested edits:

“Thanks Russ.  At hospital so I’ll touch be tomorrow.”

We have yet to hear from him this morning if the baby was born or if he has more edits. This is not the first time we’ve received an email from a client in the hospital and probably will not be the last. It is an example of the intensity of some of our clients and how seriously they take their work.

This person is an analyst for the executive team of a major healthcare company. He and his team are preparing presentations for their upcoming yearly analyst meeting. They do not take this opportunity to present to an important group of analysts lightly.

We have been working with their executive team for years and we know they fully take advantage of the power of excellent PowerPoint visuals to connect with their audience, tell their story effectively, and insure the meeting does not just tell of their success but contributes to their future success with excellent communication.

The pressure of an important PowerPoint production sometimes feels like we’re helping  a client give birth to a baby. I’ve always said all the late night productions for me were great practice for the sleepless “baby feeding and diaper changing days”.  Now that my kids are way beyond that stage,

Can PPT Bullets Save Us From Real Bullets?

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

PowerPoint is not the enemy, but can be a powerful communication secret weapon, if used well.

If you were in a contest to win a million dollars by pitching an idea to a small group of investors for starting a new company which would you choose:

1. Send them a detailed 100 page business plan a week before the meeting and ask these extremely busy investors who have their own successful companies to run and a few too many start-up businesses to oversee and keep tabs on – to read your detailed plan. Then at the pitch meeting with them, speak to a few highlights of the plan and ask them if they had any questions. What do you think the chances are that they read your detailed business plan or anything beyond the summary page – if they even took the time to look at more than the title?

2. Send them the detailed 100 page business plan and ask them to review it. Then you meet with them and take the first ten minutes to present the key highlights of the plan with some powerful, effective, easy to understand PowerPoint visuals that support your presentation speech. You make sure they knew you expect them to ask questions at any time. You brought copies of the detailed business plan, so you could answer some questions by pointing them to answers in the document (that they probably forgot to bring, or lost in the pile of plans they are asked to review). You might have an appendix of the plan in the PowerPoint deck with all the key data that you might be asked about and can quickly show supporting data to answers if asked about it.

Creating this PowerPoint deck might take a lot of work. I might even hire a professional graphic artist to assist with a few of the key graphics. In the end it will ensure that I get the opportunity to present my idea thoroughly and accurately by having the long form detailed document, my speech, and powerful visuals to point out the highlights and support the words in my speech.

For an opportunity to win a million bucks to get my business started, I’d do what ever it takes to ensure my one shot at pitching it to the investors that could make it happen. I’d use every tool available to me.

Now, if I were in the military and presenting information on strategies and information that may change the course of history and literally result in the life or death of people, not just the financial success of a company – I would use every available tool to communicate that information as effectively and accurately as possible!

If used effectively, maybe the bullet points in a PowerPoint used by the military could actually save lives by avoiding the use of real bullets that kill people.

Terrific Tufte, but Tired of Anti-PowerPoint

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

Tufte Teaching 031810I recently attended Edward Tufte’s full day class “Presenting Data and Information” for the second time. I enjoyed it just as much as the first time and highly recommend it for anyone in the business of designing and producing presentation visuals. If you don’t know who Edward Tufte is, he is the master of Visual Data Design. Last week President Barack Obama announced that he would be appointing Edward Tufte to the independent panel that advises the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board. Tufte is being asked to help design the government web site www.recovery.gov, which will chart how every single dollar of the $787 billion stimulus bill is being spent.  A Newsweek article on his appointment, calls his data visualization “the clearest, richest interactive database ever produced by the American bureaucracy”.

If there is anyone that can take on the monster task of taking the tons of government dollar data of the recovery act and turn it into visually appealing and most important understandable information for a mass audience, it is Tufte. I only wish the government used Tufte or one of his followers to put the healthcare chaotic mess into some easy to understand visuals so the voting public could actually understand what is going on or maybe even help our politicians understand what exactly they really voted for.

Tufte is amazing how he can take a boat load of complicated data and turn it into a simplified, accurate visualization that communicates the data tracking results effectively. In today’s world of infinite information overload, this talent is in high demand. Tufte is well known by anyone in the business of presenting data and information, or at least he should be.  Don’t hire any professional presentation designer if they can’t tell you they are familiar with some of Edward Tufte’s principles of data and information design.

Although, be careful of “professional presentation designers” that buy into his anti-PowerPoint message. He spews anti-PowerPoint insults to anyone in his class that admits they use PowerPoint. I believe it has been a great marketing ploy. He broke out of his circle of academic fame into the public eye with his essay “PowerPoint Does Rocket Science–and Better Techniques for Technical Reports” where he claims PowerPoint is partly responsible for the Columbia spaceship disaster. From this essay, the “DEATH by PowerPoint” term was born and the Anti-PowerPoint movement was launched. Data visualization is not by any means an interesting topic of mass appeal, but PowerPoint, the tool of millions, if not nearly every professional and amateur presenter, is an easy target to attract mass appeal. With PowerPoint shows being viewed by millions and millions of audiences around the world every day, every hour, every minute, who can not say they have not viewed more than their fare share of bad PowerPoint slides? Tufte’s “Death by PowerPoint” message hit home to the millions of people who regularly are forced to sit through boring presentations and BAD PowerPoint produced slides.

Yes, I will admit PowerPoint has probably contributed partially to the Columbia Spaceship disaster, but in the same way a knife contributes to the killing in the latest murder on last night’s news. But it is only a tool, you can’t hold the knife responsible for the murder!  When used appropriately, a knife can carve a delicious turkey, or help carve a beautiful sculpture. PowerPoint is just a communication tool. In Tufte’s essay all he proves is that the decision makers used the tool wrong or maybe should have used a different tool such as a long detailed technical engineering report and not relied so heavily on summary slides.

In my view, Tufte’s essay actually proves how POWERFUL a PowerPoint presentation can be in shaping opinions and moving people to decisions. Unfortunately in the case of the Columbia incident it was used poorly, and resulted in a bad decision. BAD PowerPoint can lead to bad decisions. It can do this by inaccurately focusing the audience on wrong information and in most cases just “kills” the the communication at the meeting, which almost always results in causing more problems.

PowerPoint can be a great tool when used correctly. I have personally seen it happen hundreds of times – how a good PowerPoint deck has helped communicate critically important messages that have impacted millions of lives for the better by changing the courses of large and small companies for the better. I have seen great presentations with the help of powerful PowerPoint visuals close billion dollar corporate deals and help raise millions of dollars at a single charity event.

Edward Tufte, a data guru, professor with a passion for very large sculptures, you’re famous now. You’re making millions. Please give up on the anti-PowerPoint marketing message and acknowledge the reality that it is just a tool and if you use it well (and this includes using many of your principles of good data visualization), it can be a great tool for presenting data and information. One day maybe you’ll read and agree with my essay “Life by PowerPoint”.