Well, conversation is great precisely because it's responsive to the listener. It's a co-creation, not a one-way street. Too bad conversation doesn't scale.

I agree with you about narrated PowerPoint shows that come in one big blob, i.e. no way to navigate within it. In fact, one nice aspect of Breeze is that you can hop from slide to slide, at random, and pick up the sound for that slide only.

I would like to have a variable speed control, too. We humans can process words several times more rapidly than we can speak them. Eloquent had this feature. I remember blasting through presentations on Eloquent; when a speaker got boring, I'd speed him up to Donald Duck voice. When I wanted to review a point, I might slow him down. Usually 1.5x or 2x felt just fine.

Bill, I am not a fan of scripts, for they tempt one to be artificial. Outlines, on the other hand, let one tell stories and play little riffs off the main score. Improv. It helps overcome the feeling that the speaker is simply unloading dogma.

Rambling off topic insults the audience, in person or recorded.

At conference presentations, I tend to sit in the front row. I used to endure boring speakers. Online learning got me used to sticking with a presentation only so long as my personal cost/benefit ratio warranted. In a curious back-formation, now I'll walk out of a live presentation (unless its some visiting dignitary to whom I'm paying respect).

Steve Denning, in The Springboard, describes his epiphany that PowerPoint insults the viewer and chokes off dialog from the get-go. He found that he was more compelling without. Going without PowerPoint encourages spontaneity and the vernacular. It's friendlier. Natural. The message of The Cluetrain Manifesto pops into my head.

Today I have to prepare a presentation for next Tuesday. As an experiment, I think I'll create a wordless PowerPoint with nothing but abstract art. If you're at TechKnowledge next week, drop by and see how it goes.

cool stuff