Unbelievably Bad Presentations

We had a lot of fun with KnowHR’s Top 10 Best Presentations Ever and Top 10 Best Presentations - The Reader’s Choice. But even more fun is watching the equivalent of someone falling down on the ice. How else can you explain that 14 times as many people watch America’s Funniest Home Videos than watch The News Hour? With that in mind, and tongue firmly planted in cheek, here’s our list of Unbelievably Bad Presentations (and some advice on how to make your presentation even worse):

C’mon, anyone?. Starts with three letters, ends in d-o-o?

Ben Stein shows what a bad - c’mon, anyone? - presentation is about.

Where It All Went Wrong

Top 10 Presentation Disasters. Microsoft makes a list of how things can go wrong so quickly. An example: ‘I once attended a customer presentation with 200 people in audience where the presenter forgot to switch off their wireless connection and Instant Messaging (IM). Half way through the presentation, the IM notification window popped up%u2026 “Wet Patch has just signed in.”‘

Steve Ballmer Does the Monkeyboy Dance. You know, there’s energy, and then there’s a moment that you wish you’d forget. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer probably wouldn’t put this one in his “finest moments” scrapbook.

Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers. Um, you know it’s gone wrong when your presentation has more mods than the original had viewers. This one from MacComedy is the funniest of the Steve Ballmer clips all rolled into one comical ball.

Even Steve Jobs Isn’t Infallible. Here’s a compendium of bloopers from Apple Keynote presentations. The cool part is that even when it’s bad, it’s good with Steve.

The Gettysburg Address in PowerPoint. Four score and seven ways to make a great speech into a disaster.

You Scream, I Scream, Howard Dean Screams

Here’s the scream that ended a presidential bid.

Don’t Try This at Home

They’re trained professionals.

The Ten Worst Presentation Habits. From Business Week comes this set of bad habits. Don’t try these at home, kids.

How to Give a Bad Presentation. The 10 Commandments for making a bad presentation. Examples: Thou shalt not be neat; Thou shalt not covet brevity;l and Thou shalt not make eye contact.

10 Ways to Give a Bad Presentation. “Just wing it” is a beauty piece of advice. Coupled with “finish weak” and you have the formula for a guaranteed bad presentation.

Stop This Presentation Before It Kills Again.. Kathy says that sometimes the best presentation is no presentation at all.

Posted on October 26, 2006 by Frank Roche
Filed Under Presentations

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Lewis Parry 1 year ago 1 point
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The worst presentation in a movie has to be from "Robo Cop"
when ED the Enforcement Droid prototype marmalises the hapless
volunteer! Very disappointing.

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Lewis Parry 1 year ago 1 point
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Pushing my luck on media portrayals of presentations,the ones that Darren in "Bewitched" gave to his boss Larry were always problematical,especially if Endora was in a spiteful mood.
Some might say that transporting the planning meeting for promoting
Squidget's Widgets back to the court of Louis XVI demonstrated originality and flair, but I maintain that it showed Darren had lost control of the campaign to another (albeit supernatural) agency.

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