# The Observant Lodge Powerpoint



## CLewey44 (Oct 9, 2019)

Hello all, I had made this awhile back and was going to present it to my lodge but not sure they are interested in it. Wanted to share if anyone would like to present a simple powerpoint on Masonic Restoration Foundation.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E2zi-hPEbRmaHZO1qr4uqxvK3NupRWGb/view?usp=drivesdk


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## Winter (Oct 10, 2019)

Link takes you to a paper titled: The Five Elements and Five Senses.  Not a PP on the MRF (of which I am a big fan).


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## CLewey44 (Oct 10, 2019)

Winter said:


> Link takes you to a paper titled: The Five Elements and Five Senses.  Not a PP on the MRF (of which I am a big fan).




Thank you for catching that, Br. Winter...well, that other one will have to wait haha, darn it.


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## Winter (Oct 11, 2019)

Let me know when you get it up.  I'd love to take a look.  

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## CLewey44 (Oct 11, 2019)

I switched the link now. It should be the right one haha. Thanks for letting me know.


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## Winter (Oct 11, 2019)

Great.  I'll check it out after I get home.  It was the early work of the MRF that helped inspire our EC Lodge.  

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## Winter (Oct 12, 2019)

Some great information in your presentation, Brother, but it falls into the same trap the majority of people who create power point presentations find themselves in.  The slides are mostly just walls of texts and bullet points to read through.  Slide 13 had the right idea, though.  Ideally, this information should be in a paper instead of a power point presentation.

I recommend an article from 2013 by Mitch Joel that helped open my eyes about how I format my presentations.

https://www.sixpixels.com/articles/archives/powerpoint_doesnt_suck_you_do/

The majority of us have sat through horrible presentations by brothers who stood in front of us and basically read each slide as they clicked through them.  They even have a name for it, "Death by Power Point." I was an instructor in law enforcement for several years in the late 90's and early 00's and this is how we were taught to use power point, just lay out your training plan on the screen with lots of bullet points and go over them with the class.  But that is not the way this technology was ever intended to be used.  One of the greatest gifts we can give to the future of our Fraternity is to put in place good training programs that help develop future presenters who know how to structure presentations using the available technology.


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## Brother RG (Oct 12, 2019)

Winter said:


> Some great information in your presentation, Brother, but it falls into the same trap the majority of people who create power point presentations find themselves in.  The slides are mostly just walls of texts and bullet points to read through.  Slide 13 had the right idea, though.  Ideally, this information should be in a paper instead of a power point presentation.
> 
> I recommend an article from 2013 by Mitch Joel that helped open my eyes about how I format my presentations.
> 
> ...



I agree, very good information on the slides and I do see where it can seem like it will be a long presentation. I feel like a powerpoint presentation should be more visual (pictures or diagrams) with the presenter maybe giving off some information on each slide. Slide 13 gave off that impression. Great info tho!


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## CLewey44 (Oct 12, 2019)

Thanks for the feedback fellows. Typically when I give PPs I do ad lib and even ask questions as I go. This one and the others I've done are usually pretty brief and are intended to give some guidelines if anyone wanted to study further into these subjects they could also just have it there for guidance. Certainly reading verbatim bullet by bullet would be boring.

Typically when I've experienced Death by PowerPoint it's usually been A. A topic in which is already boring such as 401k, job culture training, or insurance etc. type slides and/or B. 50 to 80 slides long. Mine are usually pretty short but I certainly see where you're both coming from. This topic in particular is very important because I think it's the future of Freemasonry within the United States. I just want to get the message out there on it and have people get a spark of interest in it. Most members of my lodge had never really heard of it or experienced it, if they had heard of it. Lodge culture certainly has to change or progress.

Thanks again, gents.


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## Winter (Oct 12, 2019)

Instead of a PP presentation to distribute to parties who may be interested in a topic, consider using a Talking Point Paper instead.  Rather than a formal academic style paper, a talking point paper is a brief overview of the topic that answers the basic questions the reader may have.  These can also include directions where to find more information if the reader should be interested.  Talking point papers can also be issued by an organization to make sure their message is consistent regardless of who is answering questions. 

The correct method for the desired results I believe go a long way to getting the Brothers engaged and keeping them.

Academic style papers to prove a hypothesis or explore a topic in depth.
Multimedia presentation to engage an audience with a combination of audio and visual stimuli.
Talking point paper (or pamphlet) to spark interest and where to go for more info.
This is by no means written in stone or exhaustive, just my take based on my experience.


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## Warrior1256 (Oct 13, 2019)

Nice Brother, especially "Dressing Your Best for Lodge". Totally agree. Sloppily dressing for lodge is a pet peeve of mine.


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## Phil Pearce (Oct 28, 2019)

Thank you for sharing your PP presentation.  It was visually appealing and full of content.
My one and only suggestion would be to eliminate the text walls, use bullets or numbers. 
But great job, and again thanks for sharing.


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## CLewey44 (Oct 28, 2019)

Phil Pearce said:


> Thank you for sharing your PP presentation.  It was visually appealing and full of content.
> My one and only suggestion would be to eliminate the text walls, use bullets or numbers.
> But great job, and again thanks for sharing.


Thank you Brother Phil, I may have to tweak that before (and if) I present it.


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## CLewey44 (Oct 30, 2019)

Warrior1256 said:


> Nice Brother, especially "Dressing Your Best for Lodge". Totally agree. Sloppily dressing for lodge is a pet peeve of mine.


Agreed. I understand the "I just got off of work" argument but there are even ways around that. If you were motivated enough to wear your suit you'd carry it to work and change at the lodge (similarly as one would do with gym clothes to go to gym after work) Where there's a will there's a way. Where there are excuses there are sloppily dressed masons.


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## Warrior1256 (Oct 30, 2019)

CLewey44 said:


> I understand the "I just got off of work" argument but there are even ways around that. If you were motivated enough to wear your suit you'd carry it to work and change at the lodge (similarly as one would do with gym clothes to go to gym after work) Where there's a will there's a way. Where there are excuses there are sloppily dressed masons.


Exactly!


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