PowerPoint turns 25

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Robert Gaskins wrote a proposal for PowerPoint (then called 'Presenter') and the product was released into the wild in 1984. Three years later, his company was acquired, kit and caboodle, by Microsoft because they reckoned that the market for "desktop presentation" had the same potential as the "desktop publishing" sector.

In the meantime, we have all been subjected to a gazillion bullet points and most audiences reflexively wince and brace themselves for the onslaught when they see a person fiddling with a laptop, a USB stick and a data projector.

Last week, I had the surreal experience of delivering a PowerPoint presentation to an audience at a business breakfast while simultaneously trying to make any sense at all to a national radio audience. Let me know if you thought it worked - you can click over to the piece on my presentation blog here.