PowerPoint Karaoke

Interesting article in the Sunday Boston Globe:  PowerPoint Karaoke, by Erin McKean:

If you've never heard of PowerPoint Karaoke, that probably means you're neither German nor a hardcore techie. The phenomenon has been spreading geek to geek and conference to conference since it was invented by a German artists' group in 2005. PowerPoint Karaoke sessions have been held at last year's E-Tech conference in San Diego, the Chaos Conference in Berlin, and at smaller tech gatherings in Los Angeles, London, and Montreal.

In a typical event, a few brave people volunteer to "present" a random deck of slides pulled off the Web, or borrowed from friends or employers. (I first heard about PowerPoint Karaoke when an organizer asked if she could use a deck I had presented on word meanings.) The audience laughs, cheers, and yells out suggestions as the presenters gamely struggle to link one slide to the next, transforming something that probably started life as a tedious corporate monologue into a five-minute flight of creative irony.

PowerPoint Karaoke might seem like a one-off, the geek equivalent of macho stunts like chainsaw racing. But it is part of a robust tradition in the geek world: the mordant parody of business culture.

For more on PowerPoint Karaoke, see here, here, and here.