Reviewing the SlideShare financial crisis presentation contest winners

The winners of the SlideShare presentation contest about the financial crisis were announced a few days ago.

• My general point about SlideShare-style presentations being great for online viewing but not always the best solution for live audiences still stands.

• The content of the winning presentation is not surprising, most of us will have picked up the messages from the newspaper. It is a shame that none of the winners used visualization of data from original analysis to give us a really new insight in the subject matter.

• It is great to see how contests like these can spark so much creativity in people submitting their work.

Having said that, let’s discuss the graphical execution of the winners:

The winner:

The Financial Crisis: an Historical Perspective

I like this presentation, especially the use of images (the historical paintings look great, the falling knife almost makes you feel the pain in your own hands.)

Number 2:

The crisis 101 (US economy 2008) - put simple serie

Not judging the content here, I like the execution of this presentation less. The link between the text and the images is not that strong.

Number 3:

Cooking up an International Global Finance

UPDATED. While I generally do not like simple graphics like clip art in presentations, this presentation uses this technique beautifully. All graphics are custom-made. They have a consistent style, and the “simplistic” graphics provide a good tongue-in-cheek contrast to the really complicated subject matter and the whole thing hangs together well.