I hear it said at least several times a week. I see it posted on Twitter pretty frequently. It’s the simple statement that’s become cool to utter: PowerPoint Sucks. And often in the same breath I hear people extol the wonders of Keynote or Prezi.

I’ll be the first person to admit that I have seen countless horrible PowerPoint presentations. I probably see at least one PowerPoint presentation per day that is a crime against humanity. I’ve seen more poorly laid out slides, absurd overuse of ridiculous transitions and animations, badly-utilized effects, slides with so much text that Tolstoy would complain, more bullets than Rambo can fire off in full-length movie, and more light-colored fonts on yellow backgrounds than should be legal.

But this is not the point. It’s a poor craftsman that blames his tools. Just because you produce your presentation on a MacBook Pro (and I’m typing this post on one right now) with Keynote it does not somehow imbue you with some sudden, instantaneous and deity-like powers to produce an amazing presentation. And using Prezi mostly just increases the likelihood of inducing motion sickness and nausea in your audience while reducing the reusability of your content and failing to add anything meaningful to your corporate knowledge base.

Here’s a news flash: a good presentation requires having a good story to tell and a good story teller. Period. The tools you might use are irrelevant, but if you do choose to use tools to add to your story you need to have a clue of how to use them and then use them in a manner that supports the telling of a great story. That’s it. A great story teller with a great story to tell doesn’t even need a series of slides popping up behind them. Great visuals, content and media that reinforce key messages and enhance the story can be tremendously helpful and effective when used properly. But they are still not the primary and most important element in a successful presentation that connects with the audience. You are.

Prezi and Keynote do not grant you mystical and magical powers. They do not make you smarter and better looking. They are not powered by Skynet and constructed on top of a positronic copy of the brains of Steve Jobs, Bill Buxton, Martin Luther King, and Zig Ziglar. They do not think for you. They do not know who your audience is, they do not know the purpose of your presentation, they do not know the message you are trying to convey, they do not know the desired outcome, they do not know how to connect with the people in the room. Neither does PowerPoint for that matter.

There are absolutely some minute feature details that can be argued about the different tools. I’ve used them all. Though if you actually take the time to learn them you find that for the most part each has their shortcomings and things they can’t do well, and each has capabilities the other doesn’t. But it still all comes back to you. Saying “PowerPoint Sucks” is quite simply a short-cut to thinking. It doesn’t suck. You do. Instead try focusing on coming up with a good story and learning how to tell it well.

And just to illustrate my point, here's this entire blog post re-done very poorly as a hack-job Prezi. It's a horrible presentation. Just makes you want to cry. Enjoy. http://prezi.com/4_muqjahha-g/powerpoint-doesnt-suck-you-do/

(Image Credit: Niall Kennedy)