Edmonton Battledecks

If you’ve ever worked in an office, odds are that you’ve been subjected to a terrible PowerPoint presentation at least once.

You know the kind. The kind where the presenter has tried to cram way too much information into his slides. The kind where he reads directly from his slides, without providing any additional information. The kind where he uses terrible clip art that actually manages to make his presentation less interesting.

Battledecks is a bit of a satire of that type of PowerPoint presentation. It’s also a game of improvisational humour.

Participants in Battledecks are given 3-5 minutes to give a presentation based on a set of 10-15 slides that they have never seen before. The slides may contain mostly images/graphs, or they may be text-heavy. Either way, the presenter will see the slides for the first time when they stand up to give the presentation.

The goal isn’t to make fun of the presentation or the slides. The goal is to give a presentation as if the set of slides you’ve been given is a real presentation about a real topic.

This will generally mean acting as if you’re giving a serious presentation (the laughs will flow from this; trust me), but it can also mean doing a bit of improvisational comedy based on the slides you’re given—give the presentation however you want, just don’t make fun of the slides themselves, as that defeats the purpose and kills the joke.