D.C. consultant Seamus O'Neill stood before an attentive audience and cleared his throat. "Some of you may be wondering how rats got to D.C.," he began. "Like most residents, rats came to D.C. for work." The crowd laughed.
This is how an article I recently read started. And you know what's best? This wasn't a conference about urban rodents. This was a PowerPoint Party.
Wait, what?
PowerPoint Party is a TikTok trend. Young people get together and give each other absurd presentations. About rats in Washington. About why their cat is a psychopath. About ranking guys they've dated.
Sounds like a joke? That's exactly why Microsoft took it seriously. In 2024, the company released an official "party slide deck" template with instructions: "This isn't dad's work presentation – make it colorful and fun."
And suddenly PowerPoint, which for years was the symbol of corporate boredom, became cool.
What actually happened?
For years, everyone hated PowerPoint. "Death by PowerPoint" was the curse of every conference room. I've heard so many calls to ban PPT at conferences, I stopped counting.
Alternatives emerged. Prezi with fluid storytelling. Canva with hundreds of templates. Google Slides for online collaboration. Everyone predicted PowerPoint's death. Then came Gen-Z. And did something nobody expected. Instead of avoiding presentations - they turned them into entertainment.
The business lesson?
All presentation experts say: "PowerPoint is just a tool - its success depends on the user." Translation: The problem was never PowerPoint. The problem was how we used it.
40 slides full of data. Monotone voice. Zero stories. Zero life. And young people took the same tool and showed it can be different. Colorful. Fun. Engaging.
What does this mean for your presentations?
Three things.
1. Format doesn't matter. Execution does.
You don't need to buy the latest presentation tool. You need to learn how to tell stories. PowerPoint? Google Slides? Canva? Prezi? Doesn't matter. If your presentation bores people in PowerPoint, it will bore them in Canva too.
2. Presentations can be fun. Even business ones.
I'm not saying you should do a presentation about Washington rats at your board meeting. But humor? An anecdote? An unexpected twist? It works.
PowerPoint parties presentations are engaging because people have fun. The presenter has fun. The audience has fun. When was the last time you had fun at a Q4 review meeting? Exactly.
3. The younger generation expects something different.
Gen-Z is entering the workforce. They grew up on TikTok. On 60-second videos. On dynamic storytelling. Think they'll sit quietly through your 40-slide presentation with no story? They won't.
73% of people multitask during remote presentations. That's not a coincidence. It's a signal we need to start presenting differently.
What's next?
PowerPoint isn't dying. It's evolving. Young people showed that the same old format can be used in new ways.
The question is: Are you evolving with it? Because you can keep making presentations like dad from work. Or you can make something that actually engages. The choice is yours.
Piotr Garlej
P.S. Next time you make a presentation, ask yourself: "Would anyone remember this in a week?" If the answer is "no" - you know what to do.
P.P.S. And if you want to see how to make presentations people actually remember, check out our presentation trainings.
