The Obama administration wants to communicate to the American people (and the rest of the world) with clarity and transparency. Apparently the message hasn’t yet reached the Department of Defense.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, the DOD issued this statement in response to the ridiculous Air Force One flyover in New York City:

“In coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Presidential Airlift Group conducted a aerial photo mission in the New York City area on 27 Apr 2009. This mission, involving the VC-25 and an F-16, was conducted in conjunction with normally scheduled continuation training for assigned aircrew members. This mission was coordinated for the Upper New York Bay, south of the Holland Tunnel and in the Newark Bay north of the Staten Island Expressway between the hours of 1000L and 1030L.

Plain English gobbledygook.

Patrick Doyle, the President of Dominoes, issued a video apology/response to the disgusting video posted by two store employees in North Carolina. I’ve heard it criticized for being corporate speak. I disagree.

Yes, maybe it would have been better if he hadn’t read at all, but just talked to the camera like David Neeleman, the former CEO of JetBlue Airways, when he apologized for service problems in 2007. But actually, as reading goes, I thought Doyle did a good job of making the statement sound heart felt and real.

The major problem that undermined his sincerity was a lack of eye contact.  He appeared to be reading cue cards or a laptop to the left of the camera, instead of facing directly into the lens which a Teleprompter allows you to do. Gee, they don’t cost that much to rent, especially when your brand is at stake.

Advice on how to take advantage of social media is everywhere — articles, blogs, webinars, podcasts, etc.

Of course, much of the interest in Facebook, Twitter and the like is being driven by younger people. The message to companies and other organizations is clear — communication has changed. Audiences want simple, understandable, interesting messages or they’ll tune you out. They also want their voice heard and they’ll use it no matter what you do or say.

Then why are so many people who are tuned into social media still giving the same horribly boring, non audience-focused PowerPoint (and Apple Keynote) presentations? How long will it be before Gen Yers, Xers, and even Baby Boomers revolt by walking out on or even refusing to attend speeches that bore them with bullet points?

Often when I tell people their speeches would be much better if they dumped all their bullets, sub bullets and sub sub bullets, they’re shocked. They’ve always done it that way. How else would they deliver messages if they couldn’t fill their slides with words?

The answer, simple but not easy, is to fill slides with visuals — pictures, charts, and graphs — while using a bare minimum of words.

Chances are, if your PowerPoint presentation can stand alone without you explaining it, you have too much information on your slides. Your audience will either start texting and checking emails, or fall asleep as you drone on and on.

Here are five steps to help you make your slides — and your presentation — more engaging:

1). Plan your content before you ever start working on the slides to go with it. When we start with PowerPoint we often aren’t clear about what our important, overlying messages are.

2). Don’t put your company name and other information on every slide. Besides being unnecessary and boring, it takes up important real estate that you can use for conveying your message.

3). Plan on preparing three different presentations instead of trying to accomplish all your goals with one. The first presentation is your slides: visual, colorful and interesting. The second is your notes page at the bottom of PowerPoint or Keynote. Here you put all the bullet points that would have appeared on your slides. Finally, if you need a leave-behind or want to give your audience more in-depth information, prepare a handout.

4). Write a short headline that states the main point of your slide. It’s best to use a full sentence with an action verb. This immediately lets the audience know what you’re trying to convey.

5). Most importantly, present information in small chunks rather than a data dump. This means using only one idea per slide. So if you have a list of five bullet points, it might be best to convey the information in five different visually focused slides, rather than trying to put it all on one.

Yes, this is harder and takes more time. But what’s the alternative? Wasting your time and the audience’s on a presentation that makes no impact whatsoever.

I think it’s encouraging that, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Federal Reserve and its chairman Ben Bernanke are working to become more open and communicative — not only with the media, but also with the American public. They may even decide to hold regular news conferences

Former Reserve chief Alan Greenspan prided himself on being as unclear as possible. In his 15 years on the job, he did only one on-the-record TV interview and rarely took questions after speeches. His hesitancy to communicate is understandable given that anything he said could cause a major earthquake in the markets.

But I wonder if this lack of clarity is also part of the problem. I doubt that very many people in this country, myself included, truly understand our economic system, let alone what caused the crisis we’re in and how the government plans to get us out of it. What people don’t understand they tend to distrust or ignore.

Earlier this year, lack of clear communication from the administration was one of the reasons President Obama had such a difficult time selling his recovery plans. Since then, the White House has been trying harder to keep us in the loop.

According the the WSJ, Bernanke said in an interview, “I think it’s important for the public to understand what is going on and to know that the government is trying to solve the problem. They should know we have a plan and a strategy.”

He’s right. The days of obfuscation are over. We need leaders who can explain to us in clear, simple terms — not economic gobbledygook — just what we’re in for.

I just came back from another conference. Ho hum. More mediocre presentations that sent me checking email on my iPhone for relief.

It’s not so much that the speakers were bad (some of them were), but their PowerPoint was awful. I’ve written about this before, and I’ve done presentations on the topic, but I just can’t understand how so many smart business and professional people can be so stupid about using visuals that aren’t really visual.

How can anyone actually think that a slide filled from top to bottom with words makes any positive impact? Granted, I’m less tolerant than most. In fact, I’ve become so intolerant that I can hardly stay in the same room with bad PowerPoint. It makes me want to scream.

I believe that it’s time for audiences everywhere to revolt. Stop the insanity. We’re wasting precious time and resources. When speakers turn on those nasty slides, get up and walk out of the room.  If only Obama had a bailout plan for those of us who have to suffer through bad PowerPoint.