Truly a sad day for consulting. The entire industry runs on PPT.
Dennis Austin, developer of PowerPoint, has died
81–90 of 180 posts
Re: Dennis Austin, developer of PowerPoint, has died
#82I work in a Corporate where we have lots of "strategy" teams and PPTs flying around. What I learned is that PPT are more than a presentation format in this culture, they are a signaling tool: • something that is "just" an email, or "just" something somebody said in a meeting doesn't carry much weight in Corporates • .. but if you put it in a PPT with some graphics, it signals you've thought about it, and probably had…
This is on the money, especially "commitment" to playing the game. In my industry, the supplicant presenter is acknowledging that the audience is busy, important, and only needs the "smart points" that s/he's slaved to provide on the corporate template and color scheme.
Of course, Tufte pointed out that this can kill people.
https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=...
https://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/pi/2016_2017/phil/...
Re: Dennis Austin, developer of PowerPoint, has died
#83Dennis and I overlapped at Tandem Computers in the early 1980s, but we didn't meet until 2003, when we were both members of a small private club of computer geezers. In addition to being a great software designer he was one of the nicest and most thoughtful people I've ever met.
Re: Dennis Austin, developer of PowerPoint, has died
#84PowerPoint is where I first understood the concept of image editing as a kid - dragging and dropping. And clip art was before it’s time - imagine how much people would love that exact same thing copypasted onto a reel or a TikTok. RIP Dennis.
Re: Dennis Austin, developer of PowerPoint, has died
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a tech weirdo I still think PPTs are the best way to convey concepts. You can mix bullet points with images and video and have everything be progressively revealed exactly when you explain it. I can‘t even think of an alternative to this other than adhoc whiteboard drawings which can‘t match PPTs on any axis except if you‘re just (collaboratively) developing an idea/concept
On the other hand, there's a good reason that bullet points aren't how formal communication is actually done, which is that they're terrible for actually doing the job of conveying information. For that, you need sentences in paragraphs, and PPT can't really do that. The best option is probably just an html doc — mix text (real text, not bullet points) with whatever media you want. Can be viewed on every device in th…
There's really no need to limit yourself to bulletpoints in PPT. Powerpoint offers so many other ways of illustrating information. I really like powerpoint as it's one of the simplest tools to do visual animated story telling.
Re: Dennis Austin, developer of PowerPoint, has died
#86I work in a Corporate where we have lots of "strategy" teams and PPTs flying around. What I learned is that PPT are more than a presentation format in this culture, they are a signaling tool: • something that is "just" an email, or "just" something somebody said in a meeting doesn't carry much weight in Corporates • .. but if you put it in a PPT with some graphics, it signals you've thought about it, and probably had…
The classic corporate PPT slide is a disaster of over-information! I try hard to keep my slides short, with text that is a jumping off point for my actual presentation, but my effort to teach this method has mostly fallen on deaf ears.
When the information density is high, or there is a just a lot of text, then the audience reads the slide instead of listening to the speaker (that is, they're reading the slide instead of listening to me).
When I gave a colleague this feedback, he just told me that the information density is a positive thing, and then showed me a 100 page PPT from a previous job that amounted to the spec for a contract.
So, different strokes? I guess if the PPT is meant to be standalone, to not accompany a speaker, then the high information density works. I still try to convey only one major idea per slide, and I leave specs to written documents.
A final comment: the only thing for me that is personally more distracting than a high density slide is looped animation in the slide. My ADHD brain just locks onto that visual cue, and it takes serious conscious effort to keep focused on the presenter.
[edited to correct a typo]
Re: Dennis Austin, developer of PowerPoint, has died
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's past evidence of that. Some link the 2003 Columbia disaster to a slide-based presentation format with insufficient/unclear information. https://mcdreeamiemusings.com/blog/2019/4/13/gsux1h6bnt8lqjd...
Jesus Christ. This outdoes the hilarity/horror I heard when someone got contracted to implement a battle management system in Microsoft Office.
As a former staff officer . . . whaaaa???
Re: Dennis Austin, developer of PowerPoint, has died
#88I work in a Corporate where we have lots of "strategy" teams and PPTs flying around. What I learned is that PPT are more than a presentation format in this culture, they are a signaling tool: • something that is "just" an email, or "just" something somebody said in a meeting doesn't carry much weight in Corporates • .. but if you put it in a PPT with some graphics, it signals you've thought about it, and probably had…
The classic corporate PPT slide is a disaster of over-information! I try hard to keep my slides short, with text that is a jumping off point for my actual presentation, but my effort to teach this method has mostly fallen on deaf ears. When the information density is high, or there is a just a lot of text, then the audience reads the slide instead of listening to the speaker (that is, they're reading the slide instea…
Yeah, you're a tech weirdo. Don't out yourself this easily. Don't talk about "your brain" and ADHD and "information density" and all that. It's better to conceal your power level in the corporate world. If you want to play with the corporate chads, you need to play by the rules, however awful those rules may be.
Re: Dennis Austin, developer of PowerPoint, has died
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Video is usually more effective for asynchronous presentations. Powerpoint is great for spoken presentations where everyone is in the same room. But they generally suck as summary reports. For thinking and analysis word docs are superior. For asynchronous presentation video is superior. Video allows you to control the timing and framing in a way that a slide deck cannot. The main downside to videos is that they are h…
Books beat them all imho :)
While I agree, I think we're almost extinct species.
Re: Dennis Austin, developer of PowerPoint, has died
#90Let's all remember that correlation is not causation. Although we all know it was dangerous to work with a toxic product for so long.