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Dennis Austin, developer of PowerPoint, has died

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Re: Dennis Austin, developer of PowerPoint, has died

#101

Post by throy930493 »

WoodenChair wrote: post #72

If you want to read about the development of PowerPoint by its visionary, you can checkout the book Sweating Bullets by Robert Gaskins: https://amzn.to/3PvTvF0 Dennis Austin was the lead developer and Gaskins was the idea guy/manager.

"Sweating Bullets", "Almost Perfect" (http://www.wordplace.com/ap/), "The Autodesk File" (https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/e5/) and "Show Stopper!" were a few books that I think pair very well, and as a developer who wasn't around in the time really gave interesting and comparable insights into the development of a few really important companies and pieces of software.

Re: Dennis Austin, developer of PowerPoint, has died

#102

Post by lol768 »

F-W-M wrote: post #98
p5a0u9l wrote: post #48

One aspect of Amazon culture I’ve enjoyed is that meetings are document driven, and PPTs are rare, even non existent. Meetings start with dedicated reading time. It feels like PPT engendered this false sense of communication by making it easier to bullet-ize and visualize. PPT in practice lowers the critical thinking required of presenters and presentees.

Why do meetings start with dedicated reading time? Did people always come unprepared? How can I imagine this? Is it like: "Hey folks, thanks for showing up. This is the document we'll be discussing in 20min. Please read it now?". I don't think it's bad. I like written, long form content. It just is very far from what I know.

I've asked some friends at Amazon this and never quite got a satisfactory answer.

It feels really disrespectful to waste my time, when I've bothered reading the preparatory material, because X number of other attendees haven't. And, presumably, for Amazon to do this for every single meeting, it must have been commonplace for folks to not manage their time effectively to get prepared for the meetings they attend? Quite a bizarre approach.

Re: Dennis Austin, developer of PowerPoint, has died

#103

Post by canucker2016 »

nickpeterson wrote: post #9

powerpoint is one of those things that most people don’t think about nowadays, but before presentation software, people had to carry printouts, or slide decks for projectors, maybe laminated sheets for overhead projectors. PowerPoint has saved people a huge amount of work.

...And created a lot of revenue for storage companies and headaches for email admins. When MS Exchange rolled out, people discovered that email database size was higher than typical for just email messages.

A little bit of investigation revealed that PowerPoint slide decks and other multimedia was consuming the increased storage since Exchange made it much easier to send large attachments to others.

Re: Dennis Austin, developer of PowerPoint, has died

#104

Post by analog31 »

Maro wrote: post #39

I 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…

I think it's as simple as, if you put it in a PPT, you can rest assured that it will be readable and usable by the recipient, which includes passing them along to other people, presenting it, using the slides in other presentations, and so forth. If you choose some "weird" format, then the burden is on you when someone can't use it for some reason.

Re: Dennis Austin, developer of PowerPoint, has died

#106

Post by hutzlibu »

lol768 wrote: post #102
F-W-M wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do meetings start with dedicated reading time? Did people always come unprepared? How can I imagine this? Is it like: "Hey folks, thanks for showing up. This is the document we'll be discussing in 20min. Please read it now?". I don't think it's bad. I like written, long form content. It just is very far from what I know.

I've asked some friends at Amazon this and never quite got a satisfactory answer. It feels really disrespectful to waste my time, when I've bothered reading the preparatory material, because X number of other attendees haven't. And, presumably, for Amazon to do this for every single meeting, it must have been commonplace for folks to not manage their time effectively to get prepared for the meetings they attend? Quit…

"Quite a bizarre approach."

Or a pragmatic one. Also I imagine there are other positive side effects like preparing a focus for the topic at hand. And 5 minutes, or even shorter might be enough for most topics I think. Better than people pretending they know what is going on.

Re: Dennis Austin, developer of PowerPoint, has died

#109

Post by aswanson »

pmcjones wrote: post #83

Dennis 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.

Computer Geezers would make an awesome band name.

Re: Dennis Austin, developer of PowerPoint, has died

#110

Post by tough »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #94
Maro wrote: post #39

I 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…

> PPTs are a cultural currency in Corporates. Sure, but not always in a good way Where I work it seems that for the execs the PPT is the product They get credit for the PPT/presentation and zero demerits for not actually following through and delivering For dev groups reporting up, you get more credit for a good PPT putting a spin on a shitty project than for a project well done.

The theater has always become the work indeed
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