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Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

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Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#11

Post by pestaa »

jrdn wrote: post #5
afreak wrote: post #3

This reminds me of when I was back in school and the instructor would have stuff in Powerpoint on the projector screen. It was only interesting when a photograph or image would be displayed (this was an East Asian history class) but the rest of the time was just me listening to him speak about the topic rather than paying attention to the slides at hand. Why? Because he was pretty much just narrating what he already…

I had so many professors that just read me the powerpoints. I would literally miss nothing from the lecture if I just downloaded the slides after every class, but no, attendance was mandatory. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to know that I'm still paying off an education I could've gotten most of by reading a few pages of bullet points every week.

Had to upvote you for the being in the same boat. Even worse though when the slide is two lines and contains the following only:

                       [Title]
    
    * [Title]
I'm not kidding, I've seen this a couple of times. And worse yet is that there is literally no extra content to listen to in the class.

(Not all courses of mine are like this one, though.)

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#12

Post by jasoncrawford »

Moto7451 wrote: post #7

I'm not sure about just reading a six page memo out loud to everyone. That seems like a great thing to email to everyone. Some of my least favorite memories from college are the couple of classes I went to where the professor basically read the book to us. The difference is, I'm guessing, that attendance isn't optional at an Amazon meeting. Personally I like keeping presentations on the short side - only using slide…

You don't read it out loud. You bring printed copies (or send electronically) and everyone reads it for themselves, in silence, at the beginning of the meeting.

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#13

Post by michaelhoffman »

Moto7451 wrote: post #7

I'm not sure about just reading a six page memo out loud to everyone. That seems like a great thing to email to everyone. Some of my least favorite memories from college are the couple of classes I went to where the professor basically read the book to us. The difference is, I'm guessing, that attendance isn't optional at an Amazon meeting. Personally I like keeping presentations on the short side - only using slide…

People read the memo silently.

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#15

Post by jasoncrawford »

pshc wrote: post #6

Oh hey! This is exactly what Edward Tufte taught us at his course the other week. Now I'm curious as to who originated this practice...?

Yeah, I think this practice originated at Amazon not long after Edward Tufte's article “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint” was published. I think I heard that Bezos read that article and was influenced by it.

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#17

Post by aclements18 »

Moto7451 wrote: post #7

I'm not sure about just reading a six page memo out loud to everyone. That seems like a great thing to email to everyone. Some of my least favorite memories from college are the couple of classes I went to where the professor basically read the book to us. The difference is, I'm guessing, that attendance isn't optional at an Amazon meeting. Personally I like keeping presentations on the short side - only using slide…

For clarification, the 6 page memo is not read aloud. Each person is provided a copy at the beginning of the meeting and the first 10-15 minutes of the meeting are completely silent.

This actually works pretty well because in the real world people usually only skim the info provided in advance of most meetings because they only need to "get the gist" of what's being said. This forces everyone to have a thorough understanding and promotes more thoughtful discussion.

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#18

Post by icoder »

Although I've seen all the 'bad examples' come by, on average I don't have much of a problem following ppt backed presentations, contrary, apparently, to others.

Nevertheless I think this is a great idea on itself. I've seen too many meetings where there was reading material but so few people read it that the talk actually focussed on them.

There's one issue though, and only experience will tell whether it is relevant. I for myself am fond of taking in knowledge via paper but the effectiveness of this highly depends on the moment I'm reading. Also I've noticed I find it harder to concentrate when I'm reading 'together in a group'. I feel a bit rushed by it. But perhaps that's just me or something that is easy to get used to.

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#19

Post by kevinburke »

When I was in high school I tried to ban powerpoint, arguing that it inhibited our ability to grow as public speakers. I wrote Edward Tufte and told him about it and he shipped me 20 copies of "The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within" (http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp).

Some teachers opposed it and I ended up losing. I'm sure Powerpoint was more convenient for them. I use deck.js for slides now but mostly for images - the other slides tend to have 3-4 words while I try and tell a story to draw in readers.

My last project pitch to management I printed out copies of a written proposal and had everyone read for ten minutes to start the meeting. It was actually really nice.

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#20

Post by sliverstorm »

fishtoaster wrote: post #9

I don't think powerpoints are inherently bad, but they're misused enough that I wouldn't begrudge anyone who wanted to ban them outright. The two best ways to use them, from experience, seem to be: - Super dense slides. These slides have a lot of text and are information-rich. You're not expected to read them, and the presenter will just skim over them, presenting a high-level view of each topic, but definitely not r…

My preferred powerpoints support the talk. They provide things the speaker cannot- pictures, tables, graphs. Sometimes bullets are nice for openings and closings to summarize.
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