Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint” • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#51

Post by 6d0debc071 » Tue, May 14, 2013, 8:37 AM UTC

All the meetings I do are voluntary. Most of the people who attend work with the problems in some way.

Your time is incredibly valuable. If you're sitting there for 30 minutes while someone reads your memo, if you're getting everyone together in one place to read your memo, with all that implies for their schedules, then that's a waste of a lot of extremely important time for a lot of people.

Meetings are for discussions that you can only have with everyone together. They're so that people who don't understand something can ask you questions, or so that you can work with others who do understand the problems. Not for reading groups.

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#52

Post by ZeroGravitas » Tue, May 14, 2013, 8:37 AM UTC

IvyMike wrote: post #14

In my experience the people who give shitty presentations with powerpoint would also be perfectly capable of giving shitty presentations without powerpoint.

Why are they giving a presentation in the first place? It seems mostly habit as this point.

The article itself supports this as they don't just skip Powerpoint, they skip the presentation entirely in favour of a 6 page memo.

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#53

Post by gjm11 » Tue, May 14, 2013, 8:38 AM UTC

adrianhoward wrote: post #50

It's odd how tied some folk are to slides even when it's a completely inappropriate tool for the situation at hand. On the viewing side as as well as the presenter side. I occasionally workshops on various things. Some (not all) of them don't have any slides . None. On the grounds that the point of the workshop, as far as I'm concerned, is to pay a lot of attention to what I'm telling you - and do the practical exerc…

> I occasionally workshops on various things. Some (not all) of them don't have any slides.

Or verbs.

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#54

Post by iyulaev » Tue, May 14, 2013, 8:40 AM UTC

PowerPoint is a presentation tool, and like any tool it can be misused to the point of frustration. At best, PowerPoint offers a good way to provide a visual aid for a presentation. People who present crappy PowerPoint decks would have no trouble delivering a similarly crappy speech, or writing an indecipherable memo.

One great book on delivering awesome presentations - Presentation Zen (http://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Zen-Simple-Delivery-Editi...)

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#55

Post by iyulaev » Tue, May 14, 2013, 8:41 AM UTC

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…

If you can get the content of the speech from a PowerPoint deck - the deck author is "doing it wrong."

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#56

Post by agent00f » Tue, May 14, 2013, 8:41 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #44

agent00f wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it is a valid goal to cut down on irrelevancies (like empty lingo), it's the exact the wrong mentality to consider detail the enemy of good decisions. Good decision making stems from understanding a problem comprehensively, not via often misleading generalities. I would even question whether it's possible to accurately summarize anything more trivial problems in a single page; the sort of menial issue that does…

Then your doubts are not limited to 6 pages either. How do you determine the right number of pages then? 6 pages may be summarizing thousands of pages of information for all you know. How is this enough ? In the end what really matters CAN and SHOULD be summarized, and if additional details are needed there is always a place for sharing and discussion with management.

I was remarking on this point:

>In a famous Ranked 1st Consumer Goods company (i'll let you guess which one) all team memos to management are only allowed to be of a single page. This is really hard to adapt to it at the beginning but decision making is so much faster.

I'm sure less info makes decisions faster, but this seems rather the opposite of a virtue. Eg. GWB "the decider".

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#57

Post by iyulaev » Tue, May 14, 2013, 8:42 AM UTC

jpalomaki wrote: post #42

I think the best points: - Reserved time for everybody to read and understand the issues before meeting starts - Something tangible for those not able to participate in the meeting

The sad issue is that most people would gladly spend that time doing other things rather than reading :(

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#58

Post by agent00f » Tue, May 14, 2013, 8:45 AM UTC

iyulaev wrote: post #54

PowerPoint is a presentation tool, and like any tool it can be misused to the point of frustration. At best, PowerPoint offers a good way to provide a visual aid for a presentation. People who present crappy PowerPoint decks would have no trouble delivering a similarly crappy speech, or writing an indecipherable memo. One great book on delivering awesome presentations - Presentation Zen ( http://www.amazon.com/Presen…

As I mentioned to a similar comment, powerpoint has become the ubiquitous hammer of the business presentation which has everyone searching for nails.

There is a time and place for slides with a few talking points per, but in many ways it's contorted most all meetings into PR events even when there's nothing to sell.

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#59

Post by webdisrupt » Tue, May 14, 2013, 8:46 AM UTC

This article could not have been posted at a better time! I seriously think that these form of presentations do put their audience to sleep whilst also being non productive.

I personally don't think one can do without slides as sometimes it helps the audience visualise what one is discussing. Therefore I believe it should be more about the essence of the content.

In summary, just keep each slide to a max of 2-3 words or just one image that best describes the topic you are discussing.

I feel that this could work well for many organisations, irrespective of their size, especially when one factors in how much time could saved on meetings.

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#60

Post by webdisrupt » Tue, May 14, 2013, 8:50 AM UTC

kevinburke wrote: post #19

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 fo…

I was so anti PowerPoint that I used to actually build presentations in Flash (im saying in the late 90s) so as to avoid using it. But most teachers would reject the option since traditionally everyone knew just about PowerPoint.