Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

conorneill.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 126 posts

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#61

Post by CurtMonash »

I posted "Death to PowerPoints" -- http://www.strategicmessaging.com/powerpoints/2008/02/02/ -- 5 years ago, and still live by it. I almost never sit through a conventional presentation in a 1-on-1. I almost never attend presentations where a deck is presented to a group.

That said, I frequently edit slide decks for my clients to inflict on other people. And on the rare occasions I give presentations, I use PowerPoint, commonly in old-fashioned bulleted-outline style.

Complicating the discussion yet further:

* I write stuff for people to read MUCH more than I give presentations.

* My writing involves a lot of lists of bullet points. :)

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#62

Post by grinich »

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…

Even better, check out anything by Nancy Duarte. She's incredible. Helped Al Gore on the Inconvenient Truth deck, regularly consults for Apple, etc.

http://www.amazon.com/Nancy-Duarte/e/B002BMAA0K/?_encoding=U...

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#63

Post by EnderMB »

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…

My girlfriend is a teacher, and I can say for sure that it is a lost cause.

Teachers know that their slides suck, but it's what they are taught, and is what their curriculum demands. They demand bright colours, Comic Sans for dyslexic students, and tons of text on each slide.

For a middle-management role in the school, I designed her slides using one of those JS slide scripts, and it went down a treat. It took me the best part of two hours to port her content from Powerpoint to these slides, and I was able to add videos, animations, and to embed Google Apps data directly into the slide. Apparently, the interviewers had their minds blown by being able to view a Google Docs spreadsheet (where I had written the formulas) directly into the slide. I'd still say that it was fairly poorly designed, but it was a lot better than what kids are forced to read.

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#65

Post by raphman »

denrober wrote: post #24

Amazon, when I worked there, had the worst meeting discipline of all the companies I have worked for. Meetings normally started 10 minutes late and most people didn't show up until 5 minutes after the start time. Being punctual it drove me up the wall.

How does this relate to the 'reading group' concept? Did people who arrived late just sit down quietly and start reading?

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#66

Post by FrejNorling »

Maro wrote: post #49
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…

Have you tried Prezi? http://prezi.com (I work there.)

My girlfirend just showed me Prezi and I love it!

Just waiting for an opportunity to using it in a real context!

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#67

Post by ekianjo »

agent00f wrote: post #56
ekianjo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

It does not mean there is less info. It means the info is more dense, more concise, well prepared and summarized and straight to the point. It's not because you have 6 pages that it's a guarantee to avoid putting 5 pages of garbage or unnecessary prose.

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#68

Post by ozh »

6d0debc071 wrote: post #51

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 discuss…

While this is totally true (what's the point in gathering people to get them to read instead of talk?) this is just how it works in most places. Ask people to read something before a meeting: 80% show up without having read, no matter how easy to read or important the paper is.

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#69

Post by rschmitty »

amirmc wrote: post #48
ekianjo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6 pages is a bit too long, though. 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.

> "6 pages is a bit too long, though..." It does depend on the structure of those 6 pages. If I had to do these regularly I can easily imagine settling on a (largely) routine format, e.g 1st page is overview, 2nd page is problem detail, 3rd page is solution/implementation, 4th page risks/mitigation blah blah blah. Note that the article says the first 30 minutes of the meeting is reading the memo. It doesn't take 5min…

Isn't it an indicator when you are defending 6 pages not being too long with a "blah blah blah" already?

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#70

Post by rubinelli »

agent00f wrote: post #56
ekianjo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Most 6-page memos I've found in the wild are 1-page memos that the author felt had to be padded to look more "professional."

And everybody's always busy. If you send them a 6-page memo, they won't read it before the meeting. One page? Yeah, that's doable. So they go to the meeting knowing what it's about.

Post reply on HN