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Why PowerPoint should be banned

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Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#101

Post by JoshTriplett »

thesimpsons1022 wrote: post #57
Someone1234 wrote: post #33

Even if you did ban PowerPoint, people would just find a way to do PP-like things with something else. For example, MS Word, with the page down key (although then the transition animations go away, so that is a minor victory). In my opinion, people are just poorly educated (or not educated) in presentation making. Or to phase it another way, a school may teach them to use PP the software but doesn't teach them how to…

I remember in college I was marked off for not putting everything I said in my presentation into the powerpoint verbatim. I knew the professor was being dumb, but I just took the grade and moved on. I wonder how many kids in the class actually took her advice.

That is absolutely absurd, and I'm horrified that that's being taught.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#102

Post by collyw »

samspot wrote: post #21

People who currently use powerpoint to be ineffective will find other ways to be ineffective without it. People also write terrible emails and create horrible documents. Ridiculous books are written. Zero-content instant messages are sent. Some people don't get how to use the phone. Shall we discard them all?

I am sure it wasn't as bad back in the day with transparent sheets and a marker pen. (Whatever those things were called).

Most diagrams were drawn on the fly - meaning a minimalistic approach, only conveying the information necessary.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#103

Post by mratzloff »

In a class I took in college, we had to give a final presentation to go along with a paper we wrote. The presentations were to be about 30 minutes (not too hard to come up with content, as my paper ended up being 50 pages). With the paper, this was essentially our entire grade for the class.

I decided to do it without PowerPoint. I was the only one.

Instead of relying on slides, I looked people in the eye and gave a presentation from memory, with a set of index cards as backup. I told stories and tried to make it relatable. Now, I've gotten better at these kinds of things over the course of my career, but even in college I was pretty confident in my ability to give these kinds of presentations. (I even took an acting class just to refine my public speaking skills.) Anyway, after I was finished I felt good about how I did.

I got a C-. Literally the only feedback the professor gave me was that I should have had a PowerPoint presentation "to give people something to look at while I talked".

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#104

Post by JoshTriplett »

lqdc13 wrote: post #65
Someone1234 wrote: post #33

Even if you did ban PowerPoint, people would just find a way to do PP-like things with something else. For example, MS Word, with the page down key (although then the transition animations go away, so that is a minor victory). In my opinion, people are just poorly educated (or not educated) in presentation making. Or to phase it another way, a school may teach them to use PP the software but doesn't teach them how to…

I really like when people put a lot of information on the slides. It makes going over past presentations very easy. For example, when a new ML algorithm comes out, the only way to easily grasp how it works without reading a bunch of papers is to find some Power Point slides by the author. I guarantee people wouldn't make two sets of slides either.

Record a video of the speaker giving the talk.

Bonus if you have a transcript.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#105

Post by JoshTriplett »

sliverstorm wrote: post #62
Someone1234 wrote: post #33

Even if you did ban PowerPoint, people would just find a way to do PP-like things with something else. For example, MS Word, with the page down key (although then the transition animations go away, so that is a minor victory). In my opinion, people are just poorly educated (or not educated) in presentation making. Or to phase it another way, a school may teach them to use PP the software but doesn't teach them how to…

Slides exist to supplement what is being said. If your presentation doesn't work without the slides then you're doing it wrong I'm torn. Yes, slides are a supplement. But a purely verbal presentation on things like financials or schedule without some supporting data feels like complete fluff, and while the speaker could be spitting out data verbally, that doesn't "work" when you have more than one or two data points…

If you're presenting raw data, sure, all of it should be on the slide. However, when you're presenting analysis of that data, explain it verbally, and summarize your explanation on the slides.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#107

Post by r00fus »

jsingleton wrote: post #60
bhartzer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst is when people don't/can't/won't use PowerPoint and they use MS Word or a PDF to create "slides". I don't think PowerPoint should be banned, just the misuse of PPT should be banned.

PDF can work really well. Prevents transitions and less worries about compatibility on the presenting machine.

Except it's difficult/impossible to edit a PDF file. How would you handle the use-case where multiple authors are collaborating on a single powerpoint file?

Plus, PDFs can be generated from Powerpoint.

The real key would be for some App to codify good presentation rules and target OOXML output. I'm not talking Keynote - It needs to be more focused and opinionated, and make that part easier.

Is that even possible? Would Microsoft permit it to exist?

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#109

Post by collyw »

DanBC wrote: post #50
brudgers wrote: post #29

Power Point is ubiquitous because it offers improved communications. Just because some journalist isn't old enough to remember slides and overhead projectors doesn't mean such things didn't exist. If there's a shortcoming with Power Point it's that it is based on the idea of printing everything out rather than dynamic interaction. It's an old paradigm, but it's hard to beat something modelled on the physical world.

People had to prepare transparancies and it was time-consuming and expensive, so they took a bit of care over it. I can dump 7,000 words into powerpoint, chose a terrible font and terrible colours, fill it with weird clip art and transitions, and then bore and confuse my audience. I like the idea of powerpoint. But there are far too many examples of suboptimal powerpoint presentations. Perhaps there should be a galle…

I spend ages whenever I have to do a powerpoint (or libreoffice) presentation.

Drawing a box with text in it will take me maybe ten time longer in PP compared to a transparency. Admittedly the lines will be straight, and the text more readable (assuming I choose a reasonable font size), but its so time consuming in comparison.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#110

Post by wlesieutre »

r00fus wrote: post #107
jsingleton wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PDF can work really well. Prevents transitions and less worries about compatibility on the presenting machine.

Except it's difficult/impossible to edit a PDF file. How would you handle the use-case where multiple authors are collaborating on a single powerpoint file? Plus, PDFs can be generated from Powerpoint. The real key would be for some App to codify good presentation rules and target OOXML output. I'm not talking Keynote - It needs to be more focused and opinionated, and make that part easier. Is that even possible? Wou…

> Except it's difficult/impossible to edit a PDF file. How would you handle the use-case where multiple authors are collaborating on a single powerpoint file?

You generate your PDF presentation from LaTeX, which is stored in git! Multiple simultaneous editors with sane merging, unlike a group of people editing a PPT file on the network drive.

But those are probably not the PDF presenters you're talking about.

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