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Why PowerPoint should be banned

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#121

Post by mhurron »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #101
thesimpsons1022 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's so that you can send the slide deck out and people have the actual presentation when they see the slides.

I hate when I go somewhere and they provided just the slides of a previous talk and the slides have no real information on them, there is no context or explanation as to what the bulleted points are talking about.

Not to say that the talk verbatim in the presentation is a good idea either, but people seem to like giving out what amount to useless slides most of the time in place of a recording of the presentations.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#122

Post by BorisMelnik »

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…

agree, same thing with Infographics. Infographics can be a really useful tool but too many people simply make a huge wall of text instead of creating a graphical representation of the topic at hand.

the way I like to think about presentation slides is they should almost be talking point cues or reminders for the speaker. they should compliment the talk, not dominate it.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#123

Post by haberdasher »

mhurron wrote: post #121
JoshTriplett wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's so that you can send the slide deck out and people have the actual presentation when they see the slides. I hate when I go somewhere and they provided just the slides of a previous talk and the slides have no real information on them, there is no context or explanation as to what the bulleted points are talking about. Not to say that the talk verbatim in the presentation is a good idea either, but people seem to…

If you were to use something like Presentious (https://presentio.us/) to give your talk, you can capture all of the information presented without reading from your slides. And at the end of your talk, everything can be shared with your audience. For example: https://presentio.us/view/p1tcHs

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#124

Post by r00fus »

wlesieutre wrote: post #110
r00fus wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you're really talking bout LaTeX, not PDF then. PDF is a publishing format, not a collaboration format.

Now you run into the WYSIWYG issue, where the collaboration format needs to be "printed" in order to see the output.

Is there a WYSIWIG collaboration tool for LaTeX over git?

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#125

Post by jsingleton »

wlesieutre wrote: post #110
r00fus wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've had great results with LaTeX but it's not for non-technical people.

PDF would not be the main format but it works well to export to that from powerpoint (or whatever) before presentation.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#126

Post by jsingleton »

gknoy wrote: post #78
jsingleton wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed the talk should work without slides. Another way of putting it is that the deck shouldn't really work on its own. You can't just read the slides after without explanation.

While this is great for making a presentation, it makes it Really Hard to learn anything at all from a presentation for which you do not have a video recording. I've frequently seen Slideshare (or similar) presentations that look like a disjoint selection of code examples and meme images, with a narrative that is only barely hinted at.

I guess you need a stripped down version and also a full fat version for publishing after. It's a lot to ask though.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#130

Post by brudgers »

phren0logy wrote: post #35
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.

I disagree. In the pre-PowerPoint era it was more common for people to actually prepare a talk rather than hide behind hastily-created slides that usually serve more as prompts for the speaker than visual enhancements to the content. It is certainly possible to give bad presentations without PowerPoint, and good presentations with it, but most people only learn bad habits. PowerPoint PRO TIP: The "b" key will bring u…

In my experience, well prepared presentations were not more common in any absolute sense. Perhaps it was more common in a relative sense since carefully prepared presentation slides were often the purview of a more select few. In those days a third grade teacher might have some overheads. These days, the third grade students are preparing pptx's as part of the curriculum.

Banning Power Point because there are so many mediocre Power Points out there is like banning email because there are so many poorly written emails. Power Point provides unprecedented access to presentation tools as part of the "computer on every desk and in every home" revolution. A presentation no longer requires a draftsman and special print media. People can do it themselves. Even those for whom visual communication and on stage presentations are not core competencies. Most presentations aren't very good. They don't need to be. They just need to be good enough.

My Tip from making architectural presentations: Place yourself on the audience side of the fourth wall and point to your images as you tell your story. If it's about you and not the content, you're already on the wrong track because it's about you and not the audience.

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