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Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

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Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#21

Post by cybernoodles »

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…

Memo read silently and then everyone asks questions after attendees are finished. This is for mid-small sized meetings.

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#22

Post by cybernoodles »

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…

Of course they aren't inherently bad. Powerpoint is a tool. There are good ways and bad ways to use it. It's easier to use Powerpoint ineffectively than with other mediums.

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#23

Post by waster »

jonchang wrote: post #16

A more in-depth treatment "no Powerpoint" at Amazon is given here by Steve Yegge: https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/AaygmbzV...

This just doubles my question from reading the original post: A full half-hour, for a six-page memo? Are these incredibly dense and full of new information to the readers? People don't really read that slowly. Average adult reading speed is something like 250 wpm. Average memo might be, what, 300 wpp? So, six minutes to read, maybe ten if you're taking your time?

Not sure anyone has the answer, but that length of reading time vs. the presumed number of words to be read struck me as notable.

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#25

Post by jmspring »

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.

It's not the tool, it is the presenter. Often times, they lean on the tool rather than actually thinking about their presentation.

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#26

Post by zobzu »

As an audience person (ie, listening to talks) I believe "Powerpoint is easy for presenter, hard for audience" is crazy talk.

I generally follow using the slides, not listening to the dude who's talking for 30min-1h thank you very much.

Making things simple as you present something complex has nothing to do with having a powerpoint presentation or not. Nothing.

Giving a paper to read is just the same as powerpoint, except if the speaker sucks, you don't have to endure that. So yeah. Wrong punch line, okay approach.

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#27

Post by zobzu »

cybernoodles wrote: post #22
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…

Of course they aren't inherently bad. Powerpoint is a tool. There are good ways and bad ways to use it. It's easier to use Powerpoint ineffectively than with other mediums.

I disagree. It's easier to be a bad speaker than it is to make a bad power point. Even thus you can make both bad, speaking is a LOT harder.

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#29

Post by nivertech »

This reminded me the way we did Design Reviews at some multinational corporation.

I would write and print a design document of 30-50 pages long, schedule a 1-2 hours meeting and send the document in advance to those 5-10 people attending. Off-course only 1-2 persons would actually read in advance.

Then we were reading it page by page and discussing it, giving special attention to various diagrams, such as flow charts, sequence diagrams, FSMs and UMLs.

We almost never were able to finish in time, so the next meeting should be scheduled (in 1 or 2 weeks because of scheduling constraints) ...

Re: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

#30

Post by mallipeddi »

waster wrote: post #23
jonchang wrote: post #16

A more in-depth treatment "no Powerpoint" at Amazon is given here by Steve Yegge: https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/AaygmbzV...

This just doubles my question from reading the original post: A full half-hour, for a six-page memo? Are these incredibly dense and full of new information to the readers? People don't really read that slowly. Average adult reading speed is something like 250 wpm. Average memo might be, what, 300 wpp? So, six minutes to read, maybe ten if you're taking your time? Not sure anyone has the answer, but that length of rea…

I worked at AWS for a while. So a lot of times when I've been in such meetings, the 6-page document was actually full of technical details (design docs, product FAQs, post-mortem reports, etc). So taking 20-30 mins to read through the full document, re-read some sections and write down questions/comments is not that unusual.
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