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Why PowerPoint should be banned

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#51

Post by JoeAltmaier »

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.

Agreed. Powerpoint is good when its NOT a set of bullet points. Instead, show data rendered in a way that can't easily be explained in a word or two. Use the maxim that 'a picture is worth 1000 words'. There the presentation shines.

Data representation should properly be at least two variables plotted against one another, neither of which is time.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#53

Post by jszymborski »

niels_olson wrote: post #20
mashmac2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... PPT really just needs a new design interface?

To an extent. I use iPython with RISE or a deck.js based system. I really like the deck.js method because my interface is vim.

I just searched up RISE, and as a guy who loves reveal.js and spends a lot of time writing python in IPython (and who wants to bridge out into Julia), this is a godsend.

Thanks for bringing it up!

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#54

Post by peter303 »

In my town we have monthly science meeting called the Cafe Scientifique. A speaker must present his topic in twenty minutes without a projector (sort of an expanded elevator pitch). It can work even for the most complicated topics. The speaker is forced into a more story-telling style. And to focus on a few points told well.

P.S. The speaker may distribute a single handout or have a couple images as a large poster.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#55

Post by bhartzer »

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…

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.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#56

Post by kazinator »

Last time I made a presentation with slides was some 15 years ago. I used SliTeX. (It seems that has been superseded by a slides document class in LaTeX2e.)

The slides were very plain: just black text on a white background; no animations. On the other hand, great looking formulas, nicely formatted source code snippets and such.

I had a talk prepared; it wasn't a slide-reading marathon. The slides just anchored what I was saying.

Today if I did slides, I would probably make them into static HTML pages with simple navigation links. Or perhaps a dual frame: navigation pane with screens.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#57

Post by thesimpsons1022 »

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.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#58

Post by InclinedPlane »

You can't just ban PowerPoint without replacing it, and without changing the corporate culture.

PowerPoint cultivates a pitch based culture. Taking away PP will still leave that culture in place, they'll just find some other tool to make their pitches. The problem is the culture, which needs to be cut down and have the stump pulled out of the ground. It sounds like a lot of work because it is a lot of work.

Before PowerPoint the way that kind of work got done was through lots of long form written work. RFC-style documents, very long memos that bordered on essays or research papers, that sort of thing. Today the art of communicating that way has to a significant degree been lost in the modern office. The closest thing to it that exists today would probably be internal blogs and wikis. Which is precisely what I'd focus on as a replacement for PowerPoint.

Want to push some new project? Don't pitch it, blog it. Want to spread knowledge of something to other teams, don't pitch it, document it in a wiki.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#59

Post by jsingleton »

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…

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.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#60

Post by jsingleton »

bhartzer wrote: post #55
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…

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.
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