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Why PowerPoint should be banned

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#71

Post by itsdevlin »

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…

There are to very specific versions of how a presentation should be made: As a supplement to a live presentation or a replacement of it.

If you're using it as a supplement to something you're saying live, the slides should be simple, limited, and support the big points which you should be making verbally.

If you're using it as a handout (or essentially in lieu of a live presentation), it should be much more information-dense.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#72

Post by akeck »

kazinator wrote: post #56

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 (It seems that has been superseded by a slides document class in LaTeX2e.)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…

You might like https://github.com/hakimel/reveal.js .

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#73

Post by johnchristopher »

cordite wrote: post #38
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…

At a few dev meetups, some presenters just did markdown documents with enough new lines to be equivalent to a page. That way they just pressed pgdn on their laptop. On another note, some lecture-style slides (where review post-presentation or without presentation) can be really helpful for understanding concepts otherwise described in math and without examples in official papers. Many CS publications seem to make thi…

At the time I found http://remarkjs.com/#1 visually appealing and dev-oriented.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#74

Post by mbreese »

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…

I think that one of the points of the article is that PowerPoint presentations have taken over from technical reports and briefings. Instead of having a written report with data (with figures) and then a subsequent briefing to go over the findings, we are left with presentations that try to do both: present data and explain it.

So if the alternative to PowerPoint is better, more technical, reports -- I'm all for it.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#76

Post by ghaff »

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.

One of the problems with "Powerpoints" is that they serve at least two different functions--as a visual aid for the the audience during the presentation and as a leave-behind/documentation (or slideshare, etc. independent of a presenter). One presentation is very unlikely to be optimal for both. At the same time, you're right that it's unrealistic to expect multiple versions.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#77

Post by blattus »

I work in consulting; I have seen my fair share of badly-drawn graphics and spend more time using PowerPoint than I would care to admit.

The reality is that for most of Corporate America banning PowerPoint is not going to happen anytime soon. In our industry, decks are viewed not just as presentations but general fodder for deliverables, handouts, etc. I've been on several engagements where we intentionally jam-packed slides full of content (including multiple levels of footnotes) so they "stood on their own" in case someone picked up or distributed the deck after the meeting in which it was used.

If I was giving a talk I'd agree that presentation style would be overkill, but I've been in meetings with C-level execs and VPs where the extra info has paid off by being able to preempt questions and provide additional justification for the conclusion. Sometimes having a crowded slide is more "professional" in a meeting context than alt-tabbing to the detailed Excel worksheet showing the assumptions.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#78

Post by gknoy »

jsingleton wrote: post #59
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.

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.

Re: Why PowerPoint should be banned

#80

Post by gknoy »

peter303 wrote: post #49
kejaed wrote: post #17

One of the slides in the WP story credits Edward Tufte, who has written and published an essay on the subject, "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within" [1]. This, along with his seminal text "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" [2] are great reads, and I think should be required reading for anyone who has to present anything, technical or otherwise. [1] http://www.edwardtufte.com/…

Two salient points from Tuft's essay: 1) a reference books like an almanac averages 150 characters per square inch; a printed power point slide 7 characters per square inch (page 22): the visual brain starves for stimulation during a poor PP presentation. 2) Tufte recommends high resolution handouts accompany PP image slides. Eschew low content slides. "Avoid elaborate hierarchies of bullet lists. Never read aloud fr…

Agreed. He advises us to make high resolution (paper!) handouts, and give them out as people walk in. I was lucky enough to attend a presentation of his this year where he did exactly that, and its effect was amazing.

Say, "Here, read this," and then give them ten or fifteen (or more, if it's a longer talk!) to read as much as they can, before talking.

This helps because people can quickly skim the parts they don't care about, jot down questions, focus on the parts that are interesting or that they want to understand better -- and not everyone feels the same about each part of your presentation.

Then, in your talk, you can basically follow a similar rubric, or allude to the handout, and people can (and will!) ask questions about the meaningful parts.

He also notes that it's important NOT to send them ahead of time in emails, as no one will read them. Force people to read them (or play on their phones); the people who are most busy will scour the paper for useful info. Jeff Bezos' [0] meetings follow a similar pattern.

0: (apologies for lazy searching :)) http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-amazon-fortune-int...

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