The Sheila Variations

The quote of the week!

I asked a manager who worked for me to put together a presentation for a very important upcoming meeting. He used the full range of Powerpoint gizmos...slow transitions between slides, pointless animations, etc. The individual to whom we were presenting had much less time available than we had thought, and a substantial portion of it was wasted on P/P "effects" rather than on the content that needed to be discussed. By the end of the meeting, I was considering whether flaying alive, slow strangulation, or something even worse would be appropriate for my guy...

At my last job, the department director was just in love with Powerpoint...meetings that could easily have been accomplished using three handouts or even more easily have been done through e-mail, usually ate away a good part of a morning with his presentations.

I think he often called meetings just to show off his PowerPoint Prowess.

Tommy, I think I would have quit. My patience is limited. Just ask the intern. You should see me when she acts like she's never seen architectural drawings.

I forgot about this...when a classmate in a media class misnamed his presentation, and when he went to show his proposal piece in class, instead of what he'd expected, pictures from Star Wars and Star Trek came up instead. He was three slides in before he looked up at his presentation and realized why we were snickering.

Patrick--it was a small piece of why it was my last job, and not my current....

Don't blame PowerPoint, blame the people abusing it.

It's perfectly possible (easy, if you know the principles involved and adhere to them) to make efficient, clean, and meaningful powerpoint presentations. (As Stryker noted over on his blog, PowerPoint is for overviews, same as a whiteboard or flip-chart, not for a detailed report; if used to that end, and used intelligently, it's a good tool.)

If a monkey uses a microscope to try and bash open a tin of bananas, do we blame the microscope for being a lousy can-opener? Nor should we blame PowerPoint for giving people the ability to showcase their own inability to make a point clearly and succintly.

Sigivald:

Thank you for your dissenting opinion -

I admit that I have actually never seen an effective Power Point presentation and so yes, at this moment, I would blame the microscope for being a bad can-opener.

I am always willing to learn, however!

If you give an astronomer a microscope and ask him to use it to map the topography of Mars...I wouldn't blame the microscope itself, but I would blame those who gave the astronomer this inappropriate tool.