The pb with PPT users is that some idiots like to fit zillions infos into a single PPT slide !

Easy to blame a software when users don't even know how to use it.

Replace "Powerpoint" with any softwares name in mind, same result...

Stef

Anyone that believes that the Columbia disaster was a result of incomplete instructions via a Powerpoint presentation is a true nit wit! Engineering reports and bulletins would have carried the very technical findings to the appropriate parties, not an overhead projector presentation over coffee & danish!

Well spotted. What was/is the context behind this program that makes it relevant now? And why no reference to Tufte who, afaik, started this analysis? There are still some very important points made in this programme if only people had the chance to think and then enact enact on them.

Dreadful software. I never used it as I prefered to engage with the people having to watch me rather than subject them to 50 mind numbing slides of crap.

I will point out though a tip on how to cut staff, save money and zero effect on your manpower levels.

If you remove Powerpoint from your organisation I guarantee that you will find over 25% of your staff will no longer have any work or reason to continue working for you. You can therefore, get rid of them and not be affected whatsoever.

I've mentioned this to several heads of dept and directors and they all understood the idea behind it. Some senior IBM contractors said it was the best idea they had heard in ages and I should put up a whitepaper on it.

You all know those folks in the office, the ones that spend all day making PP slideshows that no one ever sees. Sorry am I making you feel uncomfortable?

"The bad worker blames his tools."

This is an old adage, and it is just as relevant today as it has always been. I have seen good and bad PowerPoint presentations, and I have made quite a few of them myself.

The key is to present the detailed info from a script, while you show the summaries on the screen. Then, at least if anyone is awake among your audience, you will have gotten the detail across to them.

I disagree that managers "cannot" know about detailed information - especially information that is pertinent to their business. The Skype example is one case in point - how many managers or lawyers do you think knew about the underlying technology in Skype to know enough that they had effectively been sold a car without an engine? How many do you think are going to be responsible for effectively being asleep at the wheel?

You cannot ignore details. But that is not Microsoft's problem - if you are relying on PowerPoint to relay your "detailed information", then you are misusing the tool and a poor communicator.

... the real BS lies in those who use (or want you to use) the bullets templates! (as many have already pointed out, anyway)

If you ever bothered to try competitor products... they're just about the same as PP.

Too many times one has to prepare this bullets presentations for people who frankly have no clue about what's been discussed... (usualy those people are big wigs, unfortunately...)

Another big problem is that, even if you print handouts with space to take notes, only a few do scribble something.

And, last but not least.... I wish I could show you the absolute BS that some people in the management have written on those bullet points.... (unfortunately I'm NDAed until I retire)

Maybe someone should prepare a PP presentation to explain old plain good sense....

pity you never linked the programme

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00lv28b/Word_of_Mouth_04_08_2009/

He has long been a detractor of powerpoint culture.
http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB&topic_id=1

I want to complain about the above comment I just made. I made a typo and can't edit it. Plus someone just sent me a PP presentation informing me that i'm not even a journalist nor do i use PP presentations and so apparently I'm talking a load of middle-management

The fact of the matter is that you can make decent PPT presentations, just most people don't put the effort into it, or never had the skill to do it in the first place. More than half of a presentation is in the speaker, not the slides. Even bad PPT presentation slides can be part of a good presentation.

For what it's worth, at least PPT forces otherwise inept presenters, into a familiar style so that, while not great, the presentations are understandable. It reminds me crappy webpages (homepages) in the mid-1990s. So many were tacky and unusable, full of javascript and java gimmicks and other idiocy. Nowadays these people just put their stuff into a blog format, which despite the same inane content, is relatively sane and readable (though there are exceptions).

This whole article is a silly rant about how things have always been. PowerPoint is no more limiting than stone or clay tablets, or parchment scrolls or illuminated manuscripts, or typewritten documents. The world has been run by paper or the modern equivalent as long as the world has been run.

Glad that the posters so far have identified that it’s not so much the software, more the use of it that’s the culprit.

“It is well known that NASA admitted it had problems with Powerpoint in its engineering programmes, but did you know that some important information about the risks of using foam on the shuttle was shoved into a presentation slide as a footnote displayed in a small font?”

The above quote in the article sums the problem up quite well I think. The fact is that the person who made the presentation chose to incorporate that little nugget of information into a footnote. A case of the Tool using the tool being wrong rather than the tool itself.

A picture can be worth a thousand words, but it has to be the right picture.

Any manager worth their salt should be able to understand what the people under them are talking about and translate it into something their bosses can understand.

If your geeky technical person is saying something like “The human tethered flying apparatus with conductive tether is not recommended to be operated during times of high atmospheric ion discharge” It’s the managers job to translate that into “Don’t fly our kite in a flipping thunderstorm”.

Another case of blaming the tool for the users incompetence.

I own a copy of office. I do not recall ever sitting through or ever viewing a power point presentation.

Maybe chicken little needs to expand his horizons.

are you serious? no one mandates that you have to use powerpoint in any specific way. this is like vilifying hypercard.

if anything ui/templates/default actions or the way people learn to use the software is at fault for fixing people info specific way of presenting.

the whole point of powerpoint/hypercard is that you can create nonlinear or dynamic flows, but no one creates in this style; they take the easy way out.

don't blame the software, blame the users for not taking advantage of 10% of the software's features.

Like, this is anything new?

"briefings that were too brief, unclear and difficult to change even if some important new information appeared after the presentation slides had been painstakingly produced."

We had the same problems 30 years ago with pasteups. Crappy planning and lame thinking have been with us for quite some time. It's just with PP, more of us are giving bad presentations more often.

And with cutbacks, no one is bringing doughnuts to meetings so we're grumpier than we used to be.

ScottJ

You clearly don't like your manager!

If management didn't have summaries of information rather than all the detail they would not be able to make decisions. The basis of organisation and control is limited by the space in a persons head to hold information and process it in a meaningful way.

How could a manager deal with the detail from all of his or her staff and still find time in the day to use that information to make decisions that give direction to the work the detail guys are doing?

Or, stick a bunch of detail guys together working on a project without good management making decisions and watch the end product either never happen or turn to utter crap.

What are these cartoons that you speak of, forget powerpoint I want to hear about them. Eventhough hearing about people dying because of powerpoint is distressing.

It's the management types who aren't interested in details and can't understand them anyway. They just want everything summed up in a few easy to understand bullet points so they can pretend to be up to speed and actually doing their job.