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People forget that especially in the business world PowerPoint presentations are not only used for presenting content but also as a medium of distribution. The

by oeuviz 9y ago

People forget that especially in the business world PowerPoint presentations are not only used for presenting content but also as a medium of distribution. The author presumably does not see need to assamble two sets of the content and just uses the same slides intended for presentation also as handout - resulting in eiter an overloaded presentation or useless handouts. I try to avoid that by integrating all necessary background info in the presentation but skip that during the presentation and only display it if asked for.

anon946 9y ago
I think this very fact may be part of the issue. The slides may serve multiple purposes: (1) Notes for the presenter, (2) visuals, text for the viewer, and (3) a document for the person who found it via Google. They thus end up being a compromise at all of them. In the ideal world, there would be three separate documents for the above, but PowerPoint is good enough at all of them that we tend to just create a single document that does all three.
cm2187 9y ago
Yeah. But these are two different exercises. You have on screen presentations on one side, which is probably less than 5% of the use of powerpoint in large companies, and pitchbooks which are probably like 95%. Pitchbooks are never meant to be shown on-screen. They are paper handouts (or on-screen on a tablet or PC). They are as much a visual aid for the meeting for charts and bullet points, than a take away to avoid people having to take notes. It de facto replaced word documents in large companies outside of a few formal documents. So it has to be concise enough to be efficient. The rule of thumb is that you should be able to read the title and subtitle of every slide only and get the message that the pitch carries. It should have an executive summary that serves the same purpose. But it needs to be detailed enough, with an appendix and footnotes, for someone who didn't attend to get all the important details.
- _raoulcousins 9y ago
  I wish that was the case at my company. I'm required to create slide decks that are supposed to be usable as presentations and can stand alone without anyone presenting them. I don't think it's actually possible.

by oeuviz 9y ago

anon946 9y ago

I think this very fact may be part of the issue. The slides may serve multiple purposes: (1) Notes for the presenter, (2) visuals, text for the viewer, and (3) a document for the person who found it via Google. They thus end up being a compromise at all of them. In the ideal world, there would be three separate documents for the above, but PowerPoint is good enough at all of them that we tend to just create a single document that does all three.

cm2187 9y ago

Yeah. But these are two different exercises. You have on screen presentations on one side, which is probably less than 5% of the use of powerpoint in large companies, and pitchbooks which are probably like 95%. Pitchbooks are never meant to be shown on-screen. They are paper handouts (or on-screen on a tablet or PC). They are as much a visual aid for the meeting for charts and bullet points, than a take away to avoid people having to take notes. It de facto replaced word documents in large companies outside of a few formal documents. So it has to be concise enough to be efficient. The rule of thumb is that you should be able to read the title and subtitle of every slide only and get the message that the pitch carries. It should have an executive summary that serves the same purpose. But it needs to be detailed enough, with an appendix and footnotes, for someone who didn't attend to get all the important details.

_raoulcousins 9y ago
I wish that was the case at my company. I'm required to create slide decks that are supposed to be usable as presentations and can stand alone without anyone presenting them. I don't think it's actually possible.