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I take some umbrage at the ubiquitous slighting of PowerPoint, et al. The vast majority of "business" presentations are for an internal audience that is alread
by eitally 16y ago
I take some umbrage at the ubiquitous slighting of PowerPoint, et al. The vast majority of "business" presentations are for an internal audience that is already partially pre-briefed and the presenter just uses the slides to jog his or her own memory of the important points to review in the meeting. It's essentially pre-written agenda+minutes, and it doesn't have to be anything more.
This is easily contrasted to the kinds of professional presenters you see at TED, or someone like Steve Jobs, but those are public presentations of novel content. Not at all the same, and it's not fair to directly compare the work these folks do to prepare and rehearse their presentations to what 9-to-5ers do. Nearly zero internal business presentations need to be so polished, either in formatting or delivery.
- mechanical_fish 16y agoIt's essentially pre-written agenda+minutes. This is very insightful. Powerpoint is a prop for establishing the structure of a meeting. It is -- as pointed out by many -- a lousy tool for conveying actual content. (Of course, in a world with cheap printing, and now cheap email, cheap blogging, cheap e-text, cheap recorded audio, and cheap online video as well, live lectures in general are lousy tools for conveying content.) Meetings need agendas. Otherwise every meeting ends up being about whatever the best schmoozer at the meeting wants it to be about. Of course, as with many tools, the use of Powerpoint is most noticeable when it is being terribly abused. People use it to force incredibly boring agendas. People use it as an excuse to lecture.