3 ms·

Making a presentation to others (the context of TFA) is not about socialization, it is about exchanging ideas. If you aren't communicating well there, you are f

Making a presentation to others (the context of TFA) is not about socialization, it is about exchanging ideas. If you aren't communicating well there, you are failing at the primary objective. I do agree there are contexts where the information transfer is not important (the ritual gum smacking). Good communicators can identify which is which and act appropriately.

jrockway 15y ago
Are you sure? I think business presentations are 99% getting your name out there and 1% teaching people valuable information. I've been to them and I'm not sure how anyone could pay attention to the content because it's very very slow-moving and boring. But now I know the presenter. Hence, it's obvious that this is a social ritual rather than something that makes objective good use of everyone's time. (The audience members attend so that other audience members will remember them too.) (We recently had some company-wide meeting that was a few hours long. I realized that I could have read an essay version of the "presentation" in five minutes. 1 hour and 55 minutes times 300,000 employees makes presentations a pretty fucking dumb way of sharing information, if the only purpose is in fact to share information.)
- tedunangst 15y ago
  Company wide meetings are so that nobody can claim they didn't get the memo. It's not just about sharing information, it's the implicit threat that everyone knows the information has been shared with you. Lots of other ways to solve that problem, but apparently herding everyone in the same room is the accepted default.
billswift 15y ago
Nonsense. You can communicate anything at all complex faster, more clearly, and above all more reliably in print, even in an email, than by speech. Meetings and presentations are all about status and signaling.

3 ms·

Making a presentation to others (the context of TFA) is not about socialization, it is about exchanging ideas. If you aren't communicating well there, you are f

by SoftwareMaven 15y ago

jrockway 15y ago
Are you sure? I think business presentations are 99% getting your name out there and 1% teaching people valuable information. I've been to them and I'm not sure how anyone could pay attention to the content because it's very very slow-moving and boring. But now I know the presenter. Hence, it's obvious that this is a social ritual rather than something that makes objective good use of everyone's time. (The audience members attend so that other audience members will remember them too.) (We recently had some company-wide meeting that was a few hours long. I realized that I could have read an essay version of the "presentation" in five minutes. 1 hour and 55 minutes times 300,000 employees makes presentations a pretty fucking dumb way of sharing information, if the only purpose is in fact to share information.)
- tedunangst 15y ago
  Company wide meetings are so that nobody can claim they didn't get the memo. It's not just about sharing information, it's the implicit threat that everyone knows the information has been shared with you. Lots of other ways to solve that problem, but apparently herding everyone in the same room is the accepted default.
billswift 15y ago
Nonsense. You can communicate anything at all complex faster, more clearly, and above all more reliably in print, even in an email, than by speech. Meetings and presentations are all about status and signaling.