4 ms·

I normally don't get much from presentation slides; they aren't even intended to be consumed independent of the speaker's remarks and they often amount to the b

by arebop 4y ago

I normally don't get much from presentation slides; they aren't even intended to be consumed independent of the speaker's remarks and they often amount to the bullet points of someone's outline. But in this case, the article is an extremely poor summary of this comparatively rich and substantial presentation. Thanks for sharing this link. It is much more comprehensible than the article itself.

ghaff 4y ago
> they aren't even intended to be consumed independent of the speaker's remarks Historically, yes, as an aspirational goal. Even if, in practice, a lot of people didn't want to or didn't get around to creating a doc to go along with the presentation. That said, I've seen a real trend over the past decade of a lot of people wanting to consume content/ideas/etc. from a slide format rather than reading paragraphs of text. So it's pretty normal--at least for routine information sharing--to create a text-heavy presentation and just hit the high points when presenting from it. Not sure this is even a bad thing for a lot of purposes--especially to the degree people can put together cogent sets of bullet points but aren't that great at pages of prose.
- mikea1 4y ago
  > I've seen a real trend over the past decade of a lot of people wanting to consume content/ideas/etc. from a slide format rather than reading paragraphs of text. I prefer long form content... but spending time in the comments section of HN may show a revealed preference. I concur with your observation. Piling on with a couple examples: - Axios is a news service that only delivers information in bullet points. Unlike their long-form competitors, they are expanding into local news. [0] - Long form content, such as books, are less popular. The average number of books read each year has fallen to a 30 year low. [1] [0] https://www.axios.com/local/columbus/2022/11/22/introducing-axios-cleveland-sam-allard-troy-smith https://www.axios.com/local/columbus/2022/11/22/introducing-... [1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/388541/americans-reading-fewer-books-past.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/388541/americans-reading-fewer-...
- mort96 4y ago
  That sounds like the worst of both worlds? You end up with a slide deck that doesn't contain the information added by the presenter, but which are too info-heavy to work well during the talk.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I'm talking more about program updates, "know before you go" information about events, etc. rather than conference keynotes. (Of course, there are many things in between.) For this sort of thing you really do want a canonical source of information--including for those who didn't attend a call that hit the highlights. And these days that tends to be a fairly dense slide deck because that's what a lot of people prefer and you meet people where they are. My conference presentations don't generally have a lot of words. But that's not all I do and it does mean my conference presentation slide decks aren't super-informative on their own.

by arebop 4y ago

ghaff 4y ago

> they aren't even intended to be consumed independent of the speaker's remarks Historically, yes, as an aspirational goal. Even if, in practice, a lot of people didn't want to or didn't get around to creating a doc to go along with the presentation. That said, I've seen a real trend over the past decade of a lot of people wanting to consume content/ideas/etc. from a slide format rather than reading paragraphs of text. So it's pretty normal--at least for routine information sharing--to create a text-heavy presentation and just hit the high points when presenting from it. Not sure this is even a bad thing for a lot of purposes--especially to the degree people can put together cogent sets of bullet points but aren't that great at pages of prose.

mikea1 4y ago
> I've seen a real trend over the past decade of a lot of people wanting to consume content/ideas/etc. from a slide format rather than reading paragraphs of text. I prefer long form content... but spending time in the comments section of HN may show a revealed preference. I concur with your observation. Piling on with a couple examples: - Axios is a news service that only delivers information in bullet points. Unlike their long-form competitors, they are expanding into local news. [0] - Long form content, such as books, are less popular. The average number of books read each year has fallen to a 30 year low. [1] [0] https://www.axios.com/local/columbus/2022/11/22/introducing-axios-cleveland-sam-allard-troy-smith https://www.axios.com/local/columbus/2022/11/22/introducing-... [1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/388541/americans-reading-fewer-books-past.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/388541/americans-reading-fewer-...
mort96 4y ago
That sounds like the worst of both worlds? You end up with a slide deck that doesn't contain the information added by the presenter, but which are too info-heavy to work well during the talk.
- ghaff 4y ago
  I'm talking more about program updates, "know before you go" information about events, etc. rather than conference keynotes. (Of course, there are many things in between.) For this sort of thing you really do want a canonical source of information--including for those who didn't attend a call that hit the highlights. And these days that tends to be a fairly dense slide deck because that's what a lot of people prefer and you meet people where they are. My conference presentations don't generally have a lot of words. But that's not all I do and it does mean my conference presentation slide decks aren't super-informative on their own.