6 ms·

Next slide, please: A brief history of the corporate presentation

65 points by gumby 3y ago

constantly 3y ago
Unfortunately presented as a long form article and not a presentation.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- gumby 3y ago
  s/Unfortunately/Thankfully/ but a great point!
Sharlin 3y ago
I wonder how many people these days know why PowerPoint slides are called slides.
- Symbiote 3y ago
  A microscope slide is similar in purpose to a photographic slide, and I hope most people use those at some point in their school education.
- contingencies 3y ago
  Oh I know this one. It's because of the default transition animations, right?
ghaff 3y ago
This really focuses on high end corporate presentations. I remember 35mm customer presentation mixed in with printed foils as being a lot more pedestrian—and some of the slides were invariably out of date because getting them updated could take a month or more.
crabl 3y ago
A great book on this topic is Sweating Bullets by Robert Gaskins, the inventor of PowerPoint. It's amazing how little the core of that program has changed since it was first introduced.
joezydeco 3y ago
There's a decent sized gap in this history, between transparencies or foils on top of an overhead projector and the modern era where laptops were connected to long-throw video projectors. This middle period was filled by the creation of LCD panels that fit on top of an overhead projector and acted as a rudimentary video projector. The earliest ones were black and white and CGA only. I recall my dad using the early version of MS Paint to make images that he'd throw up on the screen with an Eastman Kodak LCD unit. Here's an example made by 3M: https://scientific-solutions.com/ebay/lcdpanel/lcdpanel.html https://scientific-solutions.com/ebay/lcdpanel/lcdpanel.html Later on, IBM actually had a specific model of ThinkPad, the 755CDV, that had a detachable backlight panel on the display. You would strap the entire laptop to an overhead projector to do your presentation. https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:755CDV https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:755CDV
- catiopatio 3y ago
  SGI also made an LCD display with a detachable backlight panel for this purpose — the Indy Presenter: http://archive.irixnet.org/siliconsurf/products/Indy/presenter_sidebar.html http://archive.irixnet.org/siliconsurf/products/Indy/present... “When combined with an Indy workstation--a nifty shoulder bag handles both--you have most of the tools you need for a first rate show on the road.” I had an Indy workstation, the Presenter display, and the shoulder bag — but I never lugged the thing to a presentation.
datadrivenangel 3y ago
30 years of powerpoint and we still think it's a good idea?
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Yes, the problem is mostly lack of skills than the powerpoints themselves.
- unethical_ban 3y ago
  Slide decks are an assistant tool to a presentation. They are meant to support what a presenter is saying, not too do heavy lifting. With very few exceptions, a slide deck should not be wholly comprehensible by itself. But too often, people put multiple paragraphs on a slide like they attached the script.
- probably_wrong 3y ago
  PowerPoint is only a bad idea if you assume that giving "regular people" access to powerful tools is a bad idea. I've had to modify slides many times to dump aaaall my information in there because my boss at the time didn't know the difference between a slide deck and a handout. I know I bored everyone to death. But is it fair to blame the tool? Maybe there's a point to be made that PowerPoint should be more strict in what it accepts, and that current trends in boring you to death are a result of that. But I don't think PowerPoint is bad idea per se.
  - datadrivenangel 3y ago
    This is my least favorite part: lack of clarity about whether people want a document or a presentation.
- greggsy 3y ago
  Yes, we do. It’s a succinct prompt that assists with communication and engagement. I’m sorry you’ve had a bad experience.
toddmorey 3y ago
When I did college in the mid-90s, the American Advertising Federation had not yet green-lighted digital projectors. (Which was ok, because the resolution and brightness at the time was pretty terrible.) So for the national contests we'd send digital artwork off to be printed as actual slides and run two synchronized projectors which would crossfade. It was tricky to set up and order the slides because they alternated across the two machines, and of course edits were impossible. We also had an entirely separate film projector for the commercials we'd made. As analog as the tech was, it was almost indistinguishable from a modern presentation in experience. Just a whole lot more gear to lug around.
paulmooreparks 3y ago
I don't know how many times I've been in a meeting or on a conference call with an executive, and the exec will say something like, "Can someone open PowerPoint and start taking notes?" Not OneNote, not Word, not even freakin' Notepad. PowerPoint. For meeting notes. It's like that's the only app they can use. Is there a lobotomy that's done in business school that causes this thinking?
- eternityforest 3y ago
  They definitely can also use Excel. They're both awesome apps(Although PowerPoint is easy to misuse for extreme time wasting watching someone just literally read slides), so they might have a reason. I use Keep, but generally when someone has a nonsensical seeming process involving commercial GUI software it usually works fine. Kinda clunky but easier than no tech, more reliable than any custom made solution, and sometimes the other off the shelf alternatives have downsides. Maybe the meeting is being structured by a PowerPoint, and they want to take notes in the same format so that each slide in the notes corresponds to a slide in the meeting presentation or something.
- postexitus 3y ago
  No, because this never happened.
- colejohnson66 3y ago
  The same reason everyone uses Excel as a database: it's all they know, and it comes in every tier of the Office suite.
- Nzen 3y ago
  Perhaps this person uses it as a constrained writing environment, similar to why some people use locked down editors [0]. If I am forced to summarize the meeting onto index cards, I am obliged to keep the essence and discard the details. [0] https://hemingwrite.com/ https://hemingwrite.com/
  - gumby 3y ago
    Interesting thinking, a plausible reason why someone might want to do this. Still seems terrible to me, but not everybody is the same. Thanks!
haberdasher 3y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM8JsM8jNcc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM8JsM8jNcc
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bitwize 3y ago
I remember an assembly at school that consisted of a multi-image presentation called Eye to Eye. In terms of content I think it fell into the typical early 90s don't-do-school, stay-in-drugs messaging of the time, but I was fascinated by it because it was driven by nine computer-controlled, precisely timed slide projectors arranged in a 3x3 square with accompanying audio playback; and supplemented by a 16mm film projector that occasionally replaced the center slide projector and provided "video" in the center of the square surrounded by images from the other eight projectors. By switching slides on a "rolling" schedule, the slide projectors could achieve very smooth fades and transitions. Combined with the accompanying audio, it made for an effect that was almost movie-like, showing characters moving and speaking more smoothly than you would expect a slideshow to be capable of. The humble slide projector is far more capable than one might guess, and has played a central role in all manner of visual presentation: the infamous "Big Board" from the gameshow Press Your Luck, for instance, consisted of slide projectors showing the various cash amounts, prizes, Whammies, etc. onto screens around the perimeter of the board, while border lights around each screen turned on to highlight which one the player would win if they hit the stop button. Famously, this arrangement was not random and super exploitable. Now of course, the slide projector has joined the rotary phone and the floppy disk on the scrap heap of once-ubiquitous technologies that vanished after their moment passed.
- bitwize 3y ago
  Thinking on it some there may have been eighteen projectors, allowing the first set of nine to crossfade into the second set of nine. Analogue double-buffering!
cancerhacker 3y ago
Back in the 80's, about the time PowerPoint was gestating, Dave Winer's ThinkTank begat MORE on the Mac. It was a simple text outliner - but press a button and the structure turned into a presentation. Symantec thought it had huge potential and bought the product for several more years of development, but it lost steam in the early 90s, despite it's dedicated fans. (Mostly people that wanted it for outlining more than presentations.)

65 points by gumby 3y ago

constantly 3y ago

Unfortunately presented as a long form article and not a presentation.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gumby 3y ago
s/Unfortunately/Thankfully/ but a great point!

Sharlin 3y ago

I wonder how many people these days know why PowerPoint slides are called slides.

Symbiote 3y ago
A microscope slide is similar in purpose to a photographic slide, and I hope most people use those at some point in their school education.
contingencies 3y ago
Oh I know this one. It's because of the default transition animations, right?

ghaff 3y ago

This really focuses on high end corporate presentations. I remember 35mm customer presentation mixed in with printed foils as being a lot more pedestrian—and some of the slides were invariably out of date because getting them updated could take a month or more.

crabl 3y ago

A great book on this topic is Sweating Bullets by Robert Gaskins, the inventor of PowerPoint. It's amazing how little the core of that program has changed since it was first introduced.

joezydeco 3y ago

There's a decent sized gap in this history, between transparencies or foils on top of an overhead projector and the modern era where laptops were connected to long-throw video projectors. This middle period was filled by the creation of LCD panels that fit on top of an overhead projector and acted as a rudimentary video projector. The earliest ones were black and white and CGA only. I recall my dad using the early version of MS Paint to make images that he'd throw up on the screen with an Eastman Kodak LCD unit. Here's an example made by 3M: https://scientific-solutions.com/ebay/lcdpanel/lcdpanel.html https://scientific-solutions.com/ebay/lcdpanel/lcdpanel.html Later on, IBM actually had a specific model of ThinkPad, the 755CDV, that had a detachable backlight panel on the display. You would strap the entire laptop to an overhead projector to do your presentation. https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:755CDV https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:755CDV

catiopatio 3y ago
SGI also made an LCD display with a detachable backlight panel for this purpose — the Indy Presenter: http://archive.irixnet.org/siliconsurf/products/Indy/presenter_sidebar.html http://archive.irixnet.org/siliconsurf/products/Indy/present... “When combined with an Indy workstation--a nifty shoulder bag handles both--you have most of the tools you need for a first rate show on the road.” I had an Indy workstation, the Presenter display, and the shoulder bag — but I never lugged the thing to a presentation.

datadrivenangel 3y ago

30 years of powerpoint and we still think it's a good idea?

pjmlp 3y ago
Yes, the problem is mostly lack of skills than the powerpoints themselves.
unethical_ban 3y ago
Slide decks are an assistant tool to a presentation. They are meant to support what a presenter is saying, not too do heavy lifting. With very few exceptions, a slide deck should not be wholly comprehensible by itself. But too often, people put multiple paragraphs on a slide like they attached the script.
probably_wrong 3y ago
PowerPoint is only a bad idea if you assume that giving "regular people" access to powerful tools is a bad idea. I've had to modify slides many times to dump aaaall my information in there because my boss at the time didn't know the difference between a slide deck and a handout. I know I bored everyone to death. But is it fair to blame the tool? Maybe there's a point to be made that PowerPoint should be more strict in what it accepts, and that current trends in boring you to death are a result of that. But I don't think PowerPoint is bad idea per se.
- datadrivenangel 3y ago
  This is my least favorite part: lack of clarity about whether people want a document or a presentation.
greggsy 3y ago
Yes, we do. It’s a succinct prompt that assists with communication and engagement. I’m sorry you’ve had a bad experience.

toddmorey 3y ago

When I did college in the mid-90s, the American Advertising Federation had not yet green-lighted digital projectors. (Which was ok, because the resolution and brightness at the time was pretty terrible.) So for the national contests we'd send digital artwork off to be printed as actual slides and run two synchronized projectors which would crossfade. It was tricky to set up and order the slides because they alternated across the two machines, and of course edits were impossible. We also had an entirely separate film projector for the commercials we'd made. As analog as the tech was, it was almost indistinguishable from a modern presentation in experience. Just a whole lot more gear to lug around.

paulmooreparks 3y ago

I don't know how many times I've been in a meeting or on a conference call with an executive, and the exec will say something like, "Can someone open PowerPoint and start taking notes?" Not OneNote, not Word, not even freakin' Notepad. PowerPoint. For meeting notes. It's like that's the only app they can use. Is there a lobotomy that's done in business school that causes this thinking?

eternityforest 3y ago
They definitely can also use Excel. They're both awesome apps(Although PowerPoint is easy to misuse for extreme time wasting watching someone just literally read slides), so they might have a reason. I use Keep, but generally when someone has a nonsensical seeming process involving commercial GUI software it usually works fine. Kinda clunky but easier than no tech, more reliable than any custom made solution, and sometimes the other off the shelf alternatives have downsides. Maybe the meeting is being structured by a PowerPoint, and they want to take notes in the same format so that each slide in the notes corresponds to a slide in the meeting presentation or something.
postexitus 3y ago
No, because this never happened.
colejohnson66 3y ago
The same reason everyone uses Excel as a database: it's all they know, and it comes in every tier of the Office suite.
Nzen 3y ago
Perhaps this person uses it as a constrained writing environment, similar to why some people use locked down editors [0]. If I am forced to summarize the meeting onto index cards, I am obliged to keep the essence and discard the details. [0] https://hemingwrite.com/ https://hemingwrite.com/
- gumby 3y ago
  Interesting thinking, a plausible reason why someone might want to do this. Still seems terrible to me, but not everybody is the same. Thanks!

haberdasher 3y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM8JsM8jNcc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM8JsM8jNcc

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

bitwize 3y ago

I remember an assembly at school that consisted of a multi-image presentation called Eye to Eye. In terms of content I think it fell into the typical early 90s don't-do-school, stay-in-drugs messaging of the time, but I was fascinated by it because it was driven by nine computer-controlled, precisely timed slide projectors arranged in a 3x3 square with accompanying audio playback; and supplemented by a 16mm film projector that occasionally replaced the center slide projector and provided "video" in the center of the square surrounded by images from the other eight projectors. By switching slides on a "rolling" schedule, the slide projectors could achieve very smooth fades and transitions. Combined with the accompanying audio, it made for an effect that was almost movie-like, showing characters moving and speaking more smoothly than you would expect a slideshow to be capable of. The humble slide projector is far more capable than one might guess, and has played a central role in all manner of visual presentation: the infamous "Big Board" from the gameshow Press Your Luck, for instance, consisted of slide projectors showing the various cash amounts, prizes, Whammies, etc. onto screens around the perimeter of the board, while border lights around each screen turned on to highlight which one the player would win if they hit the stop button. Famously, this arrangement was not random and super exploitable. Now of course, the slide projector has joined the rotary phone and the floppy disk on the scrap heap of once-ubiquitous technologies that vanished after their moment passed.

bitwize 3y ago
Thinking on it some there may have been eighteen projectors, allowing the first set of nine to crossfade into the second set of nine. Analogue double-buffering!

cancerhacker 3y ago

Back in the 80's, about the time PowerPoint was gestating, Dave Winer's ThinkTank begat MORE on the Mac. It was a simple text outliner - but press a button and the structure turned into a presentation. Symantec thought it had huge potential and bought the product for several more years of development, but it lost steam in the early 90s, despite it's dedicated fans. (Mostly people that wanted it for outlining more than presentations.)