4 ms·

I work in a Corporate where we have lots of "strategy" teams and PPTs flying around. What I learned is that PPT are more than a presentation format in this cul

by Maro 3y ago

I work in a Corporate where we have lots of "strategy" teams and PPTs flying around. What I learned is that PPT are more than a presentation format in this culture, they are a signaling tool: • something that is "just" an email, or "just" something somebody said in a meeting doesn't carry much weight in Corporates • .. but if you put it in a PPT with some graphics, it signals you've thought about it, and probably had some lesser minions also think about it and prepare a PPT • .. further, if you put it in a PPT, that means you're serious about your position --- it signals commitment • .. and finally, a PPT shows that you know how to play the game, you're not some tech weirdo that thinks PPTs are irrelevant PPTs are a cultural currency in Corporates.

KingLancelot 3y ago
[dead]
WanderPanda 3y ago
As a tech weirdo I still think PPTs are the best way to convey concepts. You can mix bullet points with images and video and have everything be progressively revealed exactly when you explain it. I can‘t even think of an alternative to this other than adhoc whiteboard drawings which can‘t match PPTs on any axis except if you‘re just (collaboratively) developing an idea/concept
- blululu 3y ago
  Video is usually more effective for asynchronous presentations. Powerpoint is great for spoken presentations where everyone is in the same room. But they generally suck as summary reports. For thinking and analysis word docs are superior. For asynchronous presentation video is superior. Video allows you to control the timing and framing in a way that a slide deck cannot. The main downside to videos is that they are harder to make. But there is a reason people prefer science documentaries over recorded lectures or lecture slides.
  - smfugit 3y ago
    Books beat them all imho :)
    - hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago
      While I agree, I think we're almost extinct species.
  - 2devnull 3y ago
    Most good video presentations include a ppt or the equivalent. A video is just a spoken presentation that’s recorded, like a live spoken presentation it can include visual aids or not, it’s still a spoken presentation. You may confusing categories of things, or maybe I’m too used to seeing ppt with slides containing embedded video.
    - blululu 3y ago
      Just as a movie can go far beyond being a recording of a theatrical play, a video presentation can offer far more possibilities than simply being a recording of a slide presentation. It can allude to possibilities that are closer to experience and convey a sense of reality that a slide deck can’t achieve.
  - tomjen3 3y ago
    You do know that you can just record your PowerPoint slide with all the spoken world and mouse movement and timing and slide transitions and whatever else, right?
- Maro 3y ago
  At least in Corporates, the point is not the content usually, or at least not 95% of the content. Usually there are 1-2 key slides per PPT that the audience actually cares about, something like the "Roadmap" slide, where you commit to a timeline on the project (even though nobody understands what the project actually is), or the "Costs" slide, where you commit to a budget (even though it's way too early to say). This is the point, supported by the signaling of the PPT itself. The remaining 95% are slides that the audience doesn't care about and/or doesn't understand anyway.
- bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
  On the other hand, there's a good reason that bullet points aren't how formal communication is actually done, which is that they're terrible for actually doing the job of conveying information. For that, you need sentences in paragraphs, and PPT can't really do that. The best option is probably just an html doc — mix text (real text, not bullet points) with whatever media you want. Can be viewed on every device in the world.
  - graypegg 3y ago
    I think what the GP comment is conveying is the cultural factor of a PPT. It’s not good for information communication when not paired with a human being giving the presentation that would say those sentences shown in bullet form. If you have the human, writing full sentences on a slide deck that they just read out is the worst. But the cultural factor is you signalling “I want to PRESENT something to you”. It implies this is a pitch, and you’re only seeing the notes. It’s a way to say “come talk to me”. The information density being so low is kind of a feature.
  - xattt 3y ago
    > On the other hand, there's a good reason that bullet points aren't how formal communication is actually done … You clearly have not met my grad school classmates who used PPTs to lead seminars, but used slides as their full-sentence speaking notes. Slideshow presentations work, but execution is key.
  - ako 3y ago
    There's really no need to limit yourself to bulletpoints in PPT. Powerpoint offers so many other ways of illustrating information. I really like powerpoint as it's one of the simplest tools to do visual animated story telling.
  - dredmorbius 3y ago
    Bullet-points deliver facts and concepts. Paragraphs deliver narrative. Both have their place, and you could trace each to far earlier forms, such as religious iconography or clan shields, and sagas or mythic poems. Iconography encapsulates an existing notion, or expresses an identity or affinity. Sagas and mythic poems contain stories with characters, events, themes, morals, and other teachings, and are structured mnemonically through verse, meter, rhyme, allusion, and often musical intonation or accompaniment, to facilitate recollection both for the teller and the audience. I'm not much of a fan of slide decks myself, largely, though as a storytelling aid they can be quite useful. That takes skill however, and instruction. Edward Tufte's suggestions for how to use slides to accompany a talk (but not substitute for it) are excellent.
- broast 3y ago
  I usually just scroll up and down a formatted document
- ekianjo 3y ago
  > I still think PPTs are the best way to convey concepts. Man I wonder how humanity was able to function with concepts before the PPT format was born. Surely this resulted in an explosion of productivity?
  - agumonkey 3y ago
    If you can't see, it may be that you're not a player /s
- 2devnull 3y ago
  Yep. I think things like Jupiter are really just imitating ppt. It’s generally the same concept, a linear series of information chunks, mixing text and graphics, the formality of written prose stripped away, just enough for one sitting. PPT are great, it’s the people who only use PowerPoint, often for nefarious ends, that I am distrustful of, not the modality itself.
- atrettel 3y ago
  > I can‘t even think of an alternative to this other than adhoc whiteboard drawings which can‘t match PPTs on any axis except if you‘re just (collaboratively) developing an idea/concept I think this is a major part of the problem. Powerpoint is so commonplace now that we cannot even conceive of different ways of presenting information to groups. If you cannot figure out how to express an idea in the medium of Powerpoint or slideware in general, then that idea is difficult to express nowadays. That limits the kind of information you can share, especially complex information that is not so easily conveyed in bullet points or in sparse infographics. "The medium is the message", in other words. Maybe I'm old, but I remember going over a lot of information in group settings without the use of Powerpoint. Here's a few examples of alternatives: - overhead projectors (common when I was in elementary school) - slide projectors - lectures and speeches - live demonstrations - field and laboratory work (can be very hands-on learning) - panel discussions and debates - group discussions (after everyone reads a book or report) - displaying a written report on a screen rather than distinct slides (I do this myself sometimes) Some of these aren't going to work that well if you need to convey Q3 sales figures, for example, but my point is that there are other options out there even though Powerpoint has flooded the arena. Note that you can even combine these with Powerpoint or slideware and get the best of both worlds too for that matter. I'm not against Powerpoint as much as I dislike how it is conventionally used. (I must also note that many people, myself included, hate the "slow crawl" of having information revealed progressively. It might work sparingly for dramatic effect but having been in so many meetings with bad speakers, it is far too easily abused and always makes me ask myself "When will the speaker get to the point?").
ekianjo 3y ago
And ppt is the main reason why people stop doing any work and instead prepare powerpoints all day long for the next reviews or meetings
OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
This is on the money, especially "commitment" to playing the game. In my industry, the supplicant presenter is acknowledging that the audience is busy, important, and only needs the "smart points" that s/he's slaved to provide on the corporate template and color scheme. Of course, Tufte pointed out that this can kill people. https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=... https://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/pi/2016_2017/phil/tufte-powerpoint.pdf https://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/pi/2016_2017/phil/...
jdblair 3y ago
The classic corporate PPT slide is a disaster of over-information! I try hard to keep my slides short, with text that is a jumping off point for my actual presentation, but my effort to teach this method has mostly fallen on deaf ears. When the information density is high, or there is a just a lot of text, then the audience reads the slide instead of listening to the speaker (that is, they're reading the slide instead of listening to me). When I gave a colleague this feedback, he just told me that the information density is a positive thing, and then showed me a 100 page PPT from a previous job that amounted to the spec for a contract. So, different strokes? I guess if the PPT is meant to be standalone, to not accompany a speaker, then the high information density works. I still try to convey only one major idea per slide, and I leave specs to written documents. A final comment: the only thing for me that is personally more distracting than a high density slide is looped animation in the slide. My ADHD brain just locks onto that visual cue, and it takes serious conscious effort to keep focused on the presenter. [edited to correct a typo]
- VoodooJuJu 3y ago
  Yeah, you're a tech weirdo. Don't out yourself this easily. Don't talk about "your brain" and ADHD and "information density" and all that. It's better to conceal your power level in the corporate world. If you want to play with the corporate chads, you need to play by the rules, however awful those rules may be.
  - chasd00 3y ago
    Heh I work in a very large corp everyone here knows and deal with 70-80 slide decks more than code these days and also happen to be named Chad ;)
- onion2k 3y ago
  The classic corporate PPT slide is a disaster of over-information! There are two kinds of slidedeck. One that's behind you when you're presenting, and one that's shared to be viewed without the presenter. Using either in the wrong situation results in people thinking it's a 'bad powerpoint' that has either too little information because the presenter isn't there to fill in the blanks, or too much because the presenter is just reading it out.
HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
> PPTs are a cultural currency in Corporates. Sure, but not always in a good way Where I work it seems that for the execs the PPT is the product They get credit for the PPT/presentation and zero demerits for not actually following through and delivering For dev groups reporting up, you get more credit for a good PPT putting a spin on a shitty project than for a project well done.
- tough 3y ago
  The theater has always become the work indeed
analog31 3y ago
I think it's as simple as, if you put it in a PPT, you can rest assured that it will be readable and usable by the recipient, which includes passing them along to other people, presenting it, using the slides in other presentations, and so forth. If you choose some "weird" format, then the burden is on you when someone can't use it for some reason.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  PPT is the least likely format I’d be able to read. I’d open it in LibreOffice but its handling of PPT is quite poor. PDF is what I see used when the sender is aware that not all the recipients are using Windows

by Maro 3y ago

KingLancelot 3y ago

[dead]

WanderPanda 3y ago

As a tech weirdo I still think PPTs are the best way to convey concepts. You can mix bullet points with images and video and have everything be progressively revealed exactly when you explain it. I can‘t even think of an alternative to this other than adhoc whiteboard drawings which can‘t match PPTs on any axis except if you‘re just (collaboratively) developing an idea/concept

blululu 3y ago
Video is usually more effective for asynchronous presentations. Powerpoint is great for spoken presentations where everyone is in the same room. But they generally suck as summary reports. For thinking and analysis word docs are superior. For asynchronous presentation video is superior. Video allows you to control the timing and framing in a way that a slide deck cannot. The main downside to videos is that they are harder to make. But there is a reason people prefer science documentaries over recorded lectures or lecture slides.
- smfugit 3y ago
  Books beat them all imho :)
  - hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago
    While I agree, I think we're almost extinct species.
- 2devnull 3y ago
  Most good video presentations include a ppt or the equivalent. A video is just a spoken presentation that’s recorded, like a live spoken presentation it can include visual aids or not, it’s still a spoken presentation. You may confusing categories of things, or maybe I’m too used to seeing ppt with slides containing embedded video.
  - blululu 3y ago
    Just as a movie can go far beyond being a recording of a theatrical play, a video presentation can offer far more possibilities than simply being a recording of a slide presentation. It can allude to possibilities that are closer to experience and convey a sense of reality that a slide deck can’t achieve.
- tomjen3 3y ago
  You do know that you can just record your PowerPoint slide with all the spoken world and mouse movement and timing and slide transitions and whatever else, right?
Maro 3y ago
At least in Corporates, the point is not the content usually, or at least not 95% of the content. Usually there are 1-2 key slides per PPT that the audience actually cares about, something like the "Roadmap" slide, where you commit to a timeline on the project (even though nobody understands what the project actually is), or the "Costs" slide, where you commit to a budget (even though it's way too early to say). This is the point, supported by the signaling of the PPT itself. The remaining 95% are slides that the audience doesn't care about and/or doesn't understand anyway.
bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
On the other hand, there's a good reason that bullet points aren't how formal communication is actually done, which is that they're terrible for actually doing the job of conveying information. For that, you need sentences in paragraphs, and PPT can't really do that. The best option is probably just an html doc — mix text (real text, not bullet points) with whatever media you want. Can be viewed on every device in the world.
- graypegg 3y ago
  I think what the GP comment is conveying is the cultural factor of a PPT. It’s not good for information communication when not paired with a human being giving the presentation that would say those sentences shown in bullet form. If you have the human, writing full sentences on a slide deck that they just read out is the worst. But the cultural factor is you signalling “I want to PRESENT something to you”. It implies this is a pitch, and you’re only seeing the notes. It’s a way to say “come talk to me”. The information density being so low is kind of a feature.
- xattt 3y ago
  > On the other hand, there's a good reason that bullet points aren't how formal communication is actually done … You clearly have not met my grad school classmates who used PPTs to lead seminars, but used slides as their full-sentence speaking notes. Slideshow presentations work, but execution is key.
- ako 3y ago
  There's really no need to limit yourself to bulletpoints in PPT. Powerpoint offers so many other ways of illustrating information. I really like powerpoint as it's one of the simplest tools to do visual animated story telling.
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  Bullet-points deliver facts and concepts. Paragraphs deliver narrative. Both have their place, and you could trace each to far earlier forms, such as religious iconography or clan shields, and sagas or mythic poems. Iconography encapsulates an existing notion, or expresses an identity or affinity. Sagas and mythic poems contain stories with characters, events, themes, morals, and other teachings, and are structured mnemonically through verse, meter, rhyme, allusion, and often musical intonation or accompaniment, to facilitate recollection both for the teller and the audience. I'm not much of a fan of slide decks myself, largely, though as a storytelling aid they can be quite useful. That takes skill however, and instruction. Edward Tufte's suggestions for how to use slides to accompany a talk (but not substitute for it) are excellent.
broast 3y ago
I usually just scroll up and down a formatted document
ekianjo 3y ago
> I still think PPTs are the best way to convey concepts. Man I wonder how humanity was able to function with concepts before the PPT format was born. Surely this resulted in an explosion of productivity?
- agumonkey 3y ago
  If you can't see, it may be that you're not a player /s
2devnull 3y ago
Yep. I think things like Jupiter are really just imitating ppt. It’s generally the same concept, a linear series of information chunks, mixing text and graphics, the formality of written prose stripped away, just enough for one sitting. PPT are great, it’s the people who only use PowerPoint, often for nefarious ends, that I am distrustful of, not the modality itself.
atrettel 3y ago
> I can‘t even think of an alternative to this other than adhoc whiteboard drawings which can‘t match PPTs on any axis except if you‘re just (collaboratively) developing an idea/concept I think this is a major part of the problem. Powerpoint is so commonplace now that we cannot even conceive of different ways of presenting information to groups. If you cannot figure out how to express an idea in the medium of Powerpoint or slideware in general, then that idea is difficult to express nowadays. That limits the kind of information you can share, especially complex information that is not so easily conveyed in bullet points or in sparse infographics. "The medium is the message", in other words. Maybe I'm old, but I remember going over a lot of information in group settings without the use of Powerpoint. Here's a few examples of alternatives: - overhead projectors (common when I was in elementary school) - slide projectors - lectures and speeches - live demonstrations - field and laboratory work (can be very hands-on learning) - panel discussions and debates - group discussions (after everyone reads a book or report) - displaying a written report on a screen rather than distinct slides (I do this myself sometimes) Some of these aren't going to work that well if you need to convey Q3 sales figures, for example, but my point is that there are other options out there even though Powerpoint has flooded the arena. Note that you can even combine these with Powerpoint or slideware and get the best of both worlds too for that matter. I'm not against Powerpoint as much as I dislike how it is conventionally used. (I must also note that many people, myself included, hate the "slow crawl" of having information revealed progressively. It might work sparingly for dramatic effect but having been in so many meetings with bad speakers, it is far too easily abused and always makes me ask myself "When will the speaker get to the point?").

ekianjo 3y ago

And ppt is the main reason why people stop doing any work and instead prepare powerpoints all day long for the next reviews or meetings

OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago

This is on the money, especially "commitment" to playing the game. In my industry, the supplicant presenter is acknowledging that the audience is busy, important, and only needs the "smart points" that s/he's slaved to provide on the corporate template and color scheme. Of course, Tufte pointed out that this can kill people. https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=... https://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/pi/2016_2017/phil/tufte-powerpoint.pdf https://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/pi/2016_2017/phil/...

jdblair 3y ago

The classic corporate PPT slide is a disaster of over-information! I try hard to keep my slides short, with text that is a jumping off point for my actual presentation, but my effort to teach this method has mostly fallen on deaf ears. When the information density is high, or there is a just a lot of text, then the audience reads the slide instead of listening to the speaker (that is, they're reading the slide instead of listening to me). When I gave a colleague this feedback, he just told me that the information density is a positive thing, and then showed me a 100 page PPT from a previous job that amounted to the spec for a contract. So, different strokes? I guess if the PPT is meant to be standalone, to not accompany a speaker, then the high information density works. I still try to convey only one major idea per slide, and I leave specs to written documents. A final comment: the only thing for me that is personally more distracting than a high density slide is looped animation in the slide. My ADHD brain just locks onto that visual cue, and it takes serious conscious effort to keep focused on the presenter. [edited to correct a typo]

VoodooJuJu 3y ago
Yeah, you're a tech weirdo. Don't out yourself this easily. Don't talk about "your brain" and ADHD and "information density" and all that. It's better to conceal your power level in the corporate world. If you want to play with the corporate chads, you need to play by the rules, however awful those rules may be.
- chasd00 3y ago
  Heh I work in a very large corp everyone here knows and deal with 70-80 slide decks more than code these days and also happen to be named Chad ;)
onion2k 3y ago
The classic corporate PPT slide is a disaster of over-information! There are two kinds of slidedeck. One that's behind you when you're presenting, and one that's shared to be viewed without the presenter. Using either in the wrong situation results in people thinking it's a 'bad powerpoint' that has either too little information because the presenter isn't there to fill in the blanks, or too much because the presenter is just reading it out.

HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago

> PPTs are a cultural currency in Corporates. Sure, but not always in a good way Where I work it seems that for the execs the PPT is the product They get credit for the PPT/presentation and zero demerits for not actually following through and delivering For dev groups reporting up, you get more credit for a good PPT putting a spin on a shitty project than for a project well done.

tough 3y ago
The theater has always become the work indeed

analog31 3y ago

I think it's as simple as, if you put it in a PPT, you can rest assured that it will be readable and usable by the recipient, which includes passing them along to other people, presenting it, using the slides in other presentations, and so forth. If you choose some "weird" format, then the burden is on you when someone can't use it for some reason.

SoftTalker 3y ago
PPT is the least likely format I’d be able to read. I’d open it in LibreOffice but its handling of PPT is quite poor. PDF is what I see used when the sender is aware that not all the recipients are using Windows