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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 prese

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.

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.