4 ms·

This hints at the key problem, which is that there are two kinds of slide decks: those meant to accompany a live presentation, and those meant to be flipped thr

This hints at the key problem, which is that there are two kinds of slide decks: those meant to accompany a live presentation, and those meant to be flipped through with no accompaniment. When the former are used for the latter purpose, they are near useless. When the latter are used for the former purpose, they are worse than useless.

ryandrake 3y ago
Yes. Almost every slide deck I have been asked to put together in 25 years of work has been the second kind. And they don’t always even accompany a presentation. Stop me when you’ve heard this one: you have a detailed status doc and a spreadsheet full of data on a particular project. Your boss tells you Director X or VP Y wants to read about that project. Those docs would be perfect! They are the canonical source of truth about the project, but the big shots just won’t read them so you need to summarize everything into a slide deck instead, which apparently people high up on the food chain can read. No matter how good that deck is it’s not going to be compete, and exec will end up with questions anyway. So much of my career has been converting information in various forms into slide decks for people with a child’s attention span. This is one thing I’d love it if AI could do effectively and reliably. I could work 10 hour weeks.
bananaflag 3y ago
> When the latter are used for the former purpose, they are worse than useless. I passionately disagree with this. I find it much better to focus on a talk (granted, I'm talking here about math talks primarily) if I know that all there is to know is contained in what I'm seeing, and that it's alright if I occasionally don't pay attention to the speaker. (I'm much more attuned to the written word than to the spoken word, and I imagine I'm not alone in this.)
- recursivecaveat 3y ago
  Yeah, the more talks I attend, the more I differ with 'powerpoint minimalism orthodoxy'. I would much rather your presentation be a subset of the slides than a superset. Then I can relax and appreciate it rather than worry about transcribing you or something. If its actually important to me than I will spend much more time reviewing the material than listening to it this once, so focus on providing a comprehensive reference. And we both know you're not going to write up a whole separate document that's the exact same material in more detail, kept up to date, so just make it the slides. The preference for minimalism I think comes from a thought process that conflates entertaining with effective. (all else equal, obviously more entertaining will make you more engaged which is more effective, but the equal is carrying some heavy weight there)

ryandrake 3y ago

Yes. Almost every slide deck I have been asked to put together in 25 years of work has been the second kind. And they don’t always even accompany a presentation. Stop me when you’ve heard this one: you have a detailed status doc and a spreadsheet full of data on a particular project. Your boss tells you Director X or VP Y wants to read about that project. Those docs would be perfect! They are the canonical source of truth about the project, but the big shots just won’t read them so you need to summarize everything into a slide deck instead, which apparently people high up on the food chain can read. No matter how good that deck is it’s not going to be compete, and exec will end up with questions anyway. So much of my career has been converting information in various forms into slide decks for people with a child’s attention span. This is one thing I’d love it if AI could do effectively and reliably. I could work 10 hour weeks.

bananaflag 3y ago

> When the latter are used for the former purpose, they are worse than useless. I passionately disagree with this. I find it much better to focus on a talk (granted, I'm talking here about math talks primarily) if I know that all there is to know is contained in what I'm seeing, and that it's alright if I occasionally don't pay attention to the speaker. (I'm much more attuned to the written word than to the spoken word, and I imagine I'm not alone in this.)

recursivecaveat 3y ago
Yeah, the more talks I attend, the more I differ with 'powerpoint minimalism orthodoxy'. I would much rather your presentation be a subset of the slides than a superset. Then I can relax and appreciate it rather than worry about transcribing you or something. If its actually important to me than I will spend much more time reviewing the material than listening to it this once, so focus on providing a comprehensive reference. And we both know you're not going to write up a whole separate document that's the exact same material in more detail, kept up to date, so just make it the slides. The preference for minimalism I think comes from a thought process that conflates entertaining with effective. (all else equal, obviously more entertaining will make you more engaged which is more effective, but the equal is carrying some heavy weight there)