I hate powerpoint

[s1m0n]

And someone who thinks like I do has posted the .ppt version of the gettysburg address.

http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/

[Congratulations]

The last slide is my favorite.

[Dale]

I had seen that before. It's good.

PowerPoint is an evil. And, of course, I've been addicted to it. But, I'm trying to kick it. Please support me.

Dale

[Doug_Tipple]

I had seen that before. It's good.

PowerPoint is an evil. And, of course, I've been addicted to it. But, I'm trying to kick it. Please support me.

Dale

I will gladly support you in your effort. Please send $1 every time you think powerpoint.

[Dale]

I had seen that before. It's good.

PowerPoint is an evil. And, of course, I've been addicted to it. But, I'm trying to kick it. Please support me.

Dale

I will gladly support you in your effort. Please send $1 every time you think powerpoint.

I hope you'll take a check.

[Dale]

What I AM trying to do with my PowerPoint presentations is boil out almost all of the text and just do a few graphics.

DW

[Bloomfield]

What I AM trying to do with my PowerPoint presentations is boil out almost all of the text and just do a few graphics.

DW

Good man yourself.

Note that I stole the idea of the "87 years ago" slide for my ppt about the new Feadog Pro.

[MarkB]

I absolutely hate powerpoint and this quote below from a longer article, gives good points of why it should be done away with.

The Closing of the PowerPoint Mind

A culture that raises its children on the milk of the moving image should not be surprised when they prove unwilling to wean themselves from it as adults. Nowhere is the evidence of this more apparent than in the business world, which has become enamored of and obedient to a particular image technology: the computer software program PowerPoint.

PowerPoint, a program included in the popular “Microsoft Office” suite of software, allows users to create visual presentations using slide templates and graphics that can be projected from a computer onto a larger screen for an audience’s benefit. The addition of an “AutoContent Wizard,” which is less a magician than an electronic duenna, helpfully ushers the user through an array of existing templates, suggesting bullet points and summaries and images. Its ease of use has made PowerPoint a reliable and ubiquitous presence at board meetings and conferences worldwide.

In recent years, however, PowerPoint’s reach has extended beyond the business office. People have used PowerPoint slides at their wedding receptions to depict their courtship as a series of “priority points” and pictures. Elementary-school children are using the software to craft bullet-point-riddled book reports and class presentations. As a 2001 story in the New York Times reported, “69 percent of teachers who use Microsoft software use PowerPoint in their classrooms.”

Despite its widespread use, PowerPoint has spawned criticism almost from its inception, and has been called everything from a disaster to a virus. Some claim the program aids sophistry. As a chief scientist at Sun Microsystems put it: “It gives you a persuasive sheen of authenticity that can cover a complete lack of honesty.” Others have argued that it deadens discussion and allows presenters with little to say to cover up their ignorance with constantly flashing images and bullet points. Frustration with PowerPoint has grown so widespread that in 2003, the New Yorker published a cartoon that illustrated a typical job interview in hell. In it, the devil asks his applicant: “I need someone well versed in the art of torture—do you know PowerPoint?”

People subjected endlessly to PowerPoint presentations complain about its oddly chilling effect on thought and discussion and the way the constantly changing slides easily distract attention from the substance of a speaker’s presentation. These concerns prompted Scott McNealy, the chairman of Sun Microsystems, to forbid his employees from using PowerPoint in the late 1990s. But it was the exegesis of the PowerPoint mindset published by Yale emeritus professor Edward Tufte in 2003 that remains the most thorough challenge to this image-heavy, analytically weak technology. In a slim pamphlet titled The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, Tufte argued that PowerPoint’s dizzying array of templates and slides “weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis.” Because PowerPoint is “presenter-oriented” rather than content or audience-oriented, Tufte wrote, it fosters a “cognitive style” characterized by “foreshortening of evidence and thought, low spatial reasoning ... rapid temporal sequencing of thin information ... conspicuous decoration ... a preoccupation with format not content, [and] an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.” PowerPoint, Tufte concluded, is “faux-analytical.”"

Full article: by Christine Rosen; The Image Culture.

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/10/rosen.htm

MarkB

[Joseph E. Smith]

What I AM trying to do with my PowerPoint presentations is boil out almost all of the text and just do a few graphics.

DW

Yeah, sure, that's how it always begins. But soon, inaccurate text starts to seak into the presentation, and after a time and before you can whistle Dixie... you're hooked.

[missy]

what I hate about Powerpoint (or any big screen presentation) is when the speaker talks to the SCREEN instead of the audience. Especially when the laptop is right in front of them on a podium and the same thing that's up on the screen is there, too.

I can't HEAR what you are saying because you are talking to the screen and not to ME!!!!!

And don't get me started on laser pointers...........

[Dale]

What I AM trying to do with my PowerPoint presentations is boil out almost all of the text and just do a few graphics.

DW

Yeah, sure, that's how it always begins. But soon, inaccurate text starts to seak into the presentation, and after a time and before you can whistle Dixie... you're hooked.

So, you think, I have to go cold turkey? Because I can quit anytime.

[Dale]

Here's one. Can't find the person's name who adapted it.

I HAVE A DREAM

A PowerPoint presentation by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

SOME OF MY DREAMS:

* We achieve a level playing field.
* The glory of the Lord becomes visible.

STRATEGY FOR REALIZING DREAMS:

* Must rely on faith.
* Must stick together.
* Need to pray a lot.
* May have to go to jail.
* Must use catch phrase, "Let Freedom Ring."

(Cut to MP3 track of "My Country 'Tis of Thee")
EXPECTATIONS:

* Freedom rings in a broad range of places.
* Will speed day of racial and religious harmony.
* Day will include a sing-a-long.
* Singers: Black men, white men, Jews, Gentiles, Protestants, Catholics.
* Song of choice: old Negro spiritual.
* Song's inspirational tagline:
o "Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

[SteveShaw]

My computer's stuffed with things that I haven't a chuffin' clue are supposed to be for. Powerpoint's one of 'em. There's another thing called Excel, and several other things that have "network" or "wireless" in their names. Occasionally I click on these things, wondering whether the countless hours I spend at the keyboard may in some miraculous and subliminal way have educated me sufficiently to make use of them. It always turns out to have been a vain hope. And I can't begin to tell you of all the features in Word that completely confound me. I just look at my screen sometimes and say to myself, what a wonderful world.

Steve

[fel bautista]

I have a page from the Columbia Crash Report (page 191, volume 1, August 2003-free on the web) tacked to my wall at work. Every ENGINEER that has to make a presentation to management should read it. It's called "Engineering by Viewgraph" It makes the case that we tend to overly summarize and sanitize findings, such that critical decisions are made from a presentation slide, rather than going the full route and having real analysis shown to people that understand. I've included a quote to put it all into context.

" As information gets passed up an organization hierarchy, from people who do analysis to mid-level managers to high level leadership, key explainations and supporting information is filtered out. In this context, it is easy to understand how a senior manager might treat this Power Point slide and not realize it <test data on tile fracture, my insert> addresses a life-threatening situation."

[Joseph E. Smith]

What I AM trying to do with my PowerPoint presentations is boil out almost all of the text and just do a few graphics.

DW

Yeah, sure, that's how it always begins. But soon, inaccurate text starts to seak into the presentation, and after a time and before you can whistle Dixie... you're hooked.

So, you think, I have to go cold turkey? Because I can quit anytime.

Cold turkey, it's a man's way to do it. But if macho ain't your cup of tea, there's always reading back issues of People Magazine while abusing psychedelic substances and drinking heavily... of course, that's really only trading one addiction for another.