Subject: it's been a while since we discussed the use of PowerPoint in meetings

From: Tony Hansen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 21:44:26 -0400

I ran into this article and felt it worth sharing:

Physicists, Generals And CEOs Agree: Ditch The PowerPoint
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/03/16/288796805/physicists-generals-and-ceos-agree-ditch-the-powerpoint

Actually, the article is not all one sided -- it does also discuss some 
times when they feel that PowerPoint *is* useful.

     Tony Hansen

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From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 19 Mar 2014 03:03:41 -0000

This screed remains the definitive rant on the topic:

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp

R's,
John

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From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 03:16:06 +0000

A 32-page book?

He could have done a slideset.

Lloyd Wood
http://about.me/lloydwood
________________________________________
From: ietf [[email-masked]] On Behalf Of John Levine [[email-masked]]
Sent: 19 March 2014 03:03
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: it's been a while since we discussed the use of PowerPoint in meetings

R's,
John

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From: Henning G Schulzrinne <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 23:15:54 -0400

And

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/03/powerpoint_in_higher_education_is_ruining_teaching.html

On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 9:44 PM, Tony Hansen <[email-masked]> wrote:

> http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/03/16/
> 288796805/physicists-generals-and-ceos-agree-ditch-the-powerpoint
>

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From: [email-masked] (Dale R. Worley)
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 15:25:30 -0400

> times when they feel that PowerPoint *is* useful.

The whole *point* of PowerPoint is not to educate, but rather to
*persuade*.  Its *goal* is to make the audience stupid and prevent
them from looking beneath the nicely-presented bullet points on the
slides.  If you don't believe me, talk to people involved in sales and
see how they use the word "powerful" -- it means "words that cause
people to act [in the way you want them to]".  PowerPoint -- to make a
powerful point.

(OK, I've calmed down now...)

Dale

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From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 15:41:28 -0400

For what we use it for, powerpoint is actually useful.

Most cases what is put up on slides is examples. And I find it much
easier to follow an example that is written down than one that is
read.

The other point that is overlooked by the powerpoint haters is that
the principal value is that it rescues incompetent speakers. There are
some people who are good speakers at IETF but the speaking
qualification is only an opinion and a keyboard. Being able to
organize a logical series of thoughts does not come into it.

I am more than happy to present without slides. The reason I write
them is that the meeting organizers DEMAND them. And they are quite
right to do that because I have two speaking modes one of which is
PowerPoint and the other is 'TED talk'.

Guess which one has the technical content.

---

From: David Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:38:43 -0700 (PDT)

I'm not sure there is any point in asking folks in sales how they
use Powerpoint. Powerpoint is a tool and it can be used or abused.
Don't blame the messenger. Sales folks have information to convey
and technical folks have information to convey. How it is organized
can be good or bad whether there are no visual aids, are plastic slides
or are powerpoint slides. The issue isn't powerpoint, it is the user
of powerpoint.

---

From: Hector Santos <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 18:36:32 -0400

+1

-- 
HLS

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From: t.p. <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 10:05:57 +0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Phillip Hallam-Baker" <[email-masked]>
To: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Cc: "IETF Discussion Mailing List" <[email-masked]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 7:41 PM
> Guess which one has the technical content.

The most striking feature for me of IETF89 was the failure of almost all
WG Chairs to produce a PowerPoint display at all, without some trial and
error.  Most laptops etc these days have a widescreen aspect ratio
(WHY???) whereas none of the projectors did, so what appeared on the
screen tended to be the top left corner or right hand extreme or ... of
the Agenda, Note Well and so on.

It seems a shame to get so many engineers together in a room and then
spend five minutes trying to get a display working.  PowerPoint may
rescue incompetent speakers but it does nothing for those who cannot
interface a laptop to a projector.

Tom Petch

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From: Yoav Nir <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 12:19:52 +0200

On Mar 20, 2014, at 12:05 PM, t.p. <[email-masked]> wrote:

> (WHY???)

The better to watch movies with.

> whereas none of the projectors did, so what appeared on the

That’s very easy to solve on Macs, and I assume the same is true of PCs. Anecdotal evidence suggests that it is.

> interface a laptop to a projector.

So maybe engineers need to learn how to operate their fancy laptops. For Macs you are a checkbox away from having the displays non-mirrored, which works very well for PowerPoint. It doesn’t work well with Preview for showing PDF files, but both Adobe Reader and Skim display PDFs very well on the projector with no truncation.

Sorry for the rant

Yoav

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From: Frank Solensky <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 08:44:36 -0400

Or this one: http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/sld001.htm

> On Mar 18, 2014, at 11:03 PM, "John Levine" <[email-masked]> wrote:
>

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From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 08:56:49 -0400

Do any of you have a serious proposal? If not, why is this on the ietf list?

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From: "Klaas Wierenga (kwiereng)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 13:08:37 +0000

> Guess which one has the technical content.

yes, and it is also very useful for those that may not be able to understand you well because of either your lack of coherence, your accent or their lack of understanding to have a visual aid.

Klaas

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From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 10:36:46 +0000

It's been a while since the
"it's been a while since we
discussed the use of Powerpoint
in meetings" thread, but...

http://www.slideshare.net/jessedee/you-suck-at-powerpoint-2

A presentation on how to do presentations.

Like, totes amazeballs. For reals.

Lloyd Wood

Tufty who?
________________________________________
From: Wood L  Dr (Electronic Eng)
Sent: 19 March 2014 03:16
To: John Levine; [email-masked]
Subject: RE: it's been a while since we discussed the use of PowerPoint in meetings

A 32-page book?

Lloyd Wood

R's,
John

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From: "Mukom Akong T." <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 06:54:50 +0400

If a presenter is bad, no tool can rescue him (PowerPoint or Keynote or
Prezi or etc etc). The problem is that most people were never taught (or
took the time to learn) how to present to an audience. There are really
simple rules of effective presentation and the tool (PowerPoint vs Keynote
etc) is insignificant .

What the organisers could do to help speakers is to present presentation
guidelines for speakers

a) No more than X slides per 15 minutes

b) Minimum font size (I personally don't go below 25 for bullets and 18 for
text on a diagram)

c) Good visuals (as most of the talks might be about networking ... the
organisers could commission a designer to provide standard elements to be
used in presentations ... router, switch, server etc. But then you can get
all of that from free from openclipart.org)

d) A ration of text : graphic slides. (I personally try to have every other
slide be graphic/illustration .... but I'd say 1 graphic slide to every 4
is ok)

e) Maximum number of bullets points per slide ( 5 - 7 max)

For those who might be interested. Nancy Duarte (a presentations expert)
released an online copy of her book "Resonate" for free. Find it at
http://resonate.duarte.com

And yes .... slides are not the only way to present and not every
presentation must be in the format of slides.

-- 

Mukom Akong T.

http://about.me/perfexcellence |  twitter: @perfexcellent
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