Swiss party demands Powerpoint's death

[Spacecadet]

Me! Me! ME look at ME!!!!! I hate powerpoint waaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Its the suityou01 of political parties


Powerpoint is blameless in all of this, the real fault lies with the dullards who create a presentation for the purpose of reading it out loud to the audience.

[doodab]

Of course there are exceptions – speakers who can give a good presentation despite PowerPoint*. But this is the same as fastening your seatbelt in a car. Just because it happened 5 out of 1000 times that the non-fastening of the seatbelt saved a life during an accident, one cannot justify that the non-fastening is the principle to stick to. Just because it happened that someone gave a good speech with PowerPoint* one can’t justify that using PowerPoint* is the principle to stick to.

As long as one has not yet become acquainted with the alternative method that I suggest on this website, one will be tempted to believe that PowerPoint* is the nonplus ultra if only one uses it correctly. But we can prove No!

When you use PowerPoint* the audience’s eyes are directed rigidly at the screen. The human being is subject to a reading compulsion. You can omit the speaker altogether. This is assisted reading!

When you observe carefully you will recognize that the energy of the audience is decreasing as soon as a projector projects something onto the wall. You can actually feel that. What is even more dramatic: The exchange of energy between the speaker and the audience is blocked by PowerPoint*. You divide the attention instead of focusing it. Convincing is being impeded.

The serious problem with PowerPoint* is that speech is forced into a structure, which works against the natural flow of speech. Speech is cut up into small bites.

PowerPoint* leads to substantiation and the formulation of word-monstrosities, which can only be processed by the mind, where your emotions are not triggered. That, which is normally expressed with a verb, becomes a noun in a PowerPoint*. An example: The two freely spoken sentences: “The rain sensor recognizes if it’s raining and turns on the windscreen wipers. The rain sensor senses, how hard it is raining and switches the wipers to faster”, get hacked into noun-slogan sentences with PowerPoint*.

Unfortunately the following then happens during the presentation. The speaker, who is using the charts as cue-card notes reads the sentence with a glance before he starts to speak. The expression on the slide enters his short-term memory, so that it becomes almost impossible for him to express it in vivid every-day language. So he more or less reads this disastrous sentence verbatim. After about five or six slides at the latest, no one in the room is listening.

I think they make a very persuasive argument. Powerpoint blows goats.

[Spacecadet]

PowerPoint* leads to substantiation and the formulation of word-monstrosities,

I've used powerpoint a few times, it's never written anything on the slides for me or is this a new 2010 feature I've not seen yet?

[doodab]

I've used powerpoint a few times, it's never written anything on the slides for me or is this a new 2010 feature I've not seen yet?

I bet you wrote a load of bollocks on them though

[Spacecadet]

I bet you wrote a load of bollocks on them though

I write feck all

All they need is a couple of titles and some conceptual diagrams

EDIT: That is when I do bother using Powerpoint, for 1 or 2 diagrams its simpler just to open visio

[Sysman]

I think they make a very persuasive argument. Powerpoint blows goats.

The best 2 I've seen this year had hardly any words on them at all. One was done by an architect, the other by a guy who used to work in the fashion industry.

[scooterscot]

Gets my vote.

Keynote is much better, because steve says so.

[Bunk]

I've seen some good Powerpoint presentations and some tulip ones. I bet if the same people used a flip-chart then the good presentations would still be good and the tulip ones still tulip.

[wobbegong]

Powerpoint is blameless in all of this, the real fault lies with the dullards who create a presentation for the purpose of reading it out loud to the audience.

Absolutely spot on!

In addition, middle managers need to grow a pair and learn to (in Dilbert's words) postpone meetings with timewasting morons.

One of the big US corporates apparently had (has?) a digital readout in their meeting rooms that showed the cost to the company minute by minute based on the attendees hourly rate.

[Bunk]

One of the big US corporates apparently had (has?) a digital readout in their meeting rooms that showed the cost to the company minute by minute based on the attendees hourly rate.

I have an app on my phone that does that. It cheers me up no end in dull meetings.