Re: Death by Powerpoint (literally)

I think that we are in broad agreement about the fact that PowerPoint
makes it easy for anyone to create a really bad presentation.

What I meant by my comment that presentation slides on their own -
without notes or audio commentary - should be almost meaningless is
this: the best presentations I have been to have been strong on
visual, non-verbal images, and the key messages have been delivered by
the presenter in their speech. An illustrated lecture is a combination
of a lecture and illustrations. That's what a good presentation should
be. Take away the lecture and leave just the illustrations, and you
don't have much left.

Many people who learn PowerPoint (and perhaps many who teach
PowerPoint) appear ignorant of the distinction I am trying to make
here between "lecture" and "visual illustration". They seem to think
that anything that's not on the slides doesn't exist, and therefore
they put everything on the slides. This means that they have nothing
left to say when they make their presentation, so they read their
slides. Knowing how to make slides is not the same as knowing how to
deliver a presentation.

In many businesses, the practice of putting everything on the slides
is actively encouraged, as this means the presentation can be left
with the staff or the clients or the potential customers and no
further effort is needed to produce supporting documents.

David

On 4 May 2010 14:15, Randal <[email protected]> wrote:
> I would complain about the logic in your article about Powerpoint. You
> fall into a trap set by the New York Times in that your central
> complaint appears to be about the "Spaghetti Graphic" about the war in
> Afghanistan. As the Times noted, the purpose of this was "meant to
> portray the complexity of American military strategy". Whether the
> content is meaningless or not, that is precisely what it does.
>
> It seems to me that one of the central problems about Powerpoint is
> that unlike good and clear writing, which develops ideas and derives
> conclusions, the basic nature of the "Bullet Point" is that is
> presents every statement as a foregone conclusion or accepted fact. It
> therefore allow blatant lies to be presented with the same weight as
> universally accepted truths. This fundamentally devalues reasoning and
> logic in an argument, and replaces it with mere summation and statement.
>
> It seems to me that the popularity of Powerpoint stems from the fact
> that it allows people who can't really write or reason to create what
> looks like (to the lazy or ignorant) an interesting or persuasive
> argument.
>
> I further very much disagree with the statement that presentation
> should simply recapitulate the messages from the presentation, and
> "should be almost meaningless". Luckily, in my life I have been called
> upon to make very few Powerpoint presentations, but as a teacher at a
> design college I have very often given slide lectures, which I
> consider to be a very effective teaching tool. In those cases, as in
> the few really effective (and affective) Powerpoint-type presentations
> I have seen, the images and slides have been central and memorable,
> and the talking that goes on around them is at best explanatory and
> incidental. One good image, or one good graph with important
> statistics, is much more persuasive than a thousand eloquently stated
> beliefs.
>
> -- Randal
>
>
> On May 4, 2010, at 1:49 PM, David Farbey wrote:
>
>> I've been inspired to comment on this on my blog:
>> http://www.farbey.co.uk/index.php/2010/05/lies-death-and-powerpoint/
>>
>> David
>>
>> On 1 May 2010 10:17, Conrad Taylor <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> Aha, Weapons of Mass Confusion.
>>> Thanks for that, Randal!
>>> Conrad
>>>
>>> On 30 Apr 2010, at 23:49, Randal wrote:
>>>
>>> Somewhat cogent article on how Powerpoint makes us stupid:
>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html
>>> The most interesting thing to me was this:
>>> "Last year when a military Web site, Company Command, asked an Army
>>> platoon
>>> leader in Iraq, Lt. Sam Nuxoll, how he spent most of his time, he
>>> responded,
>>> “Making PowerPoint slides.” When pressed, he said he was serious. "
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> David Farbey - [email protected]
>> Mobile  07879 005 946
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-- 
David Farbey - [email protected]
Mobile  07879 005 946
Web site/Blog <http://www.farbey.co.uk>
Twitter <http://twitter.com/dfarb>
LinkedIn <http://www.linkedin.com/in/informationdesign>

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