Comments on: On Powerpoint

By: lth

lth — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 05:37:00 +0000

Far greater than Powerpoint is the terror of the computer illiterate using MS Excel as a database product…

By: dsquared

dsquared — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 08:52:00 +0000

Graphs are fine in Powerpoint, as long as you create them in Excel and not in some damnable Linux whathaveyou. There's even a template for "bulleted list on the left, graph on the right" which I use incessantly.

I would also disagree with Mat; people who dump their slides on paper for handouts are very useful, if for no other reason than that you can use the slides to doodle and write "what a cunt", "at this point, he farted" and such like.

By: Backword Dave

Backword Dave — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 07:22:00 +0000

D2, what about graphs?

By: Chris Lightfoot

Chris Lightfoot — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 07:07:00 +0000

oooh! Get ‘im!

By: dsquared

dsquared — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 06:21:00 +0000

if you want to put equations on your slides

If you're putting equations into a presentation then either a) you are a nerd presenting on a nerd topic and you have my official Papal dispensation to go off and use whatever layout program you like, as long as you don't tell me about it, or b) hanging's too good for you :-).

By: Chris Lightfoot

Chris Lightfoot — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 04:22:00 +0000

"Powerpoint is a fine tool for the job..."

Nonsense. It might be barely-adequate for laying out bullet points and whatnot, but if you want to put equations on your slides it's completely wretched and if all you want is text and pictures, it's massive overkill. Sure, it has all those "transitions" and clip-art and similar shite, but they're totally without value. Use HTML for presentations which don't need any equations and LaTeX if they do.

"... and people who refuse to use it should be beaten soundly about the bollocks with a cricket bat."

Naturally I disagree.

Actually, however wretched bloody Powerpoint is, the core problem is people who insist on reading out all the bullet points on each fucking slide before moving to the next one. These are the people most in need of your proposed cricket-bat treatment.

By: Mat

Mat — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 03:36:00 +0000

Yeah, let's forget powerpoint and have TeX-generated transparent slides printed in a 12-point font! Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

How about a compromise: let's say that making handouts by dumping your PPT slides on paper should be punished by hand-crushing.

By: JonnyB

JonnyB — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 03:04:00 +0000

If you give people handouts BEFORE you start a presentation then you’re doing it very terribly horribly wrong…

Powerpoint is a reasonable tool – – – as something you might use as a little bit of backup – say 5% – for your actual presentation.

Otherwise, no.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 02:50:00 +0000

You’re not often wrong, John, but you’re wrong this time. Powerpoint is a fine tool for the job and people who refuse to use it should be beaten soundly about the bollocks with a cricket bat.

By: Chris A

Chris A — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 17:21:00 +0000

But Byrne’s thesis isn’t just saying that writing (or rather, presentations) should be structured, but that Powerpoint’s way – hierarchical, linear and temporally-based – is how they should be structured. His assertion that if you can’t boil it down to seven bullet points it’s not worth saying takes for granted that the bullet point is the best method of organising information.