What is worse is that this syndrome is affecting high school students. At least here in Lima Peru, homework is demanded to be done in the computer because it is 'more professional'. So the minimum effort way copy and pasting becomes trivial. In the old way of pen a paper our inherit aversion to effort pushed the student to learn to summarize as writing more demanded more effort. I would prohibit high school homework to be done in the computer. But I digress.
It makes going over past presentations very easy. For example, when a new ML algorithm comes out, the only way to easily grasp how it works without reading a bunch of papers is to find some Power Point slides by the author. I guarantee people wouldn't make two sets of slides either.
The reverse is also true: one can use MS Word with sparse text and make it act like a PowerPoint.
In the context of the thread, it's when the wall of text on the slides is negatively affecting the delivery of important information. Dense slides when not appropriate will bore the audience (like those military presentations shown in the article.) To add insult to injury, the typical unpolished speaker will then recite. every. single. word. on the slide.
Instead of the PPT being a set of helpful diagrams or pictures that are superior to wordy descriptions, the text-heavy slide deck becomes a glorified transcript of the talk.
But that is not what the presentation is for. If you have a hundred words on each slide (and I've seen that), you might as well give everyone the written dialogue. A visual, in this case Powerpoint but it could be an image in a report as well, is to support your story. It is not the story itself.
There is the notion of a Slidedoc:
Bonus if you have a transcript.
I'm torn. Yes, slides are a supplement. But a purely verbal presentation on things like financials or schedule without some supporting data feels like complete fluff, and while the speaker could be spitting out data verbally, that doesn't "work" when you have more than one or two data points - the audience can't hold lots of data in their head as you recite it. That's what visuals are for.
So if the alternative to PowerPoint is better, more technical, reports -- I'm all for it.
On another note, some lecture-style slides (where review post-presentation or without presentation) can be really helpful for understanding concepts otherwise described in math and without examples in official papers. Many CS publications seem to make this mistake in my eyes--that is, presenting something novel without bridging the gap via examples.
I have seen also some pages with similar functionality, and a couple of flash apps.
Even a PDF created from Latex works wonders for that purpose.
If you're using it as a supplement to something you're saying live, the slides should be simple, limited, and support the big points which you should be making verbally.
If you're using it as a handout (or essentially in lieu of a live presentation), it should be much more information-dense.
Agreed. In my opinion, the slides should supplement the presentation and sum it up in as few words as possible. Having concise slides that sum up a presentation makes it so much easier to go over the presentation and learn the subject more thoroughly (edit: assuming you have access to the slides).
I agree. You cannot make the tool as an excuse of not giving a good presentation. PP is there to help you do things, like any other tools. You need to know how to use it properly and wisely.
I think, the widespread use of PP is because of its capability to present ideas concisely, especially to the management level where they won't spend their time reading a long document. This is especially prominent in the area of Strategy Consulting, where they can just arrange picture and text to be presented to the board of directors.
I don't think PowerPoint should be banned, just the misuse of PPT should be banned.
Plus, PDFs can be generated from Powerpoint.
The real key would be for some App to codify good presentation rules and target OOXML output. I'm not talking Keynote - It needs to be more focused and opinionated, and make that part easier.
Is that even possible? Would Microsoft permit it to exist?
You generate your PDF presentation from LaTeX, which is stored in git! Multiple simultaneous editors with sane merging, unlike a group of people editing a PPT file on the network drive.
But those are probably not the PDF presenters you're talking about.
Now you run into the WYSIWYG issue, where the collaboration format needs to be "printed" in order to see the output.
Is there a WYSIWIG collaboration tool for LaTeX over git?
Which I can now imagine someone doing. Gross.
PDF would not be the main format but it works well to export to that from powerpoint (or whatever) before presentation.
Wish it had ooxml support.
I've frequently seen Slideshare (or similar) presentations that look like a disjoint selection of code examples and meme images, with a narrative that is only barely hinted at.
the way I like to think about presentation slides is they should almost be talking point cues or reminders for the speaker. they should compliment the talk, not dominate it.
It's an incredibly efficient way to scale your education system to the masses but it's producing broken people at the end of it who end up believing math is just about following the correct steps, history is about memorizing facts and english is about putting enough words on the page to hit a word count.
Instead, we should be training students to take an outcome focused approach. Define what is the ultimate goal they want to accomplish, establish how to measure their impact towards the goal and suggest previously established strategies that have historically helped but then only evaluate them on whether they successfully achieved their outcome.
Sports is actually a great example of this system working in practice. Your goal is extremely clear, there's clear feedback on your performance and tactics are widely available to learn. Nobody will penalize you in sports if you choose to kick with your left foot when "everyone knows" only right footed kickers succeed in life.
More education should be structured around such a philosophy.
I hate when I go somewhere and they provided just the slides of a previous talk and the slides have no real information on them, there is no context or explanation as to what the bulleted points are talking about.
Not to say that the talk verbatim in the presentation is a good idea either, but people seem to like giving out what amount to useless slides most of the time in place of a recording of the presentations.
At the risk of being obnoxious, the slide deck should be whatever the presenter feels best supports their presentation in front of the audience. At a conference, that should be the overriding goal of the slides. They shouldn't be designed to provide background/context/explanation for someone who didn't see the presentation or didn't take notes.
It's certainly possible to provide a link to a transcript/speaker notes/etc. and I sometimes do. But it's extra work and expense and, frankly, it's not at the top of my list of things to spend a day post-conference putting together.
Example: https://git.csx.cam.ac.uk/x/ucs/u/fanf2/talks/2014-03-nws42....
If they miss the talk, send them straight to the more detailed docs, and they can ask questions.
As sibling posts mention, there could've been a need for explicit slides (maybe in lieu of a write-up).
Say you are working with a technical crowd, who may well be taking the presentation back with them for further study. In this case, having some depth in the slides might make a lot of sense, as would adding notes and links to information they will need or want. For that scenario, some careful use of bold, color, size will provide talking points useful for interactive discussion. No need to just read the slide.
(I hate it when people just read the slides)
Other times, it might make sense to have very brief bits of info. Often sales presentations go this route, but technical ones can too. People may take the presentation for reference later, but they came for the dialog and or what you are presenting more than they did attend to get all the info in text form.
IMHO, my experience so far has been to know your audience long before you build anything. It's very helpful to get a review from a peer too. If it's important, it's also worth a half hour to talk through with somebody who can provide some insight.
I've also found there is a very significant difference between selling ideas, things and people, and more detailed education type tasks. It's extremely efficient to pack presentations full of info for classroom settings. Depending on what one is teaching, and if it needs some interactive exercises or not, one document may make optimal sense. The people teaching for a living may well be demonstrating a strong bias here, well intended, that just might not be appropriate in a business setting.
This is exactly what is to be banned. PowerPoint, Word, Impress, old school slides, blah, blah, blah.
You aren't getting around a PowerPoint ban, you are defying it. Which is part of the point, it better be dam good if you are defying the rule.
It's interesting that they give the thumbs up to Prezi though.
I tend to think good talkers do things well, crap talkers do things badly. Banning their boring slides won't stop their boring talk.
At least slides can be designed and checked by someone good with a lot of time before the talk. Correlation, not causation.
In my opinion, people are just poorly educated (or not educated) in presentation making. Or to phase it another way, a school may teach them to use PP the software but doesn't teach them how to put on a good presentation using it.
One key thing people need to learn is: Slides exist to supplement what is being said. If your presentation doesn't work without the slides then you're doing it wrong. Putting exactly what you're saying into your slides verbatim is generally a mistake (although putting key points or a list, and expanding on it vocally can work well).
Generally most people put too much content into single slides as they're worried about having to advance the slideshow mid-point. This means that your point is too expansive, and you should cut your point in half and then cutting your slides in half follows naturally (e.g. instead of doing a yearly projection with summaries of each quarter, just do each quarter individually and sum the year as a whole alone at the end).
I certainly don't think I'm an expert at presentations, I just care slightly more than your average person, and have copied elements from what I consider good deliveries.