Slashdot Mirror
Anti-PowerPoint Party Formed In Switzerland
angry tapir writes "Many people dislike sitting through a meeting being driven with presentation software. Microsoft's PowerPoint is perhaps the best known and most hated of the slide presentation programs out there, but few would take a political stand over it. However, that's exactly what Switzerland's Anti-PowerPoint Party (APPP) seeks to do. From the article: 'According to the APPP, the use of presentation software costs the Swiss economy 2.1 billion Swiss francs (US$2.5 billion) annually, while across the whole of Europe, presentation software causes an economic loss of €110 billion (US$160 billion). APPP bases its calculations on unverified assumptions about the number of employees attending presentations each week, and supposes that 85 percent of those employees see no purpose in the presentations.'"
No, Stalin; because nobody can make bullet points like him.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Keynote is WAY better than Powerpoint. Even PP can be okay though (if frustrating to actually use) if you use it properly. Unfortunately MS seems to design it to encourage abuse, rather than the opposite.
I have used Keynote and especially like the presenter view. Find it far superior to PowerPoint.
I have also used the beamer class for LaTeX (from the TeX Live distribution), using R for data analysis that needed to be included. I have also used Inkscape to draw SVG graphics to be included - typically as PDF (saved as EPS, converted to compressed PDF using epstopdf.) This latter approach has the advantage of being completely Open Source. All the packages are well-supported and have active user communities that answer well-posed questions. This is not a WYSIWG approach, but can make a good presentation. The approach follows Donald Knuth's planned workflow: the author concentrates on the content of the presentation and leaves the typesetting to the computer. The software encourages a well-structured presentation.
As others have noted, any presentation software can be used thoughtlessly (without regard for the audience) to make a horrible presentation. I admit that I am drawn to Knuth's approach of concentration my efforts on what I want to communicate to my audience and trying to give them a good return on their investment of their time and to let the software help to help achieve that goal./PP
If someone cannot give a reasonable presentation, PowerPoint will not help them, and it will not actually make the presentation much worse.
It has the potential of just doing that: make bad presentations worse.
There is of course the bad use of power point: "Things I am talking about, things I will be talking about,... and here we are at point 4.1.1.1 subpoint b. If you still remember the rest of the structure which was on a previous slide, it could almost make sense. Ooops, that was too fast? don't worry I'll come back to it later, but you might not be able to see it back there anyway. No it is 12 point, It just looks like 6 point to you. Sorry, the labels are also kind of off."
But then there are also power-point specific issues. And not just Tufte is criticizing those: You're forced to shorten things into statements that fit on individual slides. Information appears and disappears without warning, the overall structure is hidden. In bad cases you can't concentrate on the speaker because summaries flash in and out of existence in the other corner of the room.
Colleges love power point. The theory is that multi channel presentation of redundant information increases retention. But some studies show, that retention might actually be lower. At the very least, power point can prevent the audience from thinking-along. Quite often, I think a handout would be the better solution: you don't have to cut quotes, everyone gets the same point size, people can go back and forth on their own and have an overview of the whole structure. Ooh, and even mark interesting points or write down questions.