Microsoft Brings Collaborative Editing To PowerPoint On Desktop (venturebeat.com)

Microsoft today said that it has enhanced certain versions of its PowerPoint presentation-building program with real-time collaborative editing. VentureBeat adds: This feature came to Word on desktop last year. And before that it was available through Office Online. Microsoft said last year that real-time coauthoring would come to all of its desktop apps, and now Microsoft is executing on that commitment. Just like in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, this feature lets you "see what others are typing as it happens on a given slide," Microsoft Office corporate vice president Kirk Koenigsbauer wrote in a blog post. The feature is live now in PowerPoint on Windows for people who subscribe to Office 365 and belong to the Office Insider program. In addition, it's now available to everyone in PowerPoint Mobile on Windows tablets, Koenigsbauer wrote.

Comments

For what?

[gtall]

Can some people list some uses for this?

Re:For what?

[Black.Shuck]

Can some people list some uses for this?

1. To collaboratively edit a PowerPoint on desktop.

Re:For what?

[HornWumpus]

Powerpoint users can get into a real time edit war, deadlock, than starve while waiting.

Can I dream?

Re:For what?

[wierd_w]

Not understanding the beauty of this feature I see. Pure genius.

See, what do middle managers enjoy doing most when they aren't calling needless meetings all day?

That's right, it is making useless PowerPoint presentations that are devoid of actual intellectual content!

Now, what do you suppose happens when all the middle managers in a midsize company are able to make and redact edits to PowerPoint documents in real time?

Increased productivity!

Why?

Instead of calling endless bullshit meetings, the middle management team is bogged down in quorum on exactly what buzzwords to use, the cost benefit dynamics of using comic sans vs papyrus, or which set of bland clipart to use. In extended testing, the software team who created this breakthrough were able to keep mid management and even some clevel management contained for days at a time. Naturally, the managers felt the higher quality (ahem) if the presentation they made was responsible for the productivity increase, but the positive correlation between fewer meetings and more task time on productivity is very telling.

Re:For what?

[SeaFox]

Getting mental image of a mouse pointer being tugged back and forth as two people try and use it at once.
It will be like an Ouija board. Can we call forth profits this quarter???

Re:For what?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

SLIDE 1: "Uses for Powerpoint Collaboration"

SLIDE 2: "Agenda: What Is Collaboration - What Is Powerpoint Collaboration - How Powerpoint Collaboration Helps Megacorp - How to Use Powerpoint Collaboration - Powerpoint Collaboration Policy - Reporting Powerpoint Collaboration Misuse - Conclusion"

SLIDE 3: Pirated graphic of unrealistically fit and happy office people high-fiving. "What Is Collaboration"

SLIDES 4-50: ...much needless content...

SLIDE 51: Pirated graphic of business man stupidly raising his hand like a fucking second grader. "Any Questions?"

My PowerPoint Rule of Thumb.

[Ensign_Expendable]

Don't use it. People's eyes glaze over as soon as they see the first slide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:My PowerPoint Rule of Thumb.

[PsychoSlashDot]

Don't use it. People's eyes glaze over as soon as they see the first slide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Makes sense. A presenter generally boils down what they want to convey to four or five bullet points to make a slide. That slide get displayed, the audience reads it, and then the presenter reads it and talks for five minutes. Most of the time the audience got the message from the bullet points. Now they're slipping into a coma, waiting for the presenter to move on.

A good presenter can still use this, by engaging via interesting, useful, amusing anecdotes at each point. Problem is, if the presentation is about oh... product features, or sales projections... there's nothing interesting, useful, or amusing about it. So don't try. Just show us the slide and hit "next". If the presentation in on "ways to avoid getting mugged", or "how to tell if you're a raccoon", maybe you should talk about each point. Maybe.

Re:My PowerPoint Rule of Thumb.

[TheRaven64]

There are a few horrible misfeatures in PowerPoint. The worst was copied by Keynote in later versions: automatically resizing text to fit. Most of the templates have a large enough font that you can only fit a few key ideas on the slides. That's fine, because you don't want your audience reading the slides, you want them as things to refer to while you're talking. The automatic size reduction feature means that you can just keep adding text until it's illegibly small, long after the point when you'd be unable to keep the attention of the audience while you're speaking.

Re:My PowerPoint Rule of Thumb.

[bazorg]

Don't use it. People's eyes glaze over as soon as they see the first slide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

Makes sense. A presenter generally boils down what they want to convey to four or five bullet points to make a slide.

This is why good presentation normally feature someone explaining the subject, leaving the screen for showing pictures or schematics. Bullet points are useful for the notes that get distributed with the presentation file.
As usual, it's not so much the tool that is bad, it's how people use it :(

Re:Competition with Apple

[chipschap]

Because Apple updated their iWork suite in September to include real-time collaboration features.

http://www.apple.com/iwork/

Yes, and Google Docs/Slides etc. has had it for how many years now?

Infinite recursion warning!

[Gravis Zero]

I hope Microsoft knows that they just started infinite recursion in management. What's going to happen is a manager will schedule an in person discussion on some bullshit which will need a pointless PowerPoint presentation. Before the meeting happens, it will suddenly be pushed back so that there can be a phone meeting about collaborating on the PowerPoint presentation for the in person meeting. Confusion and discourse will occur and suddenly and an in person meeting will be scheduled for collaborating on presentation for the original in person meeting. This in person meeting will of course need a PowerPoint presentation to explain the confusion and discourse for which the meeting was called but after becoming a meta-meeting the manager insist on having assistance on making this presentation due to it's complexity... for which a phone meeting will be scheduled. An ever growing number of meetings and postponing of meetings will appear in your email inbox which will include and ever growing number of participants until the entire company's focus is on making presentations for presentations for presentations etc. So if you see an in person meeting scheduled and suddenly pushed back with a phone meeting scheduled before it, just run and don't look back!

What incredible news!

[hyades1]

In the wake of this earth-shattering announcement, here is what thousands of media professionals are thinking as they stare at a bottle of pills and a litre of vodka, and quietly contemplate the fact that they will now have to deal in real time with every jackass in their organization who believes a PhD in some totally unrelated field, a nepotistically-acquired position in the hierarchy, their raw intelligence (as defined by the Dunning Kruger Effect), or their knowledge of "how we did things with Word Perfect", make them qualified to completely rewrite the rewrite of the rewrite of the edit of the presentation they just spent all weekend on (because it had to be done and dusted "the day before yesterday"):

"Only one title is suitable for this feature. It MUST bear the title, 'Corporate Clusterfuck'."

Re:Wow, really?

[gtall]

It's sort of the lingua franca of DoD. Once I saw a brief by David Patraeus (sp?) on CSPAN. He goes through the usual mindnumbing collection of mindnumbing slides (novocaine by direct injection, nerve cells all lined up for their death march to oblivion), and he hits one very complicated slide. Arrows pointing at arrows, arrows pointing off screen, arrows pointing at indescribable objects, arrows pointing at nothing at all, etc. Then he thanks Microsoft for helping him with that slide. Well, I guess that explains the arrows.

Re:Competition with Apple

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> Yes, and Google Docs/Slides etc. has had it for how many years now?

Shhh...please don't let the managers know that the dev teams use Google docs/slides - we'll never get anything done if they're in there mucking about.

Re:Gross

[Darinbob]

I don't understand what you're saying. Could you please present your views using PowerPoint slides? (well actually I'll only look at the first slide and then sleep through the rest)

Re:Gross

[Big Hairy Ian]

Because whats nerdier than PowerPoint

Screen sharing apps??

[thoughtlover]

Since the days of VNC, I don't see why any 'collaborative' tools are even being touted as a 'feature.'