In the Depths of PowerPoint Hell

Tuesday, February 1, 2011
"From Hell's heart, I stab at thee."
Remember when I told you that I was going to be presenting a general session at an upcoming conference?

Yeah. That conference is next week, which means this week, I'm preparing my material. In PowerPoint.

I swear to Odin, if I ever meet the thrice damned hacks who decided that PowerPoint was just the bestest thing evah! for business presentations, I'm going to stab them with a Rambo knife until there's nothing left but a bloody stain on the carpet.

If I don't emerge in a timely manner, send in the Marines. After you get proof of life.

___________
Revised 5:07 p.m. to include Nathan's new graphic. He's such a pal.

10 comments:

David said...

You need this:

http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/index.htm

I've never posted a link before, so I hope it works.

Janiece said...

David, I shot diet root beer out of my nose.

Your work here is done.

Nathan said...

I'm thinking I need to find you some new knives.

Janiece said...

Nathan, we all know you have much better taste in knives than the rest of us.

Nathan, knife-master to the UCF.

Nathan said...

Why did I suspect you'd like that one?

mom in northern said...

It is called power pointless for a reason.

Megan said...

At my last job, I spent a lot of time taking people away from PowerPoint.

Here's the secret:
They think they need the slides. Having slides makes them and their bosses think they've put effort into planning what they're going to say. So give them the slides -- but put all of the text into the notes section. Put a photo, a chart, or something else that's visual on the slide. NO WORDS ON THE SLIDE. Grudgingly agree to put three or four words on some of the slides. If more detail is needed, put it in a separate handout.

Tell them that's the way it has to be. Then repeat this line: "Your presentation is not your slides. Your presentation is YOU."

It takes a while. But it works.

Stacey said...

Personally, I hate to have to sit through PPP especially when the presenter reads from the slides - really? You could have emailed me the presentation and I could have done it myself you effin moron.
I'm an auditory learner, so I just find the PPP distracting in a general sense.
Let me know if I need to come rescue you with liquor.

WendyB_09 said...

In an earlier incarnation I had to TEACH PowerPoint to doctors and paralegal students.

And attorneys now use it at trial for openings and closings. AHAHAHAHHAH. I'll be retraining my boss before the next big trial, oh yeah.

Steve Buchheit said...

I was there at the revolution. They had to restrain me when a manager told me that powerpoint was the future and I had better get used to it. I nearly made him fly into the light well of the building our officers were in.

The only reason, the ONLY reason powerpoint is so successful is that Microsoft gave it away for free with their office suite (that an Access, both products they couldn't sell on their own, so they bundled them together with Word and Excel, charged the same as Word and Excel individually, but added them all together and viola, Office). Bastards.

prepress - holy crap, that was my first job! And now it's my captcha on this post? Synchronicity.