I can read the gorram PowerPoint slide myself, thank you very much

The BBQ Pit
1

I am a reasonably educated person. I am capable of not only writing text, but also reading it. This skill, initially acquired in my extreme youth and further honed since that time, encompasses the recognition and decipherment of short, pithy bursts of one to three words, short independent clauses, complete sentences, and even lengthy paragraphs constructed from varying quantities of the preceding verbal ingredients.

As an educated and further an employed person, I am frequently called on to attend “meetings.” These are gatherings of similarly educated and identically employed people for the purpose of sharing information and coordinating activities of various sorts. At said meetings, visual references are provided to facilitate said coordination by keeping the proceedings organized and the participants unified in purpose.

These visual references take many forms, but the most common species in the modern cubicle zoo is the PowerPoint presentation. This is composed of a series of “slides,” or virtual pages of text and other information, written and presented sequentially in order to drive part or all of the meeting. Whether these slides are projected on some sort of screen for all to see or printed, photocopied, and distributed to each participant is immaterial; the function is in both cases the same.

Now. Please stay with me here, for I approach the crux.

As an educated person, I am capable of looking at a PowerPoint slide, discerning the presence of text thereon, and quickly comprehending the meaning of said text. I said “quickly,” and I will repeat and emphasize the adverb, because it is at the very heart of my theme. To wit: The intent of the PowerPoint slide is to outline the subjects of discussion; it provides a jumping-off point, as it were, a means by which the human beings in the room can rapidly glean the thrust of the matter at hand via ocular apperception, and therefrom spin additional conversation and decision-making.

**IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO READ THE MOTHER FUCKING POWER POINT SLIDE TO US WORD FOR MOTHER FUCKING WORD.

IT IS ESPECIALLY NOT FUCKING NECESSARY TO DISPLAY EACH FUCKING SLIDE, READ IT TO US WORD FOR MOTHER FUCKING WORD, AND THEN TURN TO AND READ THE NEXT FUCKING SLIDE WITH NO ADDITIONAL FUCKING DISCUSSION, SLIDE AFTER MOTHER FUCKING SLIDE.**

The crime is egregious enough by itself. It becomes an affront to basic humanity when it is continued for an entire scrotum-clenching HOUR.

If it were my ambition in life to spend my days being read to by adults, I believe I have means at my disposal to pursue this aim. As an example, I offer for your consideration the possibility of attacking my cerebellum with a nail gun, though I am certain a few moments of idle cogitation will commend additional options to your attention. The fact that I have not taken this path should be a strong indicator to you regarding my total lack of interest in having the very text that rests before my eyes orally interpreted for me.

I trust we will have no more confusion on this topic. Thank you for your time.

And no, I’m not reading this to you.

2

Ah, Kegel exercises. Good way to pass the time.

Most of my professors don’t do that, but occassionally a TA or a student giving a speech will. I’m a terrible public speaker, but I pride myself in the fact that even when I used PowerPoint I never did that.

3

I would’ve feigned some sort of post hypnotic suggestion by barking after every utterance of some common word.

Trust me, it really works wonders. (some manufacturors reps are just as stupid with their updates of specs.) They are so worried by you that they will never comment about it.

4

They go one better here.

Beyond showing the Power Point slide, reading the Power Point slide, they always give you a hand out of the Power Point slides so that you can read it in front of you, on the screen and hear it.

I guess they figure three time’s the charm. :smiley:

5

Bravo! But you neglected to emphasize another point in your above sentence – “to outline”. If I go to one more stinkin’ PowerPoint presentation which has paragraphs of text in teeny font per slide, I’m going to modify a projector remote into a light saber.

When I went to grad school, they actually taught us Cervaise’s Rule of PowerPoint Slides. (I don’t think they called it that, though.)

6

I feel your pain. I’ve never experienced it and I hope I never do. I’m sure I’d fall asleep.

Sad as that is, it provides something for each Preferred Sensory Mode. The Visual people can watch the screen, the Verbal folks can listen, and the Tactile prople can play with the paper. Did someone in the past attend a Sensory Mode class?

More important, in my office, the folks who went to the presentation can bring the paper back, slap a routing slip on it, and share the presentation with everyone who didn’t go. Then if it’s educational enough (CalTrans grant processing rules, for instance) it gets shoved into the reference shelf.

(CalTrans does really professional presentations, btw.)

7

Wow, are you a government worker too?

Cervaise, I understand your pain. Our division has been undergoing a ‘redesign’ for the past three years. Part of redesigning the system includes brain numbing 2-4 hour (yes, I said two to four hour) meetings that include encyclopedic handouts of… the Powerpoint presentation they will be reading verbatim from the screen. But, they do include sections in the handouts for us to jot questions-- not the supervisors ever KNOW the answers to any of the questions we may have. Joy.

We have a meeting in a few weeks to discuss the wonderful renaming of our division. The second renaming in two years. Just give me the new fucking letterhead and leave me alone. I don’t care why you decided what you decided and how it will impact us. It won’t.

8

Sounds just like a faculty meeting presented by the English department. :smiley:

9

A point I didn’t see mentioned above. It is extremely annoying to have to sit and wait while each bullet point shows up on the slide. I’ve seen a number of presentations where there are a list of bullet points, the presenter reads point A, hits the button so that bullet point B shows up, reads point B, and the cycle repeats.

It is OK (although still annoying) to have the main heading show up and be read and then the list of bullet points underneath. It is NOT OK for each bullet point to show up individually. It is EXTREMELY NOT OK for us to have to wait for the cute little icon or animation to show up in the bottom corner of the slide after the entire slide has been read to us/discussed.

By the way, Powerpoint slide shows should be SILENT. (Most are) There is no reason for noises accompanying the arrival of bullet points.

10

My boss has stream-lined this process. He hands out copies of his power point presentation which he then reads to us, completely by-passing the screen presentation. It’s more efficient that way, ya know. :smack:

11

Can someone explain why in hell I picture an Asian Smeagol hoarding his laptop.

Gorram…
Gorram…
My Precious Power Point.

12

How timely. I am right now working on a team preparing a presentation. I agree with Cervaise. I am a lone voice in my team. I like bullets that help guide the presentation. My copy will have tons of talking points on it. Everyone else wants a complete document that can be left behind for others to read at some indeterminate time in the future.

However:
(1) This is a sales pitch. We don’t want to leave a document that removes the need for a follow-up call asking for clarification.

(2) People will read slides with large lettering and lots of white space. People will glaze over or ignore blocks of text.

(3) Too much text limits a dialog and pigeon-holes a presentation that may veer off the path.

An overdone presentation is a crutch. I prefer to prepare for a presentation rather than rely on a crutch.

13

Take the presentations described by Cervaise, the handouts of the slides described by Odinoneeye, and expand it out to at least 4-5 hours a day, and you can understand why I stopped attending classes in medical school about halfway through my second year. My grades improved remarkably. By the end, the only people attending regularly were the pure auditory learners and those who just felt obligated to attend classes.

The part that really bugged me, both when I was going to classes and not, is that the professor would occasionally–I’m talking 4-5 times in an entire course–offer up a very minor point that was found neither in the notes nor the presentation, and that very point would invariably show up as a question on the test. If it was important enough to be on the test, I would ask, why the hell isn’t it important enough to put in the handout or the presentation? If you’re just trying to reward those who attended classes regularly, wouldn’t a far greater reward be, I don’t know, making classes worthwhile to attend?

14

I’m lazy and too tired to post a link but if you google, “Powerpoint is evil” you will find links to a Wired magazine article and an Edward Tufte article on how Powerpoint presentation generally suck and how they can be better. The Tufte link will lead you to an essay you can buy and if you do use Powerpoint for presentation you owe it to yourself and the audience to read, learn it and use it.

I read out loud along with the presenter. I bitch to my seatmates about how the presentation sucks when read to me.

And I was gladly written up at work for standing up in a Powerpoint presentation and saying, “IT MATTERS TO THE STARFISH!” long before the final slide.

Whistlepig, who gets in trouble for a lot of shit at work that can be summed by the phrase, “The masses are asses.”

15

Shiny rant! Bravo.

I have tried to give presentations without powerpoint slides when the only purpose of the slides would be to have a set of my speaking notes in bullet point projected on the screen. It’s simply not done. I find this remarkably odd, given that up until the moment I left school and entered the working world it was entirely expected that I would be able to convey my topic adequately in a spoken form - slides were to be used for illustrative purposes, when needed.

I’ve given up, and now I just try to make them visually interesting. What was the point of all that public speaking training if I can’t use every weapon in my arsenal to keep the audience engaged? I did like the approach of one of my bosses, who, realizing how utterly pointless her slides were, added short quotes of a philosophical nature to the bottom of each of them to “give you something interesting to read.”

16

My wife and I have all of Tufte’s books on the shelf and I have his “Napoleon’s March to Moscow” poster on my office wall at work. Are you surprised? :slight_smile:

17

Me too. ::looks up at poster on wall::

I once heard Tufte lecture on electoral statistics. Once of the best lecturers I have ever heard…

18

I have this on my bulletin board right next to me at work.

19

Somewhere deep in the bowels of my filing cabinet I have wonderfully informative handouts from various medical meetings, consisting of a succession of tiny squares on each page recapitulating all the PowerPoint slides that were read out loud during said meetings. I don’t believe I have ever gone back to squint at the little boxes.

I can understand the frustration in the OP, but really - expecting a lecturer who has labored to bring forth a PowerPoint presentation to additionally come up with verbal pearls to entertain and delight the audience (most of which is probably deep in postprandial narcosis)?

Are not.

20

My girlfriend makes the same complaint. The chair of her department will e-mail everyone everyday for 2 weeks, then call meetings where the only discussion is him reading printouts of the e-mails.

As far as sucky meetings go, I think I can top you all. I once attended a meeting that was catered. Three times. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. 14 hours. But wait, there’s more. You know that skit they used to do on SNL? The one with Molly Shannon and Ana Gasteyer? Where they played the NPR ladies? In really soft, monotone voices? “Good times”? Well, when they did that, it was two gifted comediannes working from a script written by professional writers. And they could keep it funny and interesting for, what, three minutes, maybe? So how long do you think two no-talent business women, working without a script, could keep it going? Yep, two hours. Two hours of talking about growth projections and paradigm shifts – in fucking purposeful monotone!

Arrgghhh! Og smash!