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(Slate)   Today's Slatesplanation: Why the military just can't quit PowerPoint   (slate.com) divider line
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    More: Murica, Vietnam War, France, Technology, The New York Times, Software, Organization, The Wall Street Journal, Graphics  
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2520 clicks; posted to Main » on 08 Feb 2023 at 9:35 AM (7 weeks ago)   |   Favorite    |   share:  Share on Twitter share via Email Share on Facebook



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beezeltown [TotalFark]
2023-02-08 9:22:35 AM  
Good morning. I am Beezel Town. [Next slide, please]. Today, I am going to read 73 PowerPoint slides to you. [Next slide] PowerPoint is a fantastic tool for communicating ideas using both text and graphics. [Next slide] oh, here's a stock picture of an office worker shrugging his shoulders, [next slide] but why do we need such a tool? [Next slide] Because management has created a standing one hour meeting every Wednesday morning at 9AM so department heads like myself can disseminate valuable information (ha, look at that picture of the manager with his eyebrows raised and hands on his hips while the younger employe fumbles with too many papers!) [Next slide] As you can see, PowerPoint is, "PowerFul" for making your point! [Hold for laugh...nothing]...[Next slide, ooh, go back one, great, thanks]...
 
NewportBarGuy [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2023-02-08 9:28:18 AM  
"Why'd you guys frag the LT?"

"Sir, if you focus your attention on slide 47 you'll see our reasoning."
 
Serious Black
2023-02-08 9:41:21 AM  
People use PowerPoint as a crutch. All it is is a really commonly available tool to present information. That common availability is why the military almost exclusively uses it. It's up to the person using that tool to wield it in an effective manner AND to choose when to wield it in the first place.
 
BitwiseShift
2023-02-08 9:42:21 AM  
One Google presentation talked about by ditching Power Point, productivity went up 47%.  The presentation did not use Power Point.     Then there's Facebook.

Fark user imageView Full Size
 
Diocletian's Last Cabbage [TotalFark]
2023-02-08 9:44:20 AM  
Ballad Of The PowerPoint Ranger
(Sung to the tune of The Green Beret)


Requests are made from day to day;
Briefings held and changes made.
Graphic slides, a must they say,
Power Point is the only way.

Computers crash and printers stall,
Overloading protocol.
Network's down and soldiers cry
Briefing's late, so heads will fly.

Pin Power Point slides upon my chest,
Full color slides, they look the best
100 slides were made that day
but only 10 made the final display.

Smiles upon the General's face
Slides were done, looked really great
Was up all night really working late,
Just to hear the General say ....

My soldier son, your slides were great,
Briefing's done, staff's up to date,
One problem son, you took too long,
So put in one more change, then go on home.

So tell my Mom I done my best,
Pin Power Point slides upon my chest
100 slides were made that day,
but only 10 made the final display.
 
Laobaojun
2023-02-08 9:44:59 AM  
Something about "predigested information" for cognitively challenged generals/admirals.
 
169th Cousin
2023-02-08 9:45:12 AM  
POWER!
Jeffrey Jones Goes Nuclear
Youtube GY8vhwVvhWM
 
Diocletian's Last Cabbage [TotalFark]
2023-02-08 9:45:41 AM  

Diocletian's Last Cabbage: Ballad Of The PowerPoint Ranger
(Sung to the tune of The Green Beret)


Requests are made from day to day;
Briefings held and changes made.
Graphic slides, a must they say,
Power Point is the only way.

Computers crash and printers stall,
Overloading protocol.
Network's down and soldiers cry
Briefing's late, so heads will fly.

Pin Power Point slides upon my chest,
Full color slides, they look the best
100 slides were made that day
but only 10 made the final display.

Smiles upon the General's face
Slides were done, looked really great
Was up all night really working late,
Just to hear the General say ....

My soldier son, your slides were great,
Briefing's done, staff's up to date,
One problem son, you took too long,
So put in one more change, then go on home.

So tell my Mom I done my best,
Pin Power Point slides upon my chest
100 slides were made that day,
but only 10 made the final display.


The above ballad shamelessly stolen from military.com via Google-fu.
 
The Weekend Baker
2023-02-08 9:46:54 AM  
budgetvideo.comView Full Size

Bring back the overhead projector!
 
Psychopompous
2023-02-08 9:47:45 AM  
Fark user imageView Full Size

Corporate nailed it with their "bullet points that look like bullets" bit.
Corporate - Nice Font
Youtube hj-zmKO1sa0
 
169th Cousin
2023-02-08 9:48:38 AM  

169th Cousin: POWER![YouTube video: Jeffrey Jones Goes Nuclear]


And, yes, I  used duckduckgo.
 
Snapper Carr
2023-02-08 9:50:21 AM  
Chang knows Powerpoint (Community).
Youtube Bq1kMahLzuU
 
Lochsteppe
2023-02-08 9:50:35 AM  
Why are people always making documents in Word? Oral tradition suddenly isn't a good enough means of exchanging information for you?

Excel is a crutch for people who are hung up on "rows" and "columns" for their data. Just freeball that shiat!

AND DON'T GET ME STARTED ON PEOPLE WHO NEED AN OPERATING SYSTEM EVERY TIME THEY TURN ON THEIR COMPUTER!!
 
cwheelie
2023-02-08 9:54:20 AM  
It's a branding issue
 
olorin604
2023-02-08 9:56:01 AM  
I farking hate PowerPoint, not because of PowerPoint itself but because 11/10 people that use it have no clue how to incorporate it into a presentation and it ends up being a script, that could have been an email.
 
PanicMan [BareFark]
2023-02-08 9:56:15 AM  

The Weekend Baker: [budgetvideo.com image 388x372]
Bring back the overhead projector!


And before they used those they used these. Nothing has changed. Theres just less lightbulbs to replace now .
Fark user imageView Full Size
 
Psychopompous
2023-02-08 10:01:13 AM  

PanicMan: The Weekend Baker: [budgetvideo.com image 388x372]
Bring back the overhead projector!

And before they used those they used these. Nothing has changed. Theres just less lightbulbs to replace now .[Fark user image 300x400]


And the bulbs are a lot more expensive.
https://pointerclicker.com/why-projector-lamps-are-so-expensive/
 
DON.MAC [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2023-02-08 10:02:07 AM  
There is nothing quite like weekly meetings with a middle manager with no idea.

I worked in a group that had a bunch of modern new computers and a very old IBM 3081 mainframe that took up a quarter of the machine room and 90% of the power.   That 3081 had been online since before the building was finished and I expect it is still running today. Its "availability" graph was a straight line that was either a 45 degree angle or horizontal based on the time axis. Every other computer had a sawtooth looking line the went up and then reset to zero due to reboots or crashes.  The guys running the old mainframe decided to start reporting in different units every week like centi-years or micro-centuries or nano-seconds which made the graph interesting.  That resulted in many other meetings of sub-committees. Someone found a 9.6 anomilly so there was a research afternoon meeting at location 9.6 miles away at a strip club.
 
Creoena [TotalFark]
2023-02-08 10:02:20 AM  
I don't get the hate for PowerPoint, especially for those who use it as a script, especially in the new COVID world.  It just means I can read the slide and not have to listen to the presenter.  I've often turned the volume all the way down and just read the slide for "Mandatory" 2-hour meetings where execs just ramble to hear themselves talk.
 
NewportBarGuy [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2023-02-08 10:02:59 AM  

Diocletian's Last Cabbage: The above ballad shamelessly stolen relocatedfrom military.com via Google-fu.


FTFY
 
Ringshadow [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2023-02-08 10:05:17 AM  
Read an article yesterday saying that Oracle, which is a pro-Israel company (like, they're nationalist) has managed to bury themselves deep into the UK government as database software etc.

Oracle is also used to US facilities. It's the payroll/performance management software where I am.

So anyhoooooooooooo an Israeli nationalist company has their hands dug into the data of multiple FiveEyes nations.

/netflix apparently also uses it
 
DON.MAC [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2023-02-08 10:05:53 AM  

The Weekend Baker: [budgetvideo.com image 388x372]
Bring back the overhead projector!


I was bumming around the attic of a club I belong to and found not just one but two of those.

I have a box of laser printer friendly plastic slides for over head projectors that I find useful but I use it with work's laser printer and not mine.
 
hardinparamedic [OhFark]
2023-02-08 10:09:15 AM  
YOU ARE NOW POSTING IN A PERUN THREAD

Russian Strengths & Capabilities in Ukraine - Why Russia is still a threat in 2023
Youtube V9xQf8LQgCU


/vatniks hate him
 
DON.MAC [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2023-02-08 10:12:22 AM  

Ringshadow: Read an article yesterday saying that Oracle...


Is that the 1st you heard of Oracle?  They have sort of been the #1 of evil IT companies for 3 or more decades.

Its owner doesn't own a small island in the Caribbean, he efectivly owns the entirety of one of the Hawaiian islands.  He is the 6th richest person in the world and all his money comes from IT projects of the fortune 500 and governments.
 
Gleeman [BareFark]
2023-02-08 10:14:43 AM  
Have to admit I was pretty good at creating power point training lectures when I was in the navy. Haven't touched it since retiring though.
 
jjorsett
2023-02-08 10:15:45 AM  
We were doing the same things using photocopiers, acetate pages, and overhead projectors before PowerPoint came along. PowerPoint just made it easier and prettier.
 
olorin604
2023-02-08 10:17:27 AM  

jjorsett: We were doing the same things using photocopiers, acetate pages, and overhead projectors before PowerPoint came along. PowerPoint just made it easier and prettier.


And let people spend an inordinate amount of time choosing the proper transition for each slide.
 
avian
2023-02-08 10:19:24 AM  

Ringshadow: Read an article yesterday saying that Oracle, which is a pro-Israel company (like, they're nationalist) has managed to bury themselves deep into the UK government as database software etc.

Oracle is also used to US facilities. It's the payroll/performance management software where I am.

So anyhoooooooooooo an Israeli nationalist company has their hands dug into the data of multiple FiveEyes nations.

/netflix apparently also uses it


Wait until you hear how many countries use Windows.....
 
Ringshadow [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2023-02-08 10:19:40 AM  

DON.MAC: Is that the 1st you heard of Oracle?


I use it at work, it never occurred to me to check who TF owns it, because why would I think about it?
 
hardinparamedic [OhFark]
2023-02-08 10:21:18 AM  

avian: Ringshadow: Read an article yesterday saying that Oracle, which is a pro-Israel company (like, they're nationalist) has managed to bury themselves deep into the UK government as database software etc.

Oracle is also used to US facilities. It's the payroll/performance management software where I am.

So anyhoooooooooooo an Israeli nationalist company has their hands dug into the data of multiple FiveEyes nations.

/netflix apparently also uses it

Wait until you hear how many countries use Windows.....


well we can't all sip craft lattes and eat avocado toast while debating which flavor of the Linux kernel is worth setting up for the next week and a half.
 
edmo [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2023-02-08 10:23:49 AM  
As a former officer and former govie, allow me to chime in. While everyone says they hate it, PowerPoint lives on. How is this possible? For one reason and one reason only: the top brass demand it.

The Top Brass doesn't have time to read lots of words or white papers. In fact, a disturbingly large number of them don't seem to read at all. Instead they want easy to digest color pictures with stoplight charts and other visual tricks to convince them they have a handle on what's happening. As if.

/seen too many
//made too many
///what's our alternative?
 
skiinstructor
2023-02-08 10:24:52 AM  

Psychopompous: PanicMan: The Weekend Baker: [budgetvideo.com image 388x372]
Bring back the overhead projector!

And before they used those they used these. Nothing has changed. Theres just less lightbulbs to replace now .[Fark user image 300x400]

And the bulbs are a lot more expensive.
https://pointerclicker.com/why-projector-lamps-are-so-expensive/


Going through mom and dads extensive slide collection, projector bulb went out. Amazon had one there in two days for twelve bucks.

The key to making old school projector bulbs last a long time is to turn the bulb off and let the projector fan cool the bulb down before shutting the projector completely off. I have a kodak movie projector with a bulb thats 45 or 50 years old, its lasted so long cause im religious about cooling the bulb down...
 
NewportBarGuy [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2023-02-08 10:28:22 AM  

edmo: ///what's our alternative?


No reason... just an excuse to give props to Ike.

th.bing.comView Full Size
 
Miss_Dorothy_Kilgallen [TotalFark]
2023-02-08 10:28:23 AM  

edmo: As a former officer and former govie, allow me to chime in. While everyone says they hate it, PowerPoint lives on. How is this possible? For one reason and one reason only: the top brass demand it.

The Top Brass doesn't have time to read lots of words or white papers. In fact, a disturbingly large number of them don't seem to read at all. Instead they want easy to digest color pictures with stoplight charts and other visual tricks to convince them they have a handle on what's happening. As if.

/seen too many
//made too many
///what's our alternative?


I, also, have proudly served.
Fark user imageView Full Size
 
Osama bin Limbaugh [TotalFark]
2023-02-08 10:32:22 AM  
*twitch*

/starts rocking
//happy place happy place happy place
///HAPPY PLACE!!!!
 
Russ1642
2023-02-08 10:35:37 AM  
People are blaming the slide software for military policies and actions. Those people are what we normally call 'complete farking morons'.
 
wingedkat [TotalFark]
2023-02-08 10:37:58 AM  
Yeah, yeah bad PowerPoint presentations are all over and everywhere.  Even more now that people had to lead meetings over covid.

I lead some meetings with a word agenda instead of PowerPoint.  Not sure that's better though. For one thing, I had to still my nervous scrolling habit to avoid making everyone seasick.

I skimmed TFA and just saw a discussion of PowerPoint history and usage.

Did they ever provide an alternative?
 
cefm
2023-02-08 10:38:05 AM  
I've never seen a military produced PowerPoint presentation that is small enough to be emailed. They litter their garbage briefings with so many high resolution images (for no reason) that they are gigantic files. It's like dumbass security - you can't send the file to the enemy because it's too big to send to anybody.
 
natazha [BareFark]
2023-02-08 10:39:55 AM  
Because most of the upper brass are academy grads who got into the academies because of connections, not qualifications and they like pictures. Powerpoint has saved the military billions in crayons.

/Ex-Naval officer
//ROTC
 
Gleeman [BareFark]
2023-02-08 10:40:25 AM  

edmo: As a former officer and former govie, allow me to chime in. While everyone says they hate it, PowerPoint lives on. How is this possible? For one reason and one reason only: the top brass demand it.

The Top Brass doesn't have time to read lots of words or white papers. In fact, a disturbingly large number of them don't seem to read at all. Instead they want easy to digest color pictures with stoplight charts and other visual tricks to convince them they have a handle on what's happening. As if.

/seen too many
//made too many
///what's our alternative?


I'm in the middle of reading a book on the WW2 bombing campaigns, it mentions that Winston Churchill was infamous for ignoring any document longer than a single page.

"Ain't nobody got time for that" before it was cool.
 
Karma Chameleon
2023-02-08 10:44:26 AM  
No wonder we can't win a war
 
Avast ye Scallywag
2023-02-08 10:47:07 AM  
Article is too long. Can someone gen up a quad-slide with a summary?
 
fortheloveof [TotalFark]
2023-02-08 10:48:16 AM  
PowerPoint is poetry;
Give the essentials without the dross
Jump from bullet to bullet
Pictures are worth more than words
Most people suck
 
Mad_Radhu
2023-02-08 10:58:49 AM  
Fark user imageView Full Size
 
Monocultured
2023-02-08 11:03:08 AM  

Lochsteppe: Why are people always making documents in Word? Oral tradition suddenly isn't a good enough means of exchanging information for you?

Excel is a crutch for people who are hung up on "rows" and "columns" for their data. Just freeball that shiat!

AND DON'T GET ME STARTED ON PEOPLE WHO NEED AN OPERATING SYSTEM EVERY TIME THEY TURN ON THEIR COMPUTER!!


*feels attacked*
*Hides rakugo props*
*And teletype machine*
 
Mad_Radhu
2023-02-08 11:04:58 AM  

cefm: I've never seen a military produced PowerPoint presentation that is small enough to be emailed. They litter their garbage briefings with so many high resolution images (for no reason) that they are gigantic files. It's like dumbass security - you can't send the file to the enemy because it's too big to send to anybody.


It's not just the military, I've gotten some PowerPoint presentations from companies like Samsung that are hundreds of megabytes because the people making them dropped full resolution TIFFs of the phones from the marketing team into the presentation without optimizing the image size or format.

To make the file a reasonable size to distribute I wind up having rename the PowerPoint .pptx file to a .zip file, unzip the file and pull out all the original resolution images, shrink them down in Photoshop and re-save them as JPGs or PNGs, swap the images in the presentation, and then re-save the new version. I've shrunk PowerPoint files down from 200 MB to less than 10 MB this way.
 
wamba
2023-02-08 11:11:15 AM  

The Weekend Baker: [budgetvideo.com image 388x372]
Bring back the overhead projector!


Can't. Bulb burned out and there's no spares in the cabinet.
 
Mad_Radhu
2023-02-08 11:11:26 AM  

Creoena: I don't get the hate for PowerPoint, especially for those who use it as a script, especially in the new COVID world.  It just means I can read the slide and not have to listen to the presenter.  I've often turned the volume all the way down and just read the slide for "Mandatory" 2-hour meetings where execs just ramble to hear themselves talk.


There's also a lot of people who are more easily able to ingest new information visually than by listening to someone, so having a visual of the key talking points really helps them retain the information. Yea, you can take notes to help, but you don't want people to be stenographers instead of participating actively in the meeting.

I'm honestly that way. If someone tells me their name it'll often fall out of my brain in a few minutes, but if I see their name on an email or a name tag I'll remember it much better.
 
Rent Party
2023-02-08 11:15:18 AM  
I am an acolyte of Edward Tufte.  I've got signed copies of "Visual Display" and "Envisioning Information" and have taken his courses in the past.   He hates PowerPoint because it makes creating bad visualizations easy.  But it's necessary, as (mentioned above) most people are stupid (specially the ones we work for) and can't  understand complex ideas.

I present a lot of complex systems to people with no chance at actually understanding them.  But PMs and TPMs and Program guys all think they need to know it.  So I am really good at breaking complex things into digestible chunks, and have developed my own process for doing it.

1.  Add no style formatting other than font. - Tufte's issue with PP is what he calls "chart junk."  That is anything on the visualization that does not convey information, and I agree with that.   Swoops and color and pallet are all chart junk.  Use the default white style.

2.  Keep charts and statisticals to univariate reports.   Give them *one* thing on a slide.

3.  A picture is worth a thousand words.   Keep those simple, too.

4.  Fat lines on your system interfaces.  If you're a systems engineer (and I am) put nothing on the presentation with any level of detail beyond the subsystem level.  But highlight the shiat out of those subsystems, and make sure the interfaces are well defined.  That lets Boss walk out knowing that "The FOOBLE speaks AMQP to the WHATZITS" and he can parade that around the board room for a bit.   Get into any more detail and he's gonna want to fix it for you.   Don't just cut and paste your build drawings into the thing or you will spend the entirety of the presentation explaining that.

5.  Remember, you are the presentation, not the deck.   It supports you.  You do not support the deck.

You are now prepared to dazzle the executive team.  Good luck.
 
LineNoise [OhFark]
2023-02-08 11:36:00 AM  
Me at every pitch meeting for the last 20 years of my career:

"Ok everyone, i know we all hate slide decks......but i promise this will be quick and save us some questions, so just entertain me for a second...."

as i then run through a 6 year old deck for the next 15 minutes that i just updated a few things on that morning on the train.
 
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