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PowerPoint presentations are so boring

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I don?t hate Bill Gates.  I really have no reason to do so because I've never met the man and I use his products daily - as do most of us.  I hear people complaining that Microsoft products are ?crap?, yet they seem to work and no other company has successfully marketed a better product to replace them.

Here?s my gripe though. I am convinced that Microsoft PowerPoint must be responsible globally for more mind-numbingly boring and pointless presentations of bullshit and stating the glaringly obvious than any other medium on earth.

In the good old days, salespeople, managers, team leaders and trainers would stand in front of an audience, they deliver their spiel, sometimes back it up with a few overheads and then go back to the real world of football pools, private email, drinking tea, or even looking out of the window.  All of these activities were far more productive than producing megabytes of PowerPoint presentations!

In the brave new world of PowerPoint, amateurishly scrawled overheads have been replaced by their electronic equivalent complete with transitional fades, fancy bullet points, electronic applause and text layouts in multiple vomit inducing colours.  These tools, appropriately used allow a five minute briefing to be stretched into a whole day of torture that will bore everyone rigid.  First of all though, don?t forget that days of work go into preparing the presentation, downloading silly little cartoon clips from the Internet and most importantly - writing and rewriting statements such as:

"Our customers will stay with us if we make them feel important.? (This is earth shattering stuff.)
"We must look after our customers? needs." (Thanks for telling me.)
"Our customer?s are important." (The greengrocer?s apostrophe is intentional!)

Projector - PowerPoint presentations bore me rigid During this process, colleague 'A' will go to colleague 'B' in the next office with a print out, or more likely email a copy so that 'B' can see what a great job 'A' has done.   Colleague 'B' will then email A something along the lines of "Important" does not convey the right shade of meaning.  How about "Our customer?s will stay with us if we make them feel like Number One."  Then colleague 'A' will find some objection to that, and so it goes on and on Ad infinitum; wasting time and resources when nobody really gives a toss how it?s worded as it really doesn't even need to be said at all!

Eventually the PowerPoint presentation is put together with perhaps 60 or 70 slides, all making the same banal points in various different ways.  Pretty graphs will be thrown in too along with the usual business speak jargon.  The audience troop in, the presenter then stands with his back to the audience and reads the text of the slides in a monotone whilst members of the audience groan inwardly or fall asleep.  In many cases the only points of interest being the spelling and grammatical mistakes which creep in or the ability to play ?bullshit bingo? as the business buzzwords pop up with monotonous regularity!

Some of the words which I should like to see banned from PowerPoint presentation because without them this scourge of modern business would cease to exist, are: Model (as in ?business model?), usability, deliverables, quantifiable, measurable, grow (as in ?to grow our business?), objectives and methodology!  Arrrghhh!!

By: Mike P


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Lemsip

Lemsip

What's the point of using Power Point if the slides only contain words. You can speak those words and people can take notes. Power Point is for displaying maps, diagrams, charts and photos. The worst thing about Power Point is the Power Point print out handouts often six slides to a page. I've even seen one slide to a page printed on one side of the sheet of paper. Couldn't notes be typed up into a Word document before being printed out as handouts?
20/03/17 Lemsip
1
ahforfoulkessake

ahforfoulkessake

If you don't like powerpoint presentations and I'm guessing that's most of you, try and look for a job where they're not an issue.
07/07/13 ahforfoulkessake
-9
Miserablemoaninggit

Miserablemoaninggit

Teachers are using PowerPoint increasingly as they get their students to jump through exam hoops, and the students are now so used to it that they do not complain and, indeed, Death by Powerpoint is reincarnated by said students as they move out of the mediocrity that was their education and into employment. No wonder the UK is in the state it is in.
24/12/10 Miserablemoaninggit
-16
mardi gras the candyman can

mardi gras the candyman can

the reason that slide shows are boring is because they are usually presented by a beaurocratic jobsworth who persists in talking in a monotone voice. it has been scientifically proven that people do not concentrate to their full potential in power point presentations and it has also been proven that 1000's of work hours are lost due to unnessecery meetings. the usuall culprit is meetings about when the next meeting will be.
05/11/10 mardi gras the candyman can
-3
Biggles

Biggles

I compile loads of Ppt. presentations. The real problem is not the slide pack but the misuse of content, which is often too dense and repetitious and distract from the speaker's delivery. A good slide pack should provide a helpful visual aid, not give you eye strain and a headache.

I can send you a slide-pack to demonstrate my point, if you like!
30/05/09 Biggles
-7
TaffyQuad

TaffyQuad

Death by Powerpoint. How many words can I get on a powerpoint? how many slides can is get through in an hour ? Some people just can't communicate unless they use Powerpoint. If you want to cram loads of words on a PPT chart then use a wordprocessor.
15/12/07 TaffyQuad
-6
South Coast Man

South Coast Man

Powerpoints are a crutch for people who have no communications skills. They insult you by assuming that you are prepared to be bored out of your mind. If you normally do Powerpoints yourself, and are feeling pretty depressed after reading this gripe, he is a way out! Stll use Powerpoint (unless you are lucky enough to have a MAC - but that's for another day) but forget about the bullet points - they are the real curse. Instead, use just 1 or 2 words on each slide. make them huge and vividly coloured. Use a few stunning pictures as well and a few short video clips. Astonish the audience, and they'll love you and remember what you said.
14/12/07 South Coast Man
-18
alaneroberts

alaneroberts

jamie,

Your attitude is quite sad. If that's all you want out of education, then you are simply willing to be 'spoon-fed', with no real effort on your part and no real development of the skills that are required in higher education and wider employment. You need to be taught how to 'think', not just simply 'obey'. Sad, very very sad!
11/07/07 alaneroberts
-1
crossmama

crossmama

I am crying with laughter, you are soooooo right! They bore the pants off me too.
01/06/07 crossmama
-10
jamie

jamie

I attend school and im in the 6th form, personally I just want a teacher in front of me so they can say what they want us to do and then we get on with it, but no the worst has yet to come nopt only do they tell us we have a presentation do do with powerpoint but its in front of the whole school, now I know I might be diversifying here but this is a terrifying experience for someone like me who is quite shy...and so therefore skip school because of it!!!!
19/04/07 jamie
-17
alaneroberts

alaneroberts

What's more worrying is that Powerpoint is being increasingly used in our schools and colleges. Pity those poor students who actually want a 'teacher' in front of them, rather than some banal 'course deliverer' armed with their Powerpoint presentations. Often, lights have to be dimmed and the students - the audience - adopt a primarily passive role that does not allow for any real learning to take place.

I do, for the most part, agree with the original post.
05/04/07 alaneroberts
-15
Dr Johnson

Dr Johnson

Model means pretty girl on bonnet of car. Business model means she does take money. Deliverable means it will be late. Quantifiable means the taxman wants a share of the proceeds. Measurable means a surveyor has to be brought in. Grow really means "grow up". Objective means whatever it means to whomsoever thought it up, and nothing to anyone else. Methodology is a kind of religion.
05/04/07 Dr Johnson
3
Dino Sore

Dino Sore

Glad I'm not the only one who feels this way! Or should I say we're "singing off the same songsheet"??
05/04/07 Dino Sore
-12

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