August 18, 2006
Slide Show
I try to avoid doing
PowerPoint presentations whenever possible. They are the crutch of lazy or
disorganized thinkers; possessing either too little or too much information.
But at many of the conferences I attend, PP has become the de facto tool for
giving presentations and I grudgingly oblige. When I am forced to use PP, I try
to keep the slide content concise and I verbally expound on each point, forcing
the audience to listen to me rather than simply reading the slides.
Unfortunately, not
everyone shares my wariness of slide presentations. SecDef Rumsfeld and his
lackeys are reported to have a fondness for showing off their alleged PP kung
foo and they often used slides to communicate orders and plans to field generals
in Iraq. Here's one such example. I have no idea what it means and I doubt most soldiers could make sense of it. Is it any wonder
that a war effort led by people who take more time to generate impressive-looking but indecipherable charts instead of paying attention to the actual facts on the ground has resulted in such an epic clusterfuck?
Posted by wintermute2_0 at August 18, 2006 07:02 PM