Poll about Powerpoint

[jducoeur]

We're having a discussion at work that has raised the question of how much Powerpoint is really used in the general population. Some have argued that a fair number of people are picking it up for personal use. I find myself a bit skeptical, so let's gather at least some anecdotal data.

Please take a second to fill in the following; even if you don't use the program at all, there's a checkbox down there for you. My flist is self-selecting, but it's also pretty tech-savvy, and it would be useful to at least get a sounding from this community. Thanks!

[Poll #757993]

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

In .mil contractor land, EVERYTHING is PowerPoint. Every briefing I've ever seen. (With the exception of a few Mac guys who sneak in Keynote slides, but have to convert back for interoperability.)

It is acceptable for making people communicate their point visually. It has some major warts during authoring, and allows certain types of boneheaded mistakes, but in general the easiest path in using it generates a readable slide: downhill usability. However, this fails if you want to, say, make a decent-looking picture.

It's the worst alternative, except for all the others.

[ian-gunn.livejournal.com]

*nod* What he said. I have not used it for any personal use but it came with the office suite so I have it at home.

I don't know if my wife will notice this but she recently had fun putting a presentation together for personal use. She used it to teach a dance she choreographed for her ME dance class/club/troupe. She included the music in the presentation and in slide show mode was able to time it so the slides would change to give the correct cue for the dance movement at taht moment. She geeked over it for a week or two putting it together getting the timing down just right.

[lakshmi-amman.livejournal.com]

Yep. Ditto here in yet another military contractor...

One other point about it's use around here (and with our customers) - Powerpoint by it's general way of presenting slides suggests that each and every major point should get a slide, or that your slide show should be a direct correlation to the outline of your presentation. Everyone here follows that guideline.

But presentation classes suggest that you gear your presentation to the nature of the presentation and the audience - and not every presentation or every part of a presentation needs a slide. You can get more use out of your slideshow software and your meeting time, if you ponder what you really need, rather than this stock Powerpoint format.

I think every part of Powerpoint discourages you from thinking this way... and I can't remember the last time we had a meeting without Powerpoint. We've become so dependant on it that the slides have become more important than the content.

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

By work, I mean school.

[miraclaire.livejournal.com]

ditto. I also generally just put very broad bullet points on the slides and talk from those. It's basically what I used to put on note cards, but now everyone else can see it too.

[the-nita.livejournal.com]

Granted, the main reason I own a copy of powerpoint is that it came bundled.

[siderea]

Seconded. I mean, I presume I have it because I bought Office. Hmm. I think I once accidentally fired it up, but that's it (at home).

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

I'm having trouble imagining why Powerpoint would be a choice for personal use, if you mean "around the home" like word processing or spreadsheets or suchlike.

"Clubs" I suppose I could see, if you had to give presentations regularly and had a projector setup, but in MY club, I use a chalkboard and count myself lucky. ;)

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

Well, think of somebody like hrj or lucianus1, who did their respective Kalamazoo presentations in Powerpoint, IIRC. That's definitely a hobbyist application.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's for a club, as I noted. But to me "personal" isn't the same as teaching something. I hae visions of someone trying to give a powerpoint presentation to their children about manners, or trying to write a letter to their Aunt using it.

[talvinamarich.livejournal.com]

I hae visions of someone trying to give a powerpoint presentation to their children about manners, or trying to write a letter to their Aunt using it.

Ooo...

You know, that MIGHT actually work. She pays attention to things on a computer screen.

Well...my daughter does, too, but that's beside the point. ;)

--Colin

[mindways]

My answers are a bit weird. To explain:

I have used the Powerpoint program to create / manipulate presentation files. However, in all but a very, very few cases, those were merely test data upon which to operate, and not anything I actually intended to present to anyone.

My impression of its utility (mostly formed from watching presentations, admittedly) is that within its domain-space (presentations with an overhead display), it's pretty good at what it does, but that it constantly tempts people into using it when some other format (verbal-only lecture with written handouts, diagramming on a whiteboard, etc) would be better, whether due to the information being presented, the skills of the presenter, the audience to which it's being presented, or some other factor.

(I'm reminded of one of my favorite Comp Sci professors in college, who shifted from chalkboard-written lectures - in which he was incredibly dynamic and engaging - to projection-monitor based lectures, which while very useful for being able to program examples in realtime / save them for later reference, were quite tedious and dull in comparison to his former classes.)

[siderea]

Yeah, my weird answers are similar. It is a potentially powerful tool for certain aspects of presentations (making them look slick and professional, especially when the topic doesn't have a lot of visual information to present), but a powerful tool does not make someone a better presenter nor a better presentation-designer.

It's like a chainsaw. Yes, it can make you able to take down a tree in seconds. But if you don't know about how to use it or how to cut down trees, you're more likely to lop off your own foot or bring a tree down on your head. A lot of people (*coff* NASA, I'm looking at you *coff*) shouldn't be allowed to use PP. As such it's the tool of the devil. For people who know how to put together and put on a presentation, well, fine.

All that said, it seemed to me to be a pretty mediocre piece of software, with inconvenient and confusing interfaces and inconsistent metaphors. To squeeze any juice out of that lemon, not only do you have to know what you're doing with presentations in general, but how to beat a recalcitrant desktop app into submission.

[siderea]

PS. I also feel the wide-spread use of PP in business has had a very unfortunate social effect: it has created an expectation that all presentations will come with a slick graphics background. That has become an implicit part of many business people's sense of "professionalism". Which means many, many people spend waaaaaaaaay too much time trying (personally!) to do graphics design projects when they should be worrying about the content of their presentation. They spend their time moving pictures around instead of practicing or timing their delivery. While there's times you do need to impress people that way, frankly, it's usually just an utter waste of human effort.

[oakleaf-mirror.livejournal.com]

Like rufinia, by work I mean school. Both Harvard and Northeastern required that I turn in slides in PowerPoint format for projection in class when I have to present papers or any other such presentation. That's the only reason I own a copy (part of Office, since we also need Excel for lab data).

I find the interface annoying enough that I bought a copy of iWork to get Keynote, so I can do presentations there, and save them in PowerPoint format.

That said, it beats the days when we'd spec slides in roff for a presentation, and get the proofs back from the graphics department weeks later.

[talvinamarich.livejournal.com]

I dislike it intensely. However, since sometimes we have to have it (like my wife, for school, had to use it, see below), I "invested" in OpenOffice before we made the switch to Apple, and now I use NeoOffice.

PowerPoint Lite: all the functionality I need on the rare occasions I do, and Micro$oft gets none of my money--all nice and legal!

Here's the thing: if you haven't picked up on it yet, my Lady is totally blind. PowerPoint is accessible *from the authoring standpoint*. A blind person can *create* a PowerPoint presentation. In fact, she had to, for a grade.

But the presentation itself is NOT accessible. Period. For someone entering the Public Relations job-market, this is something we have sooo much fun with.

A coworker despises it even more than I do. He uses HTML and a CSS to do his presentations, and has yet to be called on it. (Former Army Signal Corps Geek).

--Colin
(who now does not use a single MS product that he has paid for--only the lawfully free things, and ONLY as a last resort)

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

my Lady is totally blind.

Hey! So is mine! Maybe we should form a club :-)

Come to think of it, I think she had some similar PowerPoint experience when she was at UMassBoston. Off hand, I don't remember if she actually managed to create one or not...

[talvinamarich.livejournal.com]

http://community.livejournal.com/sightedpartners/profile

I formed it some time ago--response has been disappointing to say the least, but now that you are here... ;)

--Colin

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Hee! Joined :)

[lakshmi-amman.livejournal.com]

On an SCA note, I use it quite a bit - partly because I'm fairly good at it from work, and it came bundled with my Office suite on my home PC, and it's readily transportable as every computer I have includes the office suite.

Functions:
- when you're giving a joint presentation with someone on the other side of the country, it's a godsend. We thrashed out the outline and details of our presentations via Word and Powerpoint, doing final editing the day before the presentation, when we both were in the same time at the same place. We both scanned books, arranged info, and made slides, and then just unified the slides.
- bringing a memory key to the MidEast dance seminar this month was a godsend - no books, no ugly B&W handouts - just the pictures I wanted, the way I wanted to display them.
- it's not optimal - but with a grid for a Master slide, and using the various drawing elements, it's not a horrible needlework display diagram, and it exports to JPG and GIF for easy web posting. Have used this on handouts and personal web pages more than once. It's not an idea picture editor, but it's simple enough and painless enough that it works for basic stuff.

I often use it at home and work as a converter - it'll read many different image formats, and export to many different image formats... so when I don't have a more advanced graphical editor, I use as you would a pipe in a UNIX system.

Burn, PowerPoint, Burn!

[metageek.livejournal.com]

I've been stuck using it far less often than I've been stuck staring at its slides. It stinks—not just the program, but the whole mindset it engenders. (Most talks do not need slides; but, today, most talks have them.) As such, PowerPoint is not the only evil here; all its imitators, from OpenOffice Impress to the compile-an-HTML-outline-to-HTML-slides program I wrote to do a presentation about five years back, are symptoms and carriers of the same disease.

"Power corrupts; Powerpoint corrupts absolutely." — Vint Cerf

[qarylla.livejournal.com]

I used to work for a transportation consulting firm where I was a word processor. Over the time I worked there, we stopped doing things like figures and org charts in Illustrator (done by the graphic artists) to doing them in PowerPoint. They were both just as easily integrated into Word (whether as images, inserted objects, or by the old double printing method). However, it was incredibly difficult to manipulate the elements in PowerPoint to give you something that printed well. That said, I have been party to many a mediocre PowerPoint presentation and have rarely seen one that I would consider excellent. It is merely adequate at what it is designed to do and incredibly annoying to use for anything else (which makes me wonder why we were told to use it for org charts and other figures).

[vortexofchaos.livejournal.com]

Powerpoint seems to weaken every presentation I've ever seen that uses it. It engenders bad habits in the presenter (e.g. reading directly from screens) and in the presentation (e.g. time consuming empty flash for transitions and making points). Important and key data tends to be lost in the volume and the sheer speed that people usually whip through slides. The sad thing is that it's now being taught and used in many local schools.

You've probably seen The Gettysburg Address (http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/index.htm) done as Powerpoint...

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

I did not check "personally own a copy", although I probably have an old one lying around. If so, it came as part of Office, and was never actually used.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Oh, and speaking of "spawn of Satan"...

When Charles Stross was working on _The Jennifer Morgue_ (forthcoming soon from Golden Gryphon Press), he asked for input on his LJ about how Bad Guys with skill in computational demonology might weaponize a PowerPoint presentation :-)

[siderea]

he asked for input on his LJ about how Bad Guys with skill in computational demonology might weaponize a PowerPoint presentation :-)

Wow. Talk about bringing coals to Newcastle.

[tashabear.livejournal.com]

The Army uses it for every damn thing. The nice part is that you can email a training presentation to a team working remotely, and they have the data that was presented to the rest of the unit. The downside is that many (dare I say most) people only learn a few skills, and those usually involve slide transitions. Every slide has a different transition, and I find that so ditracting I lose the thread of what is being discussed.

[rosinavs.livejournal.com]

I didn't see a box that really fit me, so I didn't fill out the poll. I don't own a personal copy, but there is one on my work computer. Powerpoint is reasonably popular in the educational community, although a little less so with math. That's mostly due to symbology, but I know there are ways around it since I've seen math presentations with it with complicated symbols. It's a hot thing to have students, both singly and in groups, to give PowerPoint or web-based presentations. Certainly there are many non-technology minded profs who don't use or require it, and tech minded folks who use other things.

[rosinavs.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I think I helped an exboyfriend use it to prep a presentation once. Never used it otherwise. I'm a chalk- or whiteboard prof. I dream, however, of a tablet/laptop and projector...

[hakamadare.livejournal.com]

please consider reading Edward Tufte’s The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint (http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint); it is considerably more compelling that the typical anecdotal anti-Powerpoint screed. in a perfect world, your employer would pay for your copy. :)

-steve

[asdr83.livejournal.com]

Just as a side note the middle school kids in Adventures in Veterinary Medicine have to do a project to present to their parents at the end of the week. Last week 3 of 4 groups used powerpoint (they had the option to present in any format they wished) and i believe that this week all 8 groups are using powerpoint. all the kids know how to use it, make their own slides with effects etc. Every last middle schooler is more proficient than the counselors with the program, so I'd say it's pretty wide spread, especially since we have kids from all over the country.

[jducoeur]

Which pretty much matches the assertions I was questioning. (I had been particularly surprised by the point that proficiency in the program had become widespread among kids.)

Okay, I think I have to give on this one. While very few people seem to *like* Powerpoint, it does seem like it's permeating the general populace more than I had expected...

[tafkad.livejournal.com]

As with everything, it's what you do with it that counts. Sure, you could trash the Gettysburg Address into meaningless bullet points and charts. On the other hand, you can do some really good stuff with it, given sufficient creativity, knowledge of the tool, and accompanying graphics packages.

For example, at my company, we used to have to call a phone number at the end of every day, to record our hours (the system's name was TES--Time Entry System). Everyone forgot to do it more often than we cared to admit. I started putting up one-panel slides outside my desk as weekly reminders. Some of my favorite ones were based on current events or "this day in history" inspirations. Example: When the Mars probe landed, I downloaded a picture taken from Spirit, added numerous aliens, a castle, rows of soldiers, etc., and explained that Mars was once a great empire, but they forgot to call TES. When a co-worker posted his honeymoon pictures to the LAN, I downloaded one and gave it a caption indicating that he was cutting his honeymoon short because he forgot to log in his vacation time.

I was taught PP by a colleague who understood the need to put creativity in his presentations, and I have tried to keep my own in that same spirit. When you can make a flowchart more visually interesting, the people who have to stare at it are likelier to pay more attention to the content and likelier to understand what the @#$! you're talking about when you discuss the project/proposal/idea/whatever with them on subsequent days.

Seriously, it's what you do with it.

[laurion]

Completely agreed. It's just a tool. How effective it is relies on the tool wielder. Too often people throw all their bullt points up on slides, and just read from that, rather than using the visuals to reinforce the ideas and to give visual topic cues to the audience. Powerpoint has tried to lead people away from that recently by giving some innovative note tools for use in a dual screen situation (one on your laptop, one on the projector screen, for instance) so you can keep your notes without keeping them _in_ the presentation. You can then print them out and make them a handout if you really want to share them.

[shipbrook.livejournal.com]

As far as I'm concerned, the best thing about Powerpoint is that it spawned this article. I hate using it, but even more than that, I hate being trapped in meetings where people put up a PP presentation and just move from slide to slide, reading each slide verbatim, without adding anything.

And I know that's not Powerpoint's fault, but still, we hatesss it.