The Anti PowerPoint Party
July 6, 2011 8:43 PM   Subscribe

Although ATM's has been recently identified as playing a part in high unemployment, Switzerland's Anti PowerPoint Party believes the country loses approximately 2.1 billion Swiss Francs (2.5 billion $USD) through the use of PowerPoint. If they can obtain the signatures of 100,000 voters as needed under Swiss law the group can call for a national referendum to ban the use of PowerPoint and other presentation software throughout Switzerland. Edward Tufte (and others) also had a problem with PPoint...
posted by wallstreet1929 (56 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm really going to need this post as a series of bullet points and animated transitions.
posted by The Whelk at 8:50 PM on July 6, 2011 [4 favorites]


what do ATM's have to do with this post?
posted by esprit de l'escalier at 8:52 PM on July 6, 2011 [3 favorites]


... and some wacky clipart that shows how much of a free thinking you are.
posted by sbutler at 8:53 PM on July 6, 2011


Powerpoint is EVIL
posted by Poet_Lariat at 8:55 PM on July 6, 2011


I apply interesting transitions to my powerpoint presentations. That keeps 'em coming back
posted by the noob at 8:55 PM on July 6, 2011


The ATM machine stole my PIN number and no I don'ts got no work!
posted by blue_beetle at 8:55 PM on July 6, 2011


...and a pie chart that looks more impressive because it's in 3D.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:55 PM on July 6, 2011


But if they get rid of PowerPoint, they lose a valuable tool in determining who gets to ride on the B ark.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:57 PM on July 6, 2011 [14 favorites]


This was never a problem in Office 2003. Goddamn upgrade, stupid tabs...
posted by maryr at 9:07 PM on July 6, 2011 [1 favorite]


Tufte, et al. miss the point (ha) entirely. PowerPoint effectively minimizes the damage to an organization by
  • trapping dumb people in free-form artistic endeavors
  • occupying people who would normally be harassing customers
  • keeping AV geeks around as punching bags
  • creating opportunities to nap
posted by swift at 9:07 PM on July 6, 2011 [11 favorites]


"There is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong." -- H. L. Mencken
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:14 PM on July 6, 2011 [2 favorites]


All presentations should clearly be written in latex using the beamer package! ;)
posted by jeffburdges at 9:22 PM on July 6, 2011 [5 favorites]


There isn't any problem with machines like ATMs, grocery store self-checkout lines, word processors, algorithmic trading software, etc. putting people out of work, that's our evolution as a species/culture.

All the "structural issues with our economy" fall under the heading of "systemic corruption". Read In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell.

Exhibit A is the War on Drugs. Anyone remember Obama laughingly ignoring how "legalize marijuana" scored #1 on his Internet Town Hall? Yeah, that's "systemic corruption".
posted by jeffburdges at 9:22 PM on July 6, 2011 [16 favorites]


This seems an awful lot like saying "The US has a problem with gun violence, so we're going to outlaw the Baretta 9mm pistol."
posted by Tomorrowful at 9:23 PM on July 6, 2011 [1 favorite]


Although ATM's has been recently identified..

What? There are so many things... I don't even...
posted by Justinian at 9:27 PM on July 6, 2011 [3 favorites]


Like most political parties the Anti PowerPoint Party is offering a simplistic solution (let’s ban presentation software!) to a complicated problem (how do you communicate information to a group of people?). Personally, I’ve never understood the hatred people have towards PowerPoint. Sure, there are many bad PowerPoint decks out there, but there are also lots of bad memos, spreadsheets, reports, and corporate videos out there too.

The most useful thing I’ve ever read about PowerPoint is Andrew Abela’s distinction between conference room and ballroom style presentations:
Is PowerPoint good or evil? This is the question that spurred the development of the distinction between Ballroom and Conference Room style presentations. . . . For our purposes, all you need to know is that the experts - and the research - are divided on whether PowerPoint helps or hurts communication . . . .

I think that the reason the experts disagree is that they are talking at cross-purposes: they are talking about entirely different types of presentation. To understand this, it helps to understand the idea of presentation idiom. A presentation idiom is a form of expression with an associated set of design principles. I call the two main types of presentation idiom Ballroom style and Conference Room style. Ballroom style presentations are what most typical PowerPoint presentations are trying to be: colorful, vibrant, attention-grabbing, and (sometimes) noisy. They typically take place in a large, dark room—such as a hotel ballroom. Conference room style presentations are more understated: they have less color, with more details on each page; they are more likely to be on printed handouts than projected slides, and they are more suited to your average corporate conference room.

The biggest single mistake that presenters make—and the root cause of the PowerPoint debate—is confusing the two idioms, and particularly, using ballroom style where conference room style is more appropriate. Almost all PowerPoint presentations are given using ballroom style—yet most of the time presentation conditions call for conference room style. Ballroom style is appropriate for where the objective is to inform, impress, and/or entertain a large audience and where the information flow is largely expected to be one-way (presenter to audience). Conference room style presentations are more suited to meetings where the objective is to engage, persuade, come to some conclusion, and drive action. This covers any presentation where you want your audience to do something differently as a result of your presentation. It includes: making recommendations; selling; training; communicating the implications of research; and raising funds. Information flow in this idiom is expected to be two-way—it’s more interactive.

From this perspective, the critics of PowerPoint condemn—correctly—the use of ballroom style presentations in situations that need conference room style presentations, while its defenders uphold the use of ballroom style presentations in situations where they are appropriate. Therefore, in a sense, both are correct.

He continues on:
A conference room presentation should look more like an architectural drawing than something you’d see on television, and it is best delivered on paper. Paper has the advantage of allowing much greater resolution and therefore more information on each page; you can use font sizes as small as 9 point without difficulty, whereas in Ballroom style 24-point is usually the minimum safe size. More information on each page also facilitates more productive conversations, because it helps avoid the “turn back 2 slides – no, 3, what was that point there?”-type of confusion since all the information for the discussion of the moment is right in front of everyone on a single page. Paper delivery also allows people to write on the presentation, so that they can engage with your content better and communicate back to you any suggested changes.
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 9:33 PM on July 6, 2011 [11 favorites]


Yeah the question is, why do we want jobs? Wouldn't it be better for everyone if everyone had their hours cut 1% when productivity increases 1%?
posted by delmoi at 9:34 PM on July 6, 2011 [6 favorites]


Conference room style presentations are more understated: they have less color, with more details on each page; they are more likely to be on printed handouts than projected slides,

More details on each page = bad.

When I give a presentation, I have only one thing on each slide with text. Before and after each slide with text I have an all-blank slide. Normally, nothing is projected. When I come to a point in the presentation where I want my audience to have the exact words or figures I'm talking about, I bring up the next slide—with the text—read the text aloud (slowly, of course), and then move on to the next (blank) slide.

I mean, when I'm giving a presentation, I want my audience to pay attention to me. Not to the wall.
posted by kenko at 9:51 PM on July 6, 2011 [2 favorites]


As someone who gives a lot of presentations, but entered the workforce around 1998, I'm curious what did you folks did before Powerpoint came onto the scene? How has Powerpoint really made things worse? I've definitely sat through plenty of bad presentations, but I don't think it was due to the program the presenter was using.
posted by Thoughtcrime at 10:29 PM on July 6, 2011


Treatise for a new world:

Technology is not the enemy of labor.
Conveniences are not the enemy of labor.
The enemy of labor, and thus of the working class, is that of resting on our laurels.
The new world must be built upon a foundation of problem solving, so that when one problem is solved, another one is focused on.
These should ideally be real problems, and not just having people wear a robe backwards and calling it a "snuggie."
The middle class of the new world will move towards greater urbanization, so as to allow for less geographical transience in an era of increased transience of employment.
The predominant system of the new world will be built upon a cooperation between government and capitalist institutions, rather than a battle between them. The government, by the people, may direct where progress needs to be made, and businesses may, in exchange for tax breaks based partially upon the success of their endeavors in solving these problems, employ their own methods.
The working class may thus, ideally, move from job to job as projects demand, but without too much upset to their lives, as opposed to the current situation. They will be understood by their skills rather than their previous job titles, so that if, for instance, Tellers become largely obsolete, another project with need of personnel with customer service skills and a sense of responsibility with money can hire them en masse.
We're already halfway there, but we're missing the key elements of a common drive towards problem-solving, and of security for the working class. At present we are getting the bad without the good. This would hopefully bring the good in to exploit where the bad has already brought us.

A half-drunken idea from Navelgazer. Thank you.
posted by Navelgazer at 10:31 PM on July 6, 2011 [5 favorites]


The world used overhead projectors and colourful permanent markers. It was a more innocent, though more stained, time.
posted by jb at 10:37 PM on July 6, 2011 [6 favorites]


More details on each page = bad...When I give a presentation, I have only one thing on each slide with text. Before and after each slide with text I have an all-blank slide.

I can only say that in my job, this approach is sometimes appropriate and sometimes not. Of course, I can't dispute that you always have to be careful not to put too much into a single slide. But for certain kinds of topic/audience combinations (especially technical/technical), your approach might be a bit too spartan.

Honestly, it sounds like PowerPoint would be well-suited to the kind of presentations you describe. I don't see anything wrong with that; PowerPoint is a tool, and a lot of the hate is overblown. Sometimes it's exactly right for the job, sometimes it isn't.

Speaking of which, this party sounds ridiculous. They may have a point, but if they wanted to be constructive, they would devote their efforts to offering a real alternative. Of course, it doesn't sound like they're being completely serious, but I'm tired of people justifying stupid controversial stances in order to "stimulate a discussion." Perhaps more thought should be put into the quality of the discussion than the mere existence of one.
posted by Edgewise at 10:51 PM on July 6, 2011


Although ATM's has been recently identified as playing a part in high unemployment,

This is the lump of labor fallacy, also known as misplaced concreteness. One could more easily assert that modernized banking creates more jobs, although not at the bank, where it became cheaper to bank.
posted by Brian B. at 10:54 PM on July 6, 2011 [1 favorite]


Now that I've perused the site a bit more, I see that the party specifically advocates the use of the flip chart as an alternative to power point. So now I'm not sure what I'm looking at. Is this just an elaborate pitch for a new/old presentation methodology dressed up as a party?
posted by Edgewise at 10:57 PM on July 6, 2011


Also those big paper flip things. You still see those in comic strips or movies to signify Business Presentation.

I think the reason Powerpoint is considered more harmful than transparencies or paper is that it's flexible and flashy enough that people expect the slides to carry the presentation, to be the presentation. With more limited AV aids, people were more likely to treat them as just that, aids to a presentation given by a person.

Tufte has some good points about the way that Powerpoint in particular encourages a certain cognitive style, but I think that's kind of secondary; it wouldn't be in a position to have that effect if people weren't giving it the central role in the first place.
posted by hattifattener at 10:57 PM on July 6, 2011


When Andrew Abela talks about conference style presentations and when Edward Tufte talks about the failings of the cognitive style of PowerPoint, what both of them are arguing for is replacing electronic presentations (regardless of whether done in PowerPoint, Keynote, Latex, or any other slideware package) with short written reports that people read beforehand and then come into a meeting ready to discuss—something similar to how university seminars are supposed to work. They’re advocating for a cultural change in how business is done: people slowing down and reading things and then having an informed conversation about them. Andrew Abela is also saying that in some circumstances (presentations done in "ballrooms"), PowerPoint is the right tool to use.

Here are some relevant quotes from Tufte:

[Question] In your discussion you seemed to have a dislike for using Microsoft's Power Point. Is there an alternative software package for presentations?

[Answer by Tufte] In the first place, don't begin with the question "What presentation software should one use?" but rather with "What are the thinking-learning-understanding tasks that my displays and presentations are supposed to help with?" Answering this second question will then suggest technologies of information transmission.

. . .

Overhead projectors and PowerPoint tend to leave no traces; instead give people paper, which they can read, take away, show others, make copies, and come back to you in a month and say "Didn't you say this last month? It's right here in your handout." The resolution of paper (being read by people in the audience) must be ten times the resolution of talk talk talk or reading aloud from bullet lists projected up on the wall. A paper record tells your audience that you are serious, responsible, exact, credible.


Here are some examples from Tufte of what he thinks a good report looks like:
[Tufte] Here's a clear technical report and press release, using a 4-page format (similar to A3 or 11" by 17", folded in half). If the report were printed as a 4-pager folded-in-half, then the June 2005/April 2006 images would fall somewhat closer together, which would facilitate comparison (although both images can be seen vertically adjacent simultaneously on, for example, a 30" monitor). From the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS):


http://www.isis-online.org/publications/southasia/newkhushab.pdf

. . . .

Here is a well-designed technical report:


http://evo.bio.psu.edu/printclock


It is about 7 pages long. Note the excellent illustrations, integration of text and images, documentation, careful citations, and different types of evidence. Note also the use of sentences and paragraphs and flowing text, not the grunts of hierarchical bullet points on slides.


This is a very high standard for a technical report, but why not start at that level?


posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 11:01 PM on July 6, 2011 [4 favorites]




One could more easily assert that modernized banking creates more jobs, although not at the bank, where it became cheaper to bank.

Just out of curiosity, if it's cheaper to bank now, why are bank fees skyrocketing?
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:24 PM on July 6, 2011 [1 favorite]


They aren't going nearly far enough; we need to ban all productivity software, to give people jobs typing- no, make that scribing reports, filing records and taking dictated memos. Likewise, if we just got rtis of the internal combustion engine, think of how many fulfilling jobs we could provide pulling rickshaws and cleaning up after horse carts!
posted by happyroach at 11:35 PM on July 6, 2011 [1 favorite]


Just out of curiosity, if it's cheaper to bank now, why are bank fees skyrocketing?

Why are banks greedy? I don't know, but as far as they can get away with it smoothly, I think that's just part of their fraud industry.

'The shift from paper checks clearing physically, to electronic bank transactions, benefits the banking industry immensely,' he notes. The reason? It generates interest on the 'float time' that is still reckoned by the time that paper takes physically to clear, even while the electronic transaction is instantaneous; so it is in the interest of the banking industry to have as much electronic banking as possible. But electronic banking is much easier to hack -- and identity theft and bank fraud have skyrocketed accordingly; but the bank benefits a second time with every case of bank fraud and identity theft -- because of the immense fees -- overdraft fees, bad check fees, that can amount to hundreds or even thousands of dollars with each corrupted account -- racked up by the corrupted accounts. The longer it takes to close the corrupted account, the more difficult it is for the customer to have accountability with the bank's fraud department -- the more revenue for the bank. The bank freezes your ability to address the roblem -- but continues to charge you fees for the corrupted account. `Because of the fees that get drained out of an account, banks actually profit from bank fraud,' explains Kischuk.' Multiply this by the number of times across the country a consumer account faces identity theft or bank fraud -- and you see a mini-industry.
posted by Brian B. at 11:49 PM on July 6, 2011 [2 favorites]


A quick search turned up poehm.com, which reveals this Matthias Poehm as a self-styled public speaking guru. Evidently this movement to ban powerpoint is his latest diversion/effort to drive traffic to his website. Trying to have a serious discussion about this lends way too much credence to the wild assertions being made on the website.

I'm not saying I'm against using the internet to make money off gullible people willing to buy BS books you cranked out in a matter of hours, but I don't think links to such sites have a place on metafilter. In any case, let's at least recognize this for what it is.
posted by mantecol at 12:21 AM on July 7, 2011


God bless Switzerland.
posted by molecicco at 12:57 AM on July 7, 2011


Oh my Gawd, I am so sick of proofreading translations of 30-page PowerPoint presentations that could save time (and apparently money) by just sending out a freaking .pdf of coherent sentences and, you know, human-style communication rather than an incomprehensible series of sentence fragments and low-res graphs.
posted by Mooseli at 2:19 AM on July 7, 2011


It took me a while to figure it out, but PPT decks themselves aren't evil. The people who have lousy presentation skills are.

If you slap together a deck and stand up in the room and read the fucking deck, bullet by bullet...you are evil and should be shot.

What I've found is that decks can be very effective accents to a well-prepared presenter with some dynamism to their personality and good speaking technique.

Part of the problem is that a lot of people don't know how to use it right. Another part of the problem is that there are people giving presentations who have no business giving presentations. Hate to paraphrase the late Ben Hogan in this way, but it's not the arrow, it's the Indian...
posted by Thistledown at 4:27 AM on July 7, 2011 [3 favorites]


PowerPoint doesn't ruin presentations; presenters ruin presentations.

On the other hand, Asynchronous Transfer Mode is a tool of the Devil.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:28 AM on July 7, 2011


My pet peeve with PP, and a personal marker I have for the end of civilization as we've known it, are comedians who are now backing their standup with PowerPoint.

There's just nothing funny about PowerPoint.
posted by paulsc at 4:28 AM on July 7, 2011


The problem with PowerPoint isn't, in my experience, completely contained in PowerPoint itself. A good, oh, let's call it 85% of the problem is in shitty institutional slide templates.

I'm sure you've seen these things. Typically they have a giant colored header, big footer, a corporate logo, maybe some swoopy little decorative lines or some other junk on them, and all told take up about 10-15% of your screen real estate. Worse, they form a border around your content, which keeps anything from really standing out to the audience, and helps lull the audience to sleep by making each slide look pretty much exactly the same from a distance, as your eyes....(blink)...start to close...(long blink)....a little...mmmmffff (drool).

If you use nothing but the blank white slide and put your content on there manually, creating only as many slides as you need for the visuals you need to present, Powerpoint isn't that much worse than just printing out a bunch of handouts. Even Tufte has come around a bit to this, from what I understand, since it is not too far from the alternative to Powerpoint that he prefers: overhead projector acetates.

Which brings me to my other thought: if you want something other than Powerpoint, a flip chart ain't it. Overhead projector sheets or handouts with a whiteboard for explication make more sense, in terms of breaking the "cognitive style" that is the worst part of PP decks (characterized by sales pitch-iness, bullet points, oversimplified charts, etc.). A flipchart seems to me like it would have all the same problems. Overhead projector sheets, by contrast, seem to encourage more content/slide, and the very high resolution lets you display complex data without simplifying the charts down into meaninglessness.

I'm pretty suspicious of anyone who wants to replace Powerpoint with flipcharts.
posted by Kadin2048 at 4:36 AM on July 7, 2011


More details on each page = bad.

Nonsense! When I run out of options and find a PowerPoint presentation unavoidable, I am obliged to cram as much shit as humanly possible onto every single slide. Got some plots of engineering data that people might need to read to make design decisions? Put two of 'em on a slide! No, put three! And leave enough space to fill in two or three blocks of explanatory text! "But," you may ask, "doesn't that totally break the flow of your presentation? Are people actually going to read all of that while you're talking?" Yes, it does, and no, they probably won't, but this is the required approach because the companies that we work with seem to exclusively communicate data internally as PowerPoint presentations, so everything must be designed with the view that it is not a presentation, but a comprehensive report.

I've actually had to verify the details of a CAD model that I got based on some low-res snapshots of a wind tunnel model that were placed six to a slide on some .ppt somewhere.

[/rant]
posted by indubitable at 5:15 AM on July 7, 2011


This is why I use Open Office's Impress instead of PowerPoint. :)

Seriously, though, I can count on zero fingers the number of useful or interesting PowerPoint presentations I've attended. That's not PowerPoint's fault, though.
posted by Benny Andajetz at 5:17 AM on July 7, 2011


"In an interview with NBC, Obama correctly took note of the importance of automation to business. Yet he went a step further and implied that the substitution of machines for people is one of the reasons unemployment remains stubbornly high two years into an economic recovery. The jobless rate was 9.1% in May."

“There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers,” the president said this week. “You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM. You don’t go to a bank teller. Or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking at the gate. So all these things have created changes in the economy.”
posted by otto42 at 5:23 AM on July 7, 2011


A half-drunken idea from Navelgazer. Thank you.

Some nice sentiments there, but none of that will mean a whole lot so long as societies continue to allow the richest 5% to siphon the vast majority of profits away from the process as step 1.
posted by aught at 5:28 AM on July 7, 2011 [1 favorite]


I'm going to design an APPM (Automatic PowerPoint Machine). Once they're ubiquitous, with any luck, they will take thousands of jobs away from managers and bosses.
posted by Benny Andajetz at 5:57 AM on July 7, 2011


Jasper, as you surely know, the fundamental issue with PowerPoint is the influence of its abysmally-thought-out defaults, which barely anyone even thinks to overcome and few of whom actually can.

The argument that every medium has lesser and greater exemplars is a bit trite when there is no “default” for “memo” software, for example.
posted by joeclark at 6:06 AM on July 7, 2011


Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Seriously, you guys, I have a presentation to do at an academic conference in Lausanne next month, and they're not going to want to listen to my boring American ass drone on for twenty minutes without some visual aids. How fast does the Swiss referendum process work?
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 6:18 AM on July 7, 2011


When I want people to actually pay attention to something and remember it I just present it as a rumour about the next apple product.
posted by srboisvert at 7:11 AM on July 7, 2011 [1 favorite]


Powerpoint is a dangerous weapon not suitable for mere mortals. In most people's hands it is the equivalent of handing over a cache of machine guns and hand grenades to a bunch of drunk frat boys. What could possibly go wrong.

In the hands of Steve Jobs, however,.....
(although he probably does not use PP itself for his engrossing presentations)
posted by caddis at 7:14 AM on July 7, 2011



It took me a while to figure it out, but PPT decks themselves aren't evil. The people who have lousy presentation skills are.

If you slap together a deck and stand up in the room and read the fucking deck, bullet by bullet...you are evil and should be shot.


This is exactly right. In education, this is pretty much all I see when I go to a conference or inservice.

There are also little cartoons that the presenter seems to think he/she needs to explain to some extent because no one's laughing, but we're not laughing because we'd rather be diving into a pool full of rocks than listening to you read all the text that you copied out of the teacher's manual that we've already seen...
posted by Huck500 at 7:19 AM on July 7, 2011 [2 favorites]


In the hands of Steve Jobs..

I know!! Keynote totally rules! Powerpoint sucks!
posted by pashdown at 7:38 AM on July 7, 2011




Edward Tufte is the Godwin of PowerPoint.
posted by mkultra at 7:49 AM on July 7, 2011 [1 favorite]


“There are some structural issues with our economy...."

Well, that part's true, at least.

I have no use for PowerPoint.
posted by eviemath at 8:45 AM on July 7, 2011


Steve Jobs' vs. Bill Gates' presentations.
posted by oceano at 10:43 AM on July 7, 2011


If you slap together a deck and stand up in the room and read the fucking deck, bullet by bullet...you are evil and should be shot.

Or maybe you're just not a confident public speaker and PowerPoint helps you to get through it. How's your blood pressure?
posted by obiwanwasabi at 4:34 PM on July 7, 2011


Fuck it, why stop there? Go ahead and blame the appliances industry for creating dryers, thus putting people who hang up laundry out of a job. This is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of.
posted by CountSpatula at 5:39 PM on July 7, 2011


Or maybe you're just not a confident public speaker ...

I have endured countless hours of having PP slides read to me, during which the refrain "Give us printouts of the damned things and let us go do something useful." kept echoing in my head. My wife, who is an instructional designer and sometimes technical trainer, keeps bringing home stories of trainers who haven't learned the software they are supposed to train customers in. These stories invariably feature the trainer doing little beyond reading the slides.

I am not a confident public speaker. Were my boss to press me to give a presentation, I would do my best to make it clear what a bad idea that is. I believe that slide-readers are either too unassertive to resist being made to do something they know they cannot do, or - as I think is by far the more common situation - they are overconfident in their ability to present the material, even when they do not know that material. The third condition, which often overlaps the second, is that they are lazy and don't care.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 5:10 AM on July 8, 2011


Getting (insert certificate name) by reading (insert number of) pages of (insert tech subject) as bullets in PowerPoint and in a 4kg reader for (insert number of days) in class and an exam day is a special kind of hell.
posted by yoHighness at 7:02 PM on July 8, 2011


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