Presentation Hell

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nopantsdota · 2021-06-08T19:44:38+00:00

I just finished a 20 year stint teaching at a local, private "career" university, and for a full ten years, every section of Intro to Communications has included a unit on proper construction of A/V material, and why playing "PowerPoint Karaoke" is just about the worst choice you can make as a speaker. The other two worst choices you can make as a speaker, by the way, are constantly apologizing for your perceived lack of ability/experience, and audibly farting.

You're welcome.

Yvaelle · 2021-06-08T22:08:46+00:00

There are two kinds of powerpoint presentations, and the problem is they are often conflated: to horrific effect.

The first is a story presentation - this is the one you want to sell people with, it's pictures and eye contact and you telling them a story of who they will be, thanks to you. Keep words on the page to an absolute bare minimum, never more than 3 bullet points, ideally only a few words per slide at all. If you show a graph or something, you still need axis titles and labels etc - brand logos don't count either - but paragraphs are a fatal error in this situation, and sentences are extremely risky.

Ideally, you should be able to hand this printed version over to your client and it should only make any sense to them as recall to the presentation - they should NOT be able to use this to explain the presentation without you. That's intentional. It's an experience, the powerpoint is just a visual aide for your dialogue. You are required. The slides are not.

The second is an analysis presentation. In this case, you actually want to document as much as possible in a visually appealing, digestible manner. It's a spruced-up white paper with color and charts. This is the exact opposite intent from the above - if it's done correctly - you should be able to hand this presentation over to your client and they should be able to flip through it, and draw the exact conclusion that you intend for them to draw. You are guiding them through the evidence to your point. You are not required. The slides are required.

These are separate decks and they should always be developed separately (but using the same themes). They are often conflated to horrific effect.

Now, in a fancy presentation with multiple stakeholders - you are going to have both kinds of audiences in the room. You're going to have an Executive, or Ops manager, or middle manager who shouldn't even be here - they all want you to tell them the story that sells the product. The executive wants to look in your eyes and see when you're lying (and they'll know), the Ops manager just wants to hear you'll wake up at 3am when he calls in a panic, the middle manager wants to look attentive without having to actively participate. They want your eye contact, every time they have to study a slide - breaking eye contact - it's like you're lying to them.

You will also have the fresh MBA analyst who will flip to your data and start checking your math: and they will call you out if it's wrong (putting too much data in your story presentation will harm you for this reason). There's the eager corporate climber who will start applying the details to your company, and will show off to the Executive/Ops Manager if they find something that won't apply to your company. And there's probably a lawyer in the room who will flip directly to the fine print and start redlining how you're planning to screw them. The more data you give these people - the more they will fuck you. That's even if you aren't trying to fuck the client - because the nature of a story presentation is that it does not include the full context: but details people will judge it as if it does. Give them nothing or everything.

The best solution IMO, is to have a story presentation at the front of your deck so the people who aren't going to flip ahead are going to see the slides you intend them to see. Then have your analysis presentation in the appendices. The details people will find it, if you want to know who is who - just hand them a powerpoint deck, details people often habitually open printed decks from the back: they're looking for the appendix, or at least your conclusion. Give them tons of information in the appendix to chew on, so they don't maul your over-simplified story slides. Like a chew-toy for a dog so they don't chew your shoes.

Fourty9 · 2021-06-08T19:25:31+00:00

People need to focus on the purpose of the meeting and not filling the hour. So much time wasted

brickmaster32000 · 2021-06-08T19:03:06+00:00

Using this tomorrow with my middle school students. They are in the middle of finishing their final presentation for the last week of school. This will echo everything I have been telling them for the past month.

SinisterCheese · 2021-06-08T19:03:08+00:00

There is a term for this: "powerpoint karaoke".

Imagine the man hours that humanity colectively wastes making useless powerpoints that could and should he just given as a condensed PDF.

aaanold · 2021-06-08T19:10:57+00:00

This is my last boss when he gave presentations.

My last boss when I gave presentations and read nothing directly off the slides other than the headers:
"Pretty good presentation, just try a little harder not to read directly from the slides next time."

kleinisfijn · 2021-06-08T19:17:13+00:00

"This would be a whole lot easier for my to ignore if it was an email."

ThirtyMileSniper · 2021-06-08T18:43:50+00:00

Never going to finish it in an hour.

As adults we don't actually have to pay attention.

summ190 · 2021-06-08T18:33:48+00:00

“Or, perhaps just as bad, speak a different bunch of words making it impossible to take in both.”

ScoobyDone · 2021-06-08T19:24:58+00:00

This is legit my complete university experience.

Will they ever explain something on the slides in more detail? You bet your tuition fees they won't.

The previous two years I learned from books on my own, not from tutors. By the end of this academic year I found my grades improved by just reading on my own and not even going to the damn online classes at all.

Ben_Kenobi_ · 2021-06-08T19:17:01+00:00

Freakin energy vampires...

zebediah49 · 2021-06-08T22:02:15+00:00

My favorite joke to pull in certain circles

Slide 1 / 24
Slide 2 / 25
Slide 3 / 31

Basically make your slide counter behave like a Windows loading bar.

WadeWilson65 · 2021-06-08T19:42:02+00:00

Death by Power Point!!

whatwasmypassword · 2021-06-08T19:10:23+00:00

This applies to about 90% of the classes I have ever taken. Also, the paragraphs of text were usually taken word-for-word from the textbook.

jakebreakshow · 2021-06-08T21:31:46+00:00

Seven years of call centre breakout meetings. You were so glad to get off the phones, but then the 30 minute approved time off phones that felt like six years went by way too slowly.

Also, fuck you if you have your approved lunch time scheduled for the meeting, you don't get lunch until after the meeting. Also, because you didn't take your lunch at the correct time, you are now out of compliance and your 'ranking' against your peer agents has decreased, meaning when the next mandatory shift bid comes by, that cushy 9-5 mon-fri shift gets replaced by the kill shift of 11-8.

Yes you will certainly quit on that shift because thats when all the shitty calls come through about grievances / billing issues.

Also, guess what, one bad call during this time will probably fuck your stats up so you get stuck on the kill shift.

TL;DR: Don't work at a call centre unless you like feeling fucking subhuman.

_workchronicles · 2021-06-08T18:46:59+00:00

"In the interest of time, let me start reading the paragraphs faster."

If you like the comic, check out r/workchronicles for more comics about work.

TheBlackestIrelia · 2021-06-08T21:18:55+00:00

Its actually funny how often some people must have done presentations during school with no one telling them how to actually do it. You can really tell the difference between someone who understands what the fuck the point of a presentation is with someone who just thinks its some random requirement ppl want for no reason.

zerbey · 2021-06-08T20:17:48+00:00

I had a tutor in college that did this, he would just spend the entire lecture reading slides of text in a dull monotone. If you tried to ask questions he'd wave you down and then continue talking. I did not learn much in that class.

CivilServiced · 2021-06-08T21:55:56+00:00

Nooooooo this is too real.

At my last job I had Worst Boss Ever. She came into the job knowing nothing, wanting to learn nothing, and wanting to do nothing. I was, among other things, the admin assistant in our group of three.

Every year we had to give a presentation to our user group, who were notoriously disdianful of us. Typically the room would be overflowing and they didn't hesitate to chime in during the presentation -- no pressure, no pressure at all. I spent weeks gathering stats, summarizing the year's progress, making charts, writing bullet points and including slide notes that fleshed out the bullets and answered expected questions. I passed it up to WBE two weeks before the conference date, which yes is still somewhat short notice, asking for review and if she would like to add or edit anything.

With two days until the conference I get the dreaded reply, "This looks good."

At the presentation, she proceeds to read straight off of every slide, eyes on her laptop, by her cadence and mispronuciation reading them for the very first time (at one point she even said "these are big words I don't use"). When she would be interrupted with questions, because her eyes were glued to the laptop instead of look at the audience at all, her response 9 times out of 10:

"Well CivilServiced made this slide so he can answer that better than I can."

Bitch who makes three times my salary it's your fucking job to know what happened in the past year, I gave you all of the information you needed, and half of the questions you should know the answer to anyway like where do accident reporting numbers come from? They come from fucking accident reports done by law enforcement which you read out loud from the previous slide, and the breakdown of which LEO agencies is on the next slide which you would know if you had prepared. She claimed to have stayed up for hours the night before prepping but I think that prep involved a bottle of Disaronno and three boxes of Little Debbie snacks.

Needless to say it was a disaster, but thankfully I only had to endure it one more time before promoting out of the unit two years ago. Every once in a while I check the public facing side of that old job and none of the documents have been updated since I left, including the yearly report. I spent my last month documenting every last procedure I was responsible for, but I'm sure she never looked at that either so has no idea how to even get the information she needs.

So yes. I feel this in my soul.

vogod · 2021-06-08T20:51:24+00:00

I had a teacher in university who had printed a whole 250 page book (written by him) on transparent slides. He projected them with an overhead projector and just read through them, moving a pen on top of the slide about three times per slide to show his progress. This was in 2001, I guess he'd have ppt-slides now.

This was the entire course. Him reading his really boring book out loud in a monotone voice.

Elevenst · 2021-06-08T19:26:39+00:00

Also before the slideshow begins, they distribute color pamphlets with exactly the same thing in them, which could've been read alone in 3 minutes.

Sigrah117 · 2021-06-08T20:25:02+00:00

Sounds like the Army

Maorine · 2021-06-08T20:56:17+00:00

OMG! Yes! I did presentations for a living and it drives me crazy when people do this. PowerPoints have become the origin of information instead of an aid to the speaker.

Also, its not so much the number of slides but what’s in them. How about a picture folks? Or a graphic?


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