This really focuses on high end corporate presentations. I remember 35mm customer presentation mixed in with printed foils as being a lot more pedestrian—and some of the slides were invariably out of date because getting them updated could take a month or more.
A great book on this topic is Sweating Bullets by Robert Gaskins, the inventor of PowerPoint. It's amazing how little the core of that program has changed since it was first introduced.
There's a decent sized gap in this history, between transparencies or foils on top of an overhead projector and the modern era where laptops were connected to long-throw video projectors.
This middle period was filled by the creation of LCD panels that fit on top of an overhead projector and acted as a rudimentary video projector. The earliest ones were black and white and CGA only. I recall my dad using the early version of MS Paint to make images that he'd throw up on the screen with an Eastman Kodak LCD unit. Here's an example made by 3M:
Later on, IBM actually had a specific model of ThinkPad, the 755CDV, that had a detachable backlight panel on the display. You would strap the entire laptop to an overhead projector to do your presentation.
Slide decks are an assistant tool to a presentation. They are meant to support what a presenter is saying, not too do heavy lifting.
With very few exceptions, a slide deck should not be wholly comprehensible by itself. But too often, people put multiple paragraphs on a slide like they attached the script.
PowerPoint is only a bad idea if you assume that giving "regular people" access to powerful tools is a bad idea. I've had to modify slides many times to dump aaaall my information in there because my boss at the time didn't know the difference between a slide deck and a handout. I know I bored everyone to death. But is it fair to blame the tool?
Maybe there's a point to be made that PowerPoint should be more strict in what it accepts, and that current trends in boring you to death are a result of that. But I don't think PowerPoint is bad idea per se.
When I did college in the mid-90s, the American Advertising Federation had not yet green-lighted digital projectors. (Which was ok, because the resolution and brightness at the time was pretty terrible.)
So for the national contests we'd send digital artwork off to be printed as actual slides and run two synchronized projectors which would crossfade. It was tricky to set up and order the slides because they alternated across the two machines, and of course edits were impossible. We also had an entirely separate film projector for the commercials we'd made.
As analog as the tech was, it was almost indistinguishable from a modern presentation in experience. Just a whole lot more gear to lug around.
I don't know how many times I've been in a meeting or on a conference call with an executive, and the exec will say something like, "Can someone open PowerPoint and start taking notes?" Not OneNote, not Word, not even freakin' Notepad. PowerPoint. For meeting notes. It's like that's the only app they can use. Is there a lobotomy that's done in business school that causes this thinking?
Perhaps this person uses it as a constrained writing environment, similar to why some people use locked down editors [0]. If I am forced to summarize the meeting onto index cards, I am obliged to keep the essence and discard the details.
I've worked at a place where the contractor used PowerPoint to present 300 page detailed design documents. Made review really problematic.
But at another place a dept head started to go blind and could no longer easily read slides. So we were all encouraged to make verbal presentations of key points. It was actually really educational, and a really powerful learning experience.
What exactly is wrong with this? Powerpoint could easily be used for fast notes in a form that likely will be used to present to others in a similar fashion, has online storage with Microsoft 365 subscriptions, pre-made themes and privacy tags that you can set, the list goes on. I wouldn't use it personally, but compared to my usual textedit/notepad file open for fast notes or todo lists, the example powerpoint you told on likely is going to persist longer, be easily accessible by persons without my specific interaction (assuming it gets shared out to "someone"), there are a lot of benefits.
I'm not a fan of powerpoint presentations in any form; I find the medium uninteresting and more of a progress meter for the current meeting than anything else, but even that hasn't been reliable for a long time to know how long a presentation will go, but I don't think using powerpoint in one of the many ways it can be used is anything bad; I'd rather that such hypothetical execs have someone put the notes into powerpoint than write it down on a paper notepad. At the end of the day, all I really care about is that I can read the notes if required and I can quickly access the data without having to bug someone after the initial permissions are set.
(all this being said, I cannot express how frustrating Microsoft Office and Google Office are to me; barring powerpoints where I have no choice but to build it in one of these office suites, I usually just write plain text with markdown formatting and only use office suites to apply the necessary formatting, using the markdown as a reference; I would enjoy word/docs a lot more if there was button to "convert markdown to word formatting", and vice versa)
Google Doc's markdown mode support is limited, especially because you can't just paste a giant pile of markdown into Google Docs and have it convert properly as if you'd typed the exact same thing, but people should be aware it exists. After turning it on, I can type, eg "# heading1", and it'll convert into its version of an <h1>.
Microsoft Teams doesn't convert markdown pasted in either.
It used to do code blocks pretty nicely. I don't know if they've removed that functionality, but I can't get it to trigger anymore.
Not sure if you'll see this, but while you are correct Teams doesn't do proper markdown, it does handle HTML fairly well even just copy/pasting it into the post; it converts to Teams' markup language pretty well.
For a few schedule things that needed more management than just a shared calendar, I wrote a script to pull the schedule out of Outlook and convert it to an HTML schedule sheet which I can just copy/paste right into Teams with perfect formatting (I send it via a bot, but it works for users to just paste into the doc also)
Yep. Use a mandated Windows corporate distribution where Office is required. "Snip&Sketch" is atrocious. Much faster to open Powerpoint and doink with images there.
As a note taking tool it offers alignment and other things that OneNote doesn't. In exchange, OneNote offers a lot of things I don't give a damn about.
I think it's an artifact of (1) being an all-day-meeting-person, and (2) the majority of work-product being present in PPT form.
(1): Taking notes in PowerPoint is sensible if you want an entire conference room to be able to read the notes, as they are being taken, from their seats, and without any fuss about font sizes and so on.
(2): Additionally, since the final "product" will be a PPT, having the notes already in a PPT file means you get to skip some copy/paste steps.
It's still a bit silly and a bit of a cargo cult in the online-first world, but I get how it happens.
> Not OneNote, not Word, not even freakin' Notepad.
Hey, I'll take PPT brain damage over the even worse brain damage that causes some orgs to do everything in a buggy ass Salesforce version of google docs... give me MBA brain-rot bullet points over MBA brain-rot fancy versions of five paragraph essays any god damn day...
Never went to business school and am a hardcore nerd. Still like taking notes in ppt because I like how it forces the format of cutting things up into sections for you. Also way easier to add shapes and diagrams than any other word processor. It’s like an all-in-one canvas. It’s not for everyone though and I’m definitely aware of the negative connotations.
My approach for taking notes digitally has been using a Remarkable2, but it's a) yet another pricey electronic gadget to have/own, b) niche c) often prohibited in the corporate setting due to data privacy reasons, which means it's not a general solution, but it's a digital piece of paper, which is what I want for taking notes that need diagrams drawn inline.
PowerPoint is a fairly decent mainstream app for taking notes. It lets you draw diagrams, which for the right class is indispensable. Visio is great at diagramming, but less good for taking notes. Docs/Word, to draw new diagrams around text that often gains new content as the lecture goes on, is terrible for this. If the professor shows a picture, and then just talks about it, that would be fine, but usually, the professor draws a few shapes, then talks some, then draws in arrows and more text. Having to got in and out of drawing mode, is so much worse.
They're both awesome apps(Although PowerPoint is easy to misuse for extreme time wasting watching someone just literally read slides), so they might have a reason.
I use Keep, but generally when someone has a nonsensical seeming process involving commercial GUI software it usually works fine. Kinda clunky but easier than no tech, more reliable than any custom made solution, and sometimes the other off the shelf alternatives have downsides.
Maybe the meeting is being structured by a PowerPoint, and they want to take notes in the same format so that each slide in the notes corresponds to a slide in the meeting presentation or something.
I remember an assembly at school that consisted of a multi-image presentation called Eye to Eye. In terms of content I think it fell into the typical early 90s don't-do-school, stay-in-drugs messaging of the time, but I was fascinated by it because it was driven by nine computer-controlled, precisely timed slide projectors arranged in a 3x3 square with accompanying audio playback; and supplemented by a 16mm film projector that occasionally replaced the center slide projector and provided "video" in the center of the square surrounded by images from the other eight projectors.
By switching slides on a "rolling" schedule, the slide projectors could achieve very smooth fades and transitions. Combined with the accompanying audio, it made for an effect that was almost movie-like, showing characters moving and speaking more smoothly than you would expect a slideshow to be capable of.
The humble slide projector is far more capable than one might guess, and has played a central role in all manner of visual presentation: the infamous "Big Board" from the gameshow Press Your Luck, for instance, consisted of slide projectors showing the various cash amounts, prizes, Whammies, etc. onto screens around the perimeter of the board, while border lights around each screen turned on to highlight which one the player would win if they hit the stop button. Famously, this arrangement was not random and super exploitable.
Now of course, the slide projector has joined the rotary phone and the floppy disk on the scrap heap of once-ubiquitous technologies that vanished after their moment passed.
Thinking on it some there may have been eighteen projectors, allowing the first set of nine to crossfade into the second set of nine. Analogue double-buffering!
Back in the 80's, about the time PowerPoint was gestating, Dave Winer's ThinkTank begat MORE on the Mac. It was a simple text outliner - but press a button and the structure turned into a presentation. Symantec thought it had huge potential and bought the product for several more years of development, but it lost steam in the early 90s, despite it's dedicated fans. (Mostly people that wanted it for outlining more than presentations.)
43 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 43.1 ms ] threadThis middle period was filled by the creation of LCD panels that fit on top of an overhead projector and acted as a rudimentary video projector. The earliest ones were black and white and CGA only. I recall my dad using the early version of MS Paint to make images that he'd throw up on the screen with an Eastman Kodak LCD unit. Here's an example made by 3M:
https://scientific-solutions.com/ebay/lcdpanel/lcdpanel.html
Later on, IBM actually had a specific model of ThinkPad, the 755CDV, that had a detachable backlight panel on the display. You would strap the entire laptop to an overhead projector to do your presentation.
https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:755CDV
http://archive.irixnet.org/siliconsurf/products/Indy/present...
“When combined with an Indy workstation--a nifty shoulder bag handles both--you have most of the tools you need for a first rate show on the road.”
I had an Indy workstation, the Presenter display, and the shoulder bag — but I never lugged the thing to a presentation.
With very few exceptions, a slide deck should not be wholly comprehensible by itself. But too often, people put multiple paragraphs on a slide like they attached the script.
Maybe there's a point to be made that PowerPoint should be more strict in what it accepts, and that current trends in boring you to death are a result of that. But I don't think PowerPoint is bad idea per se.
So for the national contests we'd send digital artwork off to be printed as actual slides and run two synchronized projectors which would crossfade. It was tricky to set up and order the slides because they alternated across the two machines, and of course edits were impossible. We also had an entirely separate film projector for the commercials we'd made.
As analog as the tech was, it was almost indistinguishable from a modern presentation in experience. Just a whole lot more gear to lug around.
[0] https://hemingwrite.com/
Still seems terrible to me, but not everybody is the same. Thanks!
But at another place a dept head started to go blind and could no longer easily read slides. So we were all encouraged to make verbal presentations of key points. It was actually really educational, and a really powerful learning experience.
I'm not a fan of powerpoint presentations in any form; I find the medium uninteresting and more of a progress meter for the current meeting than anything else, but even that hasn't been reliable for a long time to know how long a presentation will go, but I don't think using powerpoint in one of the many ways it can be used is anything bad; I'd rather that such hypothetical execs have someone put the notes into powerpoint than write it down on a paper notepad. At the end of the day, all I really care about is that I can read the notes if required and I can quickly access the data without having to bug someone after the initial permissions are set.
(all this being said, I cannot express how frustrating Microsoft Office and Google Office are to me; barring powerpoints where I have no choice but to build it in one of these office suites, I usually just write plain text with markdown formatting and only use office suites to apply the necessary formatting, using the markdown as a reference; I would enjoy word/docs a lot more if there was button to "convert markdown to word formatting", and vice versa)
https://support.google.com/docs/answer/12014036
For a few schedule things that needed more management than just a shared calendar, I wrote a script to pull the schedule out of Outlook and convert it to an HTML schedule sheet which I can just copy/paste right into Teams with perfect formatting (I send it via a bot, but it works for users to just paste into the doc also)
As a note taking tool it offers alignment and other things that OneNote doesn't. In exchange, OneNote offers a lot of things I don't give a damn about.
They always have a browser and being able to make requests by default with your credentials is very helpful.
If the slides have been shared beforehand, keeping notes in the same file means you don't have a second file to keep track of.
(1): Taking notes in PowerPoint is sensible if you want an entire conference room to be able to read the notes, as they are being taken, from their seats, and without any fuss about font sizes and so on.
(2): Additionally, since the final "product" will be a PPT, having the notes already in a PPT file means you get to skip some copy/paste steps.
It's still a bit silly and a bit of a cargo cult in the online-first world, but I get how it happens.
> Not OneNote, not Word, not even freakin' Notepad.
Hey, I'll take PPT brain damage over the even worse brain damage that causes some orgs to do everything in a buggy ass Salesforce version of google docs... give me MBA brain-rot bullet points over MBA brain-rot fancy versions of five paragraph essays any god damn day...
PowerPoint is a fairly decent mainstream app for taking notes. It lets you draw diagrams, which for the right class is indispensable. Visio is great at diagramming, but less good for taking notes. Docs/Word, to draw new diagrams around text that often gains new content as the lecture goes on, is terrible for this. If the professor shows a picture, and then just talks about it, that would be fine, but usually, the professor draws a few shapes, then talks some, then draws in arrows and more text. Having to got in and out of drawing mode, is so much worse.
They're both awesome apps(Although PowerPoint is easy to misuse for extreme time wasting watching someone just literally read slides), so they might have a reason.
I use Keep, but generally when someone has a nonsensical seeming process involving commercial GUI software it usually works fine. Kinda clunky but easier than no tech, more reliable than any custom made solution, and sometimes the other off the shelf alternatives have downsides.
Maybe the meeting is being structured by a PowerPoint, and they want to take notes in the same format so that each slide in the notes corresponds to a slide in the meeting presentation or something.
By switching slides on a "rolling" schedule, the slide projectors could achieve very smooth fades and transitions. Combined with the accompanying audio, it made for an effect that was almost movie-like, showing characters moving and speaking more smoothly than you would expect a slideshow to be capable of.
The humble slide projector is far more capable than one might guess, and has played a central role in all manner of visual presentation: the infamous "Big Board" from the gameshow Press Your Luck, for instance, consisted of slide projectors showing the various cash amounts, prizes, Whammies, etc. onto screens around the perimeter of the board, while border lights around each screen turned on to highlight which one the player would win if they hit the stop button. Famously, this arrangement was not random and super exploitable.
Now of course, the slide projector has joined the rotary phone and the floppy disk on the scrap heap of once-ubiquitous technologies that vanished after their moment passed.