I hate this. It’s basically just a lecture with slides as the cue cards, which the audience can read for themselves.
It’s like having subtitles in real life.
Ugh. Give me some data, graphs, or pictures of cats to look at for the slideshow or something. Something other than what you’re saying. If you add nothing to what we’re seeing, then… I have eyes. I don’t need you to read it for me.
PowerPoint, at least, has a notes section and a presenter view, so you can hook your computer up with the projector or TV or whatever as a second monitor and PowerPoint can be set up to use the TV/projector/whatever, as the slide show, and give you a presenter view on your screen which shows the current slide, and all your notes.
So if you can’t get relevant pictures, at least put up something interesting to look at, and leave the cue cards notes in the notes section, so the audience doesn’t have to stare at the exact words you’re saying, as you’re saying them, because I guarantee you that if you do, I’ll be judging you on your spelling and grammar.
Yes. A good slide show contains a lot of visually pleasing elements that are easy to read and understand but they still hold a lot of information. Like graphs or statistics or just bulletin points with some keywords or single short paragraohs that tell how it is in a nutshell. Then the one who makes the presentation should tell the rest
A good way would be to write an essay with all the information you need. Then you would strip just the most important main elements and add those to the slide show.
That way I got the best grade from one course even though I submitted it late and lacked a lot of other tasks in the course. The teacher was actually impressed by how much information I packed in so simple powerpoint. I also had like 20 sources, did it all in on afternoon the day before deadline lol. Adhd is interesting. You procastinate something for weeks and then do multiple days work in one crunch. Medication would be neat but I live in a country where you can’t get medication even if you smoke weed.
Anyways. I don’t know why I wrote all this. I should be programming
Damn. Are you me? I’m not a programmer so I guess not.
I was hounded by one of my HS teachers to put in a little more effort, constantly.
I got annoyed by this and basically rage-wrote an essay that was due in the span of a few hours the night before it was due. Despite my lack of sources (I couldn’t be bothered to look up the information), I still got an A on the paper. She stopped telling me to try harder. IDK if that’s because she realized I didn’t do poorly because I couldn’t understand, because I clearly did, or she was just satisfied that she got me to do something and didn’t bother pestering me about it, but regardless, I felt like I won.
I never did that well on anything else in her class. I just couldn’t be bothered.
20+ years later, it turns out I have ADHD. So yeah. That explains a lot.
School before realizing I have concentration problems was mysterious time. I juat didn’t feel like doing stuff and I didn’t know why.
Also yeah your teacher propably just thought that you would need extra work to understand the course. I had a teacher who actually told me that when he first started teaching me he thought I’m a bit dumb, a below average student. But then he came to realize that I’m actually really smart but I just don’t do anything. It felt weird because at the same time I wad proud that a teacher actually said to me that I am smart. But at the same time I started wondering that why I indeed didn’t do anything.
I’m going to finally get my meds though, I just have to piss in a jar to prove I’m not smoking weed for like half a year lol. But I have gotten to the point where I don’t feel like it’s going to be an issue. I’m about to turn 24, weed used to be my coping mechanism to a lot of stuff but I have matured now and I feel like a long break would just do really good. Also I want those meds cuz my school isn’t going that well and I want to graduate and get a job already :D the courses aren’t hard but I usually lose the motivation one montv in and after that trying to finish the course is insanely hard
I was diagnosed a few years ago. I was 39. I’ve been on meds since.
My HS experience was fairly typical for an ADHD kid before ADHD was a thing… I was called lazy, I was told I needed to apply myself (whatever that means), etc. I believed it. I just thought I was a lazy ass little shit. I didn’t know why, but the evidence was clear. I understood the information, I just didn’t do any of the work.
Oh well. Live and learn. I eventually made it through college, and into a career, all without meds. It was a painful struggle, especially when dealing with the more monotonous tasks associated with having a job… I was chronically late, I slept in a lot… I was just all over the place.
Now, with the meds, I still have my hair share of bad days, but when I’m faced with the horrendous burden of monotonous tasks, instead of having to force myself to do it, I usually have more of an attitude of “whelp, I better get this done so I can move on”. It’s no longer an impossible task to simply get myself started on something that’s not very stimulating.
It’s nice.
That does sound reallu peaceful compared to this. I bet it was even harder at you time of youth when people didn’t understand the condition.
It’s honestly really super weird nobody noticed that I might be a bit odd. Like I had alll the signs now that I recall. Even some stuff related to asperger. But I just went straight trough the filters
I do like subtites almost everywhere, but hate these slides.
Maybe I also want adjustable playback speed, fast forward and readable high contrast subtites in my real live playback.
It’s pretty bad practice to just read what’s on the slide. Presentations would be prepared in such a way, and known to a degree where the slides act as refreshers for the presenter with something visual to give context. There are specific cases where you can’t get away from it, but those are incredibly specific and not very common. Like, safety meetings with specific things that need to be read verbatim to every employee, and even those still need something to break it up. I can’t think of another example.
So if you can’t get relevant pictures, at least put up something interesting to look at
Got it. Filling my PowerPoint Deck with porn, and pictures of Battlemechs
Rather than simply give you a piece of text to read, they do it like this so that you can’t scan it to figure out what is actually important and focus on that. Every moment and detail must be indulged to the full.
Proper dickhead move.
the slides will be in our corporate colors: yellow text on a pink background …
And the presenter will regularly quiz attendees on the content
Not quiz as such. More like “any questions so far?” at the end of each slide, but will not give you time to ask anything “no? Ok, moving on”
Or the awkward 5 minutes of silence when no one has a question at all.
Wow! What a quick reader!!
How anyone even remotely thinks they should do this boggles my mind.
I don’t think they think, to be honest.
Oh no my kid’s school just texted me he got a fever I have to go. Hate to miss the presentation, can you post the slides in chat after? Thx!
can you post the slides in chat after?
Can you post the highlights in chat after?
Select all.
Copy.
Open ChatGPT.
"Please sum up the following in a tweet: "
Paste.
Submit.
Sure! Here’s what I got: Innovation and synergy are good. We should do them.
Someone who gives a presentation like this is incapable of summarizing - you will be getting the full presentation.
Fuck you. Nothing to do with your comment. just because of good etiquette
Oh thats fine. We’ll have a make up presentation on thursday, i’ll schedule you for that one.
Even if I’m only presenting a handful of slides I’ll slap some blank ones on the end just to make everyone sweat over “Slide 1 of 83”. Everyone is pretty darn quiet and glad to help speed things along most of the time.
That’s genius!
No, I think it is cruel and unusual punishment.
Do you give presentations to people on whom this works more than once?
Ya got to mix it up, sometimes you really do have an 83 page slide deck.
Don’t forget the random slides of pet photos.
“now how did THAT get in there?”
CDR time!
(except I’ve had CDRs that were scheduled for a full work week, 40 hours)
You had a 40-hour Colonoscopy Debris Removal procedure? Big ups to you!
What is this CDR you speak of? Like blank CDs?
Critical Design Review. In aerospace engineering, it happens when drawings and software are substantially complete, but before starting to cut metal. The goal is to provide some assurance that the design will actually comply with the system requirements.
CDRs are usually presented as a single PowerPoint deck that can run to thousands of slides, with many presenters and dozens of review panel members.
Interesting! I operate fully outside of the realm of aerospace engineering, so this is news to me. I take it this is an opportunity for anyone to speak up if they have any concerns with any aspect of the design before it moves to the production phase?
Canada’s Drag Race? Corel DRaw? Climate Data Record? Carbon Dioxide Removal??
Man, Carbon Dioxide Removal for a full week…
I looked it up. Commission on Dietetic Registration. Or possibly Colorado Department of Revenue. Or Chadron Municipal Airport (airport designation CDR) in Chadron, Nebraska.
Definitely one of those.
Ahhhhh, makes sense. Duh!
Critical Design Review?
That’s the one I’m familiar with. But the sides themselves are super useful a few years later when you can’t remember what in the world you were thinking.
Have you ever been to an office meeting that turned out to be a CEO circlejerk that dragged on for hours?
But a friend of mine went to the grandaddy of them all, something about state politics, some ambitious asshole making a power play and filibustering for an entire day, he had come prepared specifically to wear everyone down, I think he was trying to approve a new set of rules and conditions that benefitted his position, something along those lines.
If somebody did that, I’d disapprove of those rules out of pure spite.
CEO of our company does one every single Friday at lunch over zoom. Luckily I have never attended. But my boss does has to eat his lunch while listening to CEO talk about all the ways they doing great when we aren’t.
Friday lunch meeting over zoom 💀
“Oh, looks like nobody’s doing anything during their lunch break, so I’m sure it’ll be fine to schedule a meeting during it.”
If they’re paying for lunch, I’m fine with it. If not, I’m not fine. My lunch is my time to recharge for the rest of the workday.
My manager is salary so they work them like slaves. He works 6.30am to 4.30p every day and even answers emails while vacation.
I’ve had a CEO like that. I call it the sunshine and smoke up your ass meeting.
Here is my opinion: Slide should have images, diagrams or charts to illustrate what I say, almost never any text. What I say is written in advance in the notes of the presentation that is only visible to me while presenting, but will be readable by anyone who look at the file afterwards. I prepare the duration and delivery of the speech at least three times in full before presenting.
This person points that power
Also:
Presenter: Can we hold all questions to the end, please? Thank you!
The end obviously never arrives.
Usually there aren´t any at the end. Perhaps only one or two people actually paid attention and they don´t want to put themselves in the spotlight.
It arrives, but by then there’s no time for questions.
I always feel obligated to reword so it doesn’t seem like I’m reading off the slide. But then people are reading the slide and listening at the same time and I’m not sure it’s better.
If the slide has all the information, then it’s a poor slide deck.
The slides are supposed to be an outline. The rule of thumb is max seven lines and max seven words per line.
Here’s a couple examples.
Good slide:
- Revenue: -10% vs Estimate
- Industry trends
- Low demand for new products
- Strong demand for XYZ
Also good slide, depending on who you’re presenting to:
- Revenue: -10% vs Estimate
- Industry: -3%
- New products: -30%
- XYZ: +4%
Bad slide:
- Revenue is 10% below estimate
- Industry has seen a 3% drop in sales
- New products ABC and MNO have had a 30% lower demand than we expected
- Product XYZ has higher demand than anticipated with sales 4% higher than estimate
All the extra information on the bad slide can be delivered by the presenter. It’s not necessary on the slide. The slide is for people to glance at to assist them during and after the presentation and to help them anchor themselves in the discussion.
I like your examples, you really capture how the definition of a “good” slide is context and audience dependent, and yet despite this, a “bad” slide is something that can be understood fairly objectively.
At university, I had a lecturer who took this one step further. Instead of a power point, he used a word document that he read word by word.
We had one who pulled up the pdf of the textbook to read it word by word
legere (lat) to read => lectura (lat) the reading event => lecture (en) => lecturer (en) a person giving/hosting a reading event.
A lecturer is supposed to read the text of a book to students so that they are able to write it down and obtain a copy of it for themselves.
Books written by professional scribes are incredible expensive, and this new thing they established in Bologna in 1088 – the so called “universities” offering lectures will be a major breakthrough in the history of mankind to distribute knowledge!
Good to know some professors still honour the only true way of teaching.
books written by professional scribes are incredible expensive
some things haven’t changed …
Pfff this generation is wasting good expensive sheets of paper when good old oral tradition has worked for thousands of years. Writing was invented only 4000 years ago and still haven’t caught on.
it’s a fad, like medicine
A lecturer is supposed to read the text of a book to students so that they are able to write it down and obtain a copy of it for themselves.
Does this still happen, with digital and all?
Bruder …
If the lecturer hasn’t got the notice books can be cheaply printed and purchased nowadays, probably yes. What is this digital your speeking of?
You sure they weren’t just sharing the wrong screen?
Good old PowerPoint karaoke
Ugh, I always tell students to avoid this.
That said it reminds me of Larry David on Conan podcast of how he got out of a movie test screening. “I’ve got one question and then I’ve gotta go…”.
Ah, treasures, both of them.
I remember back in high school my teachers would always warn students for doing presentations like that, yet all of them did exactly the same thing. And it was even worse in university, when we had to listen to 2 hours presentation read word by word with monotone voice.
Hug the monotone voice is the worst. A colleague of mine does that. If you are making a presentation and you sound bored all the way through, guess how your audience is going to feel?
If you sound too enthusiastic, you might wake people up.
Wakes up
-Wait a minute… you’re full of shit!
Yup! I even tell them to experiment a little because they get full points either way (my logic is, the social pressure alone is enough to get a good effort, and usually that’s true lol).
It’s because they didn’t trust their ability to remember stuff. But when I lecture, I’m often elaborating beyond the bulletpoints, engaging my audience with questions, making eye contact, etc, so it’s not like I’m not setting a good example. I guess my university it’s just too late to teach?
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