[Hidden-tech] Microsoft Office suite vs. other options

[Roger Williams]

>>>>> Joseph Steig <josephsteig at gmail.com> writes:

  > My experience, with lots of entrepreneurs, is that there seems always
  > to be an inverse relation between age of presenter and quality of
  > presentation...

Yes, that's probably generally true: younger presenters are likely to be more 
competent at snipping and repackaging information into quick sound bites, and
at delivering an "exciting" presentation.

The sales pitch is one sort of presentation in which flash, cheerleading, and
thin information is appropriate.  Presumably there are others.  But its
increased ubiquity in academia, management, and engineering has done a lot to
turn interactive meetings with a real exchange of information into presenter-
oriented infomercials, and replace in-depth analysis with snippets of
information oversimplified to fit into five bullet points per page.

Nor does PowerPoint do justice to graphical representation of data.  We say
that a picture is worth a thousand words, and graphics in a printed report can
be a very high-resolution information channel to the reader.  But (in a
bizarre reversal) nearly all PowerPoint slides that accompany talks have much
_lower_ rates of information transmission than the talk itself.

Indeed, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (investigating the shuttle
Columbia disaster in 2003) concluded that

   "The Board views the endemic use of PowerPoint briefing slides instead of
    technical papers as an illustration of the problematic methods of
    technical communication at NASA."

-- 
Roger Williams <roger at qux.com>
Chief Technical Officer, Qux Corporation
433 West Street, Suite 8, Amherst, MA 01002, USA
Tel +1 413 253-6400 * Fax +1 508 302-0230 * GSM +1 508 287-1420