David J. P. Phillips

Once upon a time I remember a 'consultant' being brought in to give a presentation to us Luddites on the use of PowerPoint. The presentation was the worst example of PowerPoint use I have ever seen. This chap cost us 1500 euros for the afternoon. I bet he went home laughing his tits off.

I always hated Powerpoint in the work context because I quickly realised that I was reading every slide as it was revealed, not listening to the speaker, but then getting annoyed when they spent ten minutes talking round a point that I had immediately understood on first reading. Or I would get annoyed by the fact that, when they tried to explain the point, they seemed to have chosen the wrong bit of their presentation for the bullet point and there was something more interesting that was buried in the surrounding verbiage. However you cut it, I was more engaged with, or distracted by, what was on the screen than what was being said. And I wound up thinking that anyone who tried to compete with a slide show must be an idiot. At university, on the other hand, I had been completely enthralled by lecturers who could just stand up there and pour out all kinds of things that I never heard before. No visual distractions. Perfect.

NB: "PowerPintas" is the word we usually use in a corporate ecosystems when referring to PowerPoint...… (meer)