Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
I’ve been demoted, or promoted, depending on your point of view. I guess the money should determine that, and the money says I’ve been promoted. At any rate, I don’t have to give PowerPoint presentations quite so much anymore, except to other engineers once in awhile. Friendlies. So maybe this is something I’ll never really need…but you never know.
I kind of miss dealing with executives. You shouldn’t be put-off from dealing directly with someone you know, beyond the shadow of any doubt, understands a great deal more than you do about some things…and is still looking to you to provide some missing piece they don’t have quite yet. It’s healthy. Most executives — all of them, I would hope — have the business sense to hound you like the worst sonofabitch straight out of the gates of hell if you’ve got it coming, and still like you personally and hope for the best out of you next time. That is, of course, what your boss is supposed to do; but that’s quite a bit different.
Back to the “sins.” He missed the big kahuna: Reading the text of the slide to the audience. If PowerPoint presenters understood how people talk about that later on, they’d do whatever it takes to keep from falling into the pit. Everyone either throws their pens and notebooks at the screen and storms out of the room…or wishes that they could.
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I actually learned this exact stuff in a course in the Army several years back. And this isn’t one of those things where you don’t know how bad it is until someone tells you how bad it is, these are things that an audience hates whether they’ve read that list or not.
- Andy | 03/11/2009 @ 11:29Congrats on the promotion. You’re spot-on about reading slides… I used to stop presenters dead in their tracks when they started down that road with a curt “I can read faster than you can talk. Get to the point.” Worked EVERY time.
Apropos of nothing… we had a derogatory term for incompetents (read as: marginal engineers) whose specialty was spiffy PPoint presentatiions… “slide engineer.” You, too?
- bpenni | 03/11/2009 @ 17:06I’ve done an awful lot of presentation/teaching/speaking etc., and learned very early that I’m better at teaching than I am at being an engineer. My own skill is in being enough of a mixture of the two that I can talk to techies and users in the same audience, recognizing that they don’t talk very well to each other.
There was a brief moment in the ’90s when the business community recognized that people like me were necessary, and that communicators have a place all their own. Teachers that don’t/can’t understand engineering are as useless as engineers that won’t/can’t communicate with people. Sales guys presenting to techies is as useless as techies presenting to business types. Somebody needs to be in the middle, and those somebodies are rare indeed.
Btw, one thing this guy left off his list is the ultimate waste of time and paper: text laden slides which are duplicated by fistfuls of handouts composed of screen prints of the presentation. Big corps used to do this as a matter of course. Anybody else seen this?
In re your promotion: take the money and run.
- rob | 03/12/2009 @ 17:49I recommend “Beyond Bullet Points” by Cliff Atkinson (Microsoft Press)
Though it is from the evil empire, it fairly well skewers Powerpoint/the program and how it is used to get people to realize it really is a method of storyboarding and a lot more. Most presentations are ‘just read’ by the presenter and way too busy. The presenter needs to be the one either selling or telling.
- Robohobo | 03/13/2009 @ 12:55