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Posted: 4/27/2010 1:59:27 PM EDT
[#1]
Quoted: Quoted: Might want to have your sarcasm meter taken in to S-6 and have them check the calibration.Quoted: A little known fact is the Roman military machine collapsed and became ineffective because the Romans developed a briefing system very similar to an ancient PowerPoint somewhere around 200 AD. There were a ton of faults with the Romans as to why they fell apart. It was a combination of things, I dont think you can point to one thing and say "this is why they failed". You said very similar. There are lots of things today you can say "they had a very similar verison of this back then." Anyway, I didn't know you were being sacrastic. |
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Posted: 4/27/2010 2:00:23 PM EDT
[#2]
Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Might want to have your sarcasm meter taken in to S-6 and have them check the calibration.Quoted: A little known fact is the Roman military machine collapsed and became ineffective because the Romans developed a briefing system very similar to an ancient PowerPoint somewhere around 200 AD. There were a ton of faults with the Romans as to why they fell apart. It was a combination of things, I dont think you can point to one thing and say "this is why they failed". You said very similar. There are lots of things today you can say "they had a very similar verison of this back then." Anyway, I didn't know you were being sacrastic. Great. Now you're confused about who said what!  |
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Posted: 4/27/2010 2:02:20 PM EDT
[#3]
Give me about 45 minutes, I'm working on a PowerPoint presentation complete with spaghetti graph and no less than 20 bullet points explaining why AIV needs double his coffee ration tomorrow.
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Posted: 4/27/2010 2:03:48 PM EDT
[#4]
I spend the majority of my days filling out spread sheets tracking such useless shit like who has passed AT-1 and defensive driving, etc..etc..........
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Posted: 4/27/2010 2:06:17 PM EDT
[#5]
Quoted: Too many people use it as a crutch for their shitty briefing skills instead of a tool. This is absolutely true. I will say the military and academia both rely far too heavily on powerpoint. There are plenty of occasions where briefings/speeches can be conducted with none at all, or very simple/minimal PP presentations. I've always been a believer in the simpler the better. I think PP is useful primarily to display pictures, they are pretty difficult to convey verbally. I stick to only the simple main points on a slide and fill in all the blanks verbally, and it seems to work ok, gets me good feedback at work and high grades in school anyway. |
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Posted: 4/27/2010 2:10:19 PM EDT
[#6]
Quoted:
Quoted:
The slide has since bounced around the Internet as an example of a military tool that has spun out of control. Like an insurgency, PowerPoint has crept into the daily lives of military commanders and reached the level of near obsession. The amount of time expended on PowerPoint, the Microsoft presentation program of computer-generated charts, graphs and bullet points, has made it a running joke in the Pentagon and in Iraq and Afghanistan. ...that's because people higher up don't pay attention to what you are saying if you can't put it into a damn graph in powerpoint. In General McMaster’s view, PowerPoint’s worst offense is not a chart like the spaghetti graphic, which was first uncovered by NBC’s Richard Engel, but rigid lists of bullet points (in, say, a presentation on a conflict’s causes) that take no account of interconnected political, economic and ethnic forces. ...which is impossible to relay in a 45 minute brief. Back when I was a lowly SSgt fighting the briefing wars plain acetate slides and Sharpies were the weapons of choice. The exact same considerations came into play as do today with Powerpoint. My favorite saying, which nobody ever disagreed with, was "You sure run out of one-syllable words awfully fast when you are trying to do briefing slides for an O-6 (or above)!" The problem isn't the medium. The problem is that commanders want their staffs to have already done all their thinking for them, with messy reality boiled down to one-line bullet points in the properly military passive voice, with the bureaucratically correct three courses of action from which to choose, two of which are outlandishly impractical making the approved third choice unassailable. |
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Posted: 4/27/2010 2:22:09 PM EDT
[#7]
Remember CAS3? The Army had a 5 week school that ALL O-3s had to attend, devoted to churning out PowerPoint Rangers (and it used to be 9 weeks before they cut out the mandatory volleyball requirement).
Thankfully they cancelled it. |
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Posted: 4/27/2010 2:34:36 PM EDT
[#8]
Quoted:
Quoted:
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Components/Photo/2009/December/091202/091203-engel-big-9a.jpg And you gotta know the guy that made that slide was proud as hell. Technically that graph probably wasn't made in PowerPoint but made in a specialized graphing software and cut-and-paste into PowerPoint. PowerPoint takes a bad rap - it's an empty vessel that many people choose to fill with idiocy. |
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Posted: 4/27/2010 2:41:33 PM EDT
[#9]
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Posted: 4/27/2010 3:14:35 PM EDT
[#10]
Quoted: Quoted: These assholes should not be allowed ordered to sit all day behind a computer making something no one understands. Allowed implies they have a choice. When the HMFIC wants a slide presentation, he gets a slide presentation. ETA: What's worse is, more often or not, it's junior NCO's and officers who get tasked with putting the presentation together. Rather than spending time with or in front of troops to get experience, they're holed up at a desk in an office trying to figure out if the maintenance officer wants them to use the real or BS deadline report. Isn't that the truth! Like the guy in Blackhawk Down, I was pulled from the line and made the Training NCO. Not for any other reason than I "knew computers and how to type" in the late 90's US Army Infantryland. And there was no MTOE slot for a specialist in that field. Which means whoever filled the slot came from the line, and thereby shorting a platoon of an effective member. So there I was creating flow charts in PP for the dumbest shit on a daily basis. And when it was not PP, it was customized db queries in Excel or Access for information the BN S' Shops should already have had. Then there was the daily, last minute, "holy shit the BN CO or CSM want a report on xyz RIGHT FUCKING NOW"... "So whip that out, go brief him, get a signature, and run it to the BDE CDR...you got ten minutes...so execute!" ..... I likened that assignment to being in purgatory. |
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Posted: 4/27/2010 3:17:19 PM EDT
[#11]
Quoted: I spend the majority of my days filling out spread sheets tracking such useless shit like who has passed AT-1 and defensive driving, etc..etc.......... You mean, kind of like the 'wonderful' process that is 1-161 trying to issue military driver's licensees? |
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Posted: 4/27/2010 3:23:50 PM EDT
[#12]
This came out a few years ago regarding the potential ineffectiveness of PowerPoint as a communication tool.
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Posted: 4/27/2010 3:31:20 PM EDT
[#13]
Quoted:
Quoted:
Too many people use it as a crutch for their shitty briefing skills instead of a tool. This is absolutely true. I will say the military and academia both rely far too heavily on powerpoint. There are plenty of occasions where briefings/speeches can be conducted with none at all, or very simple/minimal PP presentations. I've always been a believer in the simpler the better. I think PP is useful primarily to display pictures, they are pretty difficult to convey verbally. I stick to only the simple main points on a slide and fill in all the blanks verbally, and it seems to work ok, gets me good feedback at work and high grades in school anyway. Nothing makes me want to punch kittens more than briefings that are nothing more than the slides. I could have read the damn thing in a quarter of the time and gotten back to the work I need to do. |
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Posted: 4/27/2010 3:39:11 PM EDT
[#14]
I have a 53 page powerpoint presentation that I give as part of new employee indoc.
I cover 7 items, briefly explain each aspect of the program. I have 15 pages of pretty pictures. It takes me 10 minutes to cover the required material. I suck at power point.
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Posted: 4/27/2010 3:51:12 PM EDT
[#15]
I wonder how much PA Consulting Group got paid to come up with that abomination of a slide.
Whoever did that should be hung for stupidity. |
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Posted: 4/27/2010 3:59:48 PM EDT
[#16]
If we could get the Taliban to use PowerPoint they'd be so wrapped up in useless meetings that their organization would collapse from lack of purpose.
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Posted: 4/27/2010 4:09:57 PM EDT
[#17]
Quoted:
Quoted:
I spend the majority of my days filling out spread sheets tracking such useless shit like who has passed AT-1 and defensive driving, etc..etc.......... You mean, kind of like the 'wonderful' process that is 1-161 trying to issue military driver's licensees? Dear God dont even get me started with that goat rope....its like trying to get a security clearance...a TS might be easier to get than a M998 lic from MATES.... |
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Posted: 4/27/2010 5:11:47 PM EDT
[#18]
Not all Power Point is bad
Capt. Travis Patriquin got it right in his Power Point Army Captain's Simple Demonstration: How to Win in Iraq Officer Killed in Battle, but His Ideas Live On By MARTHA RADDATZ Dec. 15, 2006 President Bush has spent the last few weeks engaged in complex briefings with senior military officers, State Department officials and outside experts as he tries to come up with a new plan to achieve victory in Iraq. But a young captain serving in Iraq's violent Al Anbar Province has offered a simple explanation of what the problem was in Iraq and how to solve it. Among his observations is the importance of having a moustache in Iraq. In a military known for its sleep-inducing, graphically dizzying PowerPoint presentations, the young captain's presentation, which has been unofficially circulating through the ranks, stands out. Using stick figures and simple language, it articulates the same goal as the president's in Iraq. The creator of this PowerPoint presentation, "How to Win in Al Anbar," was Capt. Travis Patriquin. But Patriquin will not see victory in Iraq. He was killed by the same improvised explosive device that killed Maj. Megan McClung of the Marine Corps last Wednesday. Patriquin had fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. A gifted officer, he spoke numerous languages, including Arabic. "How to Win in Al Anbar" may not make it to the desk of the president, but maybe it should. Copyright © 2010 ABC News Internet Ventures |
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Posted: 4/27/2010 5:49:42 PM EDT
[#19]
Quoted:
Not all Power Point is bad
Capt. Travis Patriquin got it right in his Power Point Army Captain's Simple Demonstration: How to Win in Iraq Officer Killed in Battle, but His Ideas Live On By MARTHA RADDATZ Dec. 15, 2006 President Bush has spent the last few weeks engaged in complex briefings with senior military officers, State Department officials and outside experts as he tries to come up with a new plan to achieve victory in Iraq. But a young captain serving in Iraq's violent Al Anbar Province has offered a simple explanation of what the problem was in Iraq and how to solve it. Among his observations is the importance of having a moustache in Iraq. In a military known for its sleep-inducing, graphically dizzying PowerPoint presentations, the young captain's presentation, which has been unofficially circulating through the ranks, stands out. Using stick figures and simple language, it articulates the same goal as the president's in Iraq. The creator of this PowerPoint presentation, "How to Win in Al Anbar," was Capt. Travis Patriquin. But Patriquin will not see victory in Iraq. He was killed by the same improvised explosive device that killed Maj. Megan McClung of the Marine Corps last Wednesday. Patriquin had fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. A gifted officer, he spoke numerous languages, including Arabic. "How to Win in Al Anbar" may not make it to the desk of the president, but maybe it should. Copyright © 2010 ABC News Internet Ventures God Bless the Captain. So simple yet so effective. |
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Posted: 4/29/2010 9:01:34 PM EDT
[#20]
bump
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Posted: 4/29/2010 9:12:32 PM EDT
[#21]
Quoted:
Death by Powerpoint is the cause of most non-combat deaths in the military. dude it kills people everywhere, even barely literate rednecks in college courses BUT! it CAN help get you FEMA certs!!!
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Posted: 4/30/2010 5:26:41 AM EDT
[#22]
So, can anyone in the military actually make sense of that chart?
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Posted: 4/30/2010 5:34:48 AM EDT
[#23]
Quoted: If we could get the Taliban to use PowerPoint they'd be so wrapped up in useless meetings that their organization would collapse from lack of purpose. We just need to find a Muslim LSS black belt and insert him into the Taliban as an undercover agent. I wonder what a three hour long meeting trying to figure out what the stakeholder requirements for an IED would look like. |
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Posted: 4/30/2010 5:58:06 AM EDT
[#24]
Quoted: Quoted: http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Components/Photo/2009/December/091202/091203-engel-big-9a.jpg And you gotta know the guy that made that slide was proud as hell. your not kidding! a true powerpoint commando! That guy makes my company slides look like 1st grade finger paintings |
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Posted: 4/30/2010 6:02:41 AM EDT
[#25]
If I ever put that in front of my Management, I'd be looking for a job before the next slide went up.
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Posted: 4/30/2010 6:18:57 AM EDT
[#26]
Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I spend the majority of my days filling out spread sheets tracking such useless shit like who has passed AT-1 and defensive driving, etc..etc.......... You mean, kind of like the 'wonderful' process that is 1-161 trying to issue military driver's licensees? Dear God dont even get me started with that goat rope....its like trying to get a security clearance...a TS might be easier to get than a M998 lic from MATES.... Well, at least it's not confined to Charlie Co... And yeah, renewing a clearance would be easier: At least they only make you fill out the clearance paperwork ONCE, and don't kick it back for dumbshit like the forms being stacked in the wrong order... |
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Posted: 4/30/2010 12:19:38 PM EDT
[#27]
Any class with the professor using powerpoint was sure to make me doze. No one knows how to use it. I think maybe one or two did, TAs at that.
It's there to reinforce what you're teaching. A chalkboard works wonders. Maybe a picture or two and a few bullet points that capture the basic sentiment of what you're saying. I hate wall of text and even worse when they just read it word for word. I may suck at public speaking but I'm not that bad! I've made a bad powerpoint or two before I realized how to use it properly. Another reason why college was a joke. |
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Posted: 4/30/2010 12:26:02 PM EDT
[#28]
Quoted:
Any class with the professor using powerpoint was sure to make me doze. No one knows how to use it. I think maybe one or two did, TAs at that. It's there to reinforce what you're teaching. A chalkboard works wonders. Maybe a picture or two and a few bullet points that capture the basic sentiment of what you're saying. I hate wall of text and even worse when they just read it word for word. I may suck at public speaking but I'm not that bad! I've made a bad powerpoint or two before I realized how to use it properly. Another reason why college was a joke. It seems no one can grasp its meant to highlight your key/important points and show pictures/videos/sound on what your discussing. If you are reading word for word whats on your power point, that means you shouldnt be using it. |
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Posted: 4/30/2010 12:26:52 PM EDT
[#29]
Quoted:
If I ever put that in front of my Management, I'd be looking for a job before the next slide went up. The sad part is you'd probably be hired instantly elsewhere as a manager and above.
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Posted: 4/30/2010 12:27:41 PM EDT
[#30]
Paralysis by analysis.
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Posted: 4/30/2010 12:48:46 PM EDT
[#31]
Quoted:
Quoted:
Any class with the professor using powerpoint was sure to make me doze. No one knows how to use it. I think maybe one or two did, TAs at that. It's there to reinforce what you're teaching. A chalkboard works wonders. Maybe a picture or two and a few bullet points that capture the basic sentiment of what you're saying. I hate wall of text and even worse when they just read it word for word. I may suck at public speaking but I'm not that bad! I've made a bad powerpoint or two before I realized how to use it properly. Another reason why college was a joke. It seems no one can grasp its meant to highlight your key/important points and show pictures/videos/sound on what your discussing. If you are reading word for word whats on your power point, that means you shouldnt be using it. I just sat through a group presentation today...each of the 3 members did the whole wall o' text, word for word strategy.... MY FUCKING GOD. It was horrible. |
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