[EAS]PowerPoint Crackdown

pjk pjk at design.eng.yale.edu
Fri Sep 29 20:43:31 EDT 2000


Mail*Link® SMTP               PowerPoint Crackdown

Dear Colleagues -

Excerpts (and full text) of a WSJ article, passed on by a
colleague. Like all such technology, Powerpoint can become a
serious obstacle to communication if used too robotically.

And if you're unclear what contributes to making PowerPoint
presentations a form of anesthesia or torture, I've appended below
the PowerPoint guidelines with which one of America's largest
computer companies enjoins its employees.

  --PJK

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|  Peter J. Kindlmann     |  Prof.(Adjunct), Director of Undergrad.  |
|  Dept. of Elect. Engrg. |  Studies and the Morse Teaching Center   |
|  Yale University        |  tel.(203)432-4294, fax (203)458-3803    |
|  New Haven, CT 06520    |  email: pjk at design.eng.yale.edu          |
|        http://www.eng.yale.edu/EE-Labs/morse/about/pjk.html        |
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======================================================================
--EXCERPTS---

"Shelton's order is only the Pentagon's most recent assault on a
growing electronic menace: the PowerPoint briefing."

"'The idea behind most of these briefings is for us to sit through
100 slides with our eyes glazed over, and then to do what all
military organizations hope for ... to surrender to an overwhelming
mass,' says Navy Secretary Richard Danzig."

"Navy Secretary Danzig announced late last year that he was no
longer willing to soldier through the slide shows. He maintains
that PowerPoint briefings are only necessary for two reasons: If
field conditions are changing rapidly or if the audience is
'functionally illiterate.'"

"'PowerPoint Ranger' is a derogatory term for a desk-bound
bureaucrat more adept at making slides than tossing grenades. There
is even a "PowerPoint Ranger Creed," a parody of the Marine Corp's
famous 'Rifleman's Creed':

'This is my PowerPoint. There are many like it, but mine is
[PowerPoint] 97. ... I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its
weaknesses, its fonts, its accessories and its formats ... My
PowerPoint and myself are the defenders of my country. We are the
masters of our subject. We are the saviors of my career.'


--FULL TEXT--

Pentagon cracks down on ... PowerPoint
By Greg Jaffe, WSJ Interactive Edition
April 26, 2000 7:44 AM PT
 
WASHINGTON -- Earlier this year, Gen. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued an unusual order to U.S. military
bases around the globe.

His message: Enough with the bells and whistles -- just get to the
point.

It seems that e-mailed military briefings larded with electronic
"slides" of booming tanks and spinning pie charts were gobbling up
so much of the Defense Department's classified bandwidth that they
were slowing more-critical communications between headquarters and
units in the field.

"The chairman basically told everyone that we don't need
Venetian-blind effects or fancy backdrops. All we need is the
information," says one senior Defense Department official.

Shelton's order is only the Pentagon's most recent assault on a
growing electronic menace: the PowerPoint briefing. Sure, business
executives complain about the seemingly endless PowerPoint
presentations put on by overeager middle managers in darkened
boardrooms across America. But in the military, the Microsoft
program, which helps users create computer-based graphics and sound
effects, has become one of the most dreaded facts of life. 

And it's even shouldering the blame for at least some of the armed
forces' ills.

PowerPoint-induced coma Congressional support for new weapons
programs isn't as strong as expected? Army Secretary Louis Caldera
suggests that PowerPoint presentations are alienating lawmakers.
"People are not listening to us because they are spending so much
time trying to understand these incredibly complex slides," he
says.

Too many bright, young junior officers are leaving the military for
the private sector? A recent survey of captains at Fort Benning,
Ga., cites the "ubiquity of the PowerPoint Army" as a prime reason
for their disaffection.

"The idea behind most of these briefings is for us to sit through
100 slides with our eyes glazed over, and then to do what all
military organizations hope for ... to surrender to an overwhelming
mass," says Navy Secretary Richard Danzig.

Old-fashioned slide briefings, designed to update generals on troop
movements, have been a staple of the military since World War II.
But in only a few short years PowerPoint has altered the landscape.
Just as word processing made it easier to produce long, meandering
memos, the spread of PowerPoint has unleashed a blizzard of jazzy
but often incoherent visuals. Instead of drawing up a dozen slides
on a legal pad and running them over to the graphics department,
captains and colonels now can create hundreds of slides in a few
hours without ever leaving their desks. 
 If the spirit moves them they can build in gunfire sound effects
and images that explode like land mines.

"There is an arms-race dimension to it," says Peter Feaver, a
military expert at Duke University and frequent PowerPoint briefer
at various war colleges. "If there are three briefings in a row,
and you are the one with the lowest production values, you look
really lame."

PowerPoint Rangers PowerPoint has become such an ingrained part of
the defense culture that it has seeped into the military lexicon.
"PowerPoint Ranger" is a derogatory term for a desk-bound
bureaucrat more adept at making slides than tossing grenades. There
is even a "PowerPoint Ranger Creed," a parody of the Marine Corp's
famous "Rifleman's Creed":

"This is my PowerPoint. There are many like it, but mine is
[PowerPoint] 97. ... I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its
weaknesses, its fonts, its accessories and its formats ... My
PowerPoint and myself are the defenders of my country. We are the
masters of our subject. We are the saviors of my career." 

The parody is zapping around the Defense Department as a PowerPoint
slide complete with the sound of explosions and featuring an
animated John Wayne in Army Ranger garb wielding a laser pointer.

How did a piece of technology that was supposed to improve
communication become a barrier to it?

Some military sociologists say the endless presentations are a
product of the military's zero-defect culture, in which one
mediocre review by a superior can torpedo a career. "Young officers
are worried that they might leave something out of their briefing,
and a supervisor might say something about it. So they pack their
presentations with every detail that they can think of," says
Charles Moskos, a military-culture expert at Northwestern
University in Evanston, Ill.

Others blame the problem on the absence of a formidable enemy. "We
crave something that explains who we are," says retired Army Col.
Henry G. Cole. "The PowerPoint game creates the illusion of
control. All those moving arrows and graphics become reality for a
military that is trapped in this permanent state of shadow-boxing
an enemy that no longer exists."

Frontal assault whatever the cause, a handful of senior Pentagon
officials have decided to attack the PowerPoint problem head-on.
Navy Secretary Danzig announced late last year that he was no
longer willing to soldier through the slide shows. He maintains
that PowerPoint briefings are only necessary for two reasons: If
field conditions are changing rapidly or if the audience is
"functionally illiterate."

"In the Pentagon the second seems to be the underlying
presumption," grouses Danzig, who now asks to get all his briefings
in written form.

Danzig's Army counterpart, Caldera, says he, too, would ban the
presentations if he thought he could get away with it. "For some of
these guys, taking away their PowerPoint would be like cutting off
their hands," he says. Caldera's strategy is to interrupt the show
with questions when he gets bored.

Despite such countermeasures, PowerPoint is showing no signs of
retreat. Indeed, it seems to be spreading. James A. Calpin, an
officer in the Naval Reserves, just returned home from duty in
Operation Northern Watch in Turkey, where PowerPoint has just begun
to surface in officer presentations. "I was able to come in and
spruce up their briefings, and they were just wowed," he says.
"People over there just loved it."

Foreign armed services also are beginning to get in on the act.
"You can't speak with the U.S. military without knowing
PowerPoint," says Margaret Hayes, an instructor at National Defense
University in Washington D.C., who teaches Latin American military
officers how to use the software.

Unfortunately, Hayes admits many foreign officers, including those
fluent in PowerPoint visuals, still struggle to understand their
U.S. counterparts' complicated slide presentations. "We've gotten
away from inviting our colleagues from the Department of Defense to
brief our visiting officers. Some of their presentations are a
little bit too complex and too inhibiting," she says.

All of which makes Duke University's Feaver wonder if the U.S.
military is misusing the technology. "If we really wanted to
accomplish something we shouldn't be teaching our allies how to use
PowerPoint," he says. "We should give it to the Iraqis. We'd never
have to worry about them again."
 
==================================================================
(from one of America's largest computer companies)

Subject: Revised presentation templates

Attached are the most current versions of the corporate 
PowerPoint presentation templates (blue background and 
white background.) The templates have been 'color-
coordinated' to ensure quick and easy transitions when 
changing a presentation from one background color to the 
other. 

These templates are to be used for all internal and 
external presentations.  They are not to be modified for 
your department or division in any way.  The revised 
templates will be posted on the Brand Identity website, 
under 'What's New'.  

Please be sure to use the "white" template for internal 
presentations, and the "blue" template for presentations 
to external audiences.  

Also included with both templates are guidelines for 
writing presentations.  These are provided so that 
presentations are consistent in appearance and 
terminology for all audiences, regardless of who writes 
the presentation. 

"Rule of Seven"
A critical part of these guidelines is the "Rule of 
Seven".  The "Rule of Seven" means seven (7)  bullets or 
lines per page, seven (7) words per line.  By writing 
your presentation in this manner, you help	
	(1) increase the readability of each slide; 
	(2) reduce the 'clutter' on each slide; and 
	(3) your audience focus on and retain key 
information.

In addition, the Rule of Seven helps minimize the 
tendency of some speakers to 'read' their presentation 
to the audience - something the audience can really do 
on its own.  The speaker notes should contain notes on 
areas the presenter can emphasize - without putting each 
and every word on the slide itself.

Capitalization:
We are asking everyone to use "Sentence" case for all 
titles as well as 1st and 2nd level bullet 
points.  "Sentence" case means that you only use 
an "initial" cap on the first word of each new bullet.  
Third (3rd) level bullet points should appear in all 
lower case letters.

"Highlight" Colors
When you want to call attention to a key word or phrase, 
please use the following colors from the template's 
color palette.

"Blue" background
	First level		Bright green
	Second level	        Bright blue
	Third level		Gold
	Fourth			Purple

"White" background
	First level		Bright green
	Second level	        Bright blue
	Third level		Gold
	Fourth level		Purple

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