Powerpoint: The Killer App

I spent all of yesterday trapped in a room full of people, staring at Powerpoint presentations. There were about, oh, 13 presenters and each one had their own special presentation to show off. I sat in the most uncomfortable chair on the planet, listening to people who were essentially reading off every single word on each slide in their respective presentations.

If that isn't a preview of the Ninth Level of Hell, then I don't know what is.

Now I know I look deceptively young. I'm small. I have youthful features. Hell, I get carded when I try to order a latte at Starbucks but what on God's green earth gave these people the idea that I didn't know how to read?

Maybe it was out of courtesy that they didn't deviate from the words on the screen because... I could not read them. Unless you were a cat (and sadly, none of the humans in the room were) I don't think anyone could have read anything on the screen. I don't think anyone who sat more than a foot away from the massive 8x8 ft screen could read anything. It's hard to when the font is the size of sand granules.

I effing HATE Powerpoint presentations or, as I like to call them, "Satan's reading material for the damned."

I don't think they are a necessary evil. They're just evil - as in 'sacrifice a goat and chant White Snake lyrics backwards' evil. Whoever invented the Powerpoint at Microsoft should get their ass kicked, no joke.

But seriously, it is a business tool and maybe, used effectively, they could be helpful. The problem is Powerpoints are almost never used effectively.

People do stupid shit sometimes- they ride motocycles without helmets, they buy full price at Banana Republic, and they try to cram as many words as possible into 30 or more slides and think others will care.

The odd thing is, people seem to rely on slide presentations to the point of dependency. I'm in the communications industry yet a lot of the people I work with just don't get that Powerpoints are the worst way to communicate with someone. When asked for data, the first application people usually click on is the Powerpoint icon.

Why? Whatever happened to innovation? Creativity? Thinking outside of the box (or in this case, slide)?

What happened to talking?

The end goal of a Powerpoint is to express an idea and what usually happens is that any spark of brilliance or true original thought is lost in a hideous, chaotic mess of words and ridiculous images.

By the end of the day yesterday, I was ready to stab my eyes with the little plastic sporks my client had so kindly provided for me to use during our 'working' lunch. Seriously. I was ready to slash someone's (preferably a presenter's) tires. See how they liked being trapped with no escape.

I know that each time I have to work on a Powerpoint presentation, the Devil is setting aside my own little spot in Hell.

-Signing off from Seattle