There is a special place in hell...

[rivka]

...for the person who just sent me an announcement about a grantwriting workshop for junior faculty and fellows.

In the form of an e-mail attachment.

Of a Powerpoint file.

There was nothing - nothing - in the attachment that couldn't have been conveyed in plain text in an e-mail. There weren't even any photographs or diagrams.

A special place in hell, I'm telling you.

Comments

[ailbhe]

The hell of Untreatable Bloat - huge attacks of water retention and gas, and a big pile of antacids, diuretics and so on *just out of reach*.

[selki.livejournal.com]

I keep getting a monthly meeting announcement in that same format. Date and time, meeting description. Grr.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

I think that beats the memo that was a Word merge file. And the PDFs of one-paragraph memos.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I think this beats the paper that I was sent for initial consideration for journal publication that included all the illustrations embedded in the text. It was ginormous and took forever to download on my dialup connection.

[and-ham.livejournal.com]

I know! Constant announcements come to me via powerpoint. It's even worse when they add gratuitous noises such as cars screeching to each bullet point that gives the WHEN, WHERE, and WHY information...

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

People who add sound and animation to slides deserve to be s-l-o-w-l-y barbqued over an open pit.

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Yes. Yes there is.

And by the way, I love your icon. I took a photo of some electricity poles in Scotland that had the same image on their warning signs, only they said "Danger of Death - Keep Off".

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Oh, is that what the picture is supposed to convey? Electrocution risk?

Somewhere on the net there's a website that lets you design your own warning signs, with one of a large number of potentially amusing pictures and whatever text you like. That's where I made this one. Unfortunately, I don't remember where the site is.

My favorite warning sign ever was in Scotland. I took a picture on my honeymoon. It said "Warning: Changed Priorities Ahead." I still don't know what it means.

[ckd]

Warning: Changed Priorities Ahead

It means that they've changed who's required to yield, which might be fatally surprising if you think you have the right-of-way, and so does the other driver.

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Here's the picture. (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v235/electricland/scotland/Fort%20William%20and%20Eilean%20Donan/Dornie1.jpg)

I dunno *what* it's supposed to convey, but they do seem quite serious about not going near those poles, don't they?

"Warning: Changed Priorities Ahead": hee.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

It's worse if you're on a dial-up line.

I can't tell you how many times I get attachments for things that could just as easily been in the email body.

B

[supergee.livejournal.com]

We should have known back when the Mac was new and executives were putting bunny-rabbit pictures on serious memos because the machine let them do it.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

My company is prone to such idiocy too. It's only a minor annoyance for me, since I have broadband at home. But when I think of our field engineers in places like Guam who are connecting over 56k ISDN lines, or somesuch, it's just stupid.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

My bosses have been treating me more and more like a full-blown IT manager, at least as far as asking my advice about things computer-related goes. In a recent staff meeting, the program director turned to me and asked, "If you could make any single improvement, tech-wise, what would it be."

I didn't skip a beat before blurting "take away everybody's PowerPoint and Excel."

I confess to a moment of outright glee when it was recently announced that the federal assessment team that's making its quadrennial review visit here in May has proclaimed that they do not wish to see any PowerPoint presentations during the review sessions. Go, them.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

Clue bats. Several. Repeatedly.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Our Dean sends out everything, even three-line emails, in the form of Word attachments. It drives me utterly batshit.

-J

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Disgracefully behind the times. Everyone knows they should be .pdfs.

[puppytown.livejournal.com]

We get memos sent to us in PDF format, of documents that were obviously faxed and then scanned into PDF. It's so stupid, especially since we also get the faxes.

[balmofgilead.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think flash animation is de rigueur for email these days. With sound. Without dancing monkeys and organ music, people might not understand your message.

[darthgeek.livejournal.com]

A slow and painful death is too good for infractions like that.

[xopher-vh.livejournal.com]

Or as my friend Judy likes to say "Defenestration's too good for him! Throw him out the window!!"

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

Whenever I find myself assaulted by bad Powerpoint, I return to http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/ to re-wallow in the most hideous thing anyone has ever done.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Powerpoint, in general, should be taken out and shot. I've yet to see a .ppt that wouldn't be better presented as a handout.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

My aunt, who was sixty at her last birthday, teaches history of art to adults, as courses of lectures. She used to use slides to show paintings.

She now uses Powerpoint as if it were a high tech version of slides for showing paintings -- look, a painting. Look, this is a bit of the painting blown up. Look, I'll put another bit of a different painting next to it so you can see the influence. Here are the two paintings together. See how this blue is different from that blue. Let this Japanese print fade into this Monet so you can see the influence. Look at the way this figure is standing, and now this figure. Look at the hands.

This is clearly what Powerpoint was born for.

I used to feel exactly as you did, and think the thing was entirely misconceived and would be better replaced with a whiteboard and a handout, but I have changed my mind after seeing her programs. It clearly needs to get out of the office and into the art-room.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Ok, argument made - THAT is a good use for Powerpoint, and far less cumbersome than boxes of slides and a projector.

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

My former boss had me create a slideshow that showed how the company's IT systems had accumulated over time, which was a helpful way to show how an acquisition could affect a lot of other systems. It also made it easier to visualize how a prospective new project could help multiple other systems.

That's about the only thing I ever really used it for, although I did whip up a quick-and-dirty org chart with it a couple of times. Mostly, I've tried to avoid it, but I think it can have some limited uses.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

That person apparently also works for UT, because yesterday I received an announcement of a vendor fair. One, single, Powerpoint slide, attached to an e-mail.

Sheesh.

And I'm irked, too, because to enter in the grand prize drawing, you have to give the vendor some other office supplies catalog, and I of course threw mine in the recycle bin as soon as I received the new one.