Don Watson (pictured) has written a book called “Death Sentences: How Clichés, Weasel Words and Management-Speak are Strangling Public Language”. The Nesweek interview with him is pretty funny.
NEWSWEEK: What are some examples of the way business-speak has spread beyond the corporate world?
Don Watson: My granddaughter Sophie has been asked to write her English essays in PowerPoint. It’s shocking and terrible. And maybe when she grows up she’ll get married in PowerPoint: “Point one: Do you take this man for your lawful husband?” And maybe when she dies, she’ll even have her funeral in PowerPoint. [Laughs.] Her [class] spent their last week of primary education writing their “personal mission statement”—their “core values and key goals going forward.” And then there was an example from a Houston newspaper review of my book where births [at a hospital] were referred to as OB [obstetrics] product. Now we can say I was a seven-and-a-half pound OB product, which is a measurable item, not just a child.
While I think PPT gets needlessly dumped on a lot, there is no question many use it in rediculous ways. If one of my sons were asked to write an essay in PPT, his teacher would receive a nasty PPT file from me in response.
Tom Bunzel brought this article to our attention in his comment to a previous post. Thanks Tom!
Posted by Robert Befus at 4:45 PM .
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At InfoComm this year the ICIA introduced an impressive document called “Audiovisual Best Practices”. Now before you get too excited, let me tell you this is not a a best practice document about designing or delivering presentations. It is best practices for “The design and integration process for the AV and construction industries”. Nevertheless, it is very well done and can serve as a model for the kind of best practices document we might want to see developed for presentation design and delivery. Altough not targeted to Pres Pros, “Audiovisual Best Practices” does recognize the important role we play and lists the following definition of a Presentation Professional in its introductory chapter.
Presentation Professionals
After hardware is installed in an AV system and staff training is complete, presentation professionals are often hired to produce strong, effective and creative presentations that use the AV equipment to its fullest potential. This ensures a solid return on the organization’s investment. Presentation professionals are often hired as in-house resources or as independent freelancers to enhance the message through graphics and video presentations, marketing expertise and creative application of presentation tools.
This is the first time that I am aware of that a Presentation Professional has been formally acknowledged and defined. I think this definition is a pretty good start…. but what do you think? What would you change or add if you could? Does this describe your profession?
Posted by Robert Befus at 1:51 PM .
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This technique might provide an convenient way to practice a presentation in the plane, the cab, the lobby or other places where you’d rather not have to boot up the laptop. And, as the author remarks, it might be a good way to get the boss to let you expense an ipod.
“there’s a new tool (for macs) that will export powerpoint, pdfs and keynote slides for use on the ipod photo, $18 or you can use my how-to to do the same. an ipod photo, portable media center or any device that plays photos will do. might be a good way to get the boss to let you expense one of these. in the how-to i pump the images out to a headset display, which is part of a cool project that’ll i’ll post about later.”
Posted by Lee Potts at 12:39 PM .
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