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if you've ever worked an office job you've probably experienced all the

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typical trappings of being a corporate wage slave sitting for eight hours at a

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cubicle uncomfortable lunches with irritating co-workers and useless

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meetings which of course feature a powerpoint presentation indeed research

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has shown that most workplace meetings do very little to increase productivity

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and just seeing the first slide of a poorly executed powerpoint intensifies

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this particularly mundane form of dread but despite the fact that most nine to

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five workers agree that powerpoints kind of suck as a tool to convey information

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we just keep right on using them what gives what's the deal well it helps to

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know what the point of powerpoint originally was before we were all

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looking at bullet points on digital projectors workplaces had to use

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old-fashioned contraptions such as vacation photo style slides projectors

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which you probably remember from high school or chalkboards but despite the

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fact that making presentations for these devices was time consuming hundreds of

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millions of presentation slides were being created every year and even though

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software and equipment that could show powerpoint like presentations were

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around before the 1980s they were very expensive however once the personal

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computer started becoming widespread software developers quickly figured out

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that using them to show visual aids in the workplace made both giving and

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creating presentations much quicker and easier and since people were already

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used to the slides presentation paradigm programmers already had an idea for what

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presentation program should look like so lots of presentation programs came out

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for the pc in the 1980s with powerpoint hitting the scene in 1987. and while

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this did make it much easier for workers at all levels to share thoughts with

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colleagues the problem was that no one really knew how to use it i mean think

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about the options most people are familiar with when creating a powerpoint

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you can choose a fancy looking background embed animations to your

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heart's content or even throw in some word art but while all this stuff can be

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flashy it often doesn't do a great job conveying information yet presentation

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programs tend to emphasize these bells and whistles not what's going to get the

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point across most effectively and even if you skip these options there are user

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errors too like cramming way too much information onto one slide i know we've

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all done it while you've probably seen this any given board meeting or college

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lecture this exact problem was actually implicated in the space shuttle columbia

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disaster back in 2003 you see a

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presentation for nasa actually contained information about the defect that caused

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the shuttle to ultimately explode but it was buried far down on a slide which was

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mostly a wall of text that actually started on a positive note meaning no

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one paid much attention to it but this example highlights not only that

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powerpoint slides often contain too much or too little information to be helpful

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but that it's also been roundly criticized for making people too passive

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with how they learn or absorb new concepts i mean it's almost as if a

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linear presentation where slides come out one after the other is too

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straightforward instead of getting viewers to engage with the material the software's

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fundamental paradigm seems to reward passive learning as a result of the

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audience being too distracted by a shoddily made slideshow while missing

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more important information coming from the speaker some critics have even gone

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as far to say that it makes people less curious and if you've ever sat through a

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confusing powerpoint at your 8am lecture that your professor put basically no

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thought into you might tend to agree but is there a brighter future ahead for the

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program we all love to hate well both powerpoint and its rivals are

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incorporating features that attempt to make presentations less linear such as

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zoom features that allow the presenter to access different pieces of

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information and make the experience less predictable and torpor inducing without

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breaking flow important in this age of instagram adult attention spans

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regardless it might be worthwhile for us all to just learn how to use powerpoint

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correctly a good presentation should be a useful learning aid even after you've

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wrapped things up and have snuck out to an expense account lunch so make your

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slides informative without cramming so much stuff onto them that no one can

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read them use interesting visuals that help your audience understand instead of

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pointless clip art and stock photos of business people and don't just read off

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the slides verbatim in my day we used to call that given a speech

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freshbooks.com forward slash techwiki and enter in techwiki in the how you

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heard about a section thanks freshbooks appreciate you anyways

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guys thank you very much for watching make sure to like the video dislike

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goodbye