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themp
Supporter
Username: Themp
Post Number: 3185
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, August 12, 2006 - 10:53 am: | 
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http://crookedtimber.org/2006/08/11/powerpoint-corrupts-the-point-absolutely/
Yikes. |
Strawberry
Supporter
Username: Strawberry
Post Number: 7691
Registered: 10-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, August 12, 2006 - 11:08 am: |
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bunch of b.s. |
Dave
Supporter
Username: Dave
Post Number: 10472
Registered: 4-1997
| | Posted on Saturday, August 12, 2006 - 11:31 am: |
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Not at all. The NASA team investigating the Columbia Shuttle disaster found PowerPoint slide presentations to be one of the more serious problems.
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Innisowen
Citizen
Username: Innisowen
Post Number: 2253
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, August 12, 2006 - 10:23 pm: |
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strawberry: value-less, content-free opining. |
Bob K
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 12385
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, August 13, 2006 - 6:06 am: |
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Powerpoint can be useful to make a few major points. I think, and their is research I believe on this, both seeing and hearing increases retention.
However, anything as complicated as the Powerpoint slide shown in the article is just going to confuse people. I always suspected that Tommy Frank wasn't the sharpest tool in the draw. Now I am sure.
Of subject I admit, but I hate Powerpoint presentations with animations and sound. These features do nothing, but confuse the points trying to be made.
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Spinal Tap
Citizen
Username: Spinaltap11
Post Number: 156
Registered: 5-2006
| | Posted on Sunday, August 13, 2006 - 8:54 am: |
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I don’t agree with the whole point of the article. As someone who has been involved in writing Operations Orders and OPORD annexes, I can write that Power Point is not used in lieu of traditional 5 paragraph OPORDS. It’s just not possible to plan a military operation, especially at high levels, with Power Point. They are far too complex with too many moving parts, OPORDS plus annexes frequently going into the hundreds of pages. I don’t know what was going on among McKiernan, Franks, and Rumsfeld, but there had to have been an OPORD (or a Fragmentary order – an order based off a main OPORD with only a few changes) somewhere. And don’t kid yourself. At those levels those guys are pretty damm smart. Dolts don’t become 4-star generals in today’s military let alone get selected for a theater command.
However, I will admit that many officers are totally obsessed with Power Point. You almost can’t talk to anyone in the military anymore without a Power Point presentation. Portions of the career training that Captains and Majors receive (Lieutenants or Lieutenant Commanders in the Navy) include training on conducting briefings. This is where they learn to create these absolutely amazing slides that no one can understand without a degree in mechanical engineering. Briefings frequently run over a hundred slides. On most senior staffs, there is an O-3 or O-4 who does nothing but make slides. Some officers are afraid to admit that they know how to make them out of fear that they will wind up being that person. I once showed my father, who was a corporate executive at the time, one of these presentations, and he remarked that if you walked into a corporate meeting with that, you would get laughed out of the room. I guess in places where time equals money, they don’t have the inclination for that.
This is not a new phenomenon but rather a relic of the 1990s peacetime military. Back then, without a war to make your bones, officers had to come up with other ways to dazzle their superiors. Power Point was one of them. Such individuals were derisively referred to as Power Point Rangers or the ascendancy of the techno-geek over the war fighter, or Chairborne (vs. Airborne). Many officers left in the 90’s because they couldn’t take the madness and many of the Captains and Majors who thrived in that environment are today’s Power Point obsessed Lieutenant Colonels and Colonels (battalion and brigade commanders and general staff officers). Additionally, most general officers, who entered after Vietnam, were never company grade officers in combat.
One of the results of this is considerable friction between National Guard or Reserve Officers and their Regular Army counterparts or superiors. The reservists and guardsmen just want to get the job done and get home in one piece – all else be dammed – and they resent risk averse career officers who are terrified of making a mistep or upsetting a superior that will cost them their career. The career officers resent the guardsmen and reservists who never tire of informing them that the only way they can be hurt with an Offficer Evaluation Report, is if someone rolls it up and pokes them in the eye with it.
I remember reading what I think was a Time Magazine article a few years after the Cold War that covered one of the first joint Russian / U.S. training exercises. The article discussed some of the cultural differences between the Russians and Americans. One of the things they pointed out was the Russian’s not being able to understand our obsession with Power Point. One of the Russian officers remarked that if they had ever gone to war, the Soviet’s would have won because they would haven been killing us while we were making Power Point slides. (Or maybe it was Harvard Graphics back then)
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