Comments on: “Dumb-Dumb Bullets” and Information Processing

By: Adam Elkus

Adam Elkus — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:15:18 +0000

Starbuck of Wings over Iraq links to us and adds his own commentary: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2009/07/draft-draft-draftpowerpoint-1/

By: Adam Elkus

Adam Elkus — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:41:03 +0000

Anyone read Hammes’ “Read Different” list?

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2008/08/3566947/

By: Tim Hsia

Tim Hsia — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:38:34 +0000

speaking of the devil, check out this Armed Forces Journal contest posted on their website:

AFJ 2009 essay contest

AFJ is running its second annual essay contest. Submit an essay of no longer than 1,500 words on a PowerPoint presentation that most affected your career — for good or bad. The winning essayist will receive a set of books recommended by T.X. Hammes; runners up will receive book gift cards. The winning essays will be published in our November issue.

By: Adam Elkus

Adam Elkus — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:50:46 +0000

That’s more or less what Hammes argued as well.

By: Jason Fritz

Jason Fritz — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:18:55 +0000

While PowerPoint is conducive to lazy information exchange, it isn’t the culprit. Slide decks should rarely be stand-alone documents and are often used effectively as a form of executive summary to a real report or order. It is lazy staff work that uses PPT as an OPORD as opposed to an OPORD briefing. A good staff uses PPT to make their organization more efficient.

By: Adam Elkus

Adam Elkus — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:51:22 +0000

That pamphlet would be a good addition to the Red Teaming library.

By: Tim Hsia

Tim Hsia — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:14:41 +0000

this is a good summary too…

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/14/magazine/2003-the-3rd-annual-year-in-ideas-powerpoint-makes-you-dumb.html

By: Adam Elkus

Adam Elkus — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 01:41:59 +0000

Mark,

I must have been crazy to forget Tufte!

Peter,

Yes, a PPT is a human-screen interface, not a human-human interface.

Younghusband,

Shilling is encouraged

Guile,

Agree wholly.

By: Guile

Guile — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:33:16 +0000

Thank you Adam, thank you. People at all organizational levels would do well to recognize the art of high-quality information design (thanks Ivy leaguer – you know who you are). Good information exchange requires thought and consideration. One must employ a degree of precision and focus to make sure every character or object on a slide is essential. I can think of at least one other tension that contributes to the electronic presentation communication challenge besides quantity and speed. One such tension is the requirement (in some cases) that the presentation be informative and coherent to those only viewing the presentation and not hearing the presenter. In such cases, there is no real-time opportunity to gain clarity to what exists on the slide, thus one could feel compelled to communicate in complete sentences and paragraphs. Or at least to make bullets read like proper language statements. Creating and providing concise presentations is a challenge and efforts to get organizations to rethink their expectations for producing and receiving such information seem warranted. For those of us (like me) that were born with the verbose gene, the struggle is especially difficult. Awareness is the first step (really condition or state) required for change!

By: Younghusband

Younghusband — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:23:34 +0000

Not to be a shill, but my thoughts on PP are here: Present ARMS! The military and Powerpoint