In this episode, Mike and I put on the latex gloves and explored the uncomfortable reality that PowerPoint has ruled corporate communication since 1987, and somehow nothing has replaced it despite Prezi, Lucidchart, Google Slides, and Canva all existing and working perfectly fine. The thesis: PowerPoint persists because it's the ultimate crutch. It's like eating a donut. Relatively safe, expected, and nobody will question you for eating it, even though it forces you to cram complex ideas into six-by-five-inch boxes and encourages people to read slides word-for-word like they're performing at an elementary school talent show. We traced PowerPoint's origins back to overhead projectors and slide carousels, realized the military lives in PowerPoint because hierarchical briefings need slides apparently, and discovered that the name "PowerPoint" came to someone in the shower (omen: they saw a sign at an airport). Mike admitted he'd rather get a Word doc than sit through most presentations, Nate confessed he uses jellyfish backgrounds and white text on purpose so people can't read the slides and have to actually listen, and we both agreed the "appendix with 70 backup slides" move is corporate theater at its finest. The breakthrough: if you need slides to tell your story, you either don't know your material or you're presenting to people who should've just read the pre-read. We also announced a new spinoff podcast called "If Life Was a PowerPoint" where we'll grill each other on invisible slide decks, which is either genius or a cry for help. Next week we're tackling Training Our Elders, aka why your relatives are still on Yahoo Mail and Lenovo laptops from 2017.
Listen at thecalculusofit.com • Join our Slack board at thecoit.us • Leave five stars • Stop reading slides word-for-word • PowerPoint is here to stay, sorry.
—Nate & Mike
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