----- Original Message ----- From: "Phillip Hallam-Baker" <hallam@xxxxxxxxx> To: "John Levine" <johnl@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: "IETF Discussion Mailing List" <ietf@xxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 7:41 PM > For what we use it for, powerpoint is actually useful. > > Most cases what is put up on slides is examples. And I find it much > easier to follow an example that is written down than one that is > read. > > The other point that is overlooked by the powerpoint haters is that > the principal value is that it rescues incompetent speakers. There are > some people who are good speakers at IETF but the speaking > qualification is only an opinion and a keyboard. Being able to > organize a logical series of thoughts does not come into it. > > I am more than happy to present without slides. The reason I write > them is that the meeting organizers DEMAND them. And they are quite > right to do that because I have two speaking modes one of which is > PowerPoint and the other is 'TED talk'. > > Guess which one has the technical content. The most striking feature for me of IETF89 was the failure of almost all WG Chairs to produce a PowerPoint display at all, without some trial and error. Most laptops etc these days have a widescreen aspect ratio (WHY???) whereas none of the projectors did, so what appeared on the screen tended to be the top left corner or right hand extreme or ... of the Agenda, Note Well and so on. It seems a shame to get so many engineers together in a room and then spend five minutes trying to get a display working. PowerPoint may rescue incompetent speakers but it does nothing for those who cannot interface a laptop to a projector. Tom Petch