Re: PowerPoint considered harmful (was Re: Barely literate minutes)

[SM <[e-mail]>]

Hi Melinda,
At 22:29 01-12-2012, Melinda Shore wrote:
>Not really sure what can be done about this - you can say "discussion,
>not presentation" until you're blue in the face and the outcome of all
>that will be a blue face but presentations during the meetings anyway.
>Ultimately I expect it comes down to how individual chairs want to
>run meetings.

Yes.

Powerpoint is intended 'for interpretation by a program that 
understands the data on the recipient's system.  Recipients need to 
understand that they are at the "mercy" of the sender, when receiving 
this type of data, since data will be executed on their system, and 
the security of their machines can be violated' [1].

These powerpoint presentations are good enough to keep people 
entertained for the duration of the session.  They mask the fact that 
there hasn't been any discussion of the issues on a mailing 
list.  Pete Resnick mentioned that "doing document reviews in 
presentation form where the editor is the one doing the slides has 
created this problem" [2].  This comes down to "we have seen others 
doing it and that's why we do it".

Regards,
-sm

1. http://www.ietf.org/assignments/media-types/application/vnd.ms-powerpoint
2. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg76080.html