10 Mar 08 - Death by Powerpoint

You have to have served in the military within the past 10 years to fully comprehend the term "death by powerpoint". It's something genuinely military. Many people consider a couple of hours at a corporate meeting or at school to be a difficult experience. Well, let me introduce you to the military's rules of powerpoint (ab)use.

1. All powerpoint presentations must be ridiculously long. A civilian "expert" may tell you that powerpoint presentations should be no more then 30 or so slides. Well, that's grossly wrong. Here in the military it is mandatory that there be at least 150 slides per presentation.

2. All presentations must be read word for word to the listeners. Civilians may be perfectly capable of reading and comprehending slides by themselves, but soldiers are not. All military presentations must be read to the viewers word for word in a slow, monotone voice to ensure maximum powerpoint killing power.

3. Each slide must be grossly cluttered. The conventional wisdom that calls for 3 or 4 lines of text that are 5 to 10 words long is a waste of perfectly good space and is just not acceptable. We must attack our powerpoint slides with 3 or 4 or more paragraphs of text. Every presentation must have at least 6 slides that are entirely covered with size 8 font. These slides, like all others, must be read verbatim to all who are present (see rule 2).

4. Technical terms and jargon must be as vague as possible. It is mandatory that nobody immediately understands the meaning of terms in your presentation. Simple, easily understood names and jargon would undermine the necessity and plausibility of having 150 slides in your presentation. Therefore terms such as "human trafficking" or "slavery" must become "trafficking in persons" and "Velcro" must become "hook and button fastener".

5. All presentations must contain at least 50 acronyms, 40 of which must have multiple applications. At least 5 of the acronyms must also be longer in acronym form than in word form. The briefer must at least pretend to know what the acronyms stand for. If asked the meaning of an unknown acronym, the presenter must immediately make up a meaning, thereby improving his versatility.

6. The presenter must not rehearse or prepare his presentation. We in the military must always be able to perform our tasks with minimal effort. Therefore, rehearsal of powerpoint presentations prior to delivery is strictly forbidden. In fact, to ensure that no rehearsal is performed, presenters must download, steal, or at least borrow their presentations from others. He/she is not allowed to view his/her own presentation until the briefing. Once giving the presentation, the briefer must read each slide to himself/herself as it is presented, pause to grasp its meaning, then read it aloud to the crowd. Then, to prove his/her competence, the briefer must have the audacity to ask the listeners if they have questions about the slide that he/she just read.

7. The equipment may not be tested prior to use. Army equipment always works. Any technical failure is obviously human error and not caused by outdated, broken, malfunctioning, or just plane crappy equipment. Projectors must be at least 5 years old and may not have been test run. If a projector is proven to work reliably, it must be commandeered for personal use by a high ranking official immediately, thereby preserving the cycle of digging up old equipment.

8. The briefer must leave his screen saver enabled, so that once he/she has finally hit the one important slide in the entire presentation it turns on, locking up powerpoint, and forcing the briefer to restart either powerpoint or the whole computer. Once powerpoint is back up, he/she must spend at least 5 minutes thumbing through slides in search of the one that he/she was on when the computer locked up. Notice that the briefer did not disable the screen saver even after this incident. He/she must continue to leave the screen saver activated in order to facilitate repeats of the screen saver lockup.

9. Lastly, but most importantly, briefings must last for ridiculously long amounts of time. Soldiers are expected to be able to stay awake for days on end in combat situations, and in order to help facilitate such ability, powerpoint presentations must last at least 7 hours. If one presentation of 200 or so slides occupies an inadequate amount of time, then it must be followed by more presentations until the minimum 7 hour block is covered. If by some chance the presentation(s) do end early, the soldiers must be prohibited from leaving the briefing room until the 7 hours have passed. To insure that soldiers are actually developing their abilities to stay awake for long periods of time and are not aided in any way, all caffeinated beverage dispensers must be kept at least 2 blocks away or simply never be stocked.

These are the rules of military power point use. Hopefully you now have a greater appreciation for exactly what soldiers mean when they say that they have been subjected to "death by powerpoint". It's something akin to torture, and many would probably prefer death to such exposure.

You can probably tell that I had to tolerate some powerpoint today. The subject material was actually good and I learned a lot. But I assure you that the 8.5 hours of slideshows that I endured today was a bit much.