So yesterday I went to a day long showcase where eight groups gave 10 minute PowerPoint presentations on their programs. They were lovely people, and their programs were also lovely. I would be so bold as to say their programs were inspiring.
What was sad was that even at 10 minutes, their presentations seemed so long I felt like I had aged 10 years by the time I got out of that auditorium.
I think it's such a sad thing when you work so hard to promote a program you feel so strongly about, and when other people see it in action, they absolutely love it, and then you do a professional type presentation on it and ...zzzzzzzz. Suddenly the coolest thing in the world just became excruciatingly boring.
Max Atkinson, author of Lend Me Your Ears did some creative calculating on how much PowerPoint is costing the British Economy. Taking the exchange rate, population, and pay scale into consideration, here's how his math applies to the US:
If there are 44,501,000 folks with college degrees earning an average of $50,000 a year in the US, and each one of those folks sits through one hour of PowerPoint presentations once a week, and 90% of those are totally boring, and no one gets a thing out of them, then the US is wasting over $49.9 billion dollars a year on boring PowerPoints. And that's not counting the time people spend researching, preparing the slides, and practicing their presentations.
No wonder we're in a recession.
