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

2012-12-02 03:16:35
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