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 I just got back from an industry symposium where I watched a bunch of engineers give lectures on various topics. Each was an expert who had knowledge to share, and I was hanging on as best I could, not being an engineer myself. One fellow stood there like a tombstone with this PowerPoint presentation. He hung onto his lectern as if he were steering the Titanic and stared down into the screen of his laptop as if it would reveal the future. As he droned he also tapped and the key words he was saying appeared on the screen for all of us to read.I found myself reading the words on the screen while trying to pay attention to what the guy was saying. The PowerPoint was a visual echo. He’d speak and then his words would appear on the screen. It was like watching a bad Japanese movie. And it wasn’t as if the PowerPoint was adding anything to what the guy had to say. There were no photos, or graphs, no pie charts to see – only words. And he was already saying those. So what was the point? In another room, I sat through the polar opposite of the PowerPoint man. Here, an ancient engineer was lecturing on air quality while writing on a white board with a black marker. He spent more than half his allotted time with his back to the audience. We could have gotten up and left.
And the coot never erased anything either. He was like God writing to Moses. As he got closer and closer to the bottom of the white board, he had to bend further and further over and twist his arm into an unnatural position. I thought he was going to topple over at one point. And his scribblings got smaller as the hour wore on. Most of us couldn’t even see what he was doing down there at the bottom of his white board, but that didn’t stop him. And you want to know the best part? No one was taking notes. Except for him. And he already knew the material. Go figure, eh? In a third room, a young engineer was talking about NOX. He was also using PowerPoint and had gotten to a part of his presentation where he was displaying a series of charts that had been scanned from some manufacturer’s catalog. The first chart looked like a plate of linguini with clam sauce.
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I don’t think this guy would have noticed. He was your old algebra teacher. He would say something like, “The resultant carbon monoxide from smoking is severe.” Then he would turn his back on us and write on the white board, The resultant carbon monoxide from smoking is severe. Every single word. And he wouldn’t speak while he was writing. We’d have to wait for him to finish. People in the audience looked at each other and shrugged. Some got up and left. The Professor never noticed.| Dan Holohan - [Intro] | [Email] | [Website] |
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