Re: Outlawing PowerPoint (Was: a suggestion....)

[cuber at worldmediaco.com (Uber, Chet)]

While I agree that a number of the Power Point demonstrations I saw were marketing
oriented, this is not the case on all of them. Does this mean that .PDF should also
be banned? I think you are throwing the baby out with the bath water. It is much
easier to read the .ppt through the overhead then it will be the flip chart, and
spelling, long URL references, etc. are better served through this method.

What the complaint seems to be is that there are these "newbies", "lurkers", and
"tourists" which are taking up IETF assets (i.e. chairs, electrical outlets) thus
making contributors to the particular WG suffer. I agree that IETF meetings are not
the same as trade shows, but I feel a great deal of elitism being espoused in this
and the other threads relate to it; such as Per's make the tourists suffer thread.

In my case, I am the Chief Technical Officer for my company; and a great deal of
our future depends on what is being designed, specified and ratified today. I guess
I would be a lurker in your terminology, but that is only because I had not found a
specific WG or ID where I could make significant contributions not already
espoused. Would it help for me to send an "I agree" e-mail to the list?? I did at
the Orlando meeting, finally find a WG that is something I feel I can make a strong
contribution to -- namely Common Intruder Detection standards.

I cannot help telling "you" the wizards, gurus, long-time protocol developers that
people need to start somewhere! If what you want is an organization of Good Ole
Boys, then you should proceed with methods to limit attendance of "newbies" and
"lurkers;" as well as such things as low visibility presentation technologies.
However, since it does not seem that any people have bothered to ask us "outsiders"
why we are even there, that the desire to perpetuate the GOB is a truism.

I find this problem is pervasive through out life. I have taken the time and money
to attend meetings, but at no time has anyone asked me why I am there (well except
one gentlemen from Ascend). If you think that the often banal arguments in meetings
about such trivial items as capitalizing the S in should turns my crank -- you are
wrong. I am looking for productive, informative, cooperative exercises to further
the Internet. There is little done to try to bring people like myself into the
fold.

The worst part for me is that my companies name is, World Media Company; and I seem
to be taken as a reporter. We are part of a 25 company holding group, which has an
extremely diverse holdings; including, polling equipment manufacturing, smart card
technology implementation, follow-me calling, direct mail marketing, publishing,
broadcasting, and technology venture capital. We were originally the New Media
Group for the publishing interests in the holding company; but even back then never
had anything to do with "content" or "reporting." We offer publications, large
corporations, and governments a way dynamically publish numerous forms of
"information;" as well as providing intranet/Internet/extranet solutions to our
parent corporation and its IOCs. We do work at all levels of the stack, and
consider IETF/IESG/IAB, ANSI, NIST and ISO standards important to our companies
future.

I suggest that the Secretariat and people like Fred Baker should try to find out
what the "newbies," "lurkers," and "tourists." are really doing there; before
trying to change variables of the meeting, which may or may not solve the problem.
If you don't understand the entire issue, how can you randomly (seemingly), talk
about making changes to the form and format of the meeting; and hope to become more
productive.

I am not upset with the IETF, nor the people trying to "make it more
productive/better," but before using grep to dismiss people based on participation;
a good scientist would find out why the participation is not happening. All things
evolve! Is it not possible that "The Tao" and the first time meeting seminar is not
enough to bring us to a level of confidently being able to contribute????

Regards,
Chet

PS: You could hold the meetings in a swamp in July and I would still attend. I have
traveled all over, and find little time to "vacation" during IETF meetings as the
content concerns me more than some faux fun.

PPS: I am not saying .ppt presentations are the best, however it is the tool at my
disposal to best fulfill my needs when conveying information to groups.


============================================================
Chet Uber, Chief Technology Officer
World Media Company, a World-Herald Company
http://www.omaha.com cuber at omaha.com
vox 402.444.1158   fax 402.346.7158   pgr 402-899-1854
------------------------------------------------------------
"My life is an MPEG, and I am not the producer.
============================================================







Pete Resnick wrote:

> On 12/12/98 at 8:41 AM -0500, Mike O'Dell wrote:
>
> > as an aid to smaller meetings, I suggest outlawing powerpoint and viewgraphs.
>
> In all deference to JK, I agree with this wholeheartedly. Inevitably
> the people with the PowerPoint presentations are also those who are
> either trying to teach novices or do marketing presentations during
> sessions, which is not what we are supposed to be doing at these
> things. I became disgusted and walked out of NTPSEC when I had to sit
> through a talk on how time service works. This was justified with,
> "This might be review for some of you, but I think it's worth going
> over for the new people." It's not worth going over; if you don't
> understand the protocol being discussed, you don't belong in the room.
>
> I am also somewhat offended by silly borders and corporate logos on
> these presentations. We spend time to come to these meetings to
> discuss protocols, not to see how artistic you are or that your
> company supports any particular work. This is engineering, not
> marketing.
>
> I do like Scott McNealy's take on this: "We had 12.9 gigabytes of
> PowerPoint slides on our network. And I thought, 'What a huge waste
> of corporate productivity.' So we banned it. And we've had three
> unbelievable record-breaking fiscal quarters since we banned
> PowerPoint. Now, I would argue that every company in the world, if it
> would just ban PowerPoint, would see their earnings skyrocket.
> Employees would stand around going, 'What do I do? Guess I've got to
> go to work.'"
>
> pr
> --
> Pete Resnick <mailto:presnick at qualcomm.com>
> QUALCOMM Incorporated
> Work: (217)337-6377 or (619)651-4478
> Fax: (217)337-1980 or (619)651-1102

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