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November 19, 2007
Thankfulness Week Begins!
Hey, it's the first day of Thanksgiving Vacation! In the past, UVM followed the traditional Thursday-and-Friday-off model of Thanksgiving breaking. Then, after the faculty rioted, burned down the administration building, and detonated a suitcase-sized nuclear device in the office of the Chair of the Board of Trustees, the university decided to face facts. Here's the month of November, with the old days-off marked in a lovely and soothing periwinkle:
Now here's the month of November, with the actual days most students would take off marked in a more alarming shade of pumpkin:
As you can see, the students decided that they were very thankful, indeed, and needed more time to adequately consider, express, and celebrate all of that thankfulness.
So, the University decided to give everyone the whole week of Thanksgiving off. Of course, students still check out early. (Some of them very early, indeed.) But now it's a little more fair for everyone.
To begin the week of thankfulness, I'm going to start with something I am thankful for: Sharable media. Without the video-sharing sites, without Flikr, without I Can Has Cheezburger's Lolcat Builder, the world would be a much sadder, plainer, less interesting place.
And speaking of sad, plain, and uninteresting, here's a new form of sharable media I just came across -- sharable and embed-able PowerPoint slideshow viewers! Slideshare.net does for PowerPoint what YouTube did for self-indulgent video blogs! But that's not why I used "sad, plain, and uninteresting" as the segue here. On LifeHacker I came across this bright little ray of light in a dark, dark world of bad PowerPoint presentations. Alexei Kapterev is here to tell you all about "Death by PowerPoint (and how to fight it)," and thank the Lords of Kobol he is!
As an English Professor, I don't actually have to sit through that many bad PowerPoint presentations at work. (Another thing for which I am thankful!) But I see them practically every day. The English Department surrounds one of the premier meeting/presentation venues on campus, and the hallway outside my office has four large windows that look down into this large, stained-glass-bedecked room. And what do I see? PowerPoint. Almost always. And what's on the slides? Bad stuff. And what are the presenters doing? Reading from the slides. I shudder.
(I should file a hostile work environment complaint. Proximal exposure to that much horribleness can't be good for my health or my productivity.)
Anyway, watch the slideshow. There's no sound. There doesn't need to be. I especially enjoyed the Microsoft Vista Launch PowerPoint slide. Ouch!
Posted by reparent at November 19, 2007 6:01 PM
Comments
The thing I have with 'powerpoint is evil' is that it is not. It is a tool, and many do not know how to use it, period.
Thanks for finding presentation - and for reminding me I should really get back into my Feeds for reading lifehacker. ;)
Posted by: Nicole Simon at November 22, 2007 6:59 PM