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Posted on December 24th, 2008 by Steve Cassidy
Why I don’t write about Architecture
Because I might come up with something like… this – I’m not quite sure what the etiquette is when one noted columnist calls another a “hack” but I am reasonably sure that neither I, nor Tim, nor Barry, ever said that avoiding death by powerpoint ever required a wholesale shift to the Macintosh!
A fascinating study in how the art of precis, together with Woody Allen’s “Sleeper” style division between domains of expertise, can lead to utterly the wrong end of the stick being firmly waved in the air…
(and yes it is xmas eve and yes I am already bored witless…)
Tags: architecture, pecha-kucha, wrong end of stick
Posted in: Rant
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December 26th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Pecha Kucha is a methodolgy for producing short and sweet (or is that sweaty) presentations. It started off with slideshows of architecture and holiday photos, ISTR.
They had presentation evenings, where 10 or so presenters were lined up and they each had to do a Pecha Kucha presentation. It meant that they had to really think about their messages and chose the images for the slides very carefully. The evenings have been a great success and visitors and presenters for the original evenings, in Tokyo, are on very long waiting lists, I believe.
A lot more thought has to go into PK, because you have to get your message across in such a short space of time.
That said, Keynote does not “support” Pecha Kucha, it is just that many of the people who are open to the idea use Macs. There is nothing to stop them using PowerPoint on the Mac or PowerPoint for Windows.
It is probably more of a fact that Keynote concentrates more on the basics, so you are less tempted to fiddle with word art, crappy slide change animations and swooping lines circling around their place before landing
Don’t worry, you guys are hacks, at least not most of the time ;.)
December 26th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
In retrospect, the reference to Keynote was confusing. I don’t think it’s even needed for a lack of temptation: I think they just use it in the circumstances Barry mentioned as a way of stopping people inserting rule-breakers in the material – but the crucial point is, Keynote was always only ever used by a small group of event runners, to open & show Powerpoint presentations written by entrants, on their PCs.
So the whole trail of references are a bit like talking to people who think you’re not allowed to take a right-hand-drive car to Europe.
December 27th, 2008 at 5:21 am
Oops, that should have been “you guys aren’t hacks…”
Damned laptop! I’ll be glad when I’m back home and have a real keyboard to work with!
December 27th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Come on David, you must have come across the idea of the Irregular Verb! The classic example is “I am firm but fair, you micromanaage, he is a tyrant” (all referring to the same behaviour).
The journalistic equivalent is “I am a senior award winning figure; you are a part-time enthusiast; he is a hack”…
It’s all a matter of where you stand!
January 6th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Semantics aside I really liked the article on Pecha Kucha. For a while we’ve been trying to speed up presentations by fanatically boring members of staff more interested in the podium than the information. It gave us a reason to focus on information, not waffle.
On PC Pro writers being “hacks”, frankly one would hope you’ve enough professional respect in your own ability to not be bothered by such comments!