James McGovern on slide decks:

I wonder if the Web 2.0 folks have ever considered that their presentations are also information dense? Many corporate folks aren't used to such density and they may be overwhelmed with such tight delivery. In overload situations, folks will also revert back to the desire of reading things later even if they were in attendance which you now have robbed them of this chance.

This is in the middle of a riff about how "Web 2.0" companies in particular fill their presentations with too much information. In my experience, small companies tend to do the best job of keeping presentations shorter and to the point. When you find a wordy, rambling presentation, there's a very good chance that it came out of a large bureaucracy.

Now, bad presentations exist everywhere - I've put together plenty of them myself. I will say this though - if you rely on powerpoint decks for documentation, then you are dying the death of a thousand horrid practices.

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