Calculus of IT - Season 3 Episode 9 - PowerPoint Inc.

In this episode, Mike and I put on the latex gloves and explored the uncomfortable reality that PowerPoint has ruled corporate communication since 1987, and somehow nothing has replaced it despite Prezi, Lucidchart, Google Slides, and Canva all existing and working perfectly fine. The thesis: PowerPoint persists because it's the ultimate crutch.  It's like eating a donut.  Relatively safe, expected, and nobody will question you for eating it, even though it forces you to cram complex ideas into six-by-five-inch boxes and encourages people to read slides word-for-word like they're performing at an elementary school talent show. We traced PowerPoint's origins back to overhead projectors and slide carousels, realized the military lives in PowerPoint because hierarchical briefings need slides apparently, and discovered that the name "PowerPoint" came to someone in the shower (omen: they saw a sign at an airport). Mike admitted he'd rather get a Word doc than sit through most presentations, Nate confessed he uses jellyfish backgrounds and white text on purpose so people can't read the slides and have to actually listen, and we both agreed the "appendix with 70 backup slides" move is corporate theater at its finest. The breakthrough: if you need slides to tell your story, you either don't know your material or you're presenting to people who should've just read the pre-read. We also announced a new spinoff podcast called "If Life Was a PowerPoint" where we'll grill each other on invisible slide decks, which is either genius or a cry for help. Next week we're tackling Training Our Elders, aka why your relatives are still on Yahoo Mail and Lenovo laptops from 2017.

Listen at thecalculusofit.com • Join our Slack board at thecoit.us • Leave five stars • Stop reading slides word-for-word • PowerPoint is here to stay, sorry.

—Nate & Mike

Transcript

Season 3 - Episode 9 - Final - Audio Only

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Trance Bot: [00:00:00] The calculus of it,

season three,

verifying this identity.

Sometimes you just have to take it.

Sometimes you just have to take it

because it's season three divided Autonomy,

verifying identity.

The calculus of it.[00:01:00] 

Nate McBride: I am record. I'm recording to the cloud. Mike, 

I love the cloud. Save it to the cloud. 

Nate McBride: Was told it's there forever. Was the cloud's not secure, but 

I'm recording. 

Nate McBride: It's not according to the cloud. Anyway, 

we, yeah, we don't wanna, we don't want to lose anything in the cloud. You know, it's not very hard to find. 

Nate McBride: No.

The cloud's unsecure and um. It is not safe for data because who knows who could see it. [00:02:00] And um,

so I wanna mention before we get started that, um, I get notified every time somebody likes us on Substack. 

Oh, nice. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Um, let me tell you who has liked us. 

Okay. Let, let's get a list going. 

Nate McBride: Uh, Bible quotes. 

Oh, nice. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Bible quotes. Shout out to Bible quotes. Woo hoo. 

We love Bible quotes, 

Nate McBride: right? Shit. Yep.

So Bible quotes liked, uh, your post calculus of it, season three, episode eight. It AKA, the PhD anthropologist. 

Love it. 

Nate McBride: Nailed it. Um, hold on. Not done. Liked. 

Maybe they liked the, uh, [00:03:00] website name too

Nate McBride: well. So Intro Wisdom liked us. They liked episode six. Oh, they, slack is Intro Wisdom. Interesting. Slack is in OS Wisdom. TXT, which I guess is text Liked Season three, episode five. Who speaks for it anyway? Book briefs. Book briefs liked season three, episode seven. Well, has become a chat. I'm, I'm not done.

Literary wisdom like season three, episode eight. I-T-A-K-A. The past the anthropologist, um, Bailey Hoop Hop. 

Okay. 

Nate McBride: Feel, feels like the calculus of it. I spent 30 years in the trenches and it's ready for change. 

Awesome. 

Nate McBride: I dunno what that means. I think we're, I think [00:04:00] we fucking made it, dude. I think we're like, officially, what's the hashtag?

We can, I don't know. 

Nate McBride: We're of official, I, I don't even know what to say.

We're not being right. We've gone big time. We've gone big time, you know, third season. Got a few likes up there. Do we have a, I think it's time verification model to verify, you know, everybody. It's 

Nate McBride: honestly, I think, I think it's time we turn the revenue, we start, start charging 

thousand dollars an episode.

Nate McBride: Can't listen to our shit for free. What? No, it's time to put the subscription model. We'll make, 

dude, we need, we need the tallest paywall. Let's go. 

Nate McBride: Well, my only question is like, if you're on your island and I'm on my island from all the money we've made. [00:05:00] 

Yep. 

Nate McBride: How, how will we chat? Will we have like a VPN between our islands?

We can use Microsoft Link.

Nate McBride: Oh my God,

yes. Um, 

I have a, I have an MSN login you can use for, um, 

Nate McBride: it's a relatively, well, it's unproven technology, right? No one's used the link to its fullest extent. I mean, it's part intranet, part asynchronous chat. 

Do you have the latest office communicator? Bader Bader Beta Badda, Baha Buddha. 

Nate McBride: Yes. I, I'm on all the, I I am on all the betas.

I'm on Alpha.

Oh, man. Man, 

Nate McBride: don't hate, don't hate, don't hate. 

I'm not hating. I, I like it. I'm cool. I'm in. [00:06:00] 

Nate McBride: So, have you ever eaten a really hot meal and it's so hot, you have to like, kinda spit it back into the bowl? 

Um, sure, 

Nate McBride: yes. I'm not, I'm not setting you up, by the way, for some sort of gross joke. I, 

I'm trying, I'm trying to, uh, navigate this in my mind, mind and see what you might be, where you might be going with this.

Nate McBride: This isn't a podcast Phish Mike. Um, 

okay. All right. All right. 

Nate McBride: So, I, I raised home from work and I put a burrito bowl, rice thingy in the microwave. And I, I didn't, my glasses inside, so it was either three minutes or five minutes, but I, I assumed it was five 'cause it looked, I have five and I put it in the microwave.

Then upon further inspection, I got my phone out and I sort of zoomed in on the box and it was three minutes. So my burrito bowl got an extra two minutes of cooking anyway. 

Wow. You're nuked it. 

Nate McBride: I know, I I [00:07:00] got you so far. I'm, uh, the story's hooked. I'm reeling you in. 

Okay. 

Nate McBride: So, so I'm eating this thing, but I have to keep spitting out what I put in my mouth 'cause it's so hot.

So then I'm like, 

I'm the edge. I'm on the edge of my seat here. Keep going. 

Nate McBride: Well, what if I, what if I stir back in the thing I just ate but didn't swallow into the mix? It will cool down the whole mix. So then I started putting the whole spoonfuls in my mouth, knowing I would spit them back out. And after about three minutes of this, I cooled down the entire bowl using my mouth to make it a burrito bowl I could eat.

That was my story. 

Wow. Amazing. That's incredible, man. 

Nate McBride: I know. And well, anyway, I was eating, I was putting the bowl away, and I heard a knock on my door and Peter North showed up. 

Really? 

Nate McBride: Yep. [00:08:00] 

I was telling the story about your Peter North avatar on a OL instant messenger and how nobody in the office knew who it was.

They thought it was you when you were younger and you used to play along with it. 

Nate McBride: Yep. All sides. 

Yep. You'd be like, oh, that was me when I was, you know, my, my early twenties. Even though I think you were in your late twenties at the time. 

Nate McBride: Hey. Oh, I'm still in my thirties right now, yet. 

Oh, okay. 

Nate McBride: Don't, don't advance the, uh, 

yeah, I, I, I I didn't mean to, uh, create any sort of, uh, 

Nate McBride: well, 

timeline, any sort of timeline there.

Nate McBride: You did, but it's okay. I hold it. I hold the editing cues so I can just edit all this shit out. I can actually use, uh, Sora too and fucking deep. [00:09:00] Fake your ass to say how much you say how much you love me. 

Do it. Do it. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. I will, I will do it. I'm gonna do that. 

Do it. Do it. 

Nate McBride: So if you're, listen, the podcast from this moment forward, everything that you hear that Mike says is actually me re re recreating Mike and Soro too.

It's not actually Mike himself. 

You have to ask if any of this is real. It's interesting, right? 

Nate McBride: I I just made him say that. 

That's right. See.

I think this is the beginning of the simulation and everyone's asking, Hey, is, is that uh, picture real? Is that document real? Is that photo reel, is that video real? And then, you know, you move 30 years in the future and it's like, is anything real? And we'll figure out, hey, it's not real. It's all been created some other way.

And I'm gonna pinch myself to see if I'm dreaming or not. And [00:10:00] I'm not, lemme see. Lemme manufactured. Lemme pinch 

Nate McBride: yourself. Lemme see if you're dreaming. 

I'm trying to pinch myself. I got, I, it kind of hurts a little. 

Nate McBride: No, you have to pinch something that, that's sensitive. Now your arm. 

I'm not gonna, what, what would I pinch that's sensitive?

Nate McBride: Your chin, 

my chin, 

Nate McBride: chin. 

Yeah. There's this thing that's hanging down under my chin here. Yeah, I was thinking like, should I, I That's, that's your, that's 

Nate McBride: your, your cos comb. 

I keep trying to grow a beard to hide it, and then it just, it's a mess. Turns into a complete mess. When was the 

Nate McBride: last time, when was the last time you had a beard?

I've never had a beard. I've tried to grow one a probably a hundred times. It just this big, well, you chy mess. 

Nate McBride: Try to grow. Trying to grow a beard does not require trying you, you do nothing to your face. 

It just grows by itself. It doesn't grow in itself. No, it doesn't. Certain parts don't grow in and it gets all, and I [00:11:00] try to groom it and everything.

It's like these blo It's a blotchy mess. I'm gonna, why don't you make, I'm gonna, I'm gonna start today. I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna start today and we're gonna see what happens. Should we start the timer? February 4th? February, because I just shaved it all off today. So we can start from here forward. So we can do an official timer to see how long it's gonna take.

Which I'm sure is really captivating for the audience. I'm excited. So 

Nate McBride: lemme, lemme take a moment to, uh, lemme announce our sponsor manscape.com. Um, so, so Mike, I 

think Yes, that's right. 

Nate McBride: Can you stimulate your follicles, Mike? 

Okay. Yep. Yep. Yeah. 

Nate McBride: manscape.com now has the follicle stimulator 3.0 Platinum gold, which, um, when applied stimulates the follicles.

Okay. 

Nate McBride: So M's. Gonna try that now and thank you to Manscaped for, um, Mike's follicle Simulator stimulator. 

Excellent. That sounds 

Nate McBride: great. It could be, it could be, it could be a simulator. You know, you could make a [00:12:00] follicle simulator that on Zoom like you started on a Monday. Yeah. Then every other, every day priest on your face in the Zoom.

Not in real life, but in Zoom. So after like 30 days in Zoom, you have a beard.

You are laughing. 

No, I'm laughing. I'm not 

Nate McBride: laughing. People, people, people. For, for centuries people have laughed at geniuses. You know what they've done, they've changed the world. 

That's true. They have 

Nate McBride: changed the world. Laugh at, laugh at me. Now. A year from now there'll be a a 16 Z funded company that's come out with the beard.

Be amatic. 

Yep. 

Nate McBride: Beo Graham. That will allow you to turn the beard setting in zoom that tracks your beard growth and then enhances it. Or in your case, your lack of beard growth. 

That's right. I mean, I need, I need help. I need some sort of, uh, you know, fertilizer or something. [00:13:00] 

Nate McBride: Have you checked your glands?

How do I do that? 

Nate McBride: Well, I'm no doctor. Yeah, but there are many glands that you could check. Yeah. 

Okay. 

Nate McBride: And they should, they should be checked routinely. 

Okay. Which, which ones. 

Nate McBride: Your face glands? 

My face gla You mean like, you mean am I clogged up? Is my face clogged in or something? And the hairs won't push through?

Nate McBride: Yes. 

That's what you mean.

Okay. Um, I'm gonna, I'll, I'll do some research on that, about checking my glance.

I, I'll ask right now, how do I check my gland on my, oh, wait, because who, 

Nate McBride: who are you asking? [00:14:00] 

I'm not, I'm, I'm asking, uh, I'm asking Grock because I'm not growing. 

Nate McBride: Don't ask Grock. 

Well, there's no harm in that, that gets out. No, no one cares. That's the one I just, I had open here. Let's see, 

Nate McBride: what's, 

what's the word for, 

Nate McBride: is it lap 

failing?

Nate McBride: What's the word for, for hair 

Check glands by failing neck and jaw for lumps. Yeah. Well, I do that. Um, 

Nate McBride: I wanna say it's dilapidation. It's appellation. So you looking for feedback on alation

depletion or de population is removing the hair you want appellation, which is Oh no, don't, don't want that. Actually. Appellation iss even worse. You want, um, bringing, bringing, what's the word for hair regrowth. You want follicle, follicular [00:15:00] rejuvenation. Mike, 

I need follicular 

Nate McBride: follicular rejuvenation. And it says right here, you do this.

By wearing an avocado, avocado mask. 

Hmm. 

Nate McBride: Uh, seven days a week. 

Let's do it. I don't like avocados that much though, so that makes me a little 

Nate McBride: nervous. Well, it's about the end game, Mike, not the, uh, short term benefits. 

I'm chasing the next level beard upgrade. 

Nate McBride: Mm-hmm. Imagine if you came out with a beard that was so epic and people are like, Mike, Mike.

Oh my God. Where did you do that? And you're like, avocado re regrowth rejuvenation in the antigen phase of hair growth. 

Yeah. 

Nate McBride: I've, I've been using photo biomodulation therapy, also known as [00:16:00] LLLT, with a laser light to also produce follicular rejuvenation. Well, I, I like to call it fr 

fr 

Nate McBride: fr. 

So this, this will help me.

I'll, this follicular rejuvenation will help me get the, the beard that I need. 

Nate McBride: Only if you are fr 

A-F-F-R-A-F. 

Nate McBride: Yeah, 

that pretty Know that sounds pretty good. You 

Nate McBride: know what that means? 

It means molecular or ation as fruit.

Wow. Was that a delayed, was that delayed reaction? 

Nate McBride: No. I'm like, I had to process that. That was actually a word I wasn't expecting at all for what the acronym means. I was expecting something [00:17:00] different and I 

like 

Nate McBride: my brain. My brain, my brain heard fruit, and it said. Hey, process that that's 

not compute 

Nate McBride: process, that does not, does not compute.

Thats not, that's not a known variable. 

No. 

Nate McBride: So you got me on that one. Um, hey, welcome to the 

we. 

Nate McBride: Oh, go ahead. I 

was gonna say we need a, we need a PowerPoint for this, for 

Nate McBride: this. Um, it's, I'm, I'm, I'm sharing, I'm sharing it right now. You can't see it? 

I can't. You got it up. It's 

Nate McBride: 90, 91 slides. It's mostly just words.

I'm gonna read it word, word by word as we go. 

Okay. If you 

Nate McBride: don't mind. 'cause decorating is I think why we have PowerPoint. Okay. You should read every word on the slide, right? That's how it goes. 

Yeah. It sounds like a good, good energized presentation. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Sounds good. Let's do 

Nate McBride: it. Well, if I send you the presentation 

Oh.

Nate McBride: And then I read it to you. 

Yep. 

Nate McBride: [00:18:00] In front of everybody word for word, using my own emotive personality. Then you're gonna be like, what? 

My mind 

Nate McBride: will be blown, blown. Like I thought when he used the comment and the period there, like that was him separating the sentence in two parts. But not hearing him say it out loud to me three feet away.

I am like, what, 

Trance Bot: what? 

Nate McBride: What? By the way, I'd be remiss if I didn't, uh, advise our audience to listen to Arm Armand Van Buren, face to face against Lily Palmer. Live at a state of trance, Mexico 2025. You can Google it on YouTube. Don't actually Google on YouTube. You can YouTube it. Look for Arm and Van Buren.

Face to face Lily Palmer. Live at a state of Trans Mexico 2025. You can also, while you're doing that. [00:19:00] Look up on the YouTube machine, uh, to Bruce Springsteen and Tom Morello, uh, January 30th, 26th, having this amazing protest concert at First Avenue Min Minneapolis. So also worth watching. Um, and that was slides one and two of my deck that I just sent to you.

You can flip over to the next slide now you want. 

Nate McBride: So go to the next slide. 

Yep, next slide. 

Nate McBride: Okay, go ahead. Go ahead. Next slide, please. 

Okay, you go. 

Nate McBride: Thank you. Go back one, please. 

Uh, the animations are broken. Dude, they're not working. They're not working. 

Nate McBride: Just 

press the back arrow. 

Nate McBride: No. Three times, 

three times, words in the bubble with no words in it, man.

Nate McBride: It's the back arrow. 

Just quit out and open it again. Just quit out of it and open it again. The presenter notes on the screen. [00:20:00] 

Nate McBride: No, 

I can see your notes. I can see your notes. 

Nate McBride: I, I, I can see your desktop. Dude. Hide that 

shit. You gotta gotta switch. You gotta switch it. 

Nate McBride: Go to the other screen. Mike, the other one.

No, when, when you share, when you share your screen in the top left corner, that's your desktop. Go below that to the PowerPoint one. 

Oh, you want me to share the whole desktop? No, 

Nate McBride: no, no. That's, you're sharing Slack. No, no. Stop sharing. Stop sharing. No, stop sharing is is a stop sharing button. Uh, look at the bottom of your zoom.

Your, um, look at the bottom of your world. What are you looking at right now? Describe your screen. Okay, great. Click on the thing that says Stop sharing that thing. 

Okay. Done. 

Nate McBride: Now share. Click on the share button. 

Okay. 

Nate McBride: Show me what, tell me what you see. 

I just see, uh, the window I'm sharing with you, which is [00:21:00] a PowerPoint window, but I didn't share the No.

Nate McBride: What other windows do you see? Do you see like your desktop and, and other things you have opened? 

I see the character mapper.

Nate McBride: Okay. Don't, don't click that one. Um, click the one that looks like what you wanna show. 

Okay. I'm open up my opera window here. 

Nate McBride: Okay. That looks good. Now click on the present button. In the bottom right corner. It's like a little, um, took a little box on a, on on a stick. 

All right. 

Nate McBride: Yep. Okay. Now that's 12. 

No, no, no.

You want the box and the stick? Yep. The little presentation. Alright. It's back. It's back. Okay. 

Nate McBride: All right. Great. Great. Now go, go back a slide. 

Okay, we're back. Well, it started at the beginning. So which side were we on? When you push it, it starts at the beginning. [00:22:00] So you want me to go to which side? You wanna go to the third slide, right?

Alright, we're on, we'll move the third, third slide. Here we go. That's better, right? Okay. Good, good, good. There it is. Um, 

Nate McBride: so PowerPoint, oh, by the way, great slide. And before we get into, into your slide about PowerPoint using PowerPoint. Yep. I wanna mention this is the calculus of IT podcast. This is episode.

Oh man. I don't know what it, what's se 8 7 

Nate McBride: 9 9 

9 9. 

Nate McBride: Episode nine. Um, 

oh. 

Nate McBride: And we are going to get into Mike's. Um. I wouldn't call it adoration, I would call it more like, uh, what do they call the people that love B-T-S-B-T-S Army. Mike is a PowerPoint Army [00:23:00] person. Am I, am I misclassifying you? Like, tell me if I'm wrong.

You think it's the greatest app on earth, right? 

I, you, me personally, do I like PowerPoint? Think it's the greatest app on Earth? Is that what you're asking? Yeah. 

Nate McBride: You, you do all of your work in PowerPoint, right? 

Yes, yes. I actually draw pictures in PowerPoint. Now.

I don't, well, you gotta think of, you know what PowerPoint's good for? Nothing. Replacing, replacing Visio. 

Mike Crispin: What? 

Yeah. Why do you need Visio when you have PowerPoint? That's just a Canvas application. That's all it is. I can get a ton of shapes. Make the canvas as big as I want, you know? Hold on. Oh, oh. Did you go out in the [00:24:00] yard?

No. Oh, boy. We're in trouble now.

He's, he's disappeared, ladies and gentlemen. I don't know where he went. He is hiding up. 

Nate McBride: Okay, hold on. 

He is, uh, I think he's looking for perhaps something to drink or a blanket maybe, maybe a blanket or he's getting out his projector. No, 

Nate McBride: no, no. I had to get, uh, I had a piece of cork in my wine bottle. I had to, 

I thought you were gonna say something else, but you must be freezing.

Nate McBride: I am freezing. I didn't turn the heat on until, 

what is the temperature out there? 

Nate McBride: 51. 

Okay. That's not that. I mean, it's bad, but it's not like 25. 

Nate McBride: It is twice 25 plus plus one. 

Okay, got it. 

Nate McBride: All right. So you love PowerPoint, [00:25:00] you hate anything that's not PowerPoint. We, we've established that I like PowerPoint for nothing.

So I was gonna say like maybe something, but really I hate it. I hate it for so many reasons. We don't have enough time on this podcast. And it's actually a pretty long podcast. And even still, we don't have time. But that's not why we're talking tonight. We're talking because A,

we have a podcast to talk about things. 

Yep. 

Nate McBride: So we have to talk and B, 'cause I'm wondering about how and why PowerPoint is the only way we can talk to people. And so 

yeah. 

Nate McBride: I was gonna write a book in 2026 about PowerPoint Incorporated, eg. This episode I, and I'm not going to, 'cause I have better shit to do this year than write another fucking book.

But, um, [00:26:00] when I was thinking about this, I was like, well, who uses PowerPoint to do everything? The military lives in PowerPoint. So your four primary armed forces re uh, regiments, divisions, classifications, army, Navy, air Force, Marines, all live on PowerPoint every single day. Starts with it. And it, uh, your very, very large corporations in the United States.

The government lives on PowerPoint. Everything's gotta be in a PowerPoint. And how did this happen? So like, how the fuck did we get to a point in time where we can only speak through a seven inch by? Maybe five or sitting in his box of text over and over, over again. Yep. So that's, so that's why I, I wouldn't even say PowerPoint one because if it wasn't PowerPoint, what would we be doing?

Would we be doing PowerPoint anyway? If, if there wasn't a [00:27:00] PowerPoint? Like how would we evolve? Would, well, because of, because of PowerPoint and slides. Do we, do we create the boardroom or we hit the boardroom and we created slides and PowerPoints? I mean, 

I think that it's PowerPoint in some ways has one because it's, it's like the ultimate, the ultimate crutch, right?

I mean, it's safe. And when you're standing in front of a bunch of people and you're not comfortable, it becomes like your defense mechanism. I'm just saying, just hypothetically, people just probably how some people feel is. The way I feel. But, um, just that you can use it to lean against you always have your notes, even though they're not supposed to be your notes, they're not supposed to be your, Hey, I forgot to say that.

So I'm gonna use the slides to bring me back to where I was. 

Nate McBride: Okay. 

I, I think it's, I think it's, Hey, I [00:28:00] don't have to remember everything that I'm presenting and it's there, and you just go to the next slide to bring you to the next topic. Right? So it's, I I just think it's stuck in the respect that it's super safe, but it really isn't because you can have a horrible presentation.

Right. That doesn't entice or engage anybody at all. And that happens a lot, but I think it's always just an artifact that you can send around digitally and then you can put it up in front of people and it's, yeah. Yeah. It's, it's the same old thing over and over again. Right. Why hasn't it changed? I think it's.

It's an 

Nate McBride: element of skill. Don't, don't, we're not, we're not ending the podcast right here. We, there's other things, other things to talk about. Like namely to your, to your point earlier, if I can send something around like, Hey, Mike and Mike's team, here are my thoughts. I can do it in a like, simple, [00:29:00] prosaic way, you know, like they used to do for centuries.

Why do you need also a deck to see what it is I'm saying? Um, 

it shouldn't, it should be used to, if it's being used, well, it should be used to illustrate something or to, 

Nate McBride: do you think we, we, 

we call attention to something? 

Nate McBride: Do you think we lost, uh, a point somewhere and like the idea of a quick bullet point memo.

Like, Hey, we're about to get siege. We're about to run out of food. Here's a quick memo, quick run over to other fort and tell them about it. Um, that evolved into, Hey, before you send that memo, let's sit down and have a giant battle planned. 

Yep. 

Nate McBride: I mean, you've seen all, you've seen the, the, the, the, the tropes in the movies, you know, they all are, they're all in a tent.

There's a big giant map on the table. They have like little fake [00:30:00] ceramic horses and men and moving around with the, the stick they, they using, they play craps. And um, that I think was the precursor to PowerPoint. And even before that, it was the guy in the, in the cave who's like buffalo over there. So he drew buffalo and drew a square around it and an arrow, and he had this like little page number in the bottom right and his little company header in the bottom left, and he pointed an arrow and that everyone's like, okay, Buffalo over there.

Maybe that was the genesis of PowerPoint, but somewhere on the line, I think it came through the, well, this map isn't good enough. What does this map mean? Tell us more about this map you've drawn and why it exists. Kind of shit.

Well, 

Nate McBride: did I just show a huge curve ball curveball? 

No. No, I don't think so. [00:31:00] I, I, I think the art artifact component of slides also is post. So how many times have you heard when someone's presenting with slides? Uh, are you gonna send these slides after the meeting? Are you gonna circulate these slides?

Which basically means like, uh, again, not everybody, but I'm sure people are thinking, some people that are not interested in the topic. Is there a way I can 

Nate McBride: get a, 

I can 

Nate McBride: get these slides after the meeting from 

you. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's what I just said. Yeah. 

Nate McBride: I'm, I'm not, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna listen to you talk.

That's what I was just gonna say. Yeah, but you, you jumped in I the same exact thing. 

Nate McBride: I didn't, I didn't jump in. I was power pointing you. 

Oh, I see. Okay. I think I was gonna say is like, just, you can skip look, just send me the slides. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

So I can't tell you how many times in like a sales pitch, you know, from some vendor, it's like, can you just send me the slides?[00:32:00] 

Yeah. Right. It's like, well, it's like, so, so when they walk, so that's another, I guess what I'm trying to say is the, another crutch. So if the person isn't interested in the slides, you can still send them the slides with the 1% chance that they might read them. Even though you spent all this time presenting and wanting to present, I think that's why they've stuck, is because it's like this artifact that is a, it's a summary, like you said.

It's like the bullet, the bullet, the, the memo notes. It's a summary. It's like, what do I really need to take from this? And that's a presentation artifact and not a tool to tell a story. And that's the difference. I think there's some slides that are meant to be referenced, whoa. Hold on. Slides, if you will.

And some that are meant to, you know, kind of tell a story, like a 70 page deck with, you know, with, yeah. Three words on each slide. And they're blasting through it. And it's, it's, the pace of the presentation is driven by how well the slides are used [00:33:00] to subliminally put messages in. 

Nate McBride: Okay, so here's my favorite, here's one of my favorite parts about PowerPoint decks is the, is the appendix.

Okay, the backup slides. 

Nate McBride: So I made, Hey everybody, thanks for coming today. Um, I have a presentation. It's only 45 slides. Oh, I 

know you're gone. 

Nate McBride: We'll do it together. Um, I wanna let you know that at the end of the deck, there's another 70 slides in the appendix for post reading. Um, I'm not gonna cover those today because they're, they're, they're less important.

They're so less important. I put 'em in an appendix and knowing you'll never read them. So lemme go. Let me read every slide in my 45 slides and then you can determine whether or not you think the rest of my fucking deck is worthwhile. And this is the be like, even, even better than those are the [00:34:00] decks where it's like, Hey everyone, thanks for coming today.

I can't wait to tell you about my, my project. I only have three slides. It's cool. And then like. Slide ones. I do. Okay, cool. And by the way, there's an appendix, uh, which has about another 90 slides for you that I didn't show today. 

So you that's, I thought you were gonna go, it was like, I got two slides with like three words on them, but it's like, just, that's all in the backup slides, so you can reference that after the meeting.

Yeah. 

Nate McBride: You back.

If ever there was a, a legitimate use case for gen ai and there are, there are a few, if there was ever, there's ever one. It is the, read the whole fucking deck for me. Tell me what this idiot is trying to say. 

It's like, so, you know what, any, any, any, any personal, uh, meeting, you know, a situation, you're on a date or you're out with friends and it's like you, you, you walk in the door and you sit down, you have one beer.

You talk for [00:35:00] 10 minutes and then you drop a deck, uh, of slides on the table. These are the backup slides. I, I'll talk to you tomorrow if you wanna know more about me. Here's my, here are the backup slides. 

Nate McBride: Yeah, 

we're doing, 

Nate McBride: I don't have time for you. Here's my backup slides for the day. Just read these. No walks in the house.

Like, Hey honey, what's going on for dinner? Oh, cool. How was your day? Great. Um, what did I do today? Well, here's my deck. I, I don't get time to tell you. 

I say I think that's a new podcast. A new, we should have a new podcast called If Life Was a PowerPoint. And do we do, will this, do this enact a, uh, every situation, but we just put PowerPoint, insert PowerPoint into that, into that daily, like a short, we'll create jorts.

Nate McBride: That's actually not a bad idea. 

Yeah. Life is a PowerPoint. The most absurd power corporate metaphor. 

Nate McBride: I had to get gas [00:36:00] saved from my car. It's a PowerPoint, right? It's like a Seinfeld episode. So the title of the deck is Automotive, interesting Automotive Perpetuation of Momentum Problems. Uh, the Executive Remit Slide slide two is, um, introduction

problem, uh, executive 

summary 

Nate McBride: Summary and backup slides. 

Yep. 

Nate McBride: So just so you know, I went to get gas today and as you can see here on slide three, here are the four station I went to and their various prices. Here's the price breakdown of the gas on Route one 17 eastbound of Sudbury. Next slide. As you'll know, as you will [00:37:00] note, I've color coded the gas prices from lowest to highest.

Mm-hmm. 

Nate McBride: So red indicates expensive, as you can see in the key in the bottom left corner, whereas green indicates preferred. 

Mike Crispin: That's, oh, that's one of my favorite things too. 

Where's the, where's the legend on this slide? Uh, does, does, does the, does the blue color mean something different than the green one?

It's like, no, it doesn't mean we just chose those colors. It doesn't mean anything. It's just, it's just, it's, yes. It's no significance at all to it. It's just we like the color blue, so we used blue. Oh, that's just so, there's no legend. No, there's no legend. There's no key, as you'd say. 

Nate McBride: Thanks, Mike. Hey, listen, can I, can I ask a question?

Can we, for all future presentations not use blue [00:38:00] because Okay. I do not, I don't understand blue and, okay. Mike's use of blue is problematic. 

It is problematic. I, I agree. I, I really, I'm sorry. I, I mentioned that 

Nate McBride: I only hope we can move forward from this point in time and we haven't had too much difficulty.

But honestly, Mike, if you could stick with the orange palette. 

Yeah, 

Nate McBride: that'd be great. 

When, when are you gonna get to the agenda slide? 

Nate McBride: I sent that around in the calendar invite as an attachment. 

My, my fa my favorite, my favorite thing about, you know, speaking of, um, bullet points, right? My favorite thing about the agenda slide is that can just be your presentation.

I mean, if you wanna, if you want to be good at presentations. Here, here's the thing, honestly, if you want the, if you want a presentation to be more than a discussion, change the title from Agenda to [00:39:00] Topics, and then go in and just start going on the list and someone will stop you and ask you questions about one of those topics and take up the whole meeting.

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

So just go, just put a bunch of topics up. You should know your stuff and Yep. If, if, and say, does anyone have any questions on this topic? But why are we here to discuss this? Okay, let's go into that. What's the value of this topic? Let's, we're gonna, I'm getting to that. We'll, well, as you can see 

Nate McBride: on the screen, uh, I have seven topics for today.

I versus digital. Uh, 

so, and the greatest speeches in the world ever, like, did they come up and get up in front of everyone, you know, world changing speeches and say, today this is our agenda. This is what we're gonna talk about. I have a dream. I I have a dream. Oh, treatment. Oh, I'm sorry. I have a, I have a dream, but this, this is the agenda, but no, the whole presentation is the agenda.[00:40:00] 

The whole presentation is the agenda. So you walk in with topics and just talk about them. You, the storytelling component is, you know, what you've talked about in your book. Like that's, that's the important thing. You can still use a slide, just change the agenda to the topics. If you've got an engaged group that knows why they're there, they're gonna ask you about those things.

And you can pull up your backup slides if you want. 

Nate McBride: Sorry. 

So 1, 1, 1 slide with your topics and 90 agenda, 90 backup slides. There you go. See? Done. 

Nate McBride: You. Well, you can play it back like, um, Hey, Martin Luther King Jr. Why are we here today? I know we're all here like we came today, but can you give us a kinda a rundown?

Of why we're here. Or Julius Caesar. Hey, Julius. Great job on that campaign. Lots of battles. Cool stuff, but why the, why are we all here? What's [00:41:00] the agenda? Agenda for today? 

Julius? I'm really sorry to interrupt, but I have a hard stop in 15 minutes. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. I didn't get, uh, pre-read for this one, so can you kind of like just skip No, skip over all those things go right to like the point of your presentation.

Well, you have backup slides. Well, can you send them over to my little helper over there? Yeah. It wouldn't have worked. Right. But we have changed society to the point where, well, did you see my presentation, Mike? I mean, it was right there. 

It's right in front of you. 

Nate McBride: Slide slide 17 in the bottom right corner of the table in the second box with the, with the line.

I said, no, Mike, 

he said, no.[00:42:00] 

Nate McBride: Mike, did you not, did you not see where said no. 

Uh, I missed that. I didn't read those slides. I'm sorry. 

Nate McBride: Well, I'm, so, I, I realized slide 17 had a dissolve left corner, right corner effect. And so you might have missed that dissolve effect as it went on. 'cause I wanted to slide 18 faster. But it was there and it was in the pre-read.

PDF 

and pre-reads can be something too, 

Nate McBride: which by the way, I realized not everyone had view access in the SharePoint link. So I sent it also as an attachment. 

Yeah, I don't, that's, that's 

Nate McBride: to the invite. 

I like that. Well, I didn't see an attachment in my email, so I didn't read it. Yeah, so if you send a box link or a OneDrive, well not OneDrive 'cause it'll make in a fake attachment, but like if you, you send a, any link to [00:43:00] something.

Oh, I missed that. I didn't see the attachment in, in my email 

Nate McBride: filter 

filters tab all the time. Yeah, I dunno. 

Nate McBride: Attachments personally, 

I thought it was a phishing link. I thought it was a phishing link so I didn't open it. So could you go, could you, could you go through this presentation again for me offline?

Nate McBride: Well, let me, let me start back to slide one. I'll read it word by word. Uh, which reminds me of presenter types. There are. The screen readers. 

Yep. 

Nate McBride: Word, word for word. There are the play actors word for word, but with emotion, there are the ad libbers, whichever on the screen. They're saying kind of like close to it, but they actually didn't read the deck.

So they're kind of making up as they go with the [00:44:00] occasional glance at the screen. Like, oh shit. Sure. Uh, you, it's not negative, it's positive. Sorry. Then there's people that have four words in the slide, like me. So I do the Steve Jobs method, three bullets, four words, like, okay, today we're gonna talk about X, Y, Z, and here's all the things.

And people are like, that's not on the slide. Um, are you gonna show this? It's 

somewhere Stone says that. I think you've heard that. I, I think I have heard of that too now. I think I've, yeah. Is this in the slide somewhere? 

Nate McBride: Is this a, is this There's a slide. I didn't see a slide on this point. Well, no, I'm gonna talk to you about it as a human being.

Oh, uh, will you have like notes afterwards, minutes? I don't look, you talk. Exactly. 

Because if I ch if I tune out, I don't wanna miss anything. I 

Nate McBride: So questions. Why don't we have interactive demos that are generated automatically? Why don't we have [00:45:00] conversations without artifacts? Why does it have to be so formal?

Um, why don't we prerecord video presentations that have slides? Why don't we have libraries of these things you can watch over and over again and why don't we use more? Why have we gone away from collaboration tools on the Zoom side, and I don't have any data to back this up, I just know that no one I've ever zoomed with in the last five years has used any tool other than some shitty AI bot, like no whiteboarding tools.

Like, oh my God, Nate, that's a great idea. Let's whiteboard this. 

Mm-hmm. 

Nate McBride: Who's using that shit? So, so why are none of these things happening? We're just still putting decks on screens using crappy templates that cost a shit ton of money to make. Why are we doing this? [00:46:00] 

It's safe again, it's easy. I gotta do a presentation next week.

And, and that's what people expect. So it's, no one is saying, I have a, a way to raising their hand and saying, I have a better way. And I think, uh, that's why it's simple. It's easy. I'll just get power. I'll, I'll send you the PowerPoint and no one will go. What you sending me? What? I can't open that. I don't know what that is.

So it's, I think that it's more still need some sort of guide because that's the expectation. It's moving away from the PowerPoint and gen generally moving more into walking around the room and having the conversation. But cer depends on your audience. Sometimes the audience wants the PowerPoint A so they can, they've, they've pre-read it and they have a few questions, so you don't have to go through the slides, which is great.

That happens a lot. 

Nate McBride: It be a have to be a pre-read. 

Yeah. If you [00:47:00] get a pre-read out, it's actually looked at. It creates a good discussion when you go in and do the presentation. But if it's something you're revealing and it's new and like something you're doing like in front of the whole company, it's um, it's, I think that's where you have the opportunity to do something different, to innovate in the space.

But I think. Perhaps people are nervous about speaking in front of a lot of people and they want to have that expected visual there so they feel comfortable and no one's gonna think anything else of it. That's what I mean. I think it, what I keep thinking about is it seems like still in a lot of, um, a lot of product introductions, for example, like they're still not using PowerPoint, but they're using other props and visuals that still have some words and some bullets on them.

I just don't think it's ever just been anyone's come with a better mouse trap, so to speak. 

Nate McBride: Well, so [00:48:00] my age a little bit, but I remember overhead projectors when I was in middle school. 

Yep. I remember this too. Yep. 

Nate McBride: You know this, this big box with a lamp and a magnifying glass that showed up on a white screen and it was a waves.

It was a way for teachers to show you abstract concepts and that, that part I get, show me the abstract concept, write on it with a red marker and understand. And it wasn't so much, most, wasn't so much a surrogate for chalkboards, it was just the faster way to do a chalkboard. You didn't have to draw the diagram.

You could already have it on a, on a laminate. Sure. And then, um, from that was born, uh, slide carousels. So you had the slides and they're all manufactured. You couldn't draw on 'em anymore, but you could draw on the screen on which they were on, which led to the whiteboard. Great. 

Yep. 

Nate McBride: And then, and those were all like the person knew their shit.

So here's a diagram of [00:49:00] X over Y for follicular rejuvenation, and as it's constant rate of speed, blah, blah, blah. Um, and you got it. They didn't need additional superfluous slides and charts and whatever to make their point. And then something happened, and I think it was literally the invention of the application PowerPoint.

Mm-hmm. As soon as that came out. So Word 95 came out in 94, um, PowerPoint. When did that finally get released? Uh, one moment.

1987 on the Mac. But it was called Presenter. That's right. Presenter, yep. From Forethought. [00:50:00] Um, it didn't come out for Windows in 1990. Also under the, well, under the PowerPoint 2.0. And Microsoft got over 14 million and changed the fucking world with their virus. Um,

wow. Let's see. Originally they chose to keep the name presenter for the final software. However, to everyone's surprised when they tried to register the trademark, that lawyers replied that the name was already used by another software product. The team had to find a new name, quickly thought about slide maker, an overhead maker, according to Gaskins, one night he came up with a PowerPoint randomly under the shower.

Initially, nobody liked it, but when his colleague, Glenn Hoen, independently had the same idea, he saw a sign on airport reading [00:51:00] PowerPoint and took it as an omen, stuck with a name. The reason why the name and now is a single word with an uppercase P is that back when, and then it was required, the naming of all Macintosh software applications, the Con Leaf, that PowerPoint got its name because it empowers people, is therefore wrong.

19 97, 19 87, the first 10,000 copies of the first version of PowerPoint from Mac shipped April nine 18, April, 1987, from Manufacturing by Forethought Inc. The release was received well by the media commenting as people will buy a Mac just to get access to this product.

Um, 

Trance Bot: yeah, 

Nate McBride: PowerPoint three came out in September of 1990 supporting true type fonts. Then it would be another four years before a PowerPoint four came out. This one, I know. This one I deployed [00:52:00] actually at Con. Then July 95, PowerPoint 95 came out. So all, so Microsoft decided to skip calling it version five and went right to PowerPoint 95 other than Word five, which was out at the time.

Then you would have another eight years before Office two thousands version of PowerPoint in 2003 came out. The four years was seven and onto the shit pile we have now. Okay. This is a nice little walk down memory lane.

I think also too, there's a big military point to this. I mentioned this kind of briefly earlier, but if you watch any military movie Yeah. You know they do very, very intensive planning. Both, both pre-operation and post-op. They also use [00:53:00] PowerPoints for briefings. They're clear, hierarchal, action oriented briefings.

Um,

I mean it's pretty, it's pretty much matched with how the military does very, sort of briefings. Sit, sit, red reports, mission planning. Here's a slide. Best way to show it. I get that part. 

Yeah. 

Nate McBride: But from the boardroom perspective or corporation perspective,

I, I think from the boardroom, it's, there's so much, there's so many other things that, uh, they're concerned about and worried about that changing. The artifact in which things are presented is probably not on the high, high list for them. I think I'd be nervous to do something outside of the PowerPoint. [00:54:00] A lot of times it's because your legal team or someone else says, look, this is what we use.

Put your slides here and that's it. Like you, yeah, you gotta, you gotta follow the, sort of, follow the process. But I think where it's, you're seeing more innovation is when you're promoting a product or you're unveiling something or you're, you're doing something like for the whole company, there's more creative ways to do that.

I think that's where you can make more inroads with some, some new ways of presenting stuff. It's, um, it's, it's not, not, not going away anytime soon, I don't think. And that's the thing, like sometimes, not just just slides in general, just the, the visual aspect of slides is, um, common, I guess having some visuals, 

Nate McBride: but the 

visual part 

Nate McBride: though.

Alright, so the visual part. Let me, let me just throw out an idea. The visual part could be done anything, right? It could visualize, yeah. Mm-hmm. [00:55:00] So what PowerPoint does is restricted to a very small space that's reducing the potential footprint of the idea. But let's suppose that you had a PowerPoint that said, here's a bunch of words and then link to your other presentation, your other sort of idea and different platform, and it popped up and it showed everybody.

Then you went back to PowerPoint. That to me is a better use instead of trying to cram your, your whole idea into a single slide. I wish So, uh, 

sorry, go ahead. 

Nate McBride: No, I wish more people just did like, Hey, let me show you this great fricking amazing lucid chart I developed. 

Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Uh, over here, and I'll link to it from the slide so you can see it.

But yeah, then I'll go back to the slide. 

Absolutely. I mean, I, I think that is being used. Uh, and I think that would be a good way, I mean, as a visual is a, is a visual and, uh, you're gonna put it up on a screen [00:56:00] in a room and, uh, like I Evernote tried to do that type of thing for a while, and Obsidian does something similar.

And obviously Lucidchart has slides now. Right. And you can drill into presentation and zoom in, zoom out. I, you used to use Prezi. I remember. That was awesome. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Luc Charts had slides for, for over a decade. And Prezi's still amazing. People wanna show people Prezi things. They're blown away. 

But it's still a presentation.

Like it's still a slide deck. It zooms in, it zooms out, but it's still, 

Nate McBride: yeah, 

people don't know the difference. 

Nate McBride: I mean, if you're a deck reader, then Prezi, yeah. Loose chart PowerPoint, none of them matter. But if you're somebody who's talking abstractly, like, here's three bullets, lemme talk about them. And in words you can't see.

It changes the timber and the tone of the audience. 

Yes. 

Nate McBride: Uh, like, hey, here's this slide. It's got two bullets. You're all fucked with Gen ai [00:57:00] and stop using gen ai. Now people can read that and they're like, oh, bye. And then I spend 10 minutes telling 'em about why those two bullets matter. Yes. It's different than me writing all the things I would say and try to clear 'em into a slide.

Yes. And that's, uh, turn the agenda, slide to the topic slide, and then use your, use whatever presentation, methodology or tooling or discussion approach. So, 

Nate McBride: so why 

do you think 

Nate McBride: no, no alternatives ever have ever sort of taken off? Like, why is it that, I mean, a, let, let me, let me, let me give you context a way.

Take a don't gimme. The Microsoft office is everywhere. Angle. Why else has alternative present mode taken off? 

Because it's safe. Like I said before, it's, it's, it's comfortable. It's why cha, I don't, I don't think anyone has given a reason why it should [00:58:00] change, and that's why we're talking, right? I think, I don't think anyone has given a, a really value driven reason why it, why we shouldn't just use a, a, a keynote or a PowerPoint or a, a slide deck of some sort.

Um, other than like, someone has to do it and be creative to create a new medium that someone has to figure that out. But I think what you said about you using, um, lucid Chart is a, is a great example, is if it's, if it's used to better engage and entice people to be interested in what you're talking about, then it's a winner.

But if it's kinda like a, well that looks really great and I, you know, I'd like to know how to do that, and the tool becomes more important than what you're trying to present. Then I think you're, that, that's sometimes at a loss as well. So it's like if you're doing something really cool, a topic becomes how, hey, how'd you do that?

As opposed to what [00:59:00] message you're trying to get across. And sometimes, I mean, that's up to me where I was printed a great slide deck and keynote once, and someone asked at the end that, well, what, how did you do that? How did you do this? I'm like, that's, I could love to take that offline with you, but I was expecting more questions in my presentation.

Nate McBride: So I'll tell you, I'll tell you something, which is that every, every time I present it, alio 

mm-hmm. 

Nate McBride: I present from Google Slides, I do all my decks and g slides. Not powerful. 

Awesome. 

Nate McBride: I now, I use, I use the company template, but all my presentations and, and this is not a secret. I mean, people know this. 

Yeah.

Nate McBride: Um, but you mentioned keynote. So I use G Slides not so much as a protest point because I prefer to work in G Slides than anything else. 

Yep. 

Nate McBride: Um, but why No? When was the last time you did a presentation in [01:00:00] Keynote to anybody? 

I did an all hands meeting with Keynote, uh, last year. 

Nate McBride: Okay. Yeah. So you do rep, like from a parody perspective, they don't, no 

one knows the difference.

Nobody knows the difference. Right, 

Nate McBride: exactly. Parody wise. Uh, app against the app. Against the app, they're all doing the same thing. It's data. Sure. It's in a constrained box. It's presented on the screen. No one cares. Right. And left arrows navigate. Good to go. 

Yes. Yep. 

Nate McBride: So why aren't more platforms doing this?

We mentioned, I mentioned three. I think 

it's just pre 

Nate McBride: chart. PowerPoint and Google slides. It's four. But 

Well, I think, um, there's others too. The most popular one right now, which I can't even think of right now, God, that's by the one that creates your own, uh, [01:01:00] slides. Canva, Canva, Canva's, ex exploded. I mean, it's, it's, it's everywhere.

They have an enterprise license now. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

And it's a very creative way of putting together slides that are not word heavy, that are designed to be a storytelling set of slides. 

Nate McBride: Right. 

Thousands of templates, you know, very, very modern looking, very, uh, to sort of graphic artist. Like I said, you got a graphic artist to design it for you.

Um, so I think, I think they are the biggest disruptor when it comes to PowerPoint. I mean, they haven't hit, I think our industry yet. Very hard, more used to. Putting signs around the office, you're gonna print or something I think is more common for right now. But it's, um, I think they're the ones that are the disruptors probably when the, like the non sort of non-moving medium space that's like this kind of slide presentation.

And I mean, I think also the tool sets are a matter of [01:02:00] preference. So, you know, PowerPoint comes with office, which is a hundred dollars a year for some people. I mean, people, you can go buy a hundred office for a hundred bucks. Um, not a huge money maker for Microsoft anymore, unless you're buying Office 365.

Um, you know, present, uh, present as open office is totally free. A keynote comes through your Mac. It's just not, I don't think there's a lot of money unless you're actually going to put the AI component and the design. You're buying the actual designs instead of the product. That's where I think they've separated themselves a little bit from everyone else, but.

To come back to the sort of why it's still around is it's, it's just comfortable. I think it's something that people are used to and, um, everyone can access it and use it. Everyone knows how to use it. Same reason we're trapped in Outlook or we're trapped in, uh, you know, any number of other applications.

But I [01:03:00] think it's an opportunity for people to come up with new ways to present and to make it engaging. I think it's getting harder and harder though, because I think post COVID being distributed to workforce or workforces that work remotely and the emergence of, you know, shorts and tiktoks and other things, people's attention spans are limited.

And, um, yeah, it's, it seems like it's, it's something that should change, but it's, um, it's still sort of this, this medium that everyone still uses. For some reason. Other, other, I mean, other than that's safe, there's gotta be other hooks in there. No one needs to know how to use it, I guess. But I used to dread using PowerPoint.

Um, I still do to some extent. It's, it's, um, it's kind of boring. It's not, I don't feel like [01:04:00] you can be too creative. Like I like, like to be creative with some of the stuff and that's why I used Keynote for so long was, you know, just better g geometry and being able to line things up better and things a little more clean cut and having more control over the graphical elements.

So the slide and the size of the slide and you know, being able to embed video without issues. There 

Nate McBride: are people that are people that are very proficient in using PowerPoint. Yep. I find myself very proficient on the Google slide side, but it doesn't translate over to PowerPoint. Um, 

yep. 

Nate McBride: There's a lot of reasons for this, but I also find myself.

Inefficient after 28 years of being an it on the biotech side, I'm inefficient in terms of what I wanna say. 'cause most of what I wanna say exists already in a, like a lucid chart or Airtable or some other platform, which does not translate over to a PowerPoint and PowerPoint. I'm just writing the narrative of the thing I built in the other platform.

So. 

Mm-hmm. [01:05:00] 

Nate McBride: Generally, when I present to a group with the ET or some other function, I'm not even presenting outta a PowerPoint. I'm presenting out of the app. 

Yep. 

Nate McBride: And I'm pre, I'm, I'm providing the play by play as to why I built it, what it does, you know, its impact, it's important, et cetera. Um, but we still do rely on PowerPoint.

I mean, it's 2026. 

Mm-hmm. We 

Nate McBride: do. Why, why hasn't any alternative medium taken off? Because we both just acknowledge that they exist, they work well, they're doing fine. Like there's no problem not using them. But why haven't they taken off the same way? We haven't answered that question. 

Well, I think Google Slides definitely has.

I mean, I, I would say that Google Slides, if you're on Google, that's what everyone's using. So that's definitely taken off. And I think Canva has made inroads, not in our industry, but in, you know, retail for [01:06:00] example, or in, you know, maybe less regulated industries. Uh, that it's everywhere. Uh, it's a big ticket item and it's being used, but it's just presenting stuff just like PowerPoint would.

So there's a tool and there's the medium and the medium is a slide deck, right? That's what we're talking about. Mm-hmm. There are tons of those and PowerPoint rules the world, but what really rules the world is PDF. So if there's a really important slide deck, actually everywhere I've worked in the last 20 years.

It's make it a PDF. Yeah. And then every then anyone can open it and no one's gonna edit it. It's not that you're presenting on it, but, or maybe you are. Some people present from PDFI used to present from PDF when I made what I thought was very, very good presentations in Keynote, and they didn't translate to PowerPoint.

Uh, as you mentioned, sort of certain things don't move over from slides to, uh, to to, uh, to PowerPoint. Uh, more just static [01:07:00] graphical stuff. Obviously if you're automating things, it's not gonna matter. But PDF is just everywhere. Slide decks are made in, especially now our industry, I think, are predominantly end up being PDFs in their final form, whether they're slide decks from the board, or they're decks that are being shared in a, in a regulated scenario or sales pitches, contracts that are, include a slide deck.

Um, it seems like everything's in a, in a PDF. These are all visual, like visual static mediums, and I think that's what PowerPoint and the Excel word environment sort of brings in Google as well. That there's better collaborative capabilities. But I don't think any, I, I think the artifact of a, of a canvas, if you will, whether you can zoom into it or you can move it around and in a slide, is, I mean, similarly, this, it's a, it's kind of the same medium.

It's just how you use it and how you use it to tell [01:08:00] your story better. Uh, some people use video, some people, uh, I think use different, you know, may use different types of software. And, but PowerPoint to your point, I mean, that is the standard. And that's the reason why I think people haven't moved on from it, is it's offered to them by the company they work at.

And they're, they're not thinking about. Is there a better tool for me to do the presentation? I was thinking, shit, I gotta do this presentation, so, you know, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna use the PowerPoint. Um, but until someone comes along and makes that easier, like, uh, you know, going into Claude or whatever and saying, you know, translate this document into a slide deck, just, it's gonna get even more.

There's gonna be more slides than ever. Uh, fortunately, but that's to your point on translating what's in your lucid chart to, uh, our point, I [01:09:00] think that's the, that's sort of where the, the basic AI components come into play. People will probably leverage that. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. A question about where, where AI is fit in all this is, um, I think pretty open-ended today.

I if I, 

I mean, I love that podcasting and video thing in Notebook, lm, I mean, that's huge. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

But if, if it, if you can customize it a little bit more, that would be very, very helpful. In some respects, PowerPoint, we might get away from actually power presenting in person, which I think is an issue if that stuff takes over.

Nate McBride: PowerPoint exists because of, uh, technology is obviously a big part of it, but there's a whole other reason why it exists is because you have meetings. 

Yep. 

Nate McBride: You have zoom rooms in your company. You like these things all require a medium to display data. Yep. So even if [01:10:00] you dump PowerPoint for Google Slides or something else, even if you change your platform, the vendor, whatever, if your company still operates in a PowerPoint, uh, mindset, you have to use PowerPoint to demonstrate anything.

Yeah. And, and if you were to go in and put a do if, if you are an excellent presenter, I could see, uh, you know, you're extremely confident. You're, you're a great presenter. You, you know, you stuff, you know how to engage people and call people in and have a discussion. I think of sometimes some of the, uh, some of the leadership trainings or leadership presentations, you know, you could, maybe your HR department puts up or, uh, did, has someone come in the office and speak with you?

Hardly. Do they ever have any slides with words on them? They're, if they have slides at all, they're pictures or their videos to try and illustrate [01:11:00] something, but they're asking the audience questions. They're engaging with the audience. And in a perfect world, if you could send that lucid chart out and it's, it was something that could be comprehended as a pre-read.

It's not something they'll kind of eyes will g glass over and they can understand it without explanation. You can present really well. You shouldn't really need slides. You want to tell the story, you wanna have a personality. It's, it's hard though. It's a, it's a skill and I think, um, 

Nate McBride: to a degree. Okay.

Yeah. I mean it's, it's almost some of the aspects of a sales pitch in some respects. 

Nate McBride: But, but if you write me an amazing story that's three pages long, and I tell you to put it into a PowerPoint because I Yep. 

It's gonna get lost. Something's gonna be lost. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Just, yeah, absolutely. No, no question about it.

I mean, 

yeah. 

Nate McBride: Um, I don't, I don't even know what to say about the next generation 'cause they don't give a shit about PowerPoint. But, uh, [01:12:00] and if we think about, 

yeah, 

Nate McBride: in episode 19, which is 10 from now, we're going to be talking about slop and yeah, it generated slop. Um, this is important because. What is PowerPoint?

Is every deck that's created on a, some sort of spectrum of slop. Well, because think about it. Yeah. So PowerPoints are generally created. There's nothing on the PowerPoint that no one's ever seen before. It exists somewhere. 

Yeah. It's a summary. 

Nate McBride: Just 

summary. Right. But I think that one exception to that is when there's true analytical data that's shared in those slide decks that's referenced, you know, it's reference data and that's, yeah.

Is that somewhere else? Yes. But is it in the same place? Maybe. Maybe. Yep. That's fair. But [01:13:00] is it in the same place with the story and or the other subjects that are covered where there's context that needs to be added to that data? I sometimes, I think PowerPoints become sort of these artifacts that people.

I didn't realize would be important. And then they, they end up being the place where they translate the data the best because everything is kept in those 40 slides. It ends up being end the end state. 

Nate McBride: So PowerPoint becomes the, um, tower babble for the systems. You can't seem, some somehow integrate, but if you were able to actually do the upstream data integrations the way you were supposed to, you wouldn't need PowerPoint there for that translation 'cause people would be able to see it in a dashboard or some other format.

But I, I mean, I've had the same thoughts, which is if I am using [01:14:00] PowerPoint as a means to distill down other reference points to a single point. Uh, maybe in that case I don't have the technology or the software to go ahead and distill that down for me, so I have to do it in PowerPoint using that as my medium.

Mm-hmm. 

Nate McBride: I'll stipulate there, but if I could theoretically not do that, then I should still, I should stop using PowerPoint. If I can show you, Mike, a dashboard of those same three points coming in from whatever their Genesis area is, they form a new opinion, then I should not be showing you a PowerPoint. I should be showing you the original raw data and inviting you to it and letting you see it.

Um, yep. It's kind of a didactic argument there, but ultimately, I, I'm, I am with you that some sort of presentation mode is required to tell your audience that with regards to a certain topic, you're at a certain point, [01:15:00] whatever. Sure. And you fill in the blanks. Fill in the blanks. Beyond that, there's no, like, if you have a source data somewhere else, there's, there's gotta be a better way.

I, I think it requires a lot of rehearsal for people to, if they're gonna present, they're gonna know unless they're the the expert and that is all they do. Um, I think that's harder and harder to come by in smaller companies. That, that it sure. There's an expert that can, that's worked on this presentation for weeks, right.

To get this where it needs to be so that not only is it a good presentation live, but it's a good presentation for anyone who just is gonna look at the slides, someone who can't attend the meeting or whatnot. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

And then it's like, do you, if you've got five or six documents [01:16:00] loaded. Certain data. Sure.

If it's material, it's company changing, people will read it. But if it's, you know, a 40 page document on a g and a process or, you know, something that's not as material, then yeah. I mean, people may someone, people, hopefully they are, they're reading that. But, uh, priority probably says that they'd rather see slides and get the, the, both the high level points that you think are important and trust you at the rest.

And I think that's ultimately why PowerPoint exists or something like PowerPoint exists. It, it's like, come give us the summary. Give us the three things we need to know. We know there's all this other stuff and there's, it's important and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. But what are the three things that we need to know?

And so we, 'cause we have a meeting in 10 minutes, I was like, it's, I mean, I, I can't tell you how many times that's kind of been the case. I, I've tried to get better and better at [01:17:00] like, this is where, this is my ask, this is what we're doing. This is where there's risk. And then maybe like, when can I come back for follow up?

That seems to be like, it's not that it's a mean conversation or that it's a dismissive conversation in anyway. It's just often making sure that whatever I say is remembered. You know, it's like, is is registering and do you need a slide deck to do that? I, I don't think you do, but you do need some sort of referenceable information or, um, I mean, I would rather not have it.

'cause I think slides act as a distraction too, because what happens is you're speaking and you're on point number one. This is another reason why you shouldn't put much on slides. And people are looking at the slide and they go, Mike, I see over there you're saying it, you, you wrote this. It's like, well, we're talking about this thing.

Point one. Actually. Don't put that in the same fucking [01:18:00] slide. Have 0.1 on one, slide 0.2 on the next slide, 0.3 on the next. So don't crunch it all in so that people are reading the slides and they're not listening to you. Um, that's something I learned early on or try to con not to do that it's hard when you have so much to say, but, you know, having, having the, and that's why I was, I, I really wasn't joking, like on that agenda slide, it's like topic one, one sentence or two sentences, you know, and then like one of those four 40 slides, it's like, yeah, but it's 50 words, you know?

It's like that's, I, I'm trying to, I'm trying and it's hard for me. I'm trying to get more to that now because I'm realizing I work all its time on these artifact driven slides that are largely backup slides or sort of reference appendix slides, like we were joking earlier about, and, and. They act as a distraction a lot of times, but [01:19:00] okay, from the point you're trying to get across for me, sometimes that's happened to me.

Nate McBride: All great points. Um, there's a disconnect between the message and the source data. Like what I'm showing you on the screen Yes. Is my quote, objective assessment of whatever data I have related to the point I'm trying to make. If I've done it right, it's purely objective. Otherwise, there's some sort of mix between objective and subjective.

But the point is like, here's the data from all the sources. I'm gonna show you X equals one. Great. But y again, we're doing a distillation model and of course the group presenting to trust that we know what we're doing. So we have figured out the numbers, but why we're spoonfeeding an answer. Again, I use the generative AI analog.

We're not actually having them do any work. We're, we're taking a group of [01:20:00] data. We've made an assessment. Again, gen ai versus LLM. We've made an assessment. We're feeding it back to the people and saying, here's the answers, what to do next. And we're doing it through the medium of a deck. 

Yeah. 

Nate McBride: It doesn't seem to me to be, I don't know, you know what, truth be told, I'll probably be retired before someone ever resolves this, but it, it, it, it's serious from a perspective of I sit through a lot of belong meetings with a lot of decks.

I see people read the deck word for word. I see decks that are not relevant to the point from a medium. It's a, from a medium perspective, it's a way to say what you're thinking about a thing. Using to what you called earlier, a safe harbor. I'm putting words in your mouth, but basically what you said was 

Yeah, yeah.

Kinda. [01:21:00] It's a, a crutch, almost 

Nate McBride: a crutch to, um, get a point across and, you know, there's all kinds of questions we really can't answer on this podcast, but like, everything from that person's inability to interact with human beings directly one-on-one. They have a low EQ perhaps, um, they've been trained to only speak in PowerPoint terms, whatever the case may be.

They're using it, I don't know, not as a force multiplier, but not to be anti either. They're kind of using it as a defacto delivery mechanism of information that either, you know. You don't know or has been distilled for you.

It's an interesting model. How we got to ourselves, how we got ourselves to this point [01:22:00] in my tenure, 28 years. Mm-hmm. Where we still feel the need to get people in a room to show the, something on a screen that they could read themselves. 

Great point. Yeah. 

Nate McBride: That still leaves me scratching my head. If I give you my, my couple page doc and say, Hey Mike, would you please read, this is how I'm thinking, versus me sharing a deck with you with random shit in it.

For me, speaking personally, I would rather have the word document. Yeah, make a document, send it to me with your thoughts. Lemme review. Let me read it, review it, and send it back to you if at the end yeah. You want to convert it into a deck, great. Whatever. I don't care. The point is that we didn't go through the iteration process and trying to make life fit instead of a deck.

We went through the iteration process. Outside of it, we relatively [01:23:00] unconstrained in terms of figuring out what would our best answer be. Then converting that back to a deck. 

Yeah.

Well I think one of the things that is good about the presentation component is that getting people all into a room is a, sometimes a good thing. And uh, if it was just documents going around, I, I think it would be very, we struggle with it still just getting many points of view based on a, on a document or a review of the document or a discussion, and inevitably people end up in the same room.

Doesn't have to be a presentation, but has to trade ideas and figure out. How they're gonna move forward or how they're gonna approve a document or how they're gonna come to a decision. And, um, I think there's a, there's, I think there's a place for both. I just think there's room for some new, some better ways of doing it.

And, [01:24:00] um, 

Nate McBride: this is kind of a ground approach though, right? Like, if I, if I can get you to stop using PowerPoint, that means I've had to create a surrogate environment. Like maybe for instance, um, instead of a PowerPoint meeting every week, we as a group meeting for 10 minutes and cover high level edits. Yeah, 

yeah.

Like a, like a, um, what do they call those? Um, what are they, startups, what are they, what are they called? What? I can't slip in my mind right now. Pop up popups or, um. Like check-ins. They're like the, there's a, there's a, um, God, I can't remember. There's an agile term for it. I can't remember. Standups, standup meetings.

Meetings. Um, 

Nate McBride: we use 

those 

Nate McBride: by the way. 

Yeah, they're great. 

Nate McBride: They work well. 

It's just a, you know, you kinda have that daily [01:25:00] connection and 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Everyone knows what they're doing and it's, um, I think that's gotten much, much, much more common. But we're not presenting at those, we're having the discussion. We're looking at a few bullet points if we're looking at anything at all.

And, um,

we say, let's go, let's do it. But, um.

I also think just generational generationally, we were talking about what the future holds, but even in the past, I mean, PowerPoint has been around, like you said, since the, the nineties. And even before that it was, you know, maybe it was an overhead projector, maybe it was a projector of some sort, jumble strips, you know, existed, film existed.

Um, and chalkboards, [01:26:00] like you said, easels drawing boards, which in some respects, I mean, I think that just whiteboards or chalkboards are hugely effective. They seven, I don't think we've got the digital equivalent of those without having to spend a lot or having them not work. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. If you have someone who's not to use them, like I write, when I write on a whiteboard, what I write like a 4-year-old, like my scroll is terrible.

Same, same, same for me. It's like no one can read, 

Nate McBride: but, but whiteboards are better to, to me, than hooking up a laptop and a deck and the whole thing. I'd rather use a whiteboard. So I have to often ask my audience, please bear with me while I, um, get outta my third grade stance of writing. But yeah, white whiteboards, whiteboard whiteboards are fantastic.

Especially everyone's in the room. Like if I'm in the building with you, like we're, we literally sit adjacent to each other, why would I show you a deck ever in my life? 

Yep. Yep. [01:27:00] 

Nate McBride: I'm just gonna share this with you. 

Exactly. 

Nate McBride: Well, oh,

okay. Well, I, 

I, I think in terms of, uh, you know, PowerPoint is certainly is a sort of exhausted. Speed and, uh, I don't think it's gonna go anywhere. I think is, is a, if there are better ways to tell a story, someone figures it out, that's, that actually helps people maybe feel more confident or that the artifact is more effective that comes out after the fact.

It's, um, it'll be, it'll be very popular, but I, I think it's, yeah. We'll, we'll have to see how work changes in general over the next decade, because there's more that's changing besides sort of the [01:28:00] how we're communicating and presenting. So it's, we'll see what happens. 

Nate McBride: Well, I think too that, um, that platforms we use for creating new objects 

Yep.

Nate McBride: They can create presentations. I mean, it's not hard. To create a quote unquote presentation using automations that exist today that's happier and make and Google Workspace Studio. And so, yep. The question will still remain the medium of me getting information to you. How long will PowerPoint hold that crown?

Um, the answer is as long as there are corporations that need it, or is the answer more until we've replaced all the old guard?

Uh, I think it's, it's [01:29:00] probably, well might replace it as when you beam it into someone's glasses and that's probably, if the, if even then people are gonna need visuals to present. I think that's human nature and it's. Whether it's slides or it's a slide deck or it's a hologram, or whatever, whatever it might be.

Because there's always gonna be a need to have some sort of, here, let me, let me show you what I'm talking about. And it doesn't have to be a slide deck, but it has to be something. And I think that will, uh, exist even more so as we're more distributed and less in the same room. There'll be something, maybe it's a metaverse type thing, who knows?

It could be any, um, maybe we'll all live in Roblox and give our presentations there someday.

It's, it's interesting. It's interesting. [01:30:00] 

Nate McBride: I, I think to wrap up, I mean, I see there's a need sometimes to demonstrate to a large group how X plugs into y. 

Yep. And. 

Nate McBride: Just not every time can a Word document or a PDF solve that problem. I get it. 

Yep. 

Nate McBride: But I have to ask like, why, why can't we have something new?

It's actually hot. Like we can't, why can't we have a, oh my God, that's a new presentation platform. We should check it out. Uh, a non MCP version of a browser, uh, let's say it's brave, for instance. I don't know, but 

yep. I, I think can, I think Canva is that hot topic right now that's in this space. That's a, and, and it's not in our circles because we live, die, and [01:31:00] breathe PowerPoint.

But if you're in a marketing firm or you're in retail or in sales, or you're even, like if you're in state government or something like that, I mean, they're using, they're looking at Canada, they're looking at it, it's. Extensible integrates. It's very attractive. Doesn't require people to have skills in presenting.

So I think that's, it's one of the things that I think might get a little more visibility in this space, but outside of them, it's like the napkin AI and those type of groups. It's that, that's, that's the other thing, like just these Yeah. Automated platforms that are just gonna create slides. Because if you're like, even just, I sent you the link about Orion, the browser.

Yeah, that's great. Why, you know, why build a, a web kit browser right now when there's, you know, you got, not, not that I'm a fan, but you've got these AI browsers, you've got Chrome, which is still [01:32:00] the best browser in the world. You've got all these things and it's like, well, it's 'cause of privacy. And people don't, no, no, no.

Most people don't care about that when they're using a web browser. They can use Safari, they can, they can download something for free. There's a ton of those. So why? Well, because we're gonna charge for the search engine. Okay, good. That's the same thing with the PowerPoint. I'm gonna create the, a new PowerPoint tool.

It's gotta be something that brings the, the energy and the content together, makes it easy for people to use. Maybe get some, some, uh, dopamine crushing people. Like, wow, what are you, how'd you do that? What are you using? Yeah, this is cool. Yeah. Uh, you know what I mean? I think that's a static application.

Probably not gonna happen. But how can we create, okay. Like I was just talking about Notebook, lm, like, and you and I kind of discovered that together, that that component of it, you were all over notebook, lm very early. It's just that when they started doing the podcasts and the [01:33:00] slides and the, um, it's the short videos now, it's like.

Okay, do I need to make a PowerPoint? If I'm gonna send this thing around Right now, it's using one template that's obviously notebook lm. But what if Canva decides to build those things out? And it's, I 

Nate McBride: mean, I mean, what if you get to a point where MCP is centered to your PowerPoint too? Like 

it is, 

Nate McBride: it's, it's, it's obviously a huge slot issue, but, uh, there are other issues as well.

I mean, 

the PowerPoint skill and clot is incredible. 

Nate McBride: Yeah, 

it's incredible. It's here, take my company template and build these using Opus 4.5. It's unbelievable. Yeah. Obviously that comes at a cost, but once you're doing that, it's like, oh my gosh. Like this has felt an unbelievable slide deck and it took me an hour.

Nate McBride: Yeah. Or, or you could have [01:34:00] no deck at all and just send out. Amend your process to have pre-reads and a brief, brief chat. I mean, 

yeah, 

Nate McBride: that's like the PowerPoint incorporated question. Ultimately, end of the day is, okay, we'll stipulate that we need it for, um, presentations for very large meetings. We might need a, a deck created for now, but there's really not much else out there that it, it transforms in a positive way.

I so much so we couldn't lose it. 

I don't know. I think if you pulled PowerPoint, people would be pretty confused or either, either that or they'd be like, where's my summary? I don't wanna read this document. Just tell me what I need to know. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then it, then you're dumping it all into ai and hopefully you're getting the right message.

Nate McBride: Well, so one last question I had on this point was, do you feel like we're in a clemency period where, [01:35:00] um. Because of the AI is, I guess the fact and how so many companies are pivoting so fast, that's okay for a period of time to be useless, piece of shit, fuck up, whatever. Because you can get away with it based on all the noise.

Do you, uh, do you resonate? Does that resonate with you or do you, do you get that what I'm saying? Like 

it's a, yeah, it's a great question and it Well, great, great thought. I mean, I, I think, yeah, I mean, I think if, if you know what questions to ask and you know, which is part of it, it's part of having some of the knowledge, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, can, can you, can you fake it till you make it even more so because of these ai, uh, engines and tools? Probably. And then that's your, like, where, where does the skills come from? It depends on the. Area of expertise. It's, you know, obviously think if you're a specialist, you'd have different questions to ask that would [01:36:00] drive more value for what you're trying to achieve, and people could see through it.

What I'm concerned about is more of,

I'm not saying I'm concerned, I guess. I guess I'm concerned about, I'm also sort of thankful that as time goes on, people are gonna question more than they do now, and they question everything. Even now, just with humans. And I think as this AI stuff comports and comes out, it's gonna be even more of a, like we just talked about the verification economy this year.

It's like, that's why it's take, take anything that's in the press or any artifacts that come out or anything, is that one real? Is that real? Is this, is that ai or is that real and that, and before it was like, well is that real news or is that. Who's, who's the source? You know, what is this? This is, so now you've got, you've compounded that all these things, [01:37:00] and if you look at it through a positive lens, it's people are actually gonna try and find out what's real.

They're not gonna take anyone's word for anything. On the flip side, it's, some of this stuff is negative lens is, it's gonna be so confusing to know if anyone knows, if anybody knows anything, because you've got this sort of, um, this subset of data that's been created a huge, I shouldn't say a subset, but like a max set of data that's been put in front of everyone and you don't know what, maybe that's your reality now, even though it's not reality.

And I think that's the other way it can go or probably go somewhere down the middle. But that's, to your point with slides, is if I need to present and I don't yeah. Know what I'm talking about, can I just go into Claude and put a subject in there and say, you know, build me x, y, z strategy and then present the strategy as if it was my own [01:38:00] Yes.

For a temporary amount of time to, to, I think to your, where you're going. But I think as time goes on, people are gonna question everything. Like, some things they're gonna say, why didn't you use AI to do that? And then there'll be other things where it will be, the expectation will be that maybe you used AI as a tool, but that's your product.

That, and that's, that's your, your, uh, work product. Yeah. So I think it's gonna be, if, you know, I, I do think it is good that people are gonna ask, I think ask more questions, and the better we get at asking questions, the better I think the AI will be become. If we're gonna continue to build on it and use it in an appropriate way, which is up in the air, obviously 

Nate McBride: I'm not gonna try and get into the CEO Prezi or ER's heads to figure out, but I can see why they're not making a giant push against Microsoft for PowerPoint.

Um, [01:39:00] I mean, PowerPoint's gotta be embedded and, and used by, well, nearly all of its customers, whatever the number is. But

I, um, I think, I think the ultimate, the ultimate goal is to determine if, with all the ways we have to present data to somebody, I can give Mike a drawing, a lucid chart, a um, crapily put together Google slide with arrows and squares, a presentation and PowerPoint or some other medium, a screenshot. Mike has all this capability.

Now, the presentation element. Why do I need to present to Mike? Like, 

yeah. 

Nate McBride: Why do I have to present to you at all? 

I, I hear you and I, I, I totally [01:40:00] understand. Yes. Good point.

Nate McBride: Alright. Well, 

if you're, if you're, if you're why present, if something else can consume it and spit out an answer, spit out a better answer. Yeah. You 

Mike Crispin: know, it's, it's just, it's the human in the loop and the decision making, I guess, 

sort of quandary that we're worried about. Right. And that's, you know, if you don't need anyone to read the presentation, why, why do you need anyone to make a decision?

Let let the machine do it. And that's when we get in the wally. It's Wally world as we've uh, the Wally, the Wally Meter. Yeah. Once you take that out, the decision's out and you let, uh, mulch book make all your decisions. 

Nate McBride: Oh my God. 

Oh, I'm so, I opened up the can of worms, [01:41:00] but, but we should talk about that next week.

Nate McBride: No, no, no. I opened up the, the email this morning from, uh, Infor, informa informative AI about Microsoft using, uh, claw, well Claw and MT was in internally. 

Yep. 

Nate McBride: And those fucking guys are just rudderless right now. Microsoft is rudderless. They have no open AI kicking them off the altar or vice versa, depending on who you ask.

Like they have no future co-pilot's dead. The whole thing 

co-pilot is just awful. 

Nate McBride: What a collaborative AI piece of shit. I am mostly interested in. Never presenting again. And so using Airtable and, and Slack, I've made it so that on the executive team, if you have a new idea, you wanna be on the agenda, you submit your idea and your preferred meeting [01:42:00] date and any reference materials.

And the last two times we've been through this, there's been no decks in that list. 

Yep. 

Nate McBride: People come in and they talk about the thing that they put into that presentation model. And it's been glorious, been glorious. Now people that are not coming through that channel are still doing decks, but yeah, 

I, I, I think it creates discussion and like I said, like if you have people do read the pro, the pre-read and.

The topics and the people in the room are genuinely interested in the topic, and they want to contribute and they want to ask questions and they're prepared to ask questions. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Um, it's a, it becomes a great discussion. It's when, and it doesn't, it doesn't matter if someone's put slides up or not. It's more like, look, there's, there's people of, they've, they understand the topic.

They understand why they're in the [01:43:00] room to be a decision maker. They're privileged to be there and be part of the meeting. They're, they have, they have something to contribute and have the discussion. But let's not read the slides. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

And let's not just say, oh, can you just send me a copy of the slides and I'll, uh, yeah.

I got all this stuff going on, especially in Zoom world or in teams world. It's like, show me the slides. Oh yeah, yeah. I'm going to work over here while you go through the rest of the presentation. Just you gonna send me the slides? 

Nate McBride: Yeah. We're not, I mean, PowerPoint and presentation culture are so intertwined.

We not getting into that today, but 

yeah. Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Um, 

awesome stuff, awesome sauce. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. I am, I don't know if it's solvable in my, in my balance, in my tenure, but I am very opposed to using PowerPoint as a medium. Decks come and go and [01:44:00] your context and your probes comes and goes. But the fact that you're able to sort of show me a, a chart doesn't really add the value.

I'd rather see it in your writing. I'd rather see why that embedded gif or jpeg makes a difference. 

Yep. 

Nate McBride: Don't, don't send me links to all these modules, which are basically pseudo crafted PowerPoints that I have to sort of flip through on my own. Um, so anyway. 

Good, good, good, good topic. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Um,

what's next week? Let's see,

let's see. Ooh.

Oh, training our elders. Oh my God, we [01:45:00] fucked up when we came with this list. Training our elders. My god. Well, I have, I have great, I have great anecdotal examples of training my elders, which I will be able to show, but that's a deep topic. 

Oh boy. Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Our elders are literally all around us right now. 

Yes.

Nate McBride: Uh, 

yes. 

Nate McBride: Yep. 

And in people within families and other stuff is another. There's so much just, uh, social engineering is a huge issue. 

Nate McBride: Oh my God. Yeah. So Mike, I need you to figure out every possible four, four and five letter word that I could use in a Scrabble game that has Qz and X. Um,

it's for a PowerPoint. [01:46:00] Um, all right, well, so next week we have the, the old people episode. We're gonna try and zoom in on y um, MSN Hotmail may not be your best choice if you were on a Lenovo you bought seven years ago, 

Yahoo Mail, 

Nate McBride: mail. 

It's unbelievable. I know so many people on Yahoo Mail and it's like, do you know why?

You know why a lot of people are still on Yahoo Mail? It's the only product that does not have a forwarder for free. You have to pay to forward email from Yahoo to another product. 

Nate McBride: So we should in, in our, in our new podcast. By the way, everybody, Mike and I are kicking off a new podcast next week. It's called If Life Was a PowerPoint and um, 

I love it.

Let's do it. 

Nate McBride: We'll be running that un under [01:47:00] the CO it US banner 'cause we don't have time to create a new thing, but we have a new podcast coming out next week If Life was a PowerPoint. 

Perfect, 

Nate McBride: Mike, I think the format for that, by the way, should be episode one, one of us. Grills the other as if we shared a deck with them and vi then vice versa from then on forward.

So like on that first episode, I would give you a pretend deck. I would grill you on it for the whole episode. And then, oh, 

I thought we'd just, we'd just do the whole, uh, the whole podcast as if we were presenting slides. 

Nate McBride: Yeah, yeah. Like, exactly. Like, like, and I would, and so then episode two, we would reverse it.

So you'd ask me all the questions in our podcast about my slide deck, which would be obviously invisible, and then all the way through the season. [01:48:00] 

Okay. The professional language of PowerPoint. 

Nate McBride: Yep. That's good. Actually 

gotta love it. 

Nate McBride: The, the love language of PowerPoint, 

the love language of PowerPoint.

That'd be beautiful. 

Nate McBride: So it's a pinky fair. Oh, also, um, I had drinks with Kevin Dne last night at Ruth's Chris. Oh. Oh, nice. Yep. Same. We have now have a standing Tuesday night. Um, drinks and ketchup at Ruth's Chris in Waltham. 5:00 PM ish. 

Nice. 

Nate McBride: Beautiful. So if you're 

Okay, yeah, I'll see if I can 

Nate McBride: make it down.

If you're in, if you're in the Waltham area or just chilling or whatever coming through Waltham, stop at Ruth's Chris around 5:00 PM Find myself and Kevin. It's a weekly. 

[01:49:00] That's a, that's gonna be a, that's gonna be good. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Anyone shows up. I'm sure Kevin's getting tired of my shit by now. 

I'm, I'm gonna show up.

Nate McBride: Um. All right. Well, PowerPoint's here to stay. So screw you. If you thought there was amnesty or some kind of, um, revelation at the end of this episode, there isn't. We're gonna crush your dreams like every other episode we've had your dreams worthless, crushed them. Done. Um, Mike and I will be back next week, either from where we are right now in Zoom or from a remote location.

TBD have your pets spade or neutered. Of course, we don't need more of pets. You can adopt 'em too. Be nice to old people. Be nice to it people, and be nice people that are [01:50:00] foll challenged. Like Mike. Yes. If they have a follicular, regenerative, uh, velocity program going on, you know, and

Mike Crispin: I, I just should check these here. 

Nate McBride: Nothing's good going go in during the episode, do you think? 

Uh, no. Nothing has grown. 

Nate McBride: Okay. 

We need, we're gonna need at least a month to get any sort of visible, visible, uh, anything notice noticeable. That's what I just did. And it was, it was coming in. It was just gonna take a little longer, I guess.

I'll try. 

Nate McBride: All right. Well, I put a call out to the entire, uh, slack board for the ceo. Us.

Yeah. There were ton, ton of people in the waiting room 

Nate McBride: if you want right now. 

Just kidding. 

Nate McBride: Oh, [01:51:00] 

how you were. 

Nate McBride: Um, if you, if you shit the fucking asshole. I'm not looking, I have no idea how this thing 

works. Oh, I know you were. I, I Doesn't that thing go ding. Go. If someone comes in. 

Nate McBride: No, I have that. I all, my Zoom shit's muted.

I have no idea. 

Oh, alright. Oh, what is this, uh, AI assistant thing here that I can press? 

Nate McBride: Yeah, turn it on. It's important. 

It actually, it's blocked. Well done. I see you flip out.

Nate McBride: So next week, next week as we talk about, um, old it shit, if you wanna be on the episode is link our substack board about how to do that. Nice. Stay clear of the forest man,[01:52:00] 

Trance Bot: the calculus of it.

Season three,

verifying this identity.

Sometimes you just have to take it.

Sometimes you just have to take it.

It's season three divided autonomy,

verifying identities.

The calculus of [01:53:00] it.