PowerPoint Begins Transitioning from Talking Points To Talking Heads

PowerPoint presentations may change in the next few months, as Microsoft integrates live and pre-recorded video into presentations you view and create. From a report: Microsoft's engineering teams are always hard at work launching features, and today marks Microsoft's spring 2022 update of sorts, on a variety of different subjects. Microsoft announced a new Surface Hub-specific webcam, updated features to Teams and other productivity apps, and some specific improvements to how Microsoft deals with workers who are returning to the office. For that matter, Microsoft also released a survey noting that many workers aren't all that interested in returning to work, either preferring to work remotely or as a hybrid of at-home and in-person work.

PowerPoint touches many different lives and careers (even holiday parties) so it's not surprising that two of the most important announcements involve it. Specifically, Microsoft is merging PowerPoint Cameo with its Recording Studio function, so you'll have more ways to deliver video as part of presentations. PowerPoint Cameo takes an idea that has appeared in mmhmm and other solutions: It captures a small live feed of you talking through your slides, and integrates that with the presentation. All Recording Studio does is simply add the capability to pre-record that video, so you'll have the option of presenting live or pre-recording the video so others can review it on their own time -- as we've seen already happen with the ability to record Teams calls, for example.

Re: Same as it ever was

[kopecn]

Theres water, at the bottom of the ocean.

My first boss said it best

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

My first boss in the mid 90s told me: "Powerpoints constrain the ideas you want to convey at the best of time, and empty them of any meaning if you do them wrong - which is very, VERY easy. That's if they don't bore your audience to tears to begin with, or divert their attention from what you're telling them. Rule of thumb: don't present anything with a Powerpoint that you can't present successfully with a paperboard".

The guy was right. I've been following his wise words until today. I almost never present

Re:

[shaitand]

"But I never get audiences that fall asleep and politely abstain from interacting - but aren't getting anything from the presentation."

Then you must be banning phones.

Re: My first boss said it best

[ami.one]

:) That's true.

Till you realize one day that you need to present something to completely misdirect your audience, hide all the important data and highlight bits n pieces that make your audience infer the opposite of what you've actually found out, dumb down the most complex things / issues so that is easily overlooked, ask for insane budget and resources by justifying them with the weirdest benchmarks, show up most of your department's mistakes and missed targets as achievements (in light unstated of new in

Re:

[gweihir]

Well, you can do good presentations with LibreOffice presenter and with some more effort with PowerPoint, but it is really hard. Usually, I just place the essentials on the slides and add everything else on the voice-track and black/white-board.

This demented "improvement" will make the situation even worse.

Re:

[bn-7bc]

I think "powerpoint" has become the dropin word for the digital version of slides/transparencies because everyone uses MS office, right? It somewhat irks me too but sadly there is little/nothing any one of us can do about it, at least we know that a presentation does not necessarily require powerpoint and that a text c\document can be produced with other tools than word. For most people however these concepts are synonymous, I've heard people call Google docs "googles version of Word"

Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely!

[gamelaner]

This is a game changer! It used to be that someone had to stand up in front of the room, slowly reading their bullets points while the audience was bored to tears. But now, the PowerPoint presentation itself can slowly read the bullets points while the audience is bored to tears. That's progress!

Re: Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely

[TJHook3r]

PowerPoint is so easy to start using that people forget that they also need training or practice in actually presenting! It's a skill that needs to be developed and sadly most people go straight for the default layout of title + bullet points. Recipe for boredom.

Re:

[gweihir]

Yes. But that is the MS approach to things, isn't it? You do not need competent users, everything is intuitive. Until it is not or they click on a malware attachment. You do not need competent system administration, because everything is easily configured by a GUI. Until some ransomware steals all your files and leaves your network broken.

MS has from the beginning fostered the illusion that incompetents can use and administrate computers. It has created the illusion that coding, system use and system admini

Re:

[mtmra70]

Easy to configure? GUI? Have you seen the insane powershell commands it takes to manage Microsoft solutions? Cisco, hate to say it Zoom, and other have FAR better management solutions via GUI. They have APIs as well, but nothing needing insane powershell knowledge.

Re:

[gweihir]

Easy to configure? GUI? Have you seen the insane powershell commands it takes to manage Microsoft solutions? Cisco, hate to say it Zoom, and other have FAR better management solutions via GUI. They have APIs as well, but nothing needing insane powershell knowledge.

I was being sarcastic. The MS stuff is these days more obscure and more cryptic than Unix stuff ever was (well, not counting some exceptionally bad cases). Powershell is just an abomination.

Re: Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutel

[TJHook3r]

Powershell commands? If it were only that! It takes a fricking degree to work out what combination of licenses need to be purchased to get anything working!

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[cayenne8]

I say....bring back CLippy to do the presentation for you in animated form!!

Video editing

[TJHook3r]

Would it be too much trouble to bundle a capable video editor into Windows. My colleagues resort to starting a Teams call with themselves in order to record a video!

Macs have one - a little hidden...

[alispguru]

QuickTime Player [apple.com] comes with the OS. It can make audio/video recordings or capture screen sessions, and has a minimal clip/merge editor.

Re:

[Bourdain]

Captura [github.io] while no longer maintained works about as well as camtasia or other paid capture tools - I've used it for years successfully

Exactly what the world does NOT need

[alispguru]

This is consistent with the modern plague of "all how-tos need to be YouTube videos".

At least with the accompanying slides, the user will have a chance to scan the content and decide whether the video part is worth the time to view it.

Re:

[gweihir]

Yes, that is a complete atrocity. I will not watch any video when I can get a good explanation in text. And even if I cannot get that text explanation, I will still not watch any mind-numbing videos. I rather remain ignorant or figure it out by myself.

Oh, crap

[gweihir]

So they are hell-bent on making Powerpoint even worse? I see that MS is really true to their reputation as a bunch of incompetent cretins.

In other words ...

[fahrbot-bot]

PowerPoint ... Talking Heads

PowerPoint for people who can't / don't read.

automatic talking head

[John_Sauter]

How about a PowerPoint feature which will convert slides of bullet points into a talking head speaking the text? Text-to-speech is good enough for the sound to be comprehensible, and the animation industry is working on adding mouth movements automatically based on the sound track. Add head turns and hand gestures and you might have something people would want to watch.