Microsoft Works With US Army to Prevent Death By Powerpoint

To hear veterans tell it, the casualties are always heavy. But they are not talking about combat

They are talking about reactions to the military's ubiquitous and frequently boring use of Powerpoint presentations for everything from organizational minutiae to tactical field planning.

In fact, effectively (or ineffectively) wielding computer projector and
laser pointer has become such a widely recognized MOS (military occupational specialty) that adept practitioners are called "Powerpoint Rangers." As you might imagine, winning this designation is not exactly coveted.

Jumping into this minefield to protect a profitable product brand are

experts from Microsoft. Having heard of both the frequent use and persistant complaints, the company offered to assist in developing more compelling and productive usage of the technology. Since the problems with Powerpoint are not limited to warriors, the company may find that private sector demand tracks. This could even be start of the elusive consulting model which MSFT has been seeking. It could even rival the success of that other military-inspired technology, the internet. JL

Spencer Ackerman reports in Wired:

"Officially, Dave Karle is an executive communications manager at Microsoft. Less officially, his colleagues have given him another name: the Pied Piper of PowerPoint. His audience? The U.S. Army. Except that Karle isn’t trying to get the Army to use Microsoft’s presentation software. PowerPoint is already ubiquitous within the Army — to the chagrin of many an officer. Karle’s mission is much harder: stopping the Army from using it stupidly.
“I’m chasing the bad ideas out of presentations,” Karle tells Danger Room by phone from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He’s there for a meeting at the Combined Arms Center, the Army’s central nervous system for writing and spreading its doctrine. Working with an Army major at the Center, John Roberson, Karle — himself a 15 year Army veteran who served in Iraq — has come up with what he alternately calls Modern Presenter or the Modern Presentation Method, all to revive the poor headquarters officers who’ve suffered Death By PowerPoint.

The basic idea behind Karle’s Method is to introduce “simplicity, cleanliness and a very refined and simple tool set” to plan a presentation. He’s spent weeks with the Army compiling over 11,000 commonly used graphics into a database to spare officers the agony of searching for the right illustration. And — gasp — sometimes a presentation doesn’t have to use PowerPoint at all.

“Use Word sometimes instead of PowerPoint. Use a whiteboard sometimes,” Karle says. “It’s all about fixing the tool behind the tool.” He pauses. “I love that phrase.”