The telltale PowerPoint

Went to another BIM conference this week.

Should not call it ‘another’ since it was a ‘first’ of its kind, firmly indicating this intent in the title:

First Annual Conference in the Middle East: BUILDING INFORMATION MODEDLING (BIM).

Not a bad two days after all, set-for and aimed at the middle-to-bottom level of the ‘BIM-informed’ folks of the AEC, it still provided plenty of breadcrumbs for me to follow through in the next couple of days to fill my daily bloggy quota.

The obvious target for the old, ‘give-a-dog-a-bone,’ in me would be the ‘role and influence of technology’ in the event itself, how it helped and hindered its success considering again the theme and central point of the summit.

While plenty on offer to chew over that particular subject, I’ll park it for a while and go for an ever more obvious ‘sitting duck’:

The good ol’ Power Point.

Consider these questions:

Why do people with 20-30-40+ years of distinguished carrier repeatedly fall into the traps this simple-yet-ingenious tool sets for them?

Why do they fill up tens of slides with densely written text and read it up to the audiences time after time, speaker after speaker?

Why do they ignore the facility to help them stay on course and finish on time using self timing of slides?

Why don’t they rehearse beforehand?

Why?