On: Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

[pshc]

Oh hey! This is exactly what Edward Tufte taught us at his course the other week. Now I'm curious as to who originated this practice...?

[jasoncrawford → pshc]

Yeah, I think this practice originated at Amazon not long after Edward Tufte's article “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint” was published. I think I heard that Bezos read that article and was influenced by it.

[xaritas → jasoncrawford]

Probably true. The reason I was introduced to Tufte is when he was invited to give a talk at an Amazon Fishbowl (informal, internal lecture/music series). This had a strong stamp of Jeff-approval. I don't think that this particular practice was adopted immediately but Bezos plays a long game and this was probably an opening move.

[cma → pshc]

Don't know how old this is, but it has been there a good many years: http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/

[priv_acy → pshc]

Sun Microsystems banned PowerPoint years ago. Not sure if they were the first, though.

[ics → pshc]

I'll just bask in the irony of having my drawing professors presenting some of Tufte's work to a class full of architects... in PowerPoint.