Even the sharpest military minds in American were left baffled by this PowerPoint slide, a mind-boggling attempt to explain the situation in Afghanistan.
See full story here http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/julian-borger-global-security-blog/2010/apr/27/afghanistan-microsoft
'When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war,' General Stanley McChrystal, the former US and NATO force commander, remarked wryly when confronted by the sprawling spaghetti diagram in a briefing. PowerPoint has become public enemy number one for many US officers who find themselves battling slide presentations rather than insurgents. Some have gone as far as to declare all-out war on the software after the military command was over-run with mind-numbing 30-slide presentations.
There is really only one secret to good slides and that is simplicity. Each slide should be used to make one point only. Slides which contain too much information, or illustration, look cluttered and are difficult to follow. Too many words make the text small and difficult to read. As a general guideline it is best to have only six lines of text per slide and six words per line. Graphs and diagrams should be similarly uncluttered. If you feel that it is really important for your audience to have information in the form of complicated tables or diagrams, it is better to give them a hard copy. Above all remember this – PowerPoint is there to help the audience comprehend the message, and it should not be used as a prompt for the speaker.
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