MCDREEAMIE-MUSINGS – Human Factors, Presentation Skills – “We’ve all sat in those presentations. A speaker with a stream of slides full of text, monotonously reading them off as we read along. We’re so used to it we expect it. We accept it. We even consider it ‘learning’. As an educator I push against ‘death by PowerPoint’ and I’m fascinated with how we can improve the way we present and teach. The fact is we know that PowerPoint kills. Most often the only victims are our audience’s inspiration and interest. This, however, is the story of a PowerPoint slide that actually helped kill seven people….NASA officials sat down with Boeing Corporation engineers who took them through three reports; a total of 28 slides. The salient point was whilst there was data showing that the tiles on the shuttle wing could tolerate being hit by the foam this was based on test conditions using foam more than 600 times smaller than that that had struck Columbia. This is the slide the engineers chose to illustrate this point…” [This article was posted in 2019 but the lessons remain to be learned. We are inundated with inaccurate, false, biased information and a growing volume of propaganda disguised as social media. Read carefully, review the data and methodology of the work product [be it a deck, report or news article], and then proceed to communicate accurately with your customers, clients and colleagues. Our work matters and can make a difference in outcomes.]