11mo ago

Slide deck

165 comments

I'm 28 and have no idea what a slide deck is. Is that somehow the new term for a PowerPoint presentation?
- Ironically, it's a very old term for a powerpoint presentation. Presentations used to be done with actual photographic slides in a projector. They were stored in a deck of slides.
  I only know this from Mad Men.
  
  It's a carousel of slides, you heathen.
  
  Chu Chu Chunk.
  
  So what he’s saying is everyone in his company is 90 and he was fooling them into thinking he’s 90 too
  
  Wait until they hear about film strips.
  
  This is a great little fact, thanks.
- Hijacking this because you're top comment and everyone is talking about the origin of the term (the thing you load into a projector back in the days of physical slides), but no one's answering the actual question as intended:
  "Slide Deck" is the term used for the series of slides shown during a presentation, but "Presentation" refers to the whole performance, including non-slide elements like speeches and demos
- A lot of presentations are made today with Keynote, Google Slides or LibreOffice Impress.
  
  And most adhesive bandages aren't part of the Band-Aid brand, but we call them band-aids anyway.
  
  Someday, my friends, presentations made and saved in Markdown will be king, and we can forget about opening slow programs to edit them.
  Yes, somehow the world will be a better place when everything is a plaintext document. At least that's how I imagine it.
  Incidentally, there was a cool python program for presenting pdfs I used years ago. I wonder if it or similar are still in vogue somewhere.
- I wouldn't say I hear literally 'slide deck' that often, but some variation of 'slides' is very common. Basically no one says PowerPoint. Especially relevant as use of Microsoft products is not a given in work anymore, and people are aware of alternatives that require a general term. Ever heard someone say that they saw something 'on social'?
  
  PowerPoint literally was a slide show. It even uses the noun "slide" to describe one page of your information.
- Perhaps it’s geography which is missing from this conversation.
  SF Bay Area techies will say slide deck all the time.
- What's a "web search"? Is that somehow the new term for googling?
  
  AOL Keyword: http://www.google.com
  
  shh, don't let em hear you use that word round these parts

I'm 34 and I've never even heard the term "slide deck". Is that some apple shit?
- A slide deck is the analogue version of a PowerPoint.
  The deck is the rotating ring that you drop your slides into, then project them on the wall with what is essentially just an overhead projector designed to take small vertical slides of film loaded into the deck, instead of just using transparent sheets.
  You'd design all your little film slides, arrange them in order in the deck (think, deck of cards). The deck is what let you automatically swap between slides by pressing the remote to rotate the deck and reveal the next slide to the projector lens.
  I'm 32 but my school was broke as fuck so we were still using overheads and slide decks in 2005.
  
  Yup:
  
  I'm 50 and grew up with slide presentations and I've never used the term slide deck. Maybe I've heard it? but it doesn't really hit home at all.
  
  The deck is the rotating ring that you drop your slides into,
  It's always been called a carousel. A deck is the deck of slides like a deck of cards.
  
  I'm sorry but this will never dethrone the overhead projector.
  
  Yeah, my exposure to slide projectors is exclusively from movies. Never learned the terminology.
- It's some business consulting shit.
- I'm in IT, I hear this term every week.
  
  Me too. That is interesting that other people don't? Slide deck... hear it all the time in IT.
  Of course also being in IT I wonder why the fuck they are not html presentations stored in git using some kind of simple markdown instead of powerpoint, but i digress.
- Nah nah, HyperCard was the Apple shit.
- 27, never heard slide deck
  
  do you regularly present a series of text and images in sequential segments to meetings for the purpose of conducting business processes, though? If so what do you call the series of text and images you're presenting?
- Maybe they'll release the app "Slide Deck" for the Vision in a weird renneissance of skeumorphism?
  
  It'll be great, only you will be able to see the presentation, how very useful.
- You mean a slide show?

slide deck
... a what?
- Often shortened to deck. Sounds similar enough to dick that you can just say dick and no one notices. You get to go around taking about showing people your dick all the time then giggle about it.
  
  https://youtu.be/i6c4Nupnup0?si=qYuQj_r0uMl3N8Wm
  
  Just sliding the dick right in there.
- common term in corpo speak. Because people use GSlides much more often down.
  
  Also Apple. Keynote (Mac’s version of PowerPoint/GSlides) has an entire section of templates dedicated to the “Pitch Deck” category. For when you’re trying to pitch an idea to management.

As opposed to being like, 60 instead? Cuz that's the demographic I'd think of as using the term "slide deck".

What the helll is a slide deck
- I can hear this image.
  
  This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels - around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved.
  
  I only know anything about this thanks to Veggietales.

Should have called them "overhead projector sheets" and pushed them all into utter confusion.
- I'm a 32 year old teacher and I want an overhead projector.
  A dry erase transparency is much easier to write on than the white board. My macro handwriting is awful, students can barely read what I write on the board. So I always end up writing on a peice of paper on my desk, and I have my phone on a tripod so I can get a "top down shot" of me writing on the paper, then I screen cast that to the smart board.
  It works, I can write legibly by writing in a normal size, and then enlarge it for the class to read fairly quickly.... Once all the cameras and casting is set up.
  But it would be so much easier to just have an overhead projector, a few transparencies and a dry erase marker. Roll it out, plug it in, aim and focus the lens, then I'm done. Plus then if the internet goes out I could still use the board!
  
  I bet it would be every bit as good as you think. I had a math teacher back in middle school ~30 years ago who taught EVERY lesson by talking as he wrote things on a transparency on the overhead projector.
  We have great tech for that stuff now, but the projector and markers feels very human-compatible in an analog way. Kind of like reading a book I guess.
  
  The problem is that from experience I find that they heat the room to 12,000° and they have an internal fan that goes werrrrrrrrrrr all lesson.
  I suppose a better modern equivalent would be to just have a drawing tablet plugged into the computer. Also that way you can actually save the results rather than having random pieces of paper that might get lost.
  
  What you need is called an ELMO, does basically what You're doing with your phone but would allow you to avoid using your personal phone for work use, not a criticism just not something I like doing myself
  
  Not to mention the fact that you can face your students while writing on an overhead projector instead of turning your back to write on the board.
- Or "transparency." That'll fuck with 'em.
- Lmao the school I go to used these till like a month ago

“Slide deck” is an old person term, not a young person term.
If anything calling it a slide deck makes you sound old.
- Not quite...the term has actually come back around again.
  
  It’s like calling your remote a “clicker”. A term that is still used but only by the old crowd.
- My experience the last few years is that being old makes everything you say sound old.
  
  For sure especially anything related to technological advancements.
  Slide deck refers to the old film projectors, which no one uses anymore except old people. So of course youngsters will have zero clue what a slide deck is. There is no use for this term anymore and it’s dying along with its technology.

Accidentally called it a power point and not an open document presentation (the n00bs in my class don't know the difference between Keynote, PowerPoint and Impress)
- Now everyone know you use proprietary software.
  
  I had to, because the school basically forced us to use iPads and not any other tablets or laptops. And those don't have OpenOffice, and Apples apps are crap. So M$ Office it was. Now I can use my Laptop, and I felt dirty starting wine on it because it polluted my nice Arch (btw) home and cmd is so much worse than bash.
- It's only a true power point if it was grown in the Power Point region of North America. Otherwise it's just a sparkling digital slide show.

Can everyone see my screen? Okay good. I put literal paragraphs of stuff into my presentation, and I'm going to read it all to you verbatim. This is much better than email.
Now I can put presentation skills on my resume.
- I’m the first person to say “this meeting should’ve been an email”, but often it’s because I’m slated as “required” on something I’d otherwise be a Cc on.
  The reason for those, though, is because people don’t read their emails. Especially not the long winded verbose ones that actually explain things.
  You want to tell people things, put it in an email. If you want them to understand it, call a meeting.
- I had a week long training course, I read the slides the night before to make sure I would absorb the material well and have a decent shot at passing the test without much anxiety... MF spent a week reading the slides to me that I read the night before...

For some reason I am now wondering if overhead projectors are still called overhead projectors...
- Overhead projectors don't exist anymore, they've been replaced by video projectors mounted overhead.
  
  Someone tell the german schools
  
  So... They still have overhead projectors they just aren't overhead projectors?
  
  Or smart whiteboard things or actual TVs
- Remember when the teacher would bring in those fancy transparencies that had sliding handles on part of the page to animate part of the projection?
  Those were the days lol
- Or the fancier "elmos"
  
  Can i still tickle him?
- I think those are called Power Point presentations now.

Okay, so are we among 80 year olds who still can't computer, or are we among 20 year olds who either don't use Microsoft Office or are trying to stop using Microsoft branding for the concept of presentations?
- Honestly I don't relate to this tweet. Around me at least, it's the 30-40 year old millennials switching the terminology because some of them use Google Slides or KeyNote or a bunch of Figma screens.
  
  I used to work with a lot of low level Executives and in every meeting they'd say something like "add some stats to the deck", without fail my first thought was Magic the Gathering or Pokemon.
  
  I'm 36, I haven't used PowerPoint (or MS Office in general) in 10 years since I switched to Linux and thus LibreOffice, and honestly it wouldn't hurt my feelings if we managed to shake loose of Microsoft's grip on the productivity space. "Word Document" is another one I'd like to see die.

Slide deck sounds like something related to yu gi oh or mtg
- You activated my trap card! Agile, with 40min dailies

Huh. I guess I think of a "slide deck" as the (usually PDF) version that is sent to everyone in the meeting so they can refer to the slides before/after the presentation, and a "PowerPoint presentation" as the live presentation of those slides.

But does anyone younger than 40 even know what a slide is?
- 34 and we had over head projectors and slide projectors as well in elementary.
  
  I'm 25 and same. In high school (circa 2015-2016). In a developed country. Now that I think about it they probably had trouble sourcing the specialty incandescent lightbulbs to keep the damn things running (those had been banned from sale for years in the EU). ¯(ツ)/¯
  Many teachers just had really old slides they clung onto (or coursework in general... I vividly remember a geography class with grainy photocopies of maps with the Iron Curtain still on it, over 20 years after the fall of the Wall). But even if the teachers did want to show a video or sth, there were like 3 projectors for the whole school at the beginning, then it slowly improved to the point that most (but not all) of the classrooms had a projector. Some got lucky and it was overhead, and some even luckier with an overhead projector and a proper fold-out screen (other times we had to decipher a powerpoint slide against a dark green chalkboard...).
  Must have been around 2014 that we last used the bulky CRT-on-wheels.
  Part of the problem is each of those handful of awful "smart" boards we got that nobody asked for probably cost as much as 10-20 projectors and the school threw all its money into that. I'd be curious to know whether it was due to corruption, or non-relocatable funds, or just really good smartboard salespeople.
- Better yet does anyone under 40 remember filmstrips?
  
  Shit, I'm old enough to have done research using actual microfiche.
  
  Not much under that, but I remember them. I remember them more than slide decks.

I am 27 and never hear slide deck before it is indeed a power point presentation.

I'm barely in my 20s and I don't even know what a slide deck is lol.

We often just call them “charts”, too, regardless if it’s just a wall of text.

And it's a problem to be 40?
- Yeah, knock it off.
  
  King Buffalo image is cool said this old guy
- Yup step aside old man
  
  Bad news, kid. You'll be on that bench too sooner than you think, and long before I can retire.
- Hey! Gimme my flag back and stop copying my style! 😤

My wife is at the stage in her career where this is relevant. When thinking back about the phrasing she uses, when making content for someone else to present she commonly says "I need to finish making these slides". When she is putting together content for her to present herself, she says "I need to finish making this presentation".
All that said to say, I feel like the terms are related, not the same.
Just my two cents.

Slide dick
- Found the Kiwi

53 here. Seems like overnight Power Point became "slide deck". I'm just gonna roll with it.

Maybe they meant as opposed to the others who are 80?

PPT!

Edward Tufte, of Information is Beautiful fame, generally advises AGAINST using PowerPoint for presentations largely because of the low information density. Powerpoint, generally, forces you to put a LOW amount of information on the screen which can really be a problem in some situations.
His advice: Create a Word doc and give that as a handout.

I asked a Zoomer to send me a PPT and he didn't know what I was talking about.

Is this something like a slide rule?
- more like slide deez nuts
  I'll show myself out

I call them pretty computer crayon drawings for management to feel special.... absolutely fuck all important is provided in a power point...I mean..."slide deck"

Posted a picture of a text. This is the new modern?
- You’re literally on /c/WhitePeopleTwitter. Do you expect them to retweet it and just @ the community or something?

Only Bri'ish (🤮) say slide deck
- I'm a Briton, and this is the first time in my life I've seen or heard the term "slide deck".
  We used to say (or still do?) "slide show", for a presentation.
- No, never heard that term.
- Go back.
  
  Mr. PP_BOY_ , my arch nemesis. We meet again.

165 comments

"Slide Deck" is the term used for the series of slides shown during a presentation, but "Presentation" refers to the whole performance, including non-slide elements like speeches and demos