Wired Magazine: Microsoft Helps The Army Avoid ‘Death By PowerPoint’
(Featuring a special guest appearance by the one and only Doctrine Man)
Officially, Dave Karle is an executive communications manager at Microsoft. Less officially, his colleagues have given him another name: the Pied Piper of PowerPoint. His audience? The U.S. Army.
Except that Karle isn’t trying to get the Army to use Microsoft’s presentation software. PowerPoint is already ubiquitous within the Army — to the chagrin of many an officer. Karle’s mission is much harder: stopping the Army from using it stupidly.
“I’m chasing the bad ideas out of presentations,” Karle tells Danger Room by phone from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He’s there for a meeting at the Combined Arms Center, the Army’s central nervous system for writing and spreading its doctrine. Working with an Army major at the Center, John Roberson, Karle — himself a 15 year Army veteran who served in Iraq — has come up with what he alternately calls Modern Presenter or the Modern Presentation Method, all to revive the poor headquarters officers who’ve suffered Death By PowerPoint.
More from Spencer Ackerman at Wired.com’s Danger Room.
