Edward Tufte is the pre-eminent leader in the field of analytical I attended last fall with high expectations that were met and surpassed. In Tufte I found a voice that could eloquently describe the vital need to focus on the analytic aspects of design and presentation, areas all too often considered too intangible or unimportant; areas that can not be properly addressed using PowerPoint.

One of the most surprising elements of Tufte’s seminar for me was his strong aversion to PowerPoint. I could concur that the product is considerable misused, but never really grasped the full impact of improper implementation of PowerPoint.

Since Edward Tufte is en route to DC, making his annual trip to provide his one-day seminar in mid-November, I figured I’d take the opportunity to reference two very contrasting examples of PowerPoint misuse, one very humorous and one hauntingly tragic:

• The Gettysburg Address
  Years ago, the Google uber-designer Peter Norvig created an alternate history where Abraham Lincoln had the convenience of Powerpoint at his disposal when giving the Gettysburg Address.
• The Columbia Tragedy
  With the help of Tufte, the NASA’s Accident Investigation Board was able to focus in on exactly where in the process things went offline that resulted in the Columbia tragedy in 2003. The derailing resulted from a under-informative Powerpoint presentation. The full details available in this Washington Post article.

At The Motley Fool our new main office has 12 conference rooms. Those rooms typically are used for one hour sessions six to ten of them per day. That’s a lot of meetings, or so I thought until I read about Marissa Mayer at Google who takes on average 70 meetings a week. Wow! That can’t work unless you have an efficient means of running a meeting.
Marissa shares her ideas on How to Run a Meeting at Google in this month’s BusinessWeek online.

So, the company I work for, The Motley Fool, just launched a really cool new online game “” CAPS.The premise (as I understand it) is that there are these guys like Jim Kramer on CNBC who yell and bellow “pick this stock” or “pick that stock” with no accountability. There is no follow up if that pick made money; no way to really know if this Kramer guy really knows what he’s talking about.

So, the Motley Fool came up with a way. They made this game where you can rank whether you think any stock will either beat or lose to the S&P 500. It’s sort of like High-Low with stocks. You choose your stock, determine whether it will do better or worse than the S&P and (optionally) write why you think that.

So if you are like me and love Disney, you can pick DIS to succeed “cause their awesome”, or as time goes on and you get more experienced and familiar with stock trends, you can take a more analytical approach and say that since “TheKnot.com has absolutely cornered the market on online wedding websites”, that KNOT would have a good chance of beating the market.

It’s free to play, no money is exchanged. You only need to pick seven stock to get into the game, and then once you are it becomes real fun, because you can track yourself over time, against other people, against financial celebrities (I am kicking the tar out of Jim Kramer right now), and against the field. You also can see the picks everyone else has made, from the best players down to the lowest ranked.

And that is the key to the whole thing: you are now in contact with people who make good picks and are accountable for them, a very useful resource to have if you are trying to understand the stock market a little more, or especially if you are thinking of putting some money into it.

You can find CAPS at http://caps.fool.com, and once you are in and have made the seven required picks to begin, then look for me, and set me as a Friend or Favorite, my screen name is TMFShakespeare.