Pharmaceutical company 120’000 CHF

Money destruction report of 120,000 CHF. 
Three times per year the company organizes a so-called "Triannual conference" with roughly 250 employees present.  For three days in a row, from 8:00 AM until 6:00 PM PowerPoint* is continuously being presented.  All together 9 days per year.

Every speaker gets a time slot of 45 minutes …  whether or not he has something vital to say or not does not matter. That time slot has always been used bravely.

Again and again, we can observe participants, who play with their mobile phones and blackberries under the table. Some members of the audience drink and eat in a discrete manner during the presentations.

On one occasion, there were 96 slides about the law concerning drugs. The first slide contained the sentence "Good morning, Welcome" that was repeated verbatim by the speaker and the last slide contained the phrase "Thank you for your attention". In between, you have slides that were so heavily filled with legal texts, that one can be inclined to inform the speaker that there is still free space at the bottom on the left. 

On such occasions I have seen PowerPoint* presentations which had up to 350 slides.

I talked to some participants who have learnt to sleep while keeping their eyes open. That is a technique which can be acquired, and which goes unnoticed.

Then there is no more motivation left. The mood reaches its lowest level.

Estimated economic loss caused by the presentation:                              120’000 CHF

(Only lost work hours, travel expenses + costs of the event have not been included)

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