GBU Wizards of Menlo Parkhttp://www.gbuwizards.com |
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Archives of the Wizards of Menlo Park,
the people who created PowerPoint at Forethought Inc. and at the Microsoft Graphics Business Unit (GBU) located in Menlo Park, California 1984-1994. |
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Some descriptive context for these documents is at:
Bob Gaskins’s Home Page http://www.robertgaskins.com |
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All the Wizards(in order of appearance, 1984-1994)
Bob Gaskins,
Dennis Austin,
Tom Rudkin,
Keith Sturdivant,
Robert Lotz,
Kathi Baker,
Harris Meyers,
Aniko Somogyi,
Dennis Abbe,
Lewis Levin,
Bob Lagier,
Sharon Meyers,
Tuan Nguyen,
Bob Safir,
Rick Hawes,
Pam Miller,
Judea Eden,
Ron Ullman,
Don Miller,
Barb Jernigan,
Ralph Peterson,
Nelia Craig,
Lynette Moore,
Andre Brogli,
Joan Hoshino,
Connie Clark,
Dave Stearns,
Cathy Harris,
Dave Parker,
Pat Ford,
Charleen Mininfield,
Lucy Peterson,
Kathleen Richards,
Nola Donato,
Darrell Boyle,
Kathy Friend,
Linda Fitzgerald,
Soo Hahn,
Jim Bartram,
Laura Tillett,
Paul Warrin,
Yalin Chen,
Bethann Martin,
Bruce Lee,
Amy Whitehurst,
Cindy Goral,
Bronwen Martin,
Alice Wang,
Eunice Yan,
Pierre Aoun,
Dan Hoffman,
Anders Kierulf,
Kim Kinzie,
Starlene Burgett,
Dave Kesterson,
Millani Lew,
Brendan Busch,
Christoph Ammann,
Sue Ann Pratt,
Annette Kronmiller,
Karen Sipprell,
Glenn Hobin,
Roz Ho,
Rich Sneiderman,
George Santino,
Brian Jackson,
Dorothy Adams,
Reidun Valo,
Hannes Ruescher,
Neeraj Maithel,
George Chinn,
Mike Malloy,
Rob Nixon,
Bob Gregg,
Donna Simonides,
Mark Weigand,
Ric Bretschneider,
Jeremy Giddings,
Susan Grabau,
Marc Keller,
Donna Reynolds,
Cathy Albiez,
Laura Hoffman,
John Tafoya,
Vijay Vashee,
Chris Burroughs,
Ly Hoang,
Brian Rose,
Merilee Shackleton,
Jim Hansen,
Mark Carlile,
Teresa Fung,
Robert Parker,
Anil Mehra,
Elliott Ng,
Robert Scott,
Peter Wu,
Imran Qureshi,
Howard Cooperstein,
Melanie Pratt,
Waltraut Monroe,
Brian Henrikson,
Shelly Albers,
Dave Pond,
Shubhangi Kanetkar,
Peter Li,
Farhang Zamani,
Bakul Patel,
Mike Kernaghan,
Tony Lin,
Eric Wilfrid,
Liam Patel,
Teresa Conway,
Greg Nield,
David Gorbet,
May Quan,
Chris Seitzinger,
Kasia Kranz,
John Bowler
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Pictures |
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Picture from the Microsoft celebration for the
current PowerPoint team to mark the 20th anniversary
of PowerPoint and its acquisition by Microsoft,
held at the Silicon Valley Campus on 17 August 2007.
This photo shows special guests Tom Rudkin, Bob Gaskins,
and Dennis Austin (L. to R., GBU Wizards #3, #1, and #2)
collaborating to solve how to divide a cake into 200 portions.
The cake in the photo reads "Happy 20th Year Anniversary
PowerPoint!" The headline speaker was Jeff Raikes, now
the President of the huge Microsoft Business Division, who
had the idea to acquire PowePoint and got the deal done
back in 1987.
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PNG file (1,338 KB) |
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Pictures of the Graphics Business Unit in Menlo Park in 1992 shown at David Byrne's talk "I (heart) PowerPoint" at the Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium University of California, Berkeley, on 07 March 2005 |
PowerPoint presentation (31,483 KB) |
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Driving directions to the Microsoft Graphics Business Unit, 2460 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, California in 1991 (the building in the pictures above) |
PDF Document (411 KB) |
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Microsoft Applications Division Management circa 1989
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PNG Document, approx 2Kx3K (7,104 KB) |
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The "signature" Christopher Columbus presentation
as prepared by Genigraphics Santa Clara for
PowerPoint 3.0 marketing materials, early 1992
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PowerPoint B&W overheads (380 KB)
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PowerPoint
Original PowerPoint Description
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PDF document (87 KB) |
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PowerPoint Design: Screens, Menus, Dialogs
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PDF Document (6,170 KB) |
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PowerPoint Design: Sample Output
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PDF Document (3,200 KB) |
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PowerPoint Specification
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PDF Document (15,394 KB) |
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PowerPoint Strategy Document ("Product Marketing Analysis") |
PDF document (17,289 KB) |
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PowerPoint Strategy Presentation ("New Product Strategy and Review") |
PDF document (4,966 KB) |
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PowerPoint 1.0 About-Box Screendump (running on floppy-based black-and-white Macintosh) |
PNG image (5 KB) |
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Report on the First Year of the Microsoft Graphics Business Unit |
PDF document (8,528 KB) |
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GBU Tenth Anniversary of PPT 1.0
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PDF document (1,778 KB) |
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PowerPoint Version Timeline (to PowerPoint 7.0, 1995)
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PowerPoint presentation (86 KB) |
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"The World's First Laptop Video PowerPoint Presentation,
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Press |
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The Underground Art Of PowerPoint |
Forbes story (page 1 of 2) HTML document (web page)
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We Have Met the Enemy and He is PowerPoint: |
New York Times Story (front page), HTML document (web page)
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The Problem with PowerPoint Note: although the author refers to "25 years of PowerPoint" he means since the initial two-page product idea of mid-1984. The "official" PowerPoint anniversaries have always been calculated based on the Release To Manufacturing date recorded on the diskettes in the product boxes at First Customer Ship in April, 1987. Both the GBU Wizards and Microsoft Corporation observed the 20th anniversary of PowerPoint in 2007, and we plan to hold a 25th anniversary reunion in 2012. |
PDF document (text plus slides) (640 KB)
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让Point更Power: |
PDF document (10,600 KB)
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Speaking Truth to PowerPoint:
“And yet the PowerPoint juggernaut rolls on. The reason is not just PowerPoint users’
laziness, or the software’s many attractive features. It’s that PowerPointers and SourPointers
offer different answers to a basic question: Are poor slide presentations the fault of the
presentation tool or the presenter?
“Any general opposition to PowerPoint is just dumb,” argued Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker
in an email. “It’s like denouncing lectures—before there were awful PowerPoint presentations,
there were awful scripted lectures, unscripted lectures, slide shows, chalk talks, and so on.”
Computer programming pioneer Larry Wall has argued similarly, stating: “I do quarrel with
logic that says ‘Stupid people are associated with X, therefore X is stupid.’ Stupid people are
associated with everything.”
So perhaps all we can say is, “next slide.” And please pass the doughnuts.”
| HTML document (138 KB) |
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Wow Factor Added to Corporate Presentation
| HTML document (58 KB) PNG document (notional implementation) (90 KB) |
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Creating PowerPoint:
the man who changed the way the world presents
“It seems to me most people choose the wrong time periods for thinking about work/life balance. … A startup is a chance to balance out your work and life over many decades.”—Robert Gaskins | HTML document (389 KB) |
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Big Boost from Berkeley
Photos and brief stories about 13 UC Berkeley graduate students and alums who made contributions to the personal computer revolution: Doug Engelbart, Steve Wozniak, Butler Lampson, Ken Thompson, Eric Allman, Bill Joy, John Gage, Jeff Hawkins, Gordon Moore, Andrew Grove, Paul Otellini, Eric Schmidt, and Bob Gaskins for PowerPoint. Rather amazing company; PowerPoint must have made an impression in the universities. |
PDF document (whole issue) (2,126 KB)
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PowerPoint at 20: Back to Basics
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PDF document (95 KB)
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Less is More When Developing PowerPoint Animations
| PDF document (569 KB) |
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Can Google Kill PowerPoint?
| HTML document (51 KB) |
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PowerPoint Turns 20,
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English (US edition)
WSJ website
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University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business,
beginning with the Fall 2008 term requires
students to submit PowerPoint presentations as
part of their applications for admission.
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HTML document (66 KB)
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Don't Hate PowerPoint; Hate the PowerPointers
| HTML document (23 KB) |
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PowerPoint Turns 20
| HTML document (41 KB) |
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Innovators: Robert Gaskins
| HTML document (63 KB) |
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The Top 8 Innovators of the 1980's
| HTML document (33 KB) |
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Five Experts Dispute Edward Tufte on PowerPoint:
| HTML document (17 KB) |
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Don Norman, PowerPoint Usability
| HTML document (13 KB) |
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Bob Horn, The Visual Language of PowerPoint
| HTML document (13 KB) |
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Richard E. Mayer, The Cognitive Load of PowerPoint
| HTML document (16 KB) |
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Gene Zelazny, Say It (or Don't) with PowerPoint
| HTML document (12 KB) |
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Seth Godin, Really Bad PowerPoint Revisited
| HTML document (12 KB) |
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PowerPoint is Evil
| HTML document (6 KB) |
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Killing Me Microsoftly with PowerPoint
| HTML document (34 KB) |
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Die Revolutionäre des Büros
| PDF document (German) (352 KB) |
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(The Revolutionaries of the Office
| Word document (English) (44 KB) |
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The "Power Mad" episode of "In Business"
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MP3 audio (6,531 KB)
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Absolute PowerPoint
| HTML document (34 KB) |
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PowerPoint Invades the Classroom
| HTML document (11 KB) |
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What's Your Point, Lieutenant?
| HTML document (11 KB) |
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The Linus Interview
| HTML document (76 KB) |
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PowerPoint Obsession Takes Off
| HTML document (7 KB) |
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Words Go Right to the Brain, but Can They Stir the Heart?
| HTML document (12 KB) |
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The World According to PowerPoint
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PDF document (862 KB)
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Scott McNealy Bans PowerPoint
| HTML document (1 KB) |
David Byrne ♥ PowerPoint
David Byrne Really Does Love PowerPoint
| Webpage (182 KB) |
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David Byrne’s Journal for March 2005
| Webpage (1,016 KB) |
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One Talking Head
| Webpage (110 KB) |
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What Tufte is Missing, Says Byrnes
| Webpage (188 KB) |
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David Byrne Hearts PowerPoint
| Webpage (140 KB) |
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Byrne, Baby, Byrne!
| Webpage (523 KB) |
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David Byrnes Apparently Loves PowerPoint
| Webpage (178 KB) |
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No Backing Band, Just David Byrne and PowerPoint
| Webpage (102 KB) |
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With the Lights Out
| Webpage (82 KB) |
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David Byrne Explores the Artistic Possibilities of PowerPoint
| Webpage (98 KB) |
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"PowerPoint inventor Bob Gaskins was in the audience ..."
| Webpage (91 KB) |
ParodyA few cartoons about PowerPoint (Dilbert, New Yorker, Barron's) collected since PowerPoint emerged as a popular topic beginning in the mid-1990s. | PDF document (397 KB) |
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PowerPoint Remix of Tufte
| HTML page (5 KB) |
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PowerPoint Ranger Creed, parody from the Wall Street Journal to accompany the Jaffe article (press, above), "furnished anonymously by a Pentagon power briefer", 26 April 2000. | PowerPoint presentation (1,188 KB) |
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The Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation,
| PowerPoint presentation (30 KB) |
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The Making of the Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation,
| HTML document (13 KB) |
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The PowerPoint Anthology of Literature,
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Website homepage (11 KB)
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Jim Placke's PowerPoint Humor Collection,
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Website homepage (66 KB)
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Videos |
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FLV file player to download (right-click)
| Installer .EXE (3,254 KB) |
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Power(Point) Ballad by Suite Dreams
| FLV file (7,231 KB) |
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How Not to Use PowerPoint by Don McMillan
| FLV file (8,078 KB) |
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Making PowerPoint Market Share by Microsoft GBU
| MOV file (27,623 KB) |
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Flatland
| PPT presentation (38,808 KB) |
Scans of Early PowerPoint Product Boxes |
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PowerPoint 1.0 Mac (front) |
TIF (21,970 KB)
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PowerPoint 1.0 Mac (back) |
TIF (21,699 KB)
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PowerPoint 2.0 Mac (front) |
TIF (18,635 KB)
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PowerPoint 2.0 Mac (back) |
TIF (18,732 KB)
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PowerPoint 2.0 Win (front) |
TIF (18,632 KB)
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PowerPoint 2.0 Win (back) |
TIF (18,800 KB)
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PowerPoint 3.0 Mac (front) |
TIF (18,474 KB)
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PowerPoint 3.0 Mac (back) |
TIF (18,475 KB)
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PowerPoint 4.0 Mac (front) |
TIF (19,532 KB)
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PowerPoint 4.0 Mac (back) |
TIF (19,455 KB)
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