Presentation Zen: Lessons from the art of storyboarding

From the entry:

A good storyboard artist is a good storyteller. The drawings do not have to be pretty, but they must have the meaning and the feelings behind the idea. A good storyboard artist is a good pitchman.

KeynoteUser: K09 Tip: Multi-color gradients

This is a great tip on using Keynote’s new tool for advanced gradients. I hadn’t even noticed this as I’ve worked with Keynote ’09.

Tags: keynote, software, garr reynolds

Presentation Zen: Learning slide design from an IKEA billboard

Garr Reynolds posts about the similarity between slides and billboards, inspired by Nancy Duarte's new book. He outlines eight principles found on good billboards and how they translate to slide design. As a sample, here's a video from his post.



As an aside, I think it's awesome that this entire video could be created in Keynote.



Presentation Zen: Kermit learns visual thinking

Mr. Reynolds shares an old clip of Kermit doing some visual thinking on the Ed Sullivan show. Inspiration can come from the strangest places!

Tags: garr reynolds, graphics

Presentation Zen: Ichi-go ichi-e: this is the moment

Scaffolding on Benjamin Zander's fantastic talk at TED, Garr Reynolds pens a piece about living the moment and applying the principle to approaching presentations.

Here's the presentation that inspired this post:




Seth's Blog: The three laws of great graphs

After reading this post, I'm going to have to rethink my love affair with bar graphs. Click away for some good guiding principles when adding graphs to your presentation.

Tags: graphics, garr reynolds, connections

Presentation Zen: chi-nichi issho: Each day is a lifetime

…Inspiration does not come from mere words, it comes from actions and behaviors. Words matter and words and speeches inspire and stories can change the world. However, it's not only the stories we tell, it's really about the stories we live.

Here's another great piece by Garr Reynolds that starts with Dr. Randy Pausch Last Lecture presentation and goes on to examine the way we can inspire others through our words and actions. It's a great read.

(Also, look through the comments for more stories of inspiration!)

Tags: examples, inspiration, garr reynolds

Presentation Zen: Obama, JFK vs. Bad PowerPoint

Through a couple of mock PowerPoint decks, Garr Reynolds demonstrates how poorly implemented slides can detract from an otherwise great speech – definitely worth checking out!

Tags: garr reynolds, conventions

Garr Rynolds, over at Presentation Zen, has a couple of fantastic recent posts. Give them a look if you haven't read them already.

Presentation Zen: Deep or Wide? You Decide

"Make a choice about what's important, and let go of all the rest." Mr. Reynolds covers the topic of scope vs. depth in classrooms as well as in presentations.

The problem with many presentations is that people simply try to say too much in a short amount of time. Most people struggle with practicing restraint in the preparation stage—including myself—and have a hard time making the tough choices about inclusion and exclusion before the presentation. Often no time is given to the idea of exclusion and paring down. As a result, audiences all too often get more than they want, need, or can comprehend.

Presentation Zen: Inspiration Matters

The world needs more inspiration, not less. Speaking is not the only way to inspire—actions inspire too, often more—but leaders know how to inspire with both words and action.

Tags: garr reynolds, philosophy

Presentation Zen: Learning from Bill Gates & Steve

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Garr Reynolds posts another great comparison between the presentation styles of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, focusing on the contrast between Bill Gates' formal tone of presentation and Steve Jobs' conversational tone as well as their visual styles. While the two presentations he's citing are very different, he shares some very useful insights (and be sure to read the comments for some good continued discussion).

Tags: bill gates, steve jobs, examples, garr reynolds

Did any of you feel like my last post was kind of forced? Yeah, me too. Anyway:

43 Folders: How I made my presentations a little better

Merlin Mann of 43 Folders writes an excellent piece about his own experienced in preparing presentations. He cites some individuals I find very influential myself. He summarizes many good points, and I'll be bookmarking this link for future reference.

Here's a taste of the post:

I’m not suggesting your slides should undermine you, but consider sometimes showing images and text that make an orthogonal point to what you’re saying aloud to the audience at that moment. Let them discover the point (or the joke) without you leaning on it.

Let the slide serve your message, rather than letting you (and your personality and timing) be governed by the slide. That’s ‘death,’ and that’s “The Wørd.”

Tags: 10-20-30, garr reynolds, examples, stephen colbert, guy kawasaki

To reach the broadest possible audience with your message, you have to care what others think of you. You are being judged by the audience every bit as much as your content, and, if the audience does not buy into you, they will generally not buy into your material. Think of political debates you or your family may get into as well as when the media tackles issues. Inevitably, the person behind the issues will be as much a subject as the issue itself.

Whenever you present, it's important to wear as small a target as possible. To do so, you must be very conscious of self – your appearance, the way you dress, your mannerisms and idiosyncrasies that may distract your audience from your presentation. I've seen perfectly competent presentations fail in delivery (and some great deliveries of poor material) because the presenters seemed oblivious or unconcerned with the impressions they left with the audience.

A good presentation is essentially a small-scale production, and productions need good performers.

Take these presenters as positive examples:


left to right: Steve Jobs, Guy Kawasaki, Garr Reynolds, Al Gore

These individuals are great illustrations of good performers in presentation. They are very conscious of how they carry themselves, how they speak, how they dress. I believe "refined" would be a good word for it. They realize that they are every bit as much a part of the overall presentation as any notes, handouts, slides, or other visuals. They have roles to play in the delivery of their messages, and their presence is just as orchestrated as the technology involved. As a result, the presentations are very engaging and a cut above much of what we are used to seeing.

Being an individualistic society, we value the mantra of not caring what others think of ourselves, but, if we want people to accept what we have to say, we need to make sure we are not getting in the way of our own message. Do some presentations succeed despite the speakers' imperfections? Absolutely. However, giving ourselves as much attention as our notes or visuals will go a long way in removing obstacles between our presentation and our audience's attention.

Additional Viewing and Reading

• Garr Rynolds: Top Ten Delivery Tips
• Guy Kawasaki: How to Get a Standing Ovation
• Al Gore at TED
• Zentation: Guy Kawasaki – The Art of Innovation
• QuickTime Guide – Apple Events

Tags: prep, impression, steve jobs, al gore, guy kawasaki, garr reynolds, examples

The Wall Street Journal commemorates the birth of PowerPoint this week twenty years ago. Believe it or not, PowerPoint was initially developed for the Macintosh as Presenter by Forethought, Inc. – later re-christening the software as PowerPoint. Microsoft would buy PowerPoint later that year, but the Windows version would not come out until 1990. Unlike the other staples of what has become Microsoft Office, PowerPoint has seen very few competitors emerge over the years.

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powerpoint 1.0 and powerpoint 2007 (both images from wikipedia)

For better of worse, PowerPoint has become synonymous with how we present information today. Even working primarily with Apple Keynote when on a Mac and OpenOffice Impress when on a PC, I still slip into the habit of referring to my slides as my "PowerPoint." It has become a massive time-saver for adding visual aids to a presentation as well as presenting those aids in a medium more easily shared with many. Unfortunately, as the WSJ article points out, PowerPoint has seen its fair share of abuse.

As any tool, we have to accept the fact that PowerPoint is not meant to supplant the presenter – no more than a hydraulic lift can replace an engineer. Too many PowerPoint decks are created as standalone documents that actually fail in the realm of "visual aid." Instead they present overwhelming blocks of data that end of distracting from the presentation due to the effort the audience has to commit in digesting everything.

Even if a tool is misused, it can still be a good tool. As Garr Reynolds points out in his post on PowerPoint's birthday:

We all agree that the majority of presentations given with PowerPoint “suck rotten eggs” ... [But] PowerPoint is not the cause of bad business presentations, but laziness and poor writing skills may be.

He points out that we should not blame Microsoft if our presentations are ineffective. Rather, we should reevaluate the way we prepare for the presentation. However, I have to agree with one commenter on the entry. Guillaume Gete writes:

However, I don't completely agree when you say : "Don't blame Microsoft". I believe strongly that Microsoft DOES have responsibility, not because it produces the tools that everybody uses, but also because it includes its own templates with it. These are presented (no pun intended) to anyone who opens the "Project library" which bangs at your face each time you open an Office app, and are full of advice one should *not* follow.

He has some good points, and I think Microsoft should rethink some of the templates and tips included with PowerPoint, but those are subjective opinions. My personal opinion is that the best presentations are made using the blank templates – avoiding anything but your personal vision to shine through.

PowerPoint continues to evolve, and with alternatives from Apple and OpenOffice (which is free) showing up, Microsoft has continued to refine and improve their presentation app. I'm still a Keynote junkie, but PowerPoint really launched, validated, and defines this genre of applications.

For more, check out Robert Gaskins Home Page. He was one of the creators of PowerPoint.

Tags: software, garr reynolds

Back in September, Garr Reynolds posted this image on his blog without comment. Regular readers knew what he was trying to get across.


Image by Zach Graham

One easy way to kill the momentum of our presentations is to bog the conclusion down with tedious bullet points. (The other way is by ending with your Q & A session, but we'll talk about that another time.) I remember the conclusion to a Jensen Harris presentation on Office 2007 where I noticed how excited he seemed about the product, but his conclusion slide seemed sterile and stoic. I wondered, "How can this be improved?"

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Again, minimalism is my starting point, and I felt that these three words pretty much encapsulated the entire summary. ("Find the right feature" + "Be more efficient" = "Simplify" in my book.) The word "Create" is by far the largest because that is the driving point of Office – to create content that you are likely to share with others. Also, I arced the path of the builds to create a sense of movement and perspective.

Of course, as I look through some of my presentations that haven't been updated in a year or so, I'm finding some concluding slides I want to change. Here are some summations I like and others I don't from my own material. Which ones would you change? How would you give them more impact?

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Of course, it can be hard to judge a summation without context of an entire presentation, but experiment with these slides and see how you can alter or improve them. Remember, your summation will be the final impression you leave on your audience. Don't let it be injured by stray bullets.

Tags: examples, text, garr reynolds, connections

In presentations, getting "naked" refers to giving a talk without the aid of slides. This can be difficult because so many of us have grown to use slides as a crutch. (See this entry at Presentation Zen for a great illustration of that fact.) However, in many circumstances, abandoning slides is a good idea.



One example of this comes from my obsessive downloading of featured TED Talks, one of which has Sir Ken Robinson speaking about how education can sometimes "educate" the creativity right out of the child. His speech is engaging and thought-provoking, but not one slide is shown during his talk. In fact, slides would have probably distracted from the overall feel of his presentation.

Slides can greatly reinforce of our content, and they can often help create connections between our material and multiple areas of our audience's brains. However, sometimes they are just unnecessary filler. If this is the case, leave the laptop at home (or in the hotel room), and present naked. Don't hide behind your slides. Just let your audience see you for who you are.

For more tips on presenting naked or nearly-naked, follow these links (all by Garr Reynolds):

• Make Your Next Presentation Naked
• Clear Visuals With as Little Text as Possible
• Great Presentations Are Great Conversations

Tags: TED, examples, conventions, garr reynolds, connections

In the previous post, I made the statement that your slides are not the handout. All to often, we walk into a presentation, and we are handed a packet that is no more than a copy of the presenter's prepared slides with lines along the side for taking notes. (Does anyone actually use those lines?) In other words, you get something that looks like this:

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Boxes and lines do not an ideal handout make.

I firmly believe that handouts are important – especially when the aim of the presentation is some kind of professional development as my example is. However, this approach to handouts fails on a couple of levels.

• Slides are not documents. Your slides are not your conversation. Even if you practice Death By PowerPoint, every important detail will not end up on your slides. You are cheating your audience out of the full content of your presentation by substituting a meaningful document with slides that do not convey the whole story.
  
  
• Nothing is left to the imagination. You just gave away the ending ... and the beginning and the middle. You haven't given your audience a visual aid to help them pay attention. You just handed them a checklist that allows them to keep track of just how close you are to the end. Also, if you get rushed and have to skip slides (a cardinal presentation sin in and of itself), your audience will know.

Slide printouts are a waste of paper. Better to have no handouts than something that killed helpless trees for no reason. If you are going to have a handout with your presentation, make it meaningful and helpful. Create a document that is separate and apart from your slides to be handed out after your presentation is completed. (This way the audience can focus on you rather than sheets of paper.)

Below, we have two alternative methods to preparing our handouts – each appropriate to different situations.

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Now we're getting somewhere.

The first example is the best solution in my opinion. It is a standalone document that covers all of the material in the presentation. A more involved example of this would be the handout for ICE2006 on my Presentations page. These documents are wholly independent of the slides and make for good reference even long after you give your talk. The downside is that these documents require additional planning and time investment. If your handout is going to be a comprehensive document, you need to budget the preparation of that document into your schedule.

The second example is an annotated slide printout. I exported my slides as images, and dropped them into my notes. After some cleanup, making sure all text lined up with the appropriate slides, we have a serviceable handout. While less ideal than a standalone document, this solution will allow you to create a thorough handout in slightly less time. Again, though, hand this out after you have finished talking.

Hopefully, next time you prepare a presentation, you will think about investing some time in preparing your handout. Pages of little boxes with tiny type are not the best solution for communicating your ideas in print. Instead, work on an independent document that clearly communicates your conversation with the audience. Failing that, at least create a set of annotated slides that communicate more of the information than a simple printout.

For more reading on handout preparation, see these posts on Presentation Zen:

• "Slideuments" and the Catch-22 for Conference Speakers
• Handouts Can Set You Free
• Presentation Documents and Writing for Non-Writers
• The Sound of One Room Napping
• Using Annotated PPT Slides as "Handouts"

Tags: handouts, conventions, garr reynolds

Expressionist painter Vincent van Gogh is not considered a great artist because he adhered strictly to rules of perspective, texture, or color balance. His bold, provocative works are the result of creativity usurping the rules or art classes everywhere. Van Goh didn't just break rules in his paintings randomly, however. He seemed to have a intuitive grasp of knowing just when and how to defy convention in order to gain maximum effect.

This same principle carries over to effective presentation design. Most good presenters are aware of Guy Kawasaki's 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint – that is your presentation should be no more than 10 slides, 20 minutes long, and contain no font smaller than size 30. By and large, I can say I closely adhere to two of those three rules most of the time. Most presentations I have made for church have been 10-15 slides. My fonts tend to size in the high twenties to low thirties (the rule I'm not so good at), and, when rehearsed, most last twenty to thirty minutes.

In contrast to these, my presentation at ICE 2006 was 37 slides long. Why did I so fragrantly break the 10-slide rule? Quite frankly, the rule did not fit the situation. In this circumstance, it was appropriate to break a rule for the sake of impact. Was the presentation overly long? Not counting the Q & A section, I talked and demonstrated for roughly 30 minutes, and I had a 45-minute budget. Many slides flashed by in seconds to demonstrate an effect, and, in all, the entire presentation (in its final form) has only eleven "bullet points" (though no bullets are used).


Photo by Mylerdude on Flickr

Take one of my favorite presenters for example – Apple CEO Steve Jobs. A typical Seve Jobs Keynote (aka Stevenote) will last around two hours and contain roughly 150 slides. In fact, Kawasaki says Steve follows a 125+/90/60 Rule. Despite this, Mr. Jobs is practically the paradigm of good tradeshow presentation. His visuals are effective. Most of his demonstrations are carried out flawlessly – no BSODs here – and he uses text minimally but effectively. The 10/20/30 Rule is not entirely applicable to the situations he typically presents in, and he breaks the rule in a way that has an impact on his audience.

Even Guy Kawasaki, proponent of 10/20/30 used around 50 slides in his recent Art of the Start presentation at TieCon 2006. Why? The situation and style of presentation merited the additional slides. Despite the rather large deck of slides, at no point does Mr. Kawasaki feel longwinded or drawn-out in his speech. Even Garr Reynolds has a story of a time he used 285(!) slides in a presentation he gave about the Art of Presentations. If you are using your visuals effectively, your audience will not be aware of the number of your slides or how many or few of them remain. They will simply be engaged.

In this post, I've specifically tackled one rule of presentation design, and that is intentional. To go beyond this would create far too long of a post, but I may revisit this idea of rule breaking in the future. However, in order to break rules, we must first understand and respect the rules. I recommend reading Presentation Zen and the Presenting & Speaking category of Guy Kawasaki's blog for more tips. Additionally, you can see a small sampling of Steve Jobs' presentations right here. Anything worth presenting at all is worth presenting well, so take the time to learn some guidelines for creating your presentations. After that, you can find creative and meaningful ways to break those rules.

Tags: conventions, slide count, guy kawasaki, garr reynolds