Les Posen's CyberPsych Blog

What's the Macbook Air good for? What Developmental Psychology can tell us...

Date Created: 10 Feb, 2008, 11:26 PM

I can't recall a recent Apple product which has achieved such controversy both within and outside the Apple firmament than the Macbook Air.

I attended the Macworld keynote where Jobs unveiled one of his least surprising keynote announcements, given the much-held anticipation for a subnotebook portable Mac in the vein of the Powerbook Duo.

The PC world is not exactly short of überportable laptops, with many well-known brands producing a number of lightweight, small-screened units.

Sony, with its VAIO brand, has produced some tiny, light weight PCs their owners swear by. I played with a friend's VAIO the other night, when he was using it to DJ a folkdance evening.

I have to tell you, as portable as it is, it is very hard on the eyes and I was squinting and removing my glasses (I'm short-sighted) to make the screen legible.

It made me wonder just who would use such a machine as their primary machine and why. I recall several years ago having a friend whose brother was a security and networking expert, employed by small and large enterprises for their security issues (he had a Masters degree in IT, specialising in cryptography). He toted around a small Toshiba, about the same size as the VAIO with a tiny screen, which ran Windows Xp. But he spent most time using the command line, burrowing into networks and systems gaining access to what most employees would have assumed was private email. They would have been shocked to know just how easy their email was to access on the company's server.

So here we have two particular uses for very small screen lightweight PCs, where their owners have chosen them knowing their shortcomings, and where in both cases they had access to a full size PC for other work where a small screen just wouldn't cut it. In both cases, the CPU power was not the issue. As long as each machine had useful minimal "grunt" for their specific purposes, that was all that was needed, and there was no sense of compromise.

In releasing the Macbook Air, naming it as such and advertising it as "thinnovation" in the main West Hall which I visited after the Jobs keynote to play with the unit myself, Apple has let us know where it's coming from.

Both during his keynote and in the advertising material subsequently displayed, Apple and Jobs has not told its prospective users how to use the Air, for what specific purpose it designed the Air, nor who the primary user is. They left it up to us.

We, the consumer, come to the Air with all manner of prior knowledge, fueled by rumour sites as well as Apple's history of portable Macs. And design successes, and sales failures (e.g. the Cube).

If there has been disappointment in the Air, it's our doing, having projected onto the Air preconceived assumptions.

We have tried to do one of two means by which new knowledge is constructed by human beings, first described by the Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget, a giant in the field of Developmental Psychology (above, left).

He was one of the first to describe developmental stages we all go through as we develop as children. He developed two important concepts: Assimilation and Accommodation.

Assimilation is taking new data or information and making it fit our existing body of knowledge. The Mac's OS plays into this concept far in excess of Windows, and explains to some extent Mac users' joy in purchasing new software and "knowing" how to use it - at a basic level at least -- without consulting a manual. Windows users have to contend with a "wild west" software environment where software developers seem to make up rules of behaviour as they go along. There is a discernable lack of consistency. Every so often, an Apple software developer will break out of the mould (remember Kai's Power Tools?) but they are in the extreme minority.

Another example occurs when I step off the plane in LA after 14 hours flying from Melbourne, and can hop in a car, sit in the left hand seat, use my right hand to shift gears, and drive on the "wrong" side of the road, where a left turn takes me into the centre of the intersection, rather than it being a right turn back home. So despite so many things being inverse for me, I have sufficient prior knowledge of driving and how to do it in traffic that I can easily do it despite my tiredness and disorientation. (Just as well the pedal layout is consistent with what I know!)

Accommodation is the absorbing of new information - where I know it's new - and having to make a shift in my prior knowledge because the new information forces a change to occur. In other words, I cannot maintain my current knowledge base in the face of new information. Politicians often have a tough time with this concept, twisting and turning in the wind when deception and lies are uncovered in the public domain.

On a personal level, every so often, despite thinking I'm fit and healthy, I have to run for a tram or bend to reach something, only to get easily puffed or feel I am straining. This is when I am forced to acknowledge I'm not the fit exercise instructor I once was when I was in my twenties. The rest of the time I'm quite unaware of the aging process since I use my knowledge not my muscles to provide me with a living, and it keeps getting bigger and better, ie., I am yet to have senior moments, when my memory fails me.

Learning, even for adults, is a combination of assimilation and accommodation, and I use this knowledge when I give presentations and teach people presentation skills. As much as presenters need to know about design, I believe presenters who understand how the brain works - in particular how people learn - are at a real advantage over those who focus entirely on design (Let the war of words begin!)

To some extent, the introduction of the Macbook Air is a giant Piaget experiment in the concepts of Assimilation and Accommodation.

Some were so expecting a portable, ultralight but full powered Mac that they were unwilling to assimilate the Air as their fantasy notebook. These have been the Air's harshest critics, because it doesn't fit their pre-existing model of what an ultralight should be.

Because it is ultralight, critics have projected onto it other parallel qualities it should have to complete their mental model.

They complain its footprint is the same as the Macbook, as is the screen size (which having seen it in person is much brighter). The Air's thinness, while admittedly enchanting, is insufficient to differentiate it from the Macbook which is both more powerful and capacious. And thus offers better "value".

I place "value" in quotes because it is a subjective term, difficult to objectively measure and subject to personal opinion.

I want to offer that once more Steve Jobs and his design team are offering us an education in Accommodation, just as they did with the original Mac ("it's a toy!"), the iPod ("it's just an expensive mp3 player") and the iPhone ("Apple should stick to its knitting", an expression the holder of grudges, allegedly, may well use against Australia's largest telco when it comes to awarding exclusivity of iPhone distribution sometime this year).

Once more the Apple design team reminds us of the difference between good and great design, the latter perhaps revolving around what designers choose to leave out, rather than include in their designs.

It's we, the consumer, who has to come to term with the fact the Air is not perfect, if by perfect we mean it has everything we need in a portable computer. Clearly, laptops by definition are compromises, unless you choose a preferred desktop replacement such as a Macbook Pro 17".

In my own mind, the Air is an exercise in pushing design boundaries, something we were privy to seeing when Jobs brought Intel CEO Paul Otellini on stage (right) in a "confession" that their current processors weren't up to scratch and new designs had to be forged to fit Apple's minimizing designs.

The CPU that resulted is not as fast as its larger brethren in the Macbook, according to a number of sites now publishing benchmarks. Big deal - are you surprised?

Disappointed?

Why?

What were you hoping for? The world's most perfect portable?

Please! It's a thin wireless Mac portable. You need to accommodate these facts. Apple is emphasing (and I just saw a advertisement for the Air on Aussie TV as I'm writing this blog entry) its thinness. The Air part is a play on words, as in "light as air", as well as the lack of wired connectivity it forces upon its owner, using the "air" to transmit data.

(For the presenters reading, notice how Jobs illustrates the lighter than air concept by having the Macbook Air float above its shadow, (below).

Let me offer you a little story which follows my visit to Macworld.

I travelled down to LA after, and visited a small software firm who wished to speak with me about having a greater presence in Australia. It has developed unique software which goes way beyond Apple Desk Remote and Timbuktu allowing for remote operations, and the placement of applications on central servers, providing for the use of thin clients, in enterprise and educational settings.

Its young CEO, who has worked for Microsoft and Novell, had whipped together some protocols in order to solve an inhouse networking problem (his firm initially developed enterprise level security software), when the idea occurred to him his solution had applications well outside his small family-based firm.

When he saw the keynote announcing the Macbook Air, he told me he said to himself, "There goes Jobs again, placing Apple five years ahead of the rest of the IT industry".

He immediately saw where Jobs was heading. He assimilated the Air's place in the IT world, because it fitted his awareness of where things are going, because that's where he's heading also with his software ideas.

His software will allow a family to have a central server, where Office or iWork or other apps. are stored, and each family member with his or her Air will use the app on an "As Necessary" basis without impacting any other user. A smallish 80GB iPod-based hard drive in the Air is plenty sufficient to store documents, OS X, and his software. No need to store Apps.

Heading out on the road, as long as you have a wireless connection, you'll connect to home, and continue your work. Unsure if you'll get a connection (in five years, this will be a much less problematic situation as wireless "clouds" emerge), you'll take with you a smallish USB hard drive with your apps. Oh, and any road warrior or traveller spending time in hotel rooms who is not travelling with an Airport Express (AX) needs to take a hard look at their out-of-office preparations.

(My partner and I always travel with an AX, and it remains one of the first travel "documents" we pack when we travel. Whether a hotel has an ethernet connection, or wireless unit, the AX is a no-brainer to take).

It also means that travellers need to get over the idea that they must travel as light as possible, and that additions to make the Air "useful" to them detracts from its primary purpose. Again, Apple is not telling you the Air's primary purpose, that's your concoction in order to assimilate the Air into your belief system about the meaning of portable, or road warrior, or whatever.

Those who complain that Apple "makes them" take a unique DVD player on the road with them are also not getting the Accommodation principle.

If you're going to be away from work or home, needing to be self-sufficient, and you're not taking a backup drive, a Start-up CD or DVD, or a repair disk like Disk Warrior, you're asking for trouble.

So if that's your workstyle, buy the external DVD drive and keep it stored in your hotel room or in your travel bag, along with your power supply, handouts, presentation remote control (and extra batteries), and data projector connectors.

Yes, connectors. The Air comes with two, one microDVI-DVI and the other microDVI-VGA. And there is the option to buy a microDVI-S video/Composite for US$19.

Remember, what I wrote about great design leaving things out? Let's see what Apple left in with the Air.

Many commenters have decried the minimal connections Apple included. One USB, one headphone and one micro-DVI.

Left out was a microphone jack (pack a Griffin iMic or Blue Snowball or use the built-in iSight mic.), Firewire (you're really not going to do much importing from your Sony DVcam, are you on the road?) a PC Card slot (I've had one in my Powerbook for four years and never used it - never), a modem (no longer need one on the road, although having just purchased a Phone Valet at Macworld I am using it now at home, sparingly), and an ethernet connection (this is where the Airport Express come in to play). Or you purchase an adaptor. Not having target mode via Firewire will prove a once-off challenge. See Apple's advice here.

Just because the Air is spare, you still need to keep in mind your purpose in being on the road and pack accordingly. I gave a workshop last week and used a large Travel Pro suitcase to pack all my necessary gear, including my back-up Firewire 800 hard drive "just in case". Last year, in front of some young CEOs who had come to see me present, the Powerbook failed me, and would not start up. Blue Screen. If I'd had my external drive with me, since it was a Leopard problem, not hardware, I'd have started up from its Tiger-based partition, and no one would have known the difference. A costly learning exercise. The hard drive came to Macworld with me and provided me with some safety net assurance given it was my first time presenting (I did OK).

There is one location for which the Air has come in for some major criticism, and once more it's an exercise in accommodation. And that's on board aircraft, where five hours duration seems to be the benchmark, given it's the average endurance between the US coasts, eg., New York to LA. After that road warriors travelling internationally will have endurance challenges of around 8 hours (US East Coast to Europe), then 12 hours (US West Coast to Europe), then anywhere between 12-18 hours, which is US West coast into Asia and Australia.

For the latter, you need three batteries minimum, or better still, upgrade to Business class and tote with you (yes, one more thing) an airline seat charger. By the way, the cheapest connectors simply supply minimal power to maintain charge, while more expensive units incorporate inverters which allows for charging.

But let's look ahead five years, which is where Jobs is looking now. Most business travellers will be travelling, if not in business, in an economy class which will allow both power and wireless internet connectivity (The first attempt by Boeing called Connexion, failed, but in a few years time it will be ubiquitous).

Yes, I know, you want it now. But that's not necessarily how innovation works. Sometimes you have to grow into (ie, accommodate) someone else's innovations. And that includes the Air ecosystem which is about to make its way to market, and will include dock-type devices to offer multiple USB connections, mic. in, and other "missing" components. And perhaps one bright star in this ecosystem will develop a very light weight ultrathin battery plate which fits beneath the Air. I once had such a battery, albeit as thick as the Air is thin, and heavy with 10 hour battery life from VST which I used with my Powerbook 180 more than ten years ago.

Let's see who brings one out first. Sure, it won't look pretty but it will still be thinner when combined with the Air than a Macbook. And when you're on the plane, you're beyond pretty and into practical.

... but there's one more thing...

I want to add one more point to this blog entry before guiding you to add your own comments. In a previous blog entry, I advocated that Apple's Keynote, its presentation software (which I presented with and about at Macworld) was Apple's Trojan Horse into the "Please, stop torturing us with lousy Powerpoint" enterprise setting.

I have commenced this process myself, to judge by the number of CEOs who come up to me after my presentations knowing I didn't use Powerpoint (that's a whole other blog entry I'm working on as to how they know, but it's not hard to guess), and saddened to hear I didn't use Powerpoint but an Apple proprietary software. Some in the know tell me they are preparing to buy Macs just to run Keynote to give them a distinct advantage over their competition. (I kid you not. Apple Australia - are you listening?)

Think now about what Apple left in the Air. The DVI-out connection - with two connectors, just to make it easier (Does any other Mac portable pack two connectors?)

I am advocating that the Air is a presenter's dream machine. Despite its slower hard drive, I am guessing it's got five times the processing power of my current Powerbook, and believe me I load up my slide shows with movies, animations, multiple slide builds, and really push it with 400MB Keynote files.

It occasionally misses a beat, and frankly I am in dire need of a new 'book. It won't be an Air. Surprised? Don't be. My Powerbook has been my primary computer for four years, now used 16 hours a day on average.

But in a different situation, say with an iMac as my primary machine (I design my Keynote slides with a 19" monitor plugged into the Powerbook), I'd certainly take the Air on the road with me as my primary presentation device. Now you might ask why make such a big deal about presentations, and link it to the Air.

It's because, at least according to Microsoft, some 30 million Powerpoint presentations are given each day. Leaving aside the hours of lost productivity due to how most people use slideware, this is a huge marketplace. As OS X makes its presence felt more and more in education and enterprise, those demo iWork apps. will hopefully get opened and explored.

And I'm hoping the combo of the Air and Keynote will appeal to those who are ready for a paradigm shift in how to communicate complex ideas, one of the more important concepts of the early 21st century. That's just about any knowledge worker's job nowadays.

In a few years' time, I'm hoping to attend conferences and conventions, where instead of rocking up with lousy Powerpoints on thumbdrives and CDs to place on a central server, presenters will open their Airs and wirelessly connect with the data projector and it's on with the show. No more futzing around with connectors, no more useless rebooting, no more being told you can't use a Mac "with our technology set up".

It's a few years away, but I've been ready for it for years already. Time will tell how many people have been waiting for a Macbook Air and how they're going to use it. One more webpage for Apple to eventually add to apple.com/macbook: How are you using your Macbook Air?

Of things Mac > What's the Macbook Air good for? What Developmental Psychology can tell us...

Detailed pictures of two new transitions in Keynote from Steve Jobs Macworld 2008 keynote

Two new transitions for Keynote... click on each to enlarge and start a slideshow...

Date Created: 23 Jan, 2008, 04:38 AM

We start with Leopard's default desktop image	A crease line falls a little more than half way up...
The top of the screen is revealed as the fold transition continues...	The next slide begins its reveal as the fall continues...
The next slide becomes part of the fold transition... perhaps a "spindle and mutilate" transition is on its way too? ;-0	The fold transtion is almost complete...
Done! 5M copies of Leopard folded!	Another new transition...
... begins with a twist bottom left of screen...	... it looks like a page flip we've seen before from the right
... and still looking like a page flip..	... but now we see a twist on the fold element as Today distorts...
... Today is gone as it twists outa sight...	... Today goes so quickly...
... and the twist is complete...

Presentation Skills/Keynote > Detailed pictures of two new transitions in Keynote from Steve Jobs Macworld 2008 keynote

Presenting for the first time at Macworld on Presentation skills - thoughts, aspirations and challenges.

Date Created: 15 Jan, 2008, 11:02 AM

After what felt like a quick flight over (all 12 hours non-stop), I'm now in San Francisco on Monday afternoon readying myself for two Keynotes: the all-important Steve Jobs keynote tomorrow morning, and my own about Keynote, called "Presentation Magic" which is an hour session on Wednesday after lunch.

It feels somewhat odd to be returning to Macworld after nearly a decade absence, and to be here as faculty and with priority seating for my first Jobs' Keynote in person. My senses will be in full radar mode, detecting the RDF of Jobs (Reality Distortion Field).

My presentation covers this concept without using that term, but instead looks at the field of affective cognitive neuroscience, or how we create our own reality using the brain's capacity to generate emotion, thought and feedback loops. While sounding a tad dry and hardly Macworld material, it isn't at all, and hopefully they'll not be any invitation to fall asleep, despite the post-prandial time slot. I am aiming for it to be the antithesis of "death by Powerpoint". Like my friend Garr Reynolds of Presentationzen.com, I am seeking nothing more than a paradigm shift in the way we present using slideware like Keynote.

Naturally, I'll be closely watching Jobs' use of Keynote for his keynote, which I expect will contain no surprises in terms of the Keynote software (unless an update is afoot, which I doubt), but which much of the technology world hopes does contain surprises in terms of products and services.

I haven't put my presentation "to bed" yet, preferring to wait to see if there is anything to include from the keynote, just for fun.

I have checked out my room however (2006 West) and I'm waiting to learn the resolution of the data projector just to tweak my Keynote file. The room holds about 150 people in long rows of tables, since the same rooms are being used for training purposes. Mine is not one of those, more one of "take a break from Macworld and come and have fun with presentations (but you won't be able to go back and present like you usually do once you've been in my session)". It won't be a lecture by any means.

I have been playing with the inclusion of various very short clips of favourite movies to illustrate certain ideas, but being here I have decided to pull them due to concerns over copyright. In this time of DRM and DMCA, it's hard to know what is Fair Use in copyright terms. This is a public performance for which people pay, so it's a dicey decision, and I would like to get invited back next year!

I will have some goodies to give away during the session, some Keynote themes and some books about presentation skills by Garr which I'll work into the session (that should see some positive evaluations!).

But for now, my task is to complete the slide show and rehearse my timings. Then on Wednesday, I need to get to the room early to be miked up, get the Powerbook into a position where I can see it (since I'm not sitting at a desk or standing behind a lecturn) and check the sound levels.

I have about four different introductions planned, and will leave it fairly late before deciding on which to use. How you start you presentation is vitally important when you're an unknown to the audience, unlike the expectations Steve Jobs will walk out with on Tuesday.

As an "unknown quantity" I have about three minutes of "honeymoon" with the audience and after that it's down to business. A good starting sequence of slides which grabs the attention and says "this is not going to be a session like any other you've seen" is vitally important to me. Most places I go I expect to see Powerpoint and by definition be disappointed.

My audience has either come to see me or they like the topic, having chosen to spend an hour with me rather than other Macintosh luminaries all competing for their eyeballs elsewhere in Moscone. (Or the other sessions are filled, and they might as well get their money's worth!)

My hope is they leave my session, positive in their evaluations, so much so that it vindicates Paul Kent (MD of Macworld Expo for IDG) and his decision to make me part of this year's faculty, and offer him an easy choice for next year too. (Next year is earlier - January 5 to 9).

Tomorrow the blogosphere will be filled with Jobs' keynote summaries, opinions and no doubt disappointments, which I'll leave to others initially. More likely, I'll blog again after my session and share with you my keynote thoughts, my own session debrief, and other thoughts on the Macworld experience, from the inside so to speak.

Presentation Skills/Keynote > Presenting for the first time at Macworld on Presentation skills - thoughts, aspirations and challenges.

What folk dancing taught me about presentation skills: lessons from the dance floor to the centre stage

Date Created: 22 Nov, 2007, 02:43 PM

Mention the word "psychologist" and many people immediately see patients lying on couches for years.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In 25 years of practice, I have only met one psychologist who practised this way, and he was a supervisor of mine when I was studying about 17 years ago for my clinical qualifications. He even looked like Freud (see picture, left, on his couch).

Most clinical psychologists (the ones who practise therapy) are now trained using more evidence-based treatments, much like I use to train presenters in what works best to persuade and influence audiences.

But there is a world of psychologists who never appear in movies or on television, and these are organisational and social psychologists. The former work in industry and corporations, and are more focussed on a positive relationship between people and work. The latter spend time usually researching how people behave in groups, sometimes taking in the domain of organisational psychologists.

Occasionally, as a clinical psychologist I go into organisations to deliver training utilising my clinical skills, but deliver workshops on stress, communication, knowledge management and information "overload", technology's impact on work, and of course presentation skills.

Early in my student life, I became aware of the "names" - the leading figures - in my profession-to-be. One of those was a social psychologist, who also made immense contributions to organisations, the late Michael Argyle, a Scotsman. (right)

He was a psychologist well ahead of his time, something I occasionally think about with regard to myself! Twenty years ago, he turned his scientific methods to studying the psychology of happiness, way before it became a topic of much contemporary exploitation. It was he, having established a Chair in Social Psychology at Oxford who gave us the term "social skills", a term which has now passed into everyday usage. Argyle also offered a distintly non-American style of researching non-verbal communication and shyness.

Later in his life, he turned his attention to not just definitions of happiness but how to be happy. And he concluded it was not strongly associated with wealth.

Towards the end of his career, he engaged in what was really one of the first Reality TV shows on the BBC, looking at a multiweek program to help shy and depressed people once more find their mojo. He incorporated all he had learnt over his long distinguished career to help this mixed group find joy once more in their lives.

I strongly recall the final episode of the series where he took the "graduating" class to a Scottish Folk Dance class. There he was in his kilt dancing with his group, holding hands in a circle as they learnt basic steps. He communicated in the show the value of such social activities in normal human contact, and how they could be a bulwark against depression.

Two of the features of depression are a sense of isolation, and unworthiness. Thinking becomes difficult and distorted, and low mood and energy follows. Folk dancing, Scottish or otherwise, almost always places people in a social context, usually giving people permission to hold hands or touch each other in socially sanctioned ways. Movement is planned rather than random, and gently learning movements in synchrony with the emotional impact of music, energises the brain centres not usually associated with language, thus temporarily short-circuiting the vortex of negative thinking.

(In one of Argyle's many obituaries, I located the following: "Physically energetic and active, he was for years an enthusiastic and excellent Scottish dancer. He would rather mischievously explain dancing’s appeal by suggesting that it epitomised basic factors in human happiness: a skilled activity shared by aficionados, involving vigorous exercise, social interaction, and close bodily contact with the opposite sex.)"

For the past 18 years or so, about the time I switched from educational to clinical psychology, I have been involved in Israeli folk dancing. My girlfriend at the time had taken it up (she was a former trained ballet dancer) and I formed the "if you can't beat them, join them" philosophy to spend more time with her.

This form of folk dancing is enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, not restricted to Israelis or Jews. Many from Christian evangelical movements folk dance because a subset of dances have a biblical basis, others incorporate it into their International folk dance repertoire, others because it is a social event, still others because it is fun exercise (think Texas-line dancing, or better perhaps, think not), and so on. One can be secular or deeply orthodox and enjoy dance, although the latter do it only in single sex settings.

When I first started dancing, I found that I easily learnt the steps, and moved through the various levels from beginner through intermediate. Eventually, having amassed a reasonable repertoire (an average dancer will know a thousand or so dances), and with a "clean" dancing style (my steps were easily copied) I was approached to become a teacher, and I have been teaching for about ten years now.

I was also the first to take digital videos of dancing and using my Titanium Powerbook, Apple's iTools, iMovie, and Apple's .Mac homepage software, quite revolutionised the Israeli folk dance "movement" in 2001 by disintermediating the existing sources of dance distribution such that even very small groups in Taiwan, parts of Europe and the US, and New Zealand, can watch dances and maintain their connection to the dance community.

On a parallel track, as my attention turned to better presentation skills, starting because of the appalling presentations I had to endure when I returned to study at the post-grad level in 2003, I began to see the relationship between how I taught dance and how I taught presentation skills.

Let me make a disclosure: Whatever I have learnt in both domains has not come from formal didactic teaching, but from my being exposed initially to others' teaching methods as a student, then my honing my talents when I became a teacher. With regard to my presentations, I continue to stay up to date with the vast body of academic research on the topic. With dancing, I speak often with professional teachers about their methods, and of course participate in their workshops.

Naturally, over time, I have developed my own teaching style in both the dance and presentation domains. And I see an important crossover, joining these seemingly disparate ventures. But they have much in common.

Both require complex ideas or movements to be broken down into components - made simple - then reassembled seamlessly so they became memorable, engaging and persuasive. Both are usually performed in groups that are often diverse, with respect to prior knowledge and current skills. It is up to the leader/presenter to ascertain ahead of time some measure of the groups familiarity and skills level, and then continuously monitor in real time how the group is taking up the ideas or movements.

In each case, repetition is important - not too much lest you take too much time and dumb it down; not too fast so that important concepts are insufficiently linked, preventing appropriate take up of the next important concept or step sequence.

In both cases, learning is enhanced if the teacher/leader conveys passion and enthusiasm, frequently checking with the group as to their assimilating the new material, reviewing progress so as to appeal to the widest possible number of group members so none are left behind and the quickest learners don't feel held back.

This requires mastering a challenging set of skills on the part of the presenter.

Not just do you have to know your material (the dance) back, front, and upside down, you have to know how to teach or convey the concepts, not just what to convey. Too much detail, and the audience is bored and confused, too little and the concepts ask too much of a leap of logic or physical prowess for the average group member to absorb.

Moreover, it requires considerable rehearsal before your present to a live audience to know how to teach or present. For both presenting and dancing, I'll rehearse sequences over and over to learn my own weak points. If i can't do the steps or convey the concepts, the audience won't get it either. One doesn't do the presentation or dance in one's head, you stand up, find some space and do it aloud, practising timing and movement. I can't emphasise this similarity enough, and their absolute importance if you're going to nail it when you perform the real thing.

Presentation giving and dance teaching also require not just a fundamental understanding of the central ideas or step sequence, well rehearsed, but they also demand the teacher/leader take a very educated guess as to the parts of the dance/talk where the audience is most vulnerable to not "getting it". This is often perceived during practice runs.

For beginners, this can be where the dance sequence causes them to face away from the teacher who usually teaches in an inner circle. Facing outwards, they must now rely on audible commands, rather than watching and emulating the teacher. In presentations, there is also a curious mix between what is said and what is seen, and better presenters know when to emphasise each. They know when to highlight aspects of a slide, not by relying on a wavering laser pointer, but being a step ahead and guiding the audience to look at a part of the slide, perhaps by circling it in red, or keeping that area sharp, while diffusing the surrounding area.

Even when dancers are looking at the teacher, he or she can improve the likely take up of the dance steps by verbalising the steps, just like a presenter verbalises a concept then shows the word after (so the presenter doesn't read the slide to you, the number one enemy of good presenting - unless it's a quote). You use a language that does not contain jargon, unless it's a technical term that best summarises a step sequence. Shifting weight from one foot to the other is called a "sway", which may need to be verbalised to beginners, but is an assumed term for more advanced dancers, a short-cut or "chunk" if you like. One "builds" a dance by helping people "chunk" sequences. It's no wonder Keynote refers to "builds" on a slide.

My whole presentation and teaching style can be summed up this way:

I know what the whole thing will look like at the end of my time in the centre/in the limelight. I also know I have to build up a story-like set of sequences, each with its own integrity, to be assembled into a consistent, reliable "whole" eventually. I know or seek to know where the weak links are, where the group has to make a leap - a new concept or unfamiliar step sequence - and choose the right way to connect "new" to "familiar". These are called transitions, and they are an important aspect of both presenting and dance teaching.

My task is to challenge the audience by taking familiar elements and presenting them in consistent ways (all folk dances contain a majority of familiar elements or sequences put together uniquely for each piece of music or song); or take unfamiliar ideas and simplify them by breaking them down into easily assimilated components.

In each talk I give, I take people out of their comfort zones ("Huh? Why is he talking about THIS?") and then bring them back onto a central idea or theme, where the audience goes "Aha!" when they get it. It's the same for dance. They go "Huh" when they see a complicated sequence, then go"Aha" when they get it. "Ahas" are very important means to make an emotional connection to the group/audience, and means they are coming with you on your story-telling journey to their enlightenment or enjoyment.

Both dances and presentation end up being filled with "Huh? - Aha!" sequences leading to mastery of new concepts.

For dancers, mastering a new dance is a real accomplishment especially if it looked challenging when the teacher first demonstrated it. For presenters, seeing your audience nod their heads, or laugh, or cry when they absorb your ideas, is the same thing and just as satisfying.

And there is one more component of similarity. Both require the teacher/presenter to seamlessly integrate new technologies with old or new ideas. The presenter must use the technology and place it front and centre when needed, then get it out of the way when unnecessary to convey concepts.

For the dance teacher, he or she needs to understand how to speed up or slow down the music to assist the dancers, adjust the most appropriate volume, work with the wireless microphone to maintain clarity of expression, and not be fazed when the technology falls over, which happens on a too frequent basis to the best of us.

Just like forgetting a dance step, or momentarily getting lost in your talk, better presenters/teachers have an array of stories to tell while the equipment is being reset, or their brains re-adjust should they forget or become distracted.

Recall Steve Jobs at this year's Macworld keynote where his slide clicker wouldn't function, his back-up also failed, and so while the assistants were rebooting, he told a story of how he and Woz in their early days would use clicker-like devices (remotes) to play pranks on Woz's dorm mates.

Contrast that with Bill Gates on The Late Show with Conan O'Brien a few years back during CES, where Bill continually fiddled with a Window Media Centre remote which refused to do his bidding. Bill kept clicking with Asperger's-like frequency when it would have been best to joke with Conan on what is really his comedy show.

Experienced presenters/teachers come equipped with funny little stories ready to launch in case of equipment or brain failure, which can happen because we're human, and Murphy has not left the building. Or if the group or audience is struggling to get the concepts, better presenters don't make fun of them, but of themselves to normalise the experience. Unhappy audience members do not learn easily, while happy engaged members have an easier time of it, and will stay the course when the concepts get difficult.

But mastering difficult concepts or steps produces much enjoyment and self-satisfaction which has two flow on effects: people come back for more, and they wish to share the fun and bring others back with them.

Presentation Skills/Keynote > What folk dancing taught me about presentation skills: lessons from the dance floor to the centre stage

Why Keynote could be Apple's enterprise Trojan Horse - or what Google could learn from Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead"

Date Created: 11 Nov, 2007, 09:20 PM

A few, pre-Leopard, weeks ago, I wrote of Al Gore's success in sharing the Nobel Prize for Peace.

I asked the readership to consider how successfully Gore's message would have been received if he'd conformed to the traditional cognitive style of Powerpoint, which is to boringly reduce complex ideas into fractured bulletted selling points.

Indeed, I said I was preparing to use two images of Gore, one with him presenting about Hurricane Katrina using Keynote, and the same image of Gore Photoshopped in front of a bullet-point slide, using the usual blue background, in a presentation on Presentation Skills to a group of business people. (Scroll down to the previous blog entry to see).

They were invited to attend a business breakfast presentation in the Melbourne seaside suburb of Elwood, in a restaurant called "Sails" (below, right), with its own special meeting facilities.

This was to be a one hour presentation to CEOs, national sales managers, property developers, lawyers and accountants, and various business owners, all of whom employed presentations in their work, with internal and external clients.

And as I was to discover after the presentation, none had heard of Apple's Keynote, none used Macs, and of course all used various flavours of Powerpoint.

It requires no genius to guess that inviting a cross-section of the business community to such a presentation would offer up that 100% used Powerpoint.

It was in that vein that I prepared my presentation, one that I have given numerous times this year around Australia, but which changes each time so as to reflect recent events to give the presentation more currency, and thus raise its "engagement quotient".

While the beginning and conclusion will vary, the middle section contains favourite elements (groups of slides that tell a story) in order for me to get across my main messages:

1. How to engage audiences using what cognitive neuroscience tells us how we orient, learn and remember.

2. What makes my way of presenting different from the 30 million Powerpoint presentations Microsoft says is offered up each day. And why it is based on evidence, rather than tradition and social conformity.

3. Slides that provides categorical and undeniable evidence as to why my method works, engaging the audience in its own learning process using visual and other illusions that deeply impress the audience. It conveys to the audience both my expertise and my sense of fun - a rare combination.

4. That I am doing the walk and the talk at the same time - the talk is not just about the slide content (issues related to text, images, colour, movement, etc), but about how to make the technology go front and centre when it's needed, and then have it get out of the way when I resume centre-stage. To this extent, whenever I play a movie (I played several in the talk), I don't stand near the screen or the Powerbook, but I sit down with the audience, watching their reactions, which might form part of what I'll say next when the movie stops and I need to describe and elaborate on perhaps the more subtle aspects missed on first seeing some of the videos.

(See my blog entry about Paul Potts and story-telling. I showed this video and had senior managers verging on tears as many had yet to see it).

In fact, let me share one of the the videos that early in the talk set the pattern. It was about patterns, and how we are pattern-detecting creatures, and this ought to form the basis for our slide creation. A few weeks before, I'd heard the esteemed Harvard psychologist, Steven Pinker, interviewed by WNYC radio host, Leonard Lopate, a favourite podcaster.

Lopate began his interview with Pinker by reminding him of his encounter with the comedian Stephen Colbert, on the faux Fox News-style The Colbert Report.

Colbert comedically put Pinker on the spot by asking him, "Ok, describe how the brain work - five words or less."

Caught momentarily off guard, Pinker caught his breath then magically ad-libbed:

"Brains.cells.fire.in.patterns".

Brilliant! And exactly the neuroscientific message I wanted my audience to see. So I tracked down the Colbert Report (February, 2007), clipped the section I wanted, saved it in Quicktime format, and embedded it into a plasma screen in a Keynote slide (See below). It played perfectly on cue, and deeply impressed the audience.

That said, I made one monumental error.

I mistimed the talk, and stopped at the appointed time with this slide:

I looked up and saw that we had only 5 minutes of question time, and this section, despite me trimming it down, would take at least 20 minutes. And this was really the "money slide": many of those attending really wanted to know about charts and graphs as they spent so much time developing and analysing them in their businesses.

Now I could have commenced my presentation with the Charts section. But without the theory and examples I had offered as to why an alternative to Powerpoint's traditional bulleted text style is needed - and how there is an evidence base to this - I would have neutered its impact.

So I took a risk: I said to the assembled group that I had committed one of the cardinal sins of presenting, asked for their forgiveness, and suggested we return very soon for a follow-up breakfast, where, following a brief recap, we would spend exclusive time on charts and the visual representation of information. And if they wished they could send me their own Powerpoint slides and I would offer a critique of how they could be altered to make them impactful - if they needed it.

This retrieved the situation and many after expressed a desire for the talk to be expanded into a three hour training session.

For me, this meant that many had "got" what I had tossed up in a high-risk play. As one soon-to-be-CEO said during the question period, "We think we do great presentations, but you've raised the art of presenting to a whole new level!"

This is music to a presenter's ears, isn't it?

In the aftermath, as people were packing up to go about their morning's work, quite a few came up to me afterwards, and asked what I had used to perform the presentation.

These very experienced presenters knew it wasn't Powerpoint. The clarity of the minimal text I used, the sharpness of the illustrations, the different transitions handled with devastating smoothness by Keynote, the ease with which movies played embedded in the slide without dropping into Windows Media Player or Quicktime, and how it all worked together to reinforce and illustrate what I said, all screamed,

"This is not your father's Powerpoint!"

Think for a moment what these various experienced presenters - for whom presentations really count (we're talking multi-million dollar contracts in some cases) - encountered.

They were challenged to consider that their trusted and much used means to convey information was based on tradition, social conformity, and the vagaries of Microsoft's software engineers (yes, I showed them pictures of Bill Gates' recent presentations to make my points).

That was the theory. Then they had to experience the challenge of seeing and hearing a different style of presentation, fuelled behind the scenes by Keynote's ineffable qualities. I made no mention at all of Keynote, or that I was using a Mac (which could have been using Powerpoint for OS X).

But these experienced presenters came up and asked what I had used. I said aloud, it's a software program from Apple with an educational price of $79:

"Great, Les! Is it available for PCs?"

"Um, no. Sorry."

And therein lies the sting in the tale (sic).

Apple doesn't need to write specialised applications to help it gain access to the enterprise setting, nor offer up different versions of Leopard to satisfy PC-dominated IT departments. Nor kill its marketing mien by porting OS X to the PC, despite the noisy clamour of the crowds.

It can get to the organisational "C" level, vaulting over the IT department lackeys, by helping get the focus on the bottom line where Boards of Directors need to see how a company's strategy will play out.

Go along to any stockholders' AGM and watch the CEO give his or her Annual Report, and die another Powerpoint death. Perhaps a graphics department has prepared the report (perhaps using Macs) but you can be pretty sure it will be delivered in the familiar style of Powerpoint.

Notice this screen shot (above) of a CEO's 2007 AGM speech online, which cleverly incorporates his slides. Notice how, while employing the company''s logo and brand colours, they are the usual "stiff" slides, mirroring the CEO's stiff presentation style. The company is Nordea, a Nordic bank of 10 million customers.

Around the world each day, there are probably scores of such dry dull CEO speeches being given: passionless number regurgitation using passionless Powerpoints.

It's at this point I reflect on an important, influential film I always watch when it makes it occasional appearance on the Turner cable network. It never fails to remind me that running against the social conformity of crowds and following your passion is my preferred way of acting (both as a psychologist and trainer of presentation skills).

This is the movie adaptation of Ayn Rand's, The Fountainhead.

Featuring Gary Cooper as a rebellious architect named Howard Roark (with strong overtones of Frank Lloyd Wright), it also stars Raymond Massey as a newspaper magnate (think William Hearst) publisher of "The Banner" and Patricia Neal, playing the newspaper's Design and Lifestyle journalist.

There are other more unidimensional characters, such as the newspaper's architecture critic, played by Robert Douglas and a fellow architect graduate of mediocre abilities who is used despicably by the critic in order to belittle the creative genius of Roark, who threatens established architecture with its conservative adherence to Classic Greek facades. More importantly, his rampant individualism strikes at the heart of the conservative establishment as well as the hoi polloi to whom The Banner panders.

Roark is initially mentored by an architect who has come up againt the conservative architectural community, and takes over his practice... where he waits ... and waits... including labouring in a quarry, and doing small jobs. Eventually he gets noticed and admired by self-made individualist entrepreneurs, not beholden to Establishment forces.

When he does eventually get an important commission for an apartment block by a visionary CEO, his life changes. While innovative parts of his work are admired, and co-opted by the Establishment, he knows (nor cares) that his body of work will never be accepted, unlike his mediocre school contempory, Peter (played by Kent Smith).

Roark, like Frank Lloyd Wright, and more recently, Frank Gehry, feels unbound by tradition. He breaks through with new materials, new ways of thinking about the integrity of buildings and their purpose in people's lives. (Yes, this is where you start to think - if you haven't already - of Steve Jobs and Jon Ives. As an aside, Wright was approached to design the building illustrations to be used in the film, but Warner Bros. rejected his financial terms).

When he secretively wins a huge commission to design a housing facility for disadvantaged populations, by allowing Peter - the darling of the Establishment - to take credit for it, he is then bewildered and angered to learn that his individualist approach has been overtaken by an architectural committee so that all may have a role in the building's construction.

This is where you think Googlephone, by the way. A phone or its software designed by committee, compared to the laser-like focus brought by Apple to the iPhone. Maybe Sergei and Larry ought to be sent a Fountainhead DVD to think about how each product they design needs to have its own purpose and intregrity and design-by-committee doesn't work.

In the Fountainhead, the committee-rejigged housing project is a disaster, far removed from its original purpose and design intelligence.

Roark is so angered he dynamites the yet to be completed development.

(This then allows for a very Ayn Rand court scene, above left, where the main protagonist has many pages of script to expound Rand's Objectivism philosophy).

What's the point of all this?

Well, to paraphrase Roark, a presentation has its own purpose and integrity, tailored for each audience, matching the qualities of the presenter. You can't take the company message, branded by the PR and Marketing department, laying out the company's dreams in bullets, and expect to deliver it with passion, gusto and engagement.

As a for instance, last weekend, I gave a scientific presentation to psychologists on something called "heart rate variability" and how to use the underlying science to help their patients. Within the workshop, I used some Powerpoint slides given to me by one of the world's leading authorities from a previous all day workshop he had conducted in Melbourne.

But it wasn't me. It was full of typically academic tables and poorly formed graphs, and the difference between my initial slides setting the stage and his scientific slides was like night and day. I felt like continually apologising, as this group had seen me in action a month before, and wrote to say it was the best presentation they had ever experienced.

They accepted the slides' limitations, but it required me to work hard to explain the slides' essential messages.

Let me come back to conclude this entry with a brief further discussion of my presentation to the CEOs and others at Sails recently.

Doing the presentation as I did, saw several CEOs and national managers express a desire to follow up with some inhouse training. They were able to admit, afterwards, that they too are thoroughly "over" the traditional presentation style, and would dearly love an advantage over their competitors by doing it differently.

Perhaps I was lucky, or in particularly good form that day, but there was almost complete agreement amongst those present that I had achieved the outcome touted on the publicity flyer prepared fo the event: that at its end, they would be compelled to think differently about how they presented.

Word in fact came back a week later from one lawyer who had later that day attended a senior presentation by a revered member of the legal fraternity, partly fell asleep during the Powerpoint (complete text and bullets) and then spoke to him about my presentation and how it was in a different league.

That's also what a presenter about presentations wants to hear: others proselytising your work. And along the way sooner or later Apple's Keynote will get a mention for its ability to allow the audience to fully experience the impact of the theory and practice I demonstrate during my talks.

The question however will always be asked: Cannot the same result be effected with Powerpoint?

Probably.

And, I'll believe it when I see it.

For now, like Howard Roark, I'll gently peddle my message to whomever wants to hear it, in the belief that out there are business leaders ready for a change, who are not beholden to an IT Establishment who poo-poos the Mac as only being for the arty types, and who care about doing it differently, without fear of hide-bound criticism from their conservative Boards.

Got some comments to make? Use the comments section, but please, this is not about Powerpoint versus Keynote per se: it's about a style of presenting, of sharing knowledge.

And finally, I am soon moving my presentation ideas to its own blog. Blogwavestudio (what you're seeing now) doesn't play nice with Leopard. And in preparation for my presentation on Keynote at Macworld January 2008, it really needs its own space on the web.

Presentation Skills/Keynote > Why Keynote could be Apple's enterprise Trojan Horse - or what Google could learn from Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead"

Congratulations to Al Gore... but what might have been if he'd used Powerpoint, not Keynote?

Date Created: 13 Oct, 2007, 03:48 PM

Well, it's clear that Apple is pretty proud of its Board member, if you went to their webpage in the day(s) after the Nobel committee announced his joint winning of the Peace prize (above).

I am compelled to write this blog entry not just because in the next week or so as various media absorb this story then pontificate upon it ("Will Gore run for Democratic nominee for President? Will Hillary offer him a place in her West Wing if she is the successful nominee?") we will also hear legions of stories of how Gore used Powerpoint to deliver his "Inconvenient Truth" presentation, initially at Ted.com, then via the movie heard and seen around the world.

In Australia, which Gore has visited recently and where he was feted by many politicians other than our Prime Minister, who famously stated he didn't want to meet a failed presidential candidate nor did he want to see his movie, his Nobel prize has received much media coverage.

It is especially so because the same Prime Minister has announced, within 48 hours of the Nobel committee's announcement, that Australians will go to the polls to elect a new government in late November. And he is trailing in the polls badly, having dissed the climate change debate, not signed the Kyoto protocol and is looking increasingly out of touch even with those in their 50s, many of whom have become very wealthy during the past ten years of economic prosperity in this country.

(Their children however have delayed marriage and childbirth and are having a heck of a time finding affordable housing in the meantime, and are very worried about the world they will bring their children into, as a legacy of the Prime Minister's lack of ecological planning and foresight).

And that is probably a blog entry in a far more politically oriented blog. For now, my question is the validity of Apple and its adherents (fanbois to some of you) enjoying the attention Gore is receiving, not just for being a mate of Apple and Steve Jobs, but because of his extensive use of Keynote for his presentations.

Gore joined the Apple Board in early 2003, soon after Keynote was released to an unsuspecting public, who had never really questioned how Steve Jobs weaved his magical keynotes each Macworld.

I first saw the prelude to An Inconvenient Truth via a TED internet cast, probably my first, in 2006. At TED, all presenters are expected to deliver their slide show (as most choose to use) in no more than 18 minutes.

I recognised Keynote immediately.

As it turns out, while some might believe Gore came to his epiphany about climate control after his unexpected loss in the 2000 Presidential race, he has in fact been giving slide shows on global warming (using 35mm slides) since 1988.

Following his appointment to the Apple Board in early 2003 after Keynote's release at Macworld 2003, he was taunted by wife Tipper (who called him "Mr. Information Superhighway") to get with the program and use a computer for his presentations.

As my mate Garr Reynolds tells it, Gore consulted the Duarte Consultancy in California to help develop the Keynote presentation, and they also assisted on its conversion into the movie we now know as An Inconvenient Truth.

Now just imagine that in 2002 Gore had been very friendly with Bill Gates, who through his philanthropic trust, offered him many millions to pursue his passion, but on the condition he used Powerpoint in making the transition from 35mm slides.

So instead of following the cognitive style of Keynote - heavy on the graphics, no bullets, and low on the text (but what text there is, is beautifully rendered) - and slides that looked like this

it instead would follow the cognitive style of Powerpoint and look like this:

Ugh!

You got to wonder if this was the sort of show Gore had taken around the country, and the world, would it have gotten nearly the same reception as his presentation has ultimately received?

Head over to the TED site, which is really chuffed about Gore's Nobel win, and read the reactions to his original Keynote presentation in 2006. Here are a few samples.

Note how people are moved by what they saw and heard:

My wife and I came to TED uncertain about Al Gore and not thrilled to hear him. He seemed fake to us in the national political election he had gone through. His presentation profoundly changed our view of him even more than his message. We bought the messages. We did not buy the message presenter. At TED, he gave a sense of his humor, three-dimensionality, commitment to the cause, ability to criticize himself. We left with a positive attitude toward him and a commitment to help. -- David and Heidi Hoffman

At TED2006, Al Gore brought alive a vital and little-understood subject with humble, direct, passionate facts that were a call to action far beyond his previous resume as a politician -- bravo to a great humanist leader who made us address our history! -- Randy Antik

At 60 years old, there are rare seminal moments that cut across the arc of your life that make you stand up and cheer with joy of a 3-year-old, the passion of a 16-year-old and the wisdom of a 60-year-old -- Al Gore did that at TED! -- Sandra Kulli

Focused, impactful and powerful: his message changed how our family minimizes our impact on the earth in our everyday decisions, as well as how we can become an advocate for environmental issues as global citizens. -- Brett Bullington

Al Gore's talk on Global Warming was his most passionate, convincing talk that I had heard him deliver. It instantly heightened my awareness, understanding and sensitivity to the issue which has driven me to do the same for the people that I meet and do my part in reducing factors that affect Global Warming. -- Rakesh Sapra

Al Gore's presentation on Climate Collapse was the defining event of the 2006TED conference - it brought the audience together in community and gave perspective to all other conversations, focussing the sense of purpose we all felt when we left. -- Dorothy Lawson

You can read more opinions at the TED site here.

Now as someone interested in the psychology of resilience, as opposed to depression, Gore's story holds much importance. While some, such as conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, have suggested he had only himself to blame for losing the 2000 election, even he agrees that in the aftermath, Gore has re-invented himself, giving full reign to his passion for changing the world for the better.

For myself, Gore's use of Keynote was instrumental in his elevation in the public's estimation and his avoidance of the style of Powerpoint (as compared to the application itself, although one wonders whether he could have achieved the same output with PPT).

Next week, I'm giving a talk on better business presentations to a group of Melbourne business people (it's a business breakfast in Elwood) and you bet I'll be mentioning how Gore used visuals to make his case.

I'm expecting most in attendance will have never seen Keynote in action, and will be very used to seeing bullet points, lists of text, and inscrutable chart junk in their corporate lives.

No matter your politics, Gore's use of Keynote is one to look and learn from. So yes, Apple can be proud of his achievements on a variety of fronts. For me, it's a two edge sword. Privately, I can take some pride in my favourtte app's role in Gore's success. Publicly, I am going to have to endure more media references to Gore's "award winning Powerpoint presentation."

So, congrats Al Gore, Apple and Duarte - you've shown how great presentations can help change the world for the better.

Presentation Skills/Keynote > Congratulations to Al Gore... but what might have been if he'd used Powerpoint, not Keynote?

Of whining and other adolescent carrying on about Apple, the iPhone and hackers: lessons from Family Therapy and Freud.

Date Created: 09 Oct, 2007, 01:56 AM

Where are you in the arguments over hacking the iPhone, its alleged bricking on purpose by Apple, and those who believe Apple is the new Microsoft, meaning all things rotten in the world of technology?

I've sat and watched and read and listened to pundits and podcasters alike weighing in on whether success has gone to Apple's head (with its share price higher than it has been in years and still heading north), and whether Apple is now eating its young.

You know, you can substitute "Steve Jobs" for "Apple" and thus personify these arguments. Most who believe, I will assert, that those "mistakes" Apple will soon regret making to be the fault of one man: Steve Jobs and his (choose the word that most appeals or you have read elsewhere) megalomania, narcissim, huge ego, deafness to the hoi polloi, single-mindedness, laser focus on design, way or the highway approach, etc etc.

So I've thought about this turn of events for some time, and wondered what I could add to the mix to understand it for myself, and share my views with others.

Let me preface my remarks by stating my principal means of working as a clinical psychologist is to apply a rather behavioural model to my work. This means I work with patients to help them do things differently, rather than merely feeling different. Part of the method is to guide them to think differently, to coin a phrase.

This approach is known as Cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT) and it has more runs on the board when it comes to evidence-based practice than most other therapy approaches, including Freudian, Family Therapy, and Neurolinguistic programming (NLP).

But in my studies, I also learnt how to practise those therapies, gaining some understanding of them and their utility in certain situations.

Freud, for all the nonsense and unprovable ideas he developed, helped us understand the presence of a mental life outside of our immediate conscious awareness. Some call this an unconscious while others call it a pre- or sub-conscious.

Both of these allude to the idea that much of our actions, feelings, and thoughts are not necessarily under our immediate control, and only after some time has elapsed do we come to an understanding of how and why we did what we did. Slips of the tongue, forgetting people's names we know very well, absent-minded behaviours are all examples of the limited awareness we have of our own actions and motivations.

The reaction to recent Apple/Steve Jobs activities has all the hallmarks of a family undergoing challenges to its development. This is where a study of Family Therapy has something to offer. Some of the early family therapists were refugees from Freudian therapies, looking for individuals' "troubling" behaviours coming at times when the family was undergoing predictable changes, or developmental tasks, e.g. children first going to school; reaching puberty; beginning to date; going to college, etc.

Many in the Apple sphere think upon the corporation as if they are members of its large extended family. Apple owners tend more than most to have a positive emotional relationship with its technologies, naming hard drives with cute names rather than the boring C or D drive nomenclatures their PC-owning cousins endure.

Indeed, as much as PC-owning friends have traditionally boasted of the flexibility of their hardware systems, it's been Apple owners who have utilised software to individualise their Macs. Shareware developers have assisted in this endeavour for many years, and have led the way in designing high quality software to extend the useability of Mac hardware. Poorly designed software is found out very quickly on the Mac platform, and I would assert there is no shortage of such low quality software on the Windows platform, requiring its users to spend many hours sorting through what's good and what's dross.

Mac users have many means by which to learn about new shareware, and we have engaged in social networking for the purpose of enjoying and extending the use of the Mac way before Tim O'Reilly concocted the term "Web 2.0".

Somewhere along the way, with the introduction of the much hoped-for iPhone, many shareware developers expected their creativity would extend to this new platform. Recall the whoops of delight when, in January 2007 at his Macworld Keynote, Steve Jobs announced the iPhone would run a version of OS X.

But in time, this paternal largesse was revealed to be illusory. It was to be Steve Jobs' way or no way at all.

"Dad" turned out to be, for some, a family tyrant, dictating to his teenage children new limitations and expectations: "I know what's best for you, and right now is not a good time to open up the iPhone."

What made matters worse for some in the Apple family was Steve Jobs getting into bed with a new stepmother: AT&T.

Like many children from a newly-formed blended family, we were not privy to what really attracted Dad to his new wife, our new "mother", but we were told it was for the best, and we'd learn to like her in time. The same thing happened when Dad was revealed to have been having a secret affair for years with Intel, but we learnt to live with that, and even rejoice in all the new things the Apple family could do now that Intel was part of the extended family. (My original take on the Apple/Intel alliance, comparing it to professional wrestling, can be found here - well worth the read.)

Meanwhile, certain unhappy adolescents believed they were entitled to do what they liked and ignore Dad's rules, and were dismayed that when he said he was going to ground them for their breaches, he really meant it! Hence, bricked iPhones with others in the family saying "well, you got what you had coming - don't say you weren't warned."

Let's call that old-fashioned sibling rivalry.

In truth, both groups (the goody-goodies and the naughty ones, whom we'll call hackers or independent developers) dearly want the approval of Dad, and long for him to take some pride in their endeavours.

Secretly, they'd like nothing more than Dad to take them to his bosom and praise them for how they have contributed to the family, and brought him naches.

The secret unconscious desire for many hackers is for Dad to publicly recognise them, and to offer them jobs within Apple. When Dad doesn't do this, and indeed seems to thwart them, then Oedipal rivalry occurs, a love-hate relationship with Dad, and a desire to harm him. Thus the many writers who now say they won't buy an iPhone or who tell others that Apple is not the same company they knew it to once be, thus revealing a level of "stuckness" most family therapists understand.

That they do themselves no favour by standing on principle and going without doesn't seem to faze them. After all, this period of adolescence is one where young people explore values, morals and self-identity. It is also a time of magical thinking and super-sensitivity to peer group attitudes and behaviours.

Dad, on the other hand, still wants what's best for his family, while keeping his new wife happy in this new blended system. And he wants to keep working on his own projects, secretly off in his garage, tinkering and inventing, occasionally having friends over to enjoy the shared projects (think Jon Ives and his design team).

Personally, having watched Dad in action over many years, I am still of the opinion that he is not foresaking principles for the almighty dollar. He has said so on enough occasions when he's talked about that other family who live in Redmond, and how loads of money seem to never make them happy enough, nor offers them good taste.

If Dad is different than most other dads, it's because he is so future-oriented. He seems never to look at old family albums, and nostalgia is not his game. He is not interested in how his family began, and how he himself was something of a lad when his older brother, Woz, and he went on a bit of rebellious streak, funnily enough fooling around with one of his new wife's close relatives thirty years ago.

While the world of technologies may change rapidly, people and families are slow to change, and we continually play out familiar routines and patterns. Dad shutting out the kids from his tinkering in the garage is same-old, same-old, and when he's ready to show his latest invention, he'll make it easy for the kids to have their say and play with it once he has worked out the bugs.

Until then, all the adolescent champing at the bit, and all the thinking that the kids are owed something by Dad for their loyalty or creativity will amount to nought. I'm guessing Dad is very aware of the kids' whining and carrying on, but he has to take care of his relationship with the new wife first and foremost, while tending to his soon-to-be-finished projects, which will amaze his family when they've complete.

The funny thing is, there are many in his extended family who are currently enjoying his products just as they are, using them just as Dad said they could, and who are revelling in his clever ideas turned into technologies that work.

Dad knows enough about technology after all these years to be aware that technology always leads a double or shadow life. One being the intended purpose, the other being the use of technology to explore solution finding other than the original problem it was designed to solve. This is the world of the individualist hacker, and the world where, if he had the inclinination to look, the domain in which Steve Jobs' relationship with technology began.

The tough task he faces is how and when to let the kids have their way and exploit their own creativity, up against his many years of tinkering and his vision of problems which most have no idea how to solve. But he does.

Sooner or later, all that adolescent whining will pass, and some adults will look pretty silly in the process, because they didn't learn their history lessons and pass it on to their younger mentees. And as much as some in the family will now be feeling quite disenfranchised by Dad's seemingly inexplicable actions, in the next couple of months much will become clear, and those with patience and dare I say faith in their Dad will beam when they see what Dad's been working on, when others were moaning and complaining. And the family in Redmond were promising and plotting, but revealing of themselves as being no better than copiers masquerading as innovators.

In a couple of weeks, we'll see the a delayed product of Dad's recent labours, and his recent past actions will become transparent. And come January 2008, Dad will show us a pretty amazing future, and all will be forgiven, adolescent sturm und drang notwithstanding.

Some people are going to look like a bunch of ungrateful twits when it happens.

Of things Mac > Of whining and other adolescent carrying on about Apple, the iPhone and hackers: lessons from Family Therapy and Freud.

When someone "gets" how bad the cognitive style of Powerpoint can be, there's no going back

Date Created: 27 Sep, 2007, 10:38 AM

Courtesy of someone failing to send through my QANTAS flight's airways clearance, my 10.05am flight to the Australian Psychological Society Conference in Brisbane sat on the tarmac for almost an hour. Though I'd arrived at Melbourne Airport early enough to get the 9.05AM flight, it was booked out and so with time ticking away I saw my ambition for attending my first APS Fellow meeting (where my nomination and acceptance was to be formally announced) deflated. (see my blog entry below this one - Sept 26 - for more info on recent personal happenings.)

I arrived in BNE at 1.15PM having pre-booked the Airtrain service into the Brisbane CBD, but with time running out hot-footed it by cab and got to the meeting in time to say a few things about mentoring and the role Fellows may wish to take for psychologists seeking ethical guidance, an idea I've participated in and pushed to the APS for some time now. Maybe now it will get formal backing and an infrastructure to get it happening. But wheels turn slowly...

Speaking of which, straight after, I attended my first symposium for the conference, one of four single papers looking at various therapeutic endeavours.

As it turned out the first was delivered by a colleague who in the weeks before had sought out my assistance with her Powerpoint.

Fortunately, she knew enough about the mechanics of Powerpoint so that we could concentrate on her ideas. But Keynote came in mighty handy when she sent me her .ppt file (she was introduced to the wonders of yousendit.com, and forever grateful) and I did some manipulations before exporting it back to Powerpoint. Fortunately, I had chosen effects which translated well, and weren't lost.

The same couldn't be said for her presentation when it came to her talk, because she'd worked on a different edition of Powerpoint than the one the Brisbane Conference centre supplied, and a couple of noticeable glitches occurred.

Nonetheless, I was very proud of her efforts, and she spoke in a polished and calm style, which emphasised the clinical points she was making.

Aftewards, she received much praise for her presentation, made easy because not just was it good, but it was so far above the presentations that followed, it was not funny.

Essentially, the three papers that followed were a litany of all the Powerpointpoisoning I've been railing against for several years. Long lists of bulleted text, droning voices whose words had already been read by the audience the moment the slide was thrown up, and no sense that the audience is there not just to read slides, but to be engaged by speakers. At one point, one speaker threw up two quotes and then stated she couldn't be bothered reading it, and left us in silence for half a minute to read it ourselves!

Now I could possibly see a reason for doing this (I have done it once, but included a punchline at the end so that titters at the beginning ended up in laughter at the end as all in the room eventually got the joke). But this was not the presenter's purpose. She was just too bloody lazy to think of another way of presenting the same information.

Actually, tha's a tad harsh. It's not laziness, but tradition and thinking narrowly because everyone else does it this way! So when my colleague did her presentation it was "breath of fresh air" stuff for many in the audience (one described it as beautiful) if only because it contains many illustrations and lesser amounts text. It was still too text heavy for my liking, but change happens slowly.

The real purpose of this blog entry is to say that my colleague made two self-observations, one an epiphany.

The first was that her abundant use of illustrations and minimal text caused her to think in short stories, and commit them to memory, triggered by the appearance of certain slides in her talk. This allowed her to:

- slow her talk by not feeling rushed to cover all the text on her slides,
- to not be bothered by getting certain facts or data points out of order, something easily seen on text-filled slides)
- and to better connect to the audience.

It's a way to reduce the inherent failings of the linear delivery method, something which would have been even more important if she'd been last in the symposium and would have enabled her to include the previous speakers' ideas.

Her own epiphany came when she sat through the others' slideshows. Having finished on something of a high by pulling off her high-wire act, she was able to cast a more educated eye over the tradition-bound slideshows that followed.

Literally, the scales had fallen from her eyes, and she "got it". Now she was "enjoying" what I have been putting up with for years attending academic and business conferences: that despite what might be interesting, even compelling content in the confines of a 20 minute presentaion, much more is needed to make an impression.

She could not help but attend to the others' Powerpoint and discover how intefering it was for perceiving the speakers' central messages.

She also now understood some of what I preach in my presentation skills workshops: For instance, that I'd rather hear:

Conference attendee 1: "Hey you really want to attend a session Les gives..."
Conference attendee 2: "Why - is it interesting content?"
Conference attendee 1:"Well, that varies depending on your own interests, but you will find it engaging and respectful of your intelligence!

as compared to, "Nice content, but gawd, you need a couple of coffees to get through it."

So now I'm bracing for the rest of the conference where I have to watch, listen and perceive my colleagues delivering original research and ideas, many using "evidence-based" methods, but utilising socially conforming and traditional means to do so.

And prepare my own workshop for Saturday, where I have to do the walk and the talk.

My task will be to balance my enthusiasm for the new features in Keynote 08 with not overwhelming the group who will attend - admittedly self-selected with an interest in techie stuff - with the presentation's differences from what they've been "enjoying" the last few days.

I'll be curious to see if anyone asks about Keynote and whether knowing how to present is something private practitioners should learn about. Judging by what I've seen so far, psychologists are retaining their informal title as people who know about human learning, but don't apply it to themselves.

Presentation Skills/Keynote > When someone "gets" how bad the cognitive style of Powerpoint can be, there's no going back

I'll be blogging from the Australian Psychological Society Conference for the next few days...

Date Created: 26 Sep, 2007, 02:29 AM

Just a short note for those of you subscribing to the Cyberpsych blog that I'll be attending the APS conference in Brisbane and attempting to live blog the sessions, as long as the Brisbane Convention centre has wi-fi enabled.

So while the coverage may not be Mac-oriented, for those of you who like to hear about my presentation skills ideas with respect to Apple's Keynote and Microsoft's Powerpoint, yes, I'll be keeping score on how my colleagues have advanced since I last blogged the conference several years ago.

This year, I applied to do two workshops, one on Presentation Skills for psychologists (rejected) and one on Technologies for psychologists in practice, which was accepted. (It's on the last day of the conference this Saturday, which strikes me as an odd placement of workshops - why not at the beginning of the conference?).

I'll try and record my workshop using Keynote's built-in record function, and make a podcast of it, as podcasting will be a featured element of the workshop.

Frankly, I expect to die a little death each day from Powerpointpoisoning as Aussie psychologists are extremely slow to adopt Keynote, and seem slaves to the cognitive style of Powerpoint - all bullets, text, and chintzy clipart. Yech!

In fact, as I will discuss in a later blog entry, all short presentations are to be delivered as Powerpoints to be used on the Convention centre-supplied central PC servers, and Mac users have been specifically told to convert their presentations to Powerpoint - no exceptions.

Hopefully, those who attend my workshop (where I've insisted I use my Powerbook) will learn not just of technologies to enhance their practice, but will also come away wondering how they put up with the tradition of Powerpoint all these years.

Also, I can finally announce: I will be attending Macworld San Francisco and giving a training workshop on how I use Keynote. More details to follow, but it is an extreme honour and privilege to be part of the Macworld teaching faculty in '08.

Actually, I can also announce that is the first leg of my September Trifecta. the other two legs: I was elected President of iMug this evening, and was elected to Fellowship of the Australian Psychological Society last week, to be formally announced at the conference. Yippy - hi - yo!

More news to follow from the conference...

Les

APS Conference Blog > I'll be blogging from the Australian Psychological Society Conference for the next few days...

A message for unhappy iPhone early adopters: Even with your $100 "apology", your kvetching has only just begun

Date Created: 07 Sep, 2007, 10:33 PM

Australians have a dual relationship with technology.

We tend to be early adopters (we ramp up the inflection point of technology uptake toute de suite!), but we get new technologies late.

We were late to colour TV (but we got the superior PAL system), we got cable TV way after the US (it's just turned up a profit in a no-competition environment - go figure), we got Caller ID and conference call for our phone system (a previous monopoly too) very late, and we used to get Hollywood movies six months after their release.. until Bit Torrent came along and now we're no more than a few days behind.

Even the Mac-loving Californication is only two weeks ahead of its showing on Aussie TV. Neat!

But like Europe and Asia, we're late to the iPhone party.

Given the early adopter tax now being levied on iPhone buyers, less the $100 "we sorry" rebate (talk about marketing on the run!), sometimes being slow off the blocks can pay off.

Have you witnessed all the "new to the Apple fold" kvetching going on due to the surprise iPhone price reduction (and negating of any resale value on the 4GB version except as a collector's item).

Old Macheads knew full well a price reduction was on its way - it's the Apple way. Mind you, Dell does it all the time, except it telegraphs its punches with its special magazine inserts letting you know its prices will go UP when the month's out.

And it never lets you know when it's got new models coming because... who can tell the difference between them and the one's they're replacing? Or who cares?

So old Macheads hold off from getting Apple 1.0 products knowing full well a price reduction will occur in a reasonable time once the early adopter tax is paid (thus enabling better economies of scale to operate in Taiwan once the R & D has been well and truly paid for), and secondly, while some might say that Apple 1.0 products don't suffer any deficencies in design or quality control, try telling that to Titanium Powerbook owners (I had two of them).

The questio