July 31, 2009 by Jerry
The Inn at Spanish Bay in Pebble Beach, California, is 85 miles from the heart of Silicon Valley. This proximity, along with its first class golf course and attractive seaside location, make the resort a popular destination for conferences run by the Valley’s many technology organizations. As a presentations coach, I am often invited to such conferences to give a presentation about how to give a presentation. I usually deliver the same subject matter, adapted for and oriented to each unique audience. My subject matter is drawn from material I have been delivering for over two decades, and so
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July 28, 2009 by Jerry
In last month’s blog about Barack Obama’s fourth press conference, you read about a contentious exchange between the president and Chuck Todd of NBC News, sparring about the demonstrations in Iran. In yesterday’s blog about Obama’s fifth press conference, you read how Obama diminished his use of “unwords” in his handling of the reporters’ questions—until Todd tangled with him again. Perhaps it was the aftertaste of that first encounter, perhaps it was because Todd asked a follow-on question, perhaps it was because the question challenged what Obama had said in his opening statement, but Obama’s unwords reappeared during
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July 28, 2009 by Nichole
Pecha Kucha is a presentation format in which a presenter presents 20 slides for 20 seconds apiece, within a fixed time period of 6 minutes, 40 seconds. This format was created in 2003 by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Tokyo’s Klein-Dytham Architecture, who wanted to give young designers a place to meet, network, and show their work. They devised a format that kept presentations very concise in order to keep the audience’s attention and increase the number of presenters within the course of one night. They took the name “Pecha Kucha” from a Japanese term for the sound of conversation. Since its development, Pecha Kucha has soared in popularity, with coverage in Bloomberg, Wired Magazine and recently on the Presentation Zen blog. On Thursday, July 30, 2009, I will be attending and reporting on my first Pecha Kucha event in San Francisco. Stay tuned for my in depth analysis of this form of presenting that has swept across the world.
July 27, 2009 by Jerry
Barack Obama, whose smooth, articulate delivery style in his major speeches has been lauded by friend and foe alike, has also been derided by friend and foe alike for his tendency to sputter “unwords”—“ums” and “ahs”—throughout his extemporaneous press conferences. In my previous blog on the subject, you read a serious online commentary and saw a comic television mash-up of Obama’s sputtering. One of the major factors for the sharp differences in his cadence is his use of the teleprompter. Because of his diligent attention to policy as well as to rhetorical detail, Obama uses the teleprompter to read
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July 24, 2009 by Jerry
Meet Rowan Manahan, the Founder of Fortify Services, a Dublin-based consulting and career management firm. Rowan, the author of Where’s My Oasis?: The Essential Handbook For Everyone Wanting That Perfect Job, writes a blog called “Fortify Your Oasis” on which he chooses to use a clip art image to represent himself rather his own handsome Gaelic mug. Extending his modesty, he describes himself as a “speaker, trainer, husband, father, storyteller and dancing bear.” Earlier this year, Rowan wrote a post we thought you would appreciate as a closer to this series on presentation graphics. We reproduce his words here for
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July 23, 2009 by Jerry
Yesterday’s post about serif and sans serif font concluded with the Latin phrase, “de gustibus non est disputandum,” or, there is no argument about taste. The phrase is even more applicable, if not indisputable, when it comes to color choice. Well, almost indisputable, for there is a single unavoidable consideration that transcends the taste of any presenter or presenter’s designer, and that is the audience and its ability to understand the graphic. A simple one-word rule, applicable to every element of every graphic, will make it easy for every audience to understand your every slide. And, at the risk
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July 22, 2009 by Jerry
Yesterday’s post posed a trick question: whether to use initial caps or all caps in presentation text. The trick was to get you to focus on your audience’s ability to perceive your text. The least common denominator in that post as well as this post, as it is in all my posts, and as it must be in all presentations, is to make it easy for your audience to follow you and your graphics. If you do, your audience will make it easy for you; the alternative is inconceivable. Let’s begin our consideration of serif and sans serif font
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July 21, 2009 by Jerry
nitial caps or all caps, which should you use? An article in the New York Times reported on a trend among major corporations to update their brand logos, and that several of the companies have done so with “striking similarities” in their redesign. Below you’ll find the past and present versions of the Wal-Mart, Kraft, Stop & Shop, and Sysco logos. Please note that all of them have converted from all caps to initial caps. The Times article described this shift as “Toned-down type. Bold, block capital letters are out. Their replacements are mostly or entirely lower case,
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July 20, 2009 by Jerry
In the course of the past twenty years, I have posed one question to every one of the thousands of participants who have taken the Power Presentations program: “How do you feel about presenters who read the words on their slides verbatim?” I have also posed the same question to the countless business men and women who have sat in the audiences of other people’s presentations. Not a single one of them has said that he or she likes the practice. Their responses, usually accompanied by expressions ranging from disdain
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July 14, 2009 by Jerry
Peggy Noonan, writing in the Wall Street Journal about the Herculean tasks facing Barack Obama—the economic crisis, the environment, health care reform, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea—referenced Clare Boothe Luce, a noted 20th Century playwright, journalist, ambassador, and congresswoman. Ms. Luce “told about a conversation she had in 1962 in the White House with her old friend John F. Kennedy. She told him, she said, that ‘a great man is one sentence.’” Ms. Noonan then went on to define that one sentence as “leadership [that] can be so well summed up in a single sentence that you don’t have
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