BusinessWeek: Rethinking the Presentation

Earlier this month, BusinessWeek ran a short article called Rethinking the Presentation by columnist and famous communications coach Carmine Gallo. In this article, Carmine features some tips from Presentation Zen as well as tips from Cliff Atkinson and Nancy Duarte. You already know that presentations with slideware today are largely ineffective. But it can be hard to convince your boss, for example, that speaking to slideuments (or docupoints) is a practice that should be tossed. Bad habits and conventional wisdom are hard to overcome. Well, this is a very short article (which means your boss may actually read it), but it comes from a very credible source: BusinessWeek. So print this out (it's one page), highlight the keypoints, and give it to your boss or other key people in your organization than can actually have an impact on the "PowerPoint culture" within your firm (or school, etc.). It's not much ammo, but it's a start (and it's free and easy).

While I'm on the topic of Carmine Gallo, checkout his website (lot's of videos, etc.) and watch his video presentation below on how we can learn a thing or two about presentation from the Grand Master of the keynote, Steve Jobs. I have been pointing to Steve Jobs's keynotes for years now, beginning with this post comparing Jobs with Bill Gates and the Zen aesthetic.

Carmine Gallo on learning from Steve Jobs


Carmine is the author of a really cool book on communication and presentations called Fire Them Up. (Here's a video about the book.)

• How to Present Like Steve Jobs (article with tips).

Comments

[Leo Piccioli]

Thanks for the video, it is great.

[Daniel Condurachi]

Thank you for helping us some more with understanding the art of presenting ideas and teach us some tips

[Jan]

I will give away my little secret here. When it comes to formatting text in a slide, I get ideas from movie posters. I go to the iTunes Theatrical Trailers section and I get inspired by all the movie posters. I mix large and small sizes to emphasise meaning, I colour words in orange or red (or what's appropriate), and I position words and lines so they emphasis a certain meaning. A sentence can consist of two lines, and I right justify them. The last words in each line has a different colour than the rest of the words. You can do a lot with this and play around to convey your message.

[Jan]

I will give away my little secret here. When it comes to formatting text in a slide, I get ideas from movie posters. I go to the iTunes Theatrical Trailers section and I get inspired by all the movie posters. I mix large and small sizes to emphasise meaning, I colour words in orange or red (or what's appropriate), and I position words and lines so they emphasis a certain meaning. A sentence can consist of two lines, and I right justify them. The last words in each line has a different colour than the rest of the words. You can do a lot with this and play around to convey your message.

[Brian]

Hey Garr,

Love the blog and thanks for the great content... currently reading your book.

A quick pointer... try to have that business week article link to your site. businessweek.com is a great link (PR7) and you deserve it.

[Gabi Aanicai]

Thank you! Okay, I've send it, and now I am waiting to see what will happen next.

[Max]

I go to the iTunes Theatrical Trailers section and I get inspired by all the movie posters. I mix large and small sizes to emphasise meaning, I colour words in orange or red.

[Miguel Monteiro]

Found this interesting ppt.
It is in Portuguese but, just take a look:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xm8G2AN8VU

[JeromeFo]

Omgz. Thanks for sharing Steve's video.
Good presentation*

[Raffael]

Great article, short and precise. What bothers me although is the fact that the jury is impressed by a presentation like this. This just proves that the application of law often does not have anything to do with justice, but more so with "who's better at presenting".