Here's yet another example of combining imagery, text, animation, and audio to make an impact in a short amount of time. This 3-minute video presentation called Built to Last won first prize in The Congress for the New Urbanism video contest a few weeks ago. The rules for the contest were simple: "Create a 3-minute maximum video that illustrates how the principles of New Urbanism - density, design and walkability - can effectively respond to current environmental challenges that we face." Watch the video below on Youtube.
Presenting large While most of us do not have the skills or tools to create a video like this, many people can actually present live to similar visual displays that they create themselves using only off-the-shelf tools like PowerPoint or Keynote (and photo-editing software). It's all actually quite simple: Big type and large full-bleed images (and great ideas; that's the hard part). Of course, if you present to visuals in this genre on a stage, you may use less text on screen and slow it way down at times — even allowing the screen to fade to black — to allow the visuals the opportunity to support your narration at a pace the audience can connect with. At other times, however, it may be your narration that supports the powerful imagery. It can feel like a dance, a dance between you and the images and the audience. In this sense, then, when you use large, powerful imagery, you and the screen and the audience are not three things but one.
Here are some quick images below to help you visualize how you might "present large" at a future conference, etc. The point is not to suggest that you create and use visuals exactly like the video example above in your live talks, but perhaps this example will spark your imagination as you continue to think about ways to present differently and more visually.
If the pacing is right, you can even present live to similar powerful visuals. H/T Mike in Perth
The inaugural TEDxTokyo last Friday was an absolute success. In fact, it kicked some serious butt (oshiri). Sure, not all the talks were home runs from a delivery standpoint — but most were — and everyone on stage certainly made a memorable contribution that day. TEDxTokyo was an inspiration. Patrick Newell and Todd Porter and the scores of volunteers — such as Jason Wik on the tech side — did a fantastic job to pull this off. The long day at TEDxTokyo (though it seemed short) felt just like being at TED in California...with a Japanese twist. It was an amazing collection of presenters and 200 thinkers and doers from around the world who set aside a day to come together to reflect, share, and engage in Tokyo. The LIVE showing of TEDxTokyo (2500+ were watching live online) went very well (I received emails from viewers around the world on my iPhone in between talks with comments such as "hey, I can see you!" and "Barry rocks!"). In future some of the talks (all were professionally recorded) may appear online for your viewing pleasure. I'll let you know (or follow the TEDxTokyo blog).
TEDxTokyo presenters get naked Part of "presenting naked" means taking a bath in the onsen with your new TEDxer mates the night before. Of course, the best part of the hot bath is what comes after: the delicious food, cold beer, and great conversation with your friends. In this photo below from the Animoto slideshow, you can see best-selling novelist Barry Eisler and executive and environmental preservationist Bill Werlin and me at the Ooedo-Onsen-Monogatari the night before the event. (See what it's like inside.)
The unveiling of TEDxTokyo is this Friday at Miraikan — Japan’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (down by Tokyo Bay). A ton of work has gone on in preparation for this event and the organizers Todd Porter and TEDster Patrick Newell have done an amazing job lining up a wonderful list of presenters here in Japan. Here you can download a PDF of the schedule and see who the presenters are.
The TEDxTokyo Themes The day is organized around four themes:
Session 1 How can we organize ourselves to make a difference? Session 2 What does it mean to be a learner today? Session 3 How do we use finite resources to propel ourselves in the future? Session 4 How does today decide tomorrow, from local & global perspectives.
Watch TEDxTokyo live The registration for the event in Tokyo filled up a long time ago, but in the spirit of TED, TEDxTokyo is geared up to make the presentations available live of the web. Go here to watch the event live.
Follow TEDxTokyo on Twitter You can follow the day in Tokyo on Twitter in English (@tedxtokyo) and Japanese (@tedxtokyo_ja), and I'll be posting pics from my iPhone as much as I can (@presentationzen). I am heading up to Tokyo today and will be working with some of the presenters on Thursday.
TED Talks available in over 40 languages (and growing) One of the coolest things announced this year is the TED Open Translation Project. Go here to see a list of talks available with translation. Below are a couple of my favorite talks from the past with translation. On the bottom of each video you can scroll to see if your language is there. Select your language and the subtitles will appear. (If you do not see your language, perhaps you can volunteer to be a translator.) What a valuable resource for those of us who want to share TED in Japan (and elsewhere around the world). It's all about the sharing of ideas.
Hans Rosling shows the best stats you’ve ever seen
In this post by Seth Godin, he list 45 ways that you can take charge of whatever professional situation you may be in and make a change. I like #16 — "Learn to be a killer presenter." Everyone can get better and it can indeed make a big difference in your career. You can learn a lot on your own, but workshops are still relevant and important learning environments for adult learners. Seminars and workshops are great, but given the current economic situation, it's difficult for many people to attend full-day workshops, especially when participation involves transportation and hotel costs, etc. Duarte Design, which has run many successful workshops at their head office in Silicon Valley since last year, has an answer for the recession blues: The Webinar. Last week Paula Tesch announced that Duarte will be offering a series of six webinars beginning on May 27 and continuing once a week until July 1. You can sign up for a single webinar or just a few, or sign up for all six and get a good discount. Even if you can't catch the webinar live you can watch it anytime after the event if you registered.
Each Slide:ology Webinar is 45 minutes in length and starts at 10:00am on the West Coast of the United States. Sign up herefor the webinars on Duarte's website.
Slide:ology Webinars May 27 Introduction to the Principles of Slide:ology June 3 Connecting with Your Audience June 10 Story and Structure June 17 Design Thinking June 24 Visual Storytelling and Design Part I July 1 Visual Storytelling and Design Part II
Live in-person workshops Duarte just finished up some full-day workshops. Their next workshops held in their offices in Silicon Valley will be from September. Go here to check out the details of their workshops. I do not usually do many public workshops — though I'll be in Wellington, NZ in July for some public seminars — so Duarte's workshops and webinars are something I am pointing everyone I know to checkout. I think the webinar is a pretty good deal. Also, if you know anyone who could benefit from reading Presentation Zen but they are too busy to go through the book, point them to this 50-min online video of the Presentation Zen Approach available on the PeachPit website. It will be available as a DVD in June as well. It's about 20-26 bucks — that's not cheap, but it's cheaper than bringing me from Japan to your living room (though I'd come for free if there were chocolate chip cookies involved).
Mae Jemison is an astronaut, a medical doctor, an art collector, and a dancer. In 1992, Dr. Jemison was the first African-American woman to go into space. Since then she's become a crusader for science education, and for a new vision of learning that combines arts and sciences, intuition and logic. I think this 2002 TED talk below, recently featured on the TED website, is an important one to watch. The presentation itself is well structured, clear, and delivered with passion, although — and somewhat ironically, given her design sensibilities — the visuals used did not match the quality of her talk. Yet, I do not point to this talk as an example of great visuals or even of perfect delivery. Rather, I think it's the content of the talk that will cause you to pause and reflect, especially if you care anything about education. Dr. Jemison says it's foolish to even think in terms of having to choose between being analytical or being intuitive and likens this false choice to having to choose between being idealistic or realistic. "You need both," she says.
Art & creativity or science & analysis: a false choice Dr. Jemison's point is simple and it's not new, yet here we are today still thinking, for the most part, that science and the arts are completely separate from one another and that scientists are not creative and that artists and other "creatives" are not analytical. Worse still, we have educational institutions that guide students away from their artistic interests because "you'll never get a job doing that." What a waste. Looking back at my own K-12 education, I wish I had had more exposure to science and math, especially astronomy, physics, and statistics which were all but missing for me until college. But, I wish I also had taken even more art and music classes instead of avoiding fine art classes, for example, out of guilt that it was not serious academic work.
"If
we keep thinking that the arts are separate from the sciences...and
that it's cute to say 'I don't understand anything about [the arts] or
I don't understand anything about [the sciences]' then we're going to
have problems." — Mae Jemison
I'm not suggesting that everyone needs to be Leonardo da Vinci or that we all should be enlightened, well-rounded generalists. We need specialization. But even specialists have gained from following their inherent curiosity and by following a more holistic approach to their own education, an education that extends far beyond formal schooling. Over the years I've met many people in the high-tech industry, for example, that in addition to being successful engineers and programmers, etc., were also talented musicians or had obsessions in the arts that went far beyond a passive interest or hobby. In spite of the stereotypes about "technology nerds," the successful ones I've met always struck me as being sort of modern day Renaissance men/women, possessing both a well-rounded eduction in the arts and sciences and a deep, deep expertise in a special field.
Science or art? A ridiculous choice. The arts and sciences are connected. And our mission, says Dr. Jemison, is to reconcile and reintegrate science and the arts. Both the arts and the sciences, says Dr. Jemison, are not merely connected but manifestations of the same thing — they are our attempt to build an understanding of the universe, and our attempt to influence things (things in the universe internal to ourselves and the universe external to ourselves). "The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity — [they] are our attempt as humans to build an understanding of the world around us...."
Speaking of the role of art & music in education Mae Jemison's TED presentation ties in nicely with a piece that came out this week by the legendary Quincy Jones called Arts Education in America. Quincy asks "...can we really run the risk of becoming a culturally bankrupt nation
because we have not inserted a curriculum into our educational
institutions that will teach and nurture creativity in our children?" The most interesting part of Quincy's article were the words taken from the 1943 War Department Education Manual EM 603 that got its recommendations on jazz completely wrong. (Read it — you'll be amazed.) Kind of makes you wonder what else — in spite of good intentions — our educational institutions and leaders are getting completely wrong today? If our recommendations are based on the assumptions that science is not a place for creative thinking or that the arts/humanities have no room for analysis and logic or that students need to make a choice about what kind of person they are — logical or intuitive — then something tells me we're getting it wrong. We need both science and the arts...and we need to do better teaching both.
"It has been proven time and time again in countless studies that students who actively participate in arts education are twice as likely to read for pleasure, have strengthened problem-solving and critical thinking skills, are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement, four times more likely to participate in a math and science fair...." — Quincy Jones
I'm a huge Pamela Slim fan. I've followed her blog for years, and although we've never met in person, I somehow feel like I know her. We're certainly kindred spirits when it comes to work and ideas concerning thinking differently about life and business. So I was thrilled when I got my copy a few weeks ago of Pam's book Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur. You might think that this book would be another touchy-feely self-help book, but you'd be wrong. Escape from Cubicle Nation, like the blog of the same name, is an inspirational read with loads of practical real-world advice for entrepreneurs (or those thinking about becoming an entrepreneur). It's quite a large book (352 pages) but it reads very fast. Pam is also a sought-after speaker. You can get a feel for her style and her message in this Ignite presentation below which was recorded at an Ignite Phoenix event. (You canfind the video here tooon Pam's speaking page.)
Ignite: a great implementation of the short-form presentation I love the Ignite format — 20 slides, advanced automatically after 15 seconds (total: 5 minutes). I actually like this format a little better than Pecha Kucha. Ignite short-form presentations are a little bit faster and a little bit shorter than the Pecha Kucha style (which is also good), and this often leads to tighter talks. The point of an Ignite talk is not to rush through the topic or to dumb it down, but rather to work within the constraints to illuminate and illustrate the essence of your idea and of your story.
Below is another example of a good Ignite talk given in my favorite US city, Portland, Oregon by "type nerd" Bram Pitoyo. Well done.
TED has earned a lot of attention over the years for many reasons, including the nature and quality of its short-form conference presentations. All presenters lucky enough to be asked to speak at TED are given 18-minute slots maximum (some are for even less time such as 3- and 6-minute slots). Some who present at TED are not used to speaking on a large stage, or are at least not used to speaking on their topic with strict time restraints. TED does not make a big deal publicly out of the TED Commandments, but many TED presenters have referenced the speaking guidelines in their talks and in their blogs over the years (e.g., Ben Saunders).
Thou Shalt Dream a Great Dream, or Show Forth a Wondrous New Thing, Or Share Something Thou Hast Never Shared Before.
Thou Shalt Reveal thy Curiosity and Thy Passion.
Thou Shalt Tell a Story.
Thou Shalt Freely Comment on the Utterances of Other Speakers for the Sake of Blessed Connection and Exquisite Controversy.
Thou Shalt Not Flaunt thine Ego. Be Thou Vulnerable. Speak of thy Failure as well as thy Success.
Thou Shalt Not Sell from the Stage: Neither thy Company, thy Goods, thy Writings, nor thy Desperate need for Funding; Lest Thou be Cast Aside into Outer Darkness.
Thou Shalt Remember all the while: Laughter is Good.
Thou Shalt Not Read thy Speech.
Thou Shalt Not Steal the Time of Them that Follow Thee.
TEDx Tokyo2009 In less than two weeks TEDx Tokyowill have its unveiling. I will be advising some of the presenters on site the day before TEDx and pointing them to this particular post and other resources in the days ahead. There is not one best way to speak at a TED conference, there are many different ways. But what the good presentations have in common is that they were created carefully and thoughtfully with the audience in mind and were delivered with passion, clarity, brevity, and always with "the story" of it (whatever it is) in mind. So let the list of 10 above be your general guide. In addition, take a look at some of the TED presentations below. They all follow a different style but were effective and memorable in their own way.
• Presenting fully naked, no slides, no script Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? Sir Ken knows what he wants to say and usually has 2-3 key points in mind, but he does not read a script or use notes. He makes good use of humor and story to illustrate his points.
• Presenting with slides kind of like Al Gore Al Gore: 15 ways to avert a climate crisis.Al Gore became an engaging presenter with the aid of simple, high-impact visuals that helped him tell the story and give evidence supporting his content. • Using a prepared script from the lectern (no slides) Isabel Allende: Tales of passion.In general, I do not recommend reading a speech at such a conference, but if you do read, do it in a way that is engaging as demonstrated by Isabel Allende.
• Using a prepared script from the lectern (with slides/video) Sylvia Earle (TED Prize winner 2009).Although Dr. Earle was using a script, she knew her material so well that it felt natural and the pacing was almost perfect with the visuals.
• Presenting well in spite of superfluous, cruddy bulleted slides Tony Robbins: Why we do what we do.Tony Robbins speaks for a living, and while I do not recommend swearing from the stage, Tony was able to engage a rather skeptical audience at TED in spite of poor visuals. Watch the presentation to see how.
• Presenting in a way that makes an amazing connection with the audience Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight.Dr. Taylor uses some slides and one prop (an actual human brain), but mainly she lets her emotions out and tells her story in an honest, sincere way. Amazing.
• Presenting from the piano, the stage, & within the audience Benjamin Zander: Classical music with shining eyes.What can I say? If you present with even half the conviction and passion of the great Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic and loyal TEDster, you will blow their socks off.
These are not the only good presentations at TED, but these are some of the better ones. Perhaps you'd like to share your personal favorites from the point of view not just of content but from the stand point of preparation, design, and delivery.
Bill Gates vs. Bill Gates Again, you do not have to use slides at TED (or TEDx, etc.), but if you do use slides, think of using them more in the style of Bill Gates the TEDster rather than Bill Gates the bullet point guy from the past. As Bill has shown, everyone can get better at presenting on stage.
If you have a short-form presentation to give, be more like the new & improved Bill Gates (left).
A few weeks ago I received an interesting presentation from a young man in California who is, among many other things, interested in presenting information and telling stories with the aid of dots. His name is Jeffrey Monday and his blog is called Monday Dots. Below is an example of his work. He made this using Keynote (using the Magic Move effect) and did the voiceover using iMovie. It's not perfect (e.g., color issues) but I think this will give you some ideas.
"The Gamble" model Take a look at this examplebelow.Do the dots help his explanation?
Why dots? In this videobelowJeffrey explains why he uses dots in his presentation visuals.
How to make the presentation above in Keynote + iMovie Below Jeffrey explains how he made the visuals.
When I was 17, before Macintosh was even invented, I gave my first multimedia presentation using two 35mm projectors. My topic concerned the environment and the dangers of air and water pollution. Maybe this is why I have a special interest in presentations related to health and cleaning up the environment. So earlier this week I was delighted when Christine, a PZ reader from the US, pointed to this interesting presentation by Ken Cook, the Founder of the Environmental Working Group. His delivery and slides were pretty good (though online some of the info can be a bit hard to see on some slides). One thing you'll notice is that he occasionally used a full-sized video clip for the background image rather than a still photo (these are short clips; you can see them loop back to the beginning). This is something an app like Keynote can handle easily, including animated text over the video. Ken stated a lot of facts that frankly needed the sources cited. Many audiences will demand that the sources for a statistic appear on the slide itself, but at the very least you have to say what your source is before you show the data. This is not a perfect talk, but a good one. I hope you find it useful.
William McDonough: What's your intention? Ken Cook's talk reminded me a bit of one of my favorite TED talks by Bill McDonough. Bill's 2005 talk is not one of my favorites because of the delivery, but rather for the content and the story. Bill's delivery style below is not as engaging as some others, and I'd much prefer he had used a remote and moved away from the computer (and took a drink of water), but his content and stories very much connected with the live audience. There is a lot of good content in this talk, so much so that you may miss it the first time. This is important stuff. My favorite bit is at the end when he shows an example of one of the cities they are building in China. This is not a perfect talk either, and the delivery style is very different than the talk above by Ken Cook, but I find the content of this talk and Bill's mission to be very to be inspiring and memorable...and so do a lot of other people.
In the post below I said that the presentation by Shai Agassi was my personal favorite of the TED 09 conference. It was certainly not a perfect presentation technically, so one gentleman asked me how I could recommend such an imperfect, "awful" talk as a sample model to follow. Was it not a contradiction to praise such an imperfect TED talk when there are many better TED examples? But here's the thing: perfection of delivery is not the goal, nor is it even possible, depending on how you define perfection. Yes, it's true that the manuals say a speaker should eliminate the "ums" and the "ers" and so on that sometimes litter the narration of live talks. This is good advice for the most part, especially if such disfluencies become a distraction (though at least one study suggests that such disfluencies may actually sometimes help not harm comprehension). However, to me there are many kinds of successful presentations; there is not one single formula for success.
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind In the
Presentation Zen approach, if we can call it that, we are more
concerned with naturalness in delivery, a delivery on stage that is
more similar to a natural conversation between two people, such as a
teacher to student, a master to apprentice, or among equals such as a
scientist to scientist, and so on. Naturalness in delivery, then, is
more like a conversation between friends or coworkers than a formal
one-way lecture. We find something parallel to this kind of thinking in Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's MInd in a small section on communication. Here's a passage that hints at the point I'm trying to make in the context of presentation (emphasis mine):
"In Zen we put emphasis on demeanor, or behavior. By behavior we do not mean a particular way that you ought to behave, but rather the natural expression of yourself. We emphasize straightforwardness. You should be true to your feelings, and to your mind, expressing yourself without any reservations. This helps the listener to understand more easily."
— Shunryu Suzuki
We can apply these simple ideas above concerning Zen and communication to our everyday presentations, meetings, networking events, etc. That is, the emphasis should be, I believe, on the natural expression of yourself, honesty and straightforwardness, rather than on following a memorized script of the "right way" to behave. As Suzuki says, "Without any intentional, fancy way of adjusting yourself, to express yourself as you are is the most important thing."
Slide
Still, speech coaches are important Please do not misunderstand my intention. Training & coaching in public speaking (and dealing with the media, etc.) are important. Having a good speech coach and a video camera is very helpful. Recently I read a good book by Jerry Weissman called The Power Presenter: Technique, Style, and Strategy from America's Top Speaking Coach. Interestingly, right from the beginning Jerry talks about the importance of looking at speaking more like conversation rather than performance. Here again the emphasis is not on teaching people how to become performers (which more than 99% of us are not), but rather on helping them to become more natural presenters. As Jerry says early in the book while talking about his coaching career, "My goal was to move the business people I coached to become successful presenters naturally."
Returning to the Shai Agassi presentation at TED, for me is was a successful talk because he connected with the audience — however imperfectly — and told the story of his mission in a way that was interesting, memorable, and repeatable. It was not perfect and Shai can do better, but it was a successful talk that engaged and got people talking. In a sense, it was imperfectly natural...and effective.
Related This week a student of the martial arts Matthew Apsokardu wrote a very clear blog post called What PowerPoint Taught Me About Martial Arts based on some of the ideas talked about in PZ.
