I have great respect for those who dedicate themselves to the study of the martial arts in Japan. Budō, or "the martial way," is a term which encompasses the martial arts here in Japan. Bu (武) conveys the meaning "to stop clashing weapons." Dō (道) is "the way" or "the path" to truth and liberation. There is much we can learn by examining the principles found in traditional disciplines, even though they may seemed quite removed from the daily experience of most people. At the risk of greatly over simplifying things, think of Budō practice as not only being about competition or fighting and technique, but also of being a mastery of self. In the book Budo Secrets: Teachings of the Martial Arts Masters by professor and Aikido instructor John Stevens, the author recounts the three rules of the Tanseki School of Swordsmanship. I list the "Three Rules" below and then comment specifically only on Vicissitude (one of The Three Joys). Following that we'll look at "The Ten Evils for a  Budo Practitioner" with the art of presentation delivery in mind.

Even though these first simple rules comprising "The Three Rules for Practice" are taken from a manual on swordsmanship from a time long ago, notice how you may use these rules in your own work, or life in general. You can see how these ideas apply to the practice of the Japanese martial arts, of course, but perhaps you can also apply the ideas to the activities of everyday living including delivering a presentation or speech, managing a project or leading a team, and other practical endeavors where excellence is required and self-mastery a must. Here are the three rules from the Tanseki School of Swordsmanship.

The Three Prohibitions
(1) To give up
(2) To misbehave
(3) To be clumsy

The Three Joys
(1) Vicissitude
(2) Honesty
(3) Skillfulness

The Three Evils
(1) Fear
(2) Doubt
(3) Confusion

Change is a part of life. Change — even sudden and painful change — is indeed about the only thing that is certain in life, yet often we deny it or run from it. Instead, learn to prepare for change, face change, and even embrace it. We must adapt to the vagaries and ceaseless changes of everyday life. Experience can be a good teacher for dealing with the vicissitudes of life and work. Perhaps this is why athletes, for example, improve through real-game experience due to all the challenges that one faces in a real game that can not be simulated well in practice. If you want to get better at something, you have to do it, make mistakes, make adjustments, and improve over time. Just as a martial artist has his training enhanced by widening his experience through confronting ceaseless changes, we too can broaden our skills by being open to change and developing our skills further through the experience of dealing with those changes.

These items below come from The Ten Evils for a  Budo Practitioner, a list from a Kashima Shin School scroll which appear in Budo Secrets. These ten (fear & doubt appear again) have to do with one's character as a martial artist, but as the author points out, these are aspects of ourselves that everyone needs to overcome. All of these are in us (we're just human after all) — the key is not to be defeated by them. Our enemy is not in the audience (or the competition, etc.). Usually, the biggest obstacle to success is not from without, but from within. I love these words by the late Aikido master Kensho Furuya: "You have the infinite capacity to do anything you want. You compare yourself to others—that's why you feel so limited." Here's the list from The Ten Evils for a  Budo Practitioner:

(1) Insolence
(2) Overconfidence
(3) Greed
(4) Anger
(5) Fear
(6) Doubt
(7) Distrust
(8) Hesitation
(9) Contempt
(10) Conceit

I think you can see, for example, how none of these ten are helpful when making a presentation, performing a piece of music, teaching a class, and so on. All of the ten listed above can be destructive and hold us back, fear and doubt in particular. Fear holds a lot of us back. It is our fear of failure, our fear of what other people may think. We're afraid. We're not sure. So we hesitate...and we fail to act. Seth Godin calls this the Lizard Brain. Now, confidence is necessary and important, but overconfidence can sometimes be as destructive as fear and can also hold us back. Overconfidence, conceit, and contempt also prohibit us from seeing the lessons from those people and experiences around us. The old adage is "Once you think you have arrived, you have already failed." Humility, a virtue often gained through much practice, study, and experience, is key. Yet humility and great strength go hand in hand. However, a kind of projected modesty that is really a face over self-doubt and fear is not the same thing as humility. Genuine humility comes from a place of strength. It is the truly courageous who remain always humble.  

Having just returned from a trip to London, my interest in the story of Dr. John Snow and the terrible 1854 cholera outbreak in London was rekindled. It's an amazing story. (While in London I kicked around the same streets where the outbreak occurred some 156 years ago in Soho.) The presentation below is a good short talk by Steven Johnston who wrote an entire book on the case called Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. The case was explored well by Edward Tufte as well in his 1997 book Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative (pages 27-37) as a good example of how creating a statistical graph could reveal information in a way that leads to discovering the cause of an epidemic. The case is interesting to anyone, not merely epidemiologists, and among many other things, it underscores the usefulness of using visualization — in this case Snow's map — to both help one investigate the problem and show the problem and possible causes to others in a simple way. You can get a quick review and background information of the case here and here. Watch the video below

Each black bar represents a death at the residence; deaths cluster near the Broad Street pump. See larger map here in better resolution.

You have probably heard Hans Rosling's presentations on world population using the cool Gapminder software before. In his latest presentation — his sixth for TED — he mixes in some analog technique as well. This new analog teaching technique he picked up from Ikea, he says. This presentation below is excellent and is a good example of mixing analog and digital visualization techniques that result in a memorable short-form presentation. Watch the video below.


At a glance
Let's look at a few stills from Hans Rosling's talk below.


Above. One box represents one billion people. In 1960 there were one billion people in the industrialized world and two billion in the developing world. The gap on the table between the blue box and the yellow boxes represents the large socio-economic gap that existed in 1960.


Above. In 1960 those in the developed world aspired to buy a car, those in the developing world aspired to buy shoes. What Hans wants to show is that in spite of some of the old "the West and the Rest" language that is still used today, the world has changed.

Above. The world population has doubled since the early '60s.

Above. Here you can see the gap between the poorest of the developing (yellow/green boxes) nations and the rich (blue box) nations is much larger. The two billion of the poorest nations are struggling almost as much as in 1960, Hans says. In between the poorest and the richest are the emerging economies, the bulk of the world population. Hans's point is that while there is a "continuous world" from the poorest to the richest and no longer just a simplistic "us and them" or "the West and the Rest," the troubling part is that the poor are still very poor.


Above. For sure China is going to catch up by 2050 just like Japan did, Hans says, and if we invest well in green technology, etc. the emerging nations will move up right along the richest nations.


Above. Now how about the poorest two billion, will they catch up? The problem here, as Hans explains, is one of population growth (note that the two boxes have become four). In the rich and emerging countries, population growth will have essentially stopped by 2050. However, in the poorest countries the population will double by 2050 as demonstrated above.


Above. We've got to make a change so that people on this level are not stuck looking for food and shoes (i.e, move them away from poverty and its consequences), otherwise population growth will continue. However, if (and only if) they get out of poverty, get better health care, achieve high child-survival rates, etc. then the birth rate will stop increasing in 2050.


Above. Turning to the digital display to reinforce the point Hans shows how much of the world now has good child-survival rates and smaller families, but the two billion of the poorest still have a relatively large number of births per woman and poor child-survival rates. (Note how the analog box metaphor is also shown in the graph next to the population bubbles they represented earlier.)

The point is not to do it like Hans or even to use Gapminder software. The real point is for us to ask ourselves how we can incorporate digital and analog techniques into our presentations in a way that helps make the data come alive and illuminate the story in an honest and yet engaging and memorable way. There are many ways to do this; Hans Rosling's style is just one approach. But as Hans (and his team at Gapminder) has shown many times, data is not dull, in fact it tells a story.

I have linked to Hans Rosling many times before, but I think he is great and a wonderful role-model for a new generation of presenters in science and in business. Hans Rosling is a wonderful example too of someone who "presents naked" with data and with the aid of technology. Below he offers hints for using the Gapminder free software for displaying data.

The five hints for presenting bubbles
A summary of Hans's five hints:

1. Use full screen to maximize the view
2. Explain *first* the vertical and horizontal axes as well as the meaning of the size and color or bubbles
3. Mouse over a few of the bubbles that you want people to pay special attention to
4. Set the optimum speed and tell the audience when you're going to start the animation
5. Explain the meaning of the movement as it is happening

Example: Ageing and fertility rates
Let's look at a simple example.The issue here is declining birth rates and longer life expectancies. We could show the information using images and narration and interviews. This can be very effective. Watch the clips below to get a little background concerning the challenges faced when a country (like Japan or Italy) has both a high percentage of people over 65 and a shrinking fertility rate.

 
Click on photos above for short TV news video presentation on each topic.

Now notice, too, how essentially the same point (at least concerning Japan) is made below vividly in Hans Rosling's presentation using nothing but data, that is, his visualization of data. We see very clearly that Japan, for example, has both an ageing population but also a shrinking birth rate (which raises various concerns such as who will pay the pensions and health care costs for those retired?). Also note how professor Rosling first explains the chart, points out what to look for, and then explains the meaning. The relatively quick rise in the life expectancy over the last thirty years in Japan is dramatically represented in the animated chart.

Some of the best presentations will have a good mix of effective quantitative displays and discussions of the data balanced with narration, relevant images, interviews, and stories or examples.