5 Rules for Engaging Presentations

Here’s a simple slideshow that I gave to a board of executives this past week (sans audio speaking points):

I’ve designed hundreds of presentations – some for others, and many that I present myself.  I’ve also sat through many that have been boring, unmemorable, difficult to follow, and even incomprehensible (often times in a classroom).

In this era of PowerPoint and Keynote, many presenters have taken to “hiding” behind their presentations by listing too many bullet points – so that readers are often focused on reading what is on the slide, and not listening to the speaker.  Worse yet, the bullet point list on the slides often becomes the presenter’s script.

At the risk of evangelizing Lawrence Lessig too much, I yet again point to him as an example.  The Lessig style of presentation takes key words and graphics to emphasize his talking points.  The visual presentation is merely a supplement to his talk, not vice versa.  See his style in work on a talk about Free Culture.*

My focus is often on marketing and communications, so I tend to use more imagery and less words than Lessig, but here are key rules that I’ve learned about slide-show presentations that I hope others will consider:

1. Less is more. The less words there are on the screen, the more engaged the audience can be with a speaker.  When the slides are filled with bullet statements, I am distracted by reading the presentation.  I want to hear the presenter, otherwise, I could read a book or paper.  Likewise, I want to be heard as a presenter because what I’m saying ought to be more engaging than lines of text.
2. Help visualize the important themes. Lessig does this well by extracting single words, phrases, or graphics per slide.  You hear these words and phrases as part of his talk and the visualization puts emphasis on take-aways.  Visuals serve two other purpose: to know that we are on the same page when I am describing something familiar (or unfamiliar), and as a mental signal that I’ve transitioned in my talk.
3. Don’t over animate. Newer versions of PowerPoint, in particular, have fancy entries and exits.  While simple transitions aid in easing the eye, animations don’t do much but distract.  Bouncing letters and spinning charts just take the audience’s attention away from what the speaker is saying.
4. Embed. Often times presentations require links to external media.  Save time and distraction for your audience by embedding – whether it be a webpage or videolink. The less switching in and out of your presentation the smoother and cleaner the presentation.
5. You are the presentation. Not the slideshow.  Speak for yourself, and let the presentation be your accessory, not your crutch.

*If you like learning, particularly about copyright and imapct on social media, I highly recommend watching the Free Culture video in full.

Hybrid Economy

I’m waging a bet that successful new businesses will hinge on a hybrid economy.  In fact, the survival of many old school businesses (such as broadcast companies, newspapers, automative, etc.) here on out will depend on the ability to adapt to the hybrid economy of the future.

What is a hybrid economy?  I don’t think too many people have a grasp on this concept yet, even though we are living in the midst of it RIGHT NOW.

I did a Google search on hybrid economy and the results mostly revolve around the economical nature of hybrid cars.  One other search result – an article from 1993 – describes a hybrid economy as the convergence of the public-private sectors.

But the hybrid economy that I refer to is about the remix of real business and crowdsourcing, as Lawrence Lessig describes in short:

Commercial entities leverage value out of sharing economies, and vice versa.

Flickr is a service that depends on the content of its users and is highly successful.  Many third-party companies have spawned off the success of Flickr such as Moo, Imagekind, QOOP and Blurb.  Even Capital One is leveraging the power of the hybrid economy through Flickr by allowing users to create personalized credit cards.

Mass collaboration, crowd sourcing and social media has already proven to the market that people are willing to contribute for free or at little cost to organizers.  It’s also become evident over the last several years that the new generation of consumers are willing to put in labor and sweat equity for the reward of having simply participated, or being part of the design (ala Wikipedia).  Often times all anyone needs is due credit and publicity; sometimes to jump start their career or get their name on the map.  I’m one such individual.

New businesses here on out would be remiss if they ignore the potential of sourcing their customers.  @AdamAinbinder brought up a good example tonight with Friendster and their inability to reach the success that Facebook has.  First mover advantage has no advantage if you are unable to allow your community to feel that they are an integral part of the product or service.  Likewise, imagine where Apple might be today with the iPhone had they not opened up application development to the masses.

Whether it’s starting a very 1.0 business such as a recreational facility, or a 2.0 lifestyle business (i.e. MarthaStewart.com, Livestrong.com), the ability to interact with those most interested in your arena – the hobbyists and the connoisseurs – is what will feed the momentum, and thereby business awareness, growth and success.

More to come on this thought…

Remix: Lessig-Colbert

@Padrepablo introduced me to Lawrence Lessig sometime back, and I follow his blog regularly.  In fact, I posted pics of his talk about Remix @ Berkeley this past fall.

Lessig was on The Cobert Report this week and did a great interview!

And since then, there have been a few remixes, including this one.  (Lessig is tracking other remixes on his blog entry about this.)

Good times.