Wednesday, November 09, 2005

The sound of one room napping.

Presentation Zen contrasts the understated presentation of Steve Jobs to the muddled PowerPoint of Bill Gates. I first noticed this article on the blog of one S. Godin of Buffalo, N.Y. Seeing Seth's presentation at the WOM vs. Advertising conference, I can assure you he practices what he preaches. His slides were the only ones I still remember. Well, besides that one dude's belly.

I'm very new to the presentation world, with my much feted debut at the same conference. Still, I wanted to be memorable somehow... So, since I was the last of about 164 speakers, I went escuela vieja by offering no PPT. I figured everyone was sick to death of bullet points and I wanted them to pay attention to my breathtaking visage for the full seven minutes alloted. As the day progressed, I was surprised that I was going to be the only unplugged act. Ergo, I became Un Vaca Púrpura.

Brilliant, no? "No" is the correct answer, because I didn't know what I was doing. Nevertheless, I've sat through 7,493 presentations that sucked and about 12 that didn't. And what stood out among the greats was:
1) Few to no PowerPoint slides, and
b) A speaker directly engaged with the audience.
I knew that if I was fiddling around with an unfamiliar laptop, I wouldn't be interacting with the crowd and would therefore suck. QED.

I'll need to fling some slides for future presentations, but I'll keep this Presentation Zen blog handy as I prepare.

technorati tags: ; ;

3 Comments:

Blogger Kevin Creighton said...

Just tell me you aren't going to make your next presentation desnudo. :-)

7:07 PM  
Blogger Exurban Jon said...

Lo siento. No matter how often I'm asked -- nay, begged -- I don't work blue.

9:25 PM  
Blogger Olivier Blanchard said...

I know a few chicas who'll be sorry to hear that.

So true about the proportion of lousy to engaging presentations. If you're doing training, bullet points are cool. Otherwise, ppt is counterproductive.

11:45 PM  

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