Presentation Zen [10]
Sample Slides
Here are a few sample slides from one of Seth’s presentations. Without Seth, these visuals are almost meaningless. But with Seth’s engaging narrative, the visuals help illuminate a memorable story…
Lyza Danger Gardner
Exercise
Either alone or with your work group or team, have a brainstorming session where you examine your current views and guidelines (if you have them) concerning your organization’s presentations. How are your current presentations out of kilter? In what ways are they in sync? What questions should you be asking about presentation design and delivery that you have not asked in the past? What aspects of the design and delivery process have caused “suffering” for your presenters and your audiences? Have past efforts been focused too much on the comparatively inconsequential things? What are the “inconsequential” aspects and where can the focus shift?
In Sum
• Like a Japanese bento, great slide presentations contain appropriate content arranged in the most efficient, graceful manner without superfluous decoration. The presentation of the content is simple, balanced, and beautiful.
• Presentation Zen is an approach, not an inflexible list of rules to be followed by all the same way. There are many paths to designing and delivering presentations.
• The “Death by PowerPoint” approach is common and “normal” but it is not effective. The problem is not one of tools or technique so much as it is a problem of bad habits. Though some tools are better than others, it is possible to present effectively even with older versions of PowerPoint (or Keynote, etc.).
• In the “conceptual age” solid presentation skills are more important now than ever before. Presenting well is a “whole minded” skill. Good presenters target people’s “left brain” and “right brain.”
• Live talks enhanced by multimedia are about storytelling and have more in common with the art of documentary film than the reading of a paper document. Live talks today must tell a story enhanced by imagery and other forms of appropriate multimedia.
• We’ve learned some ineffective habits over the years. The first step to change is letting go of the past.
Preparation
Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint.
—James Russell
Chapter 2
Creativity, Limitations, and Constraints
In Chapter 3, we’ll look at the first steps in the preparation stage, but first let’s take a step back and look at something we usually do not think about when preparing a presentation: creativity. You may not think of yourself as being creative, let alone one of the creative professionals such as designers, writers, artists, and so on. But developing presentation content—especially content to be delivered with the aid of multimedia—is a creative act.
Recently, I gave a talk to college students where I encouraged them—begged them—to remember that they were, in fact, creative beings (they’re human aren’t they?). When I asked for a show of hands, most said they were not particularly creative. After all, they said, they were not designers or artists; they were business students. Then I asked them if they thought creating and delivering a business or conference presentation was a creative endeavor or something requiring a creative process. Only a few felt that it was. How about “design thinking?” Even fewer students understood how that related to a typical business presentation. “Design as differentiator?” Sure, students got that. But what, they said, did that have to do with presentations? Design was about iPods, and espresso machines, and sports cars, they said, but not about presentations and certainly “not PowerPoint.”
Creating presentations is a supremely creative process. At least it