I try to buy as many books about presentation technique as possible given certain (and other) constraints such as money and time — and given that the book at hand looks sufficiently interesting, of course.

So, when I heard of Cliff Atkinson’s book Beyond Bullet Points, I quickly put it on my Amazon wish list, because I hate bullet points on slides — they are misused, abused and what is even worse. Finally, this September, I got around to buying it. Here is my take:

The message of the book is essential: Stop using overcrowded slides, stop being bound by the standard bullet point template and start to think. I like that. And Cliff has a very good tool kit to use, if it is difficult for you to move from bullet point slides to “simple” slides with practically no text in them.

He introduces a running Hollywood metaphor and compares the making of a presentation to the making of a movie. It is a good and useful comparison — and his introduction of two techniques, namely the story template (equivalent to filmmakers’ manuscript) and story board comes directly out of this comparison. The story template tool is the single largest takeaway from the book — and you can download it for free (Word template) here.

On the negative side, the book is extremely repetitive and in some passages very basic. And, it, especially the repetition, becomes boring at times – very boring. And for savvy presenters (and savvy Keynote/PowerPoint users), it may not be a revolutionary read, in fact it may be the contrary.

Finally, let me just share a quote from the book, which is very true, but may be obvious, but nevertheless, sometimes, someone has to state the obvious. And Cliff does it well:

You use PowerPoint well when people don’t even notice you use PowerPoint at all. The last thing you want is for someone to compliment you on your slides — that would mean that the medium called attention to itself instead of your ideas. The most important outcome of the presentation is that the audience understands the meaning you intend to communicate. When you finish the presentation, you want the audience to talk about your special ideas, not your special effects.

You can also visit Cliff’s website and his blog.

All in all, the book is good, if you have difficulty in producing text-light slides, and seem to be stuck with bullet points. If that’s the case, buy it.

Also read:

• Go Own the Room: Sincerity
• Great Presenters
• Those Who Practice Improve
• Visual Display Workshop

One of my best friends, Christoffer Husted Rasmussen, is on exchange at New York University this Fall. Being abroad is an excellent excuse to start a blog, and of course, Christoffer went right along and did so — welcome to the blogosphere Christoffer :-). So far, he has nice stories and photographs from New York City. Boy, do I miss it!

This photograph is from the Awards Banquet of the CBS Case Competition 2006 in March. Christoffer is the one on the right.

This weekend we had the annual (well, as annual as it gets, when it is the second time we do it) CBS Case Competition Kick Off Weekend. What a blast. To my surprise and liking, we went to the southern part of Jutland — Sønderjylland — which is the part of the country that I come from, if it had slipped anyone’s attention :-).

This is a picture from our walk in the Åtte Mountains (mountains in Denmark are non-existent… we have hills, and the Åtte Mountains, which they are actually called, don’t go above 60-70 metres). The two in the foreground are Thomas (Big T) and I — we write this year’s case. On the far right in the picture is Thomas Bo, my business partner.

Yesterday (September 16) around midday, my sister Bettina delivered a baby boy (4,035 g, 52 cm), which makes her a proud mother, Jens (my brother-in-law) a proud father, and — of course — me a proud uncle.

Life is so beautiful.

Tom Peters (In Search of Excellence, The Pursuit of Wow!) runs an extremely read-worthy blog. Some days ago, a post drew my attention to an article Tom had written in Liberation Management called The Pursuit of Luck. He puts forward 50 rules that you can follow, if you want to get more lucky. Here are some of my favourites:

1. At-bats. More times at the plate, more hits.
6. Visit odd places. Want to “see” speed? Visit CNN.
17. Constantly reorganize. Mix, match, try different combinations to shake things up.
34. Spread confusion in your wake. Keep people off balance, don’t let the ruts get deeper than they already are.
40. Vary your pattern. Eat a different breakfast cereal. Take a different route to work.
45. Get out of your office. Tell me, honestly, the last time something inspiring or clever happened at that big table in your office?!

Boy is he right! You can read the entire article here.

My familiarity with Amsterdam is — unfortunately — limited to a couple of drive-throughs/drive-bys… So, I’m changing that this weekend. Hopefully, I’ll return with my camera full of photographs, so I don’t have to post someone else’s pictures — although this one is quite nice :-).

One of my latest blog roll additions is a blog called indexed, which is actually a pretty new blog (the archive goes back to the beginning of August this year) — and it is both hilariously funny, relevant and intelligent. The content generated consists of small posts with pictures of index cards, making a point using a nice hand-drawn illustration. Below, an index card called “Keepin’ it real“, posted yesterday.