This fall, what will probably be one of the top five books on presentation design and technique you’d want in your bookshelf will be published.

Garr Reynolds (check out his website — gold waiting to be dug there!), one of my absolute favourite bloggers, is in the middle of writing the book, which will help us all make better presentations and hopefully free ourselves from the inside-the-box-thinking that far too often occurs when presentations are conceived.

I’ll try to keep you posted on when the book is out. If you have any good references for books on presentation design, give a shout.

Yesterday, SlideShare announced the winner (and runner-ups) of the World’s Best Presentation Contest. You can enjoy the magnificent visual design below–I wish all of us could make great slides like that and put an end to bullet point hell.

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

Management guru Tom Peters presented in London one of these days. Although I like Tom’s writing, his slides are not the prettiest on Earth. But they are worth while, and the ones from his London event is one of the best sets I’ve seen recently. In them, he treats topics such as:

• Women - and why they contribute/will contribute more to GDP growth than emerging markets (the BRIC countries) or the Internet
• Washing your hands - is the single best thing you can do to stay free of diseases
• “Nobody gives you power. You just take it!”

And much, much more. They are really worth while, so go have a look, a laugh, and gain some insights (albeit, not from slide design :-) ). Here is the link.

A keen jazz fan (and amateur musician), I like the title of Garr Reynolds’s latest blog post: Jazz and the art of connecting. Auch! Garr has collected some good quotes from jazz magicians (and musicians) and drawn parallels to the art of presenting. Here’s one of my favourites:

“Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.” (Charles Mingus)
This is my favorite quote of all. Many presenters — very smart people — either take something essentially simple and confuse an audience or simply fail to make their more complicated material meaningful to their audience. Simplicity ain’t easy. In fact it’s hard.

The audience doesn’t need to know if we are using 35mm slides, a Mac, a PC, an iPod or displaying slides from Keynote, PowerPoint, or something else. The content of the message and our connection with the audience are all that matter.

From Carlos Ghosn: The little things matter over at Garr’s blog.

I have not read Timothy Koegel’s The Exceptional Presenter yet, but Tom Peters posted about it on his weblog (He Has a Point: A Damn Good One). Tom extracts one simple, very obvious, but—often—very forgettable piece of advice from this book:

Those who practice improve. Those who don’t, don’t

What people often complain, however, is the lack of time to practice, and maybe this should be linked to the fact that the pay-off from practicing is not immediate—it is somewhat distant in most cases. What Tom points out about this book in his post, is that one should simply seize more opportunities to practice, such as in everyday tasks:

One of Koegel’s greatest contributions is suggesting-revealing the fact, the great news, that we have many, many mundane opportunities to practice! He offers numerous ideas. Using people’s names in conversations is very powerful. So practice it at a party this weekend. Smiling is a matchless “weapon” for winning over audiences … so be aware, in family communications, the degree to which you smile, or don’t. In my case, and my wife laughs at me over this one, I spend as much time spell-checking and working on grammar-word choice on emails to old friends as I do when writing something formal to a prospective Client: Every time I communicate with anybody is an opportunity to improve my communications effectiveness.

What a wonderful point. Every time we communicate, we have the chance to improve our communication and presentation skills. Seize the opportunity and Go Own the Room.

Dr. Jay H. Lehr in his memorandum on presentation technique:

Let there be an end to incredibly boring speakers! They are not sophisticated, erudite scientists, speaking above our intellectual capacity; they are arrogant, thoughtless individuals, who insult our very presence by their lack of concern for our desire to benefit from a meeting which we chose to attend.

To the point. Full paper here.

My friend Stefan has a bunch of good links to video resources, where you can watch great presenters owning the room. You should go check it out.

In addition, one of my favourites is Steve Jobs. He is so good, and he has it all: Enthusiasm, Connection, and Sincerity. And—his visual aids are wonderful. (Slides from a visual display workshop I held can be found here.)  You can find a lot of Steve’s presentations as web casts on Apple’s website.

This is the fourth and final post in a series on presentation technique discussing your mental state while presenting—whether you own the room or not. Prior posts are How to Get a Standing Ovation, Go Own the Room: Enthusiasm, and Go Own the Room: Connection.

Sincerity is where I think most people fall to the ground. It is hard to fake, and it is not easily broken down into components that you can manage and measure (as for instance with Connection). However, it remains important if you want to own the room when you present (it remains important throughout all of life).

What, then, is sincerity all about? How do you come across as a sincere person? The easy answer, albeit not necessarily easy to implement or live by, is to be sincere. Do not underestimate the difficulty in being sincere – day in and day out you are confronted with dilemmas and tough choices that can compromise your sincerity—selling a product you don’t believe in, telling a white lie, doing something you’re not passionate about. It is small things, often, but they are there—day in and day out. And, eventually, larger dilemmas will appear, and it will make it all that more difficult.

My short answer to all of this is: Don’t compromise. Never. All you have is your word, your values, and your will, and the only one who can take these away from you is yourself. Don’t.

While your values and will are more or less tools (to use a very inappropriate word) to keep you on the track you want to be on, your word is something you share with others. Values often change as you grow up, which is natural—and not even close to what I will call compromising. Your will is how passionate you are about these values. Your word is what you tell others. Always keep your word—it is your bond, be true and live by your values with every will possible.

If you do this, which is difficult—please don’t underestimate its difficulty—I promise you that it will shine through when you present, be it in terms of presentation technique or when you present yourself through out life. Go own the room.

Making a stellar presentation requires you to connect with the audience—this post is about connection and is the third in a series on presentation technique (prior posts: How to Get a Standing Ovation and Go Own the Room: Enthusiasm).

We know this all too familiar feeling that the speaker, presenter, or lecturer does not connect with his audience. He is distant, he does not seem to communicate with you, and his content is out of place. The sad effect is that his message comes across less powerful, which is not desirable for neither the presenter nor the audience.

What this presenter needs is a connection with the audience. To establish such—and to do it well requires great ability. It also requires that nervousness does not get on top of the situation and take control; however, in this post we will disregard nervousness and focus on ability. (I will treat nervousness in a later post.)

“Connection” can be broken down into three basic parts—Conduit, Content, and Context. All three have a positive, causal impact on connection, and—to some extent—they also correlate with each other. Let me take them one by one. (more…)

Good presentation technique (and good conversation and good karma) requires enthusiasm—read my post on Enthusiasm, Connection, and Sincerity to get a heads up on what I’m talking about. This post will elaborate on enthusiasm.

It’s Not What You Say
It’s how you say it (communication break-down chart)—there is no doubt that enthusiasm about your topic enhances your message, and it increases the effect of the conveying of information. The tricky part, then, is how you get enthusiastic. Even if you are enthusiastic about a topic, you may be nervous (or have tonnes of other things to think of) when you present, thus not being able to convey your enthusiasm. This is clearly an obstacle to effective communication.

Let me break down enthusiasm into two basic components, namely (1) teaching and (2) learning.

Teaching
Truly enthusiastic individuals know peculiar things about their topic, and they have an innate desire to share knowledge about their passion. Conveying enthusiasm is about showing a willingness to teach others (or at least convey, communicate or talk about) the topic at hand, and especially anecdotes and other peculiarities. This willingness should be burden-free. The virtue of wanting to share, underlines your enthusiasm of the subject matter. If you were not enthusiastic, why would you know this stuff, let alone teach/talk about it?

Learning
Enthusiasm never ends. Enthusiastic people spare no opportunity to learn something new, and they do so with a wonderfully childish and unbiased approach. Their enthusiasm is not about confirming what they know (nor the opposite) but about learning. Enthusiastic presenters treat their audiences as equal peers, because they know that presenting is in fact communication and conversation, and that they can extract as much from the presentation as can their audiences.

Be Enthusiastic
Conveying your enthusiasm, then, can be achieved by expressing interest in and fascination of teaching and learning your subject matter, using some of the characteristics I described above.

All this, of course, assumes that you are, in fact, enthusiastic about your subject matter. If not, conveying enthusiasm can give you a hard time.

Today, I held a workshop on how to create great visuals, i.e. slides to accompany/aid your presentation. Although they do not make much sense by themselves, check them out for key points. I will also, occasionally comment on the points made in my presentation–right here on my blog. For now, suffice it to say: Don’t follow the examples given carelessly–it was a workshop, so I used a lot of slides to tease the audience and show examples of poor visual display. But, of course, there are also points to follow.

Visual Display Workshop (February 2006)

Today, the theme for the CBS Case Competition 2006 was officially revealed. The programme was quite impressive with three guest speakers on hot topics in business.

As the case writer, I presented and revealed the theme (photo on the left). I uploaded some of the slides I used (Slides: FUHU Presentation), if you want to have a look at them. Unfortunately, they are not self-containing, and you really need me present to get most out of them–and I haven’t produced hand-outs, so I can’t upload them. The slides are in Danish, but you should be able to gather some of it, and–in any case–you will be able to look at how I design slides.

Photographs from the FUHU/CBS Case Competition Rethinking Business Seminar (by Morten Maegaard).

I told you about Guy Kawasaki’s new blog before—and it keeps getting better. One of his latest posts is about how you get a standing ovation, i.e. how to present well. He has eleven good points (go to his post for full details):

1. Have something interesting to say
2. Cut the sales pitch
3. Focus on entertaining
4. Understand the audience
5. Overdress
6. Don’t denigrate the competition
7. Tell stories
8. Pre-circulate with the audience
9. Speak at the start of an event
10. Practice and speak all the time

I think they are all good points, however, I disagree with point 5. It can be as disastrous to overdress the audience as it can be to underdress it. Preferably you should match-dress it, which goes well in line with Guy’s point 4: Understand the audience.

Although I do not have all of Guy’s experience, I also have a couple of tips, which I go by. They all point to the fact that the good presenter should own the room—be omnipresent. How to get there is very difficult, but one step of the way is to realise that you have to speak to everyone (or as many as possible) in the audience—they have to feel you are speaking to them (and—almost—them only).

I try to achieve this by being enthusiastic about what I talk about. When people feel you are enthusiastic, it is much easier for them to be so as well. It is much nicer to hear from someone who loves what he does or speaks about, than a boring nuthead.

I try to connect to the audience, so they feel I am in the room. It is as simple as establishing eye contact while making key points, but also utilising other body language—smiling (!), using my arms, using the depth of the room (walking to and from the audience) (not just the width—walking from left to right on the stage).

Finally, I try to be sincere. If you’re faking it, there is a good chance the audience will spot you, so you might as well just lay it off to start out with.

In summary, my three points, for now, is:

1. Enthusiasm
2. Connection
3. Sincerity

Go own the room.