Now that's useful

At the international airport in Panama. You have to fill out a Spanish form on departure, and as is so often the case, one is never quite sure what all the fields are asking for. So wasn't it kind of Continental to provide a humorous example of forms filled in correctly? Kudos.

Clueless Guys Can't Read Women

Another crazy study, from Indiana University's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, interpreted by Jeanna Bryner here.

Money comment: "...The proper title of the piece should be 'Clueless Women Can't Communicate Non-Verbally.' If you are sending a message in such a way that 70% of your target never receives the message or receives the opposite message - clearly the sender is at fault. What's next; an article on archery entitled 'Clueless targets can't catch arrows'?"

Incredible football graphic

Drive charts from the New York Times. Wish I knew how to link to the graphic itself.

Sick of presentation advice yet?

Out Loud 

Presentation advice from Rands:

There is one unforgivable mistake when giving a presentation. You’ve heard it before: “Don’t read from your slides.” As you’ll see, my approach for presentation development is designed around avoiding this cardinal mistake, and it starts with picking the right tool.

Much love again to John Gruber of Daring Fireball for finding this.

Presentation styles: Bill Gates & Steve Jobs—Take 2

You and I don't get to pull gadgets out of our pockets that wow the faithful, generates rabid applause, and set the blogosphere abuzz. But here's something we can do. Steve makes great use of that old comparative standby—tables. Here's a sample from the introduction of the first iPod, back in October 2001.

In this case, he was highlighting a negative. I'd have used orange.

Watching the performance on YouTube, one is struck by several things: First, it's a very small audience compared to what Steve draws these days. Second, the mood is quite subdued. This is 6 weeks after 9/11, and this is an audience mostly of the press, not of MacHeads. Steve gets very little applause compared to what he's used to (also, the press of the day was rather underwhelmed by this whole "iPod" concept). Very interesting to watch Steve soldier on in front of this crowd.

Notez bien the earlier point about him not having titles on the slides.

Here's another great example from the MacBook Air intro. In this case, the table isn't comparing things per se, it's examining the attributes of competitive products. The simple and elegant use of green checkmarks and the orange x's enhanced the message about what they liked and disliked in this product class. This is the setup. You know what the payoff is going to be: each x for the competitors gets turned a checkmark for his product. BS, sure, but exquisitely executed BS.

Presentation styles: Bill Gates & Steve Jobs—Take 1

See this September 2007 post in Presentation Zen. Money quote: "Bill's topic/subtopic bullet point style is very common, very bland, and rarely effective."

Besides Bill's reliance on bullet points and screen clutter, notice this comparison about the slides: All of Bill's slides bear a title. But very few of Steve's do.

Why care? Because a title is another element, like bulleted lists, that encourages you to read your slides to the audience, a behavior which will destroy your presentation faster than a shot dog through a barn. So make this simple note to yourself: Ban titles on slides. It will encourage you to tell a story that uses slides for emphasis, rather than having the slides tell the story for you. Because if you allow that to happen, you may as well not even be there.

Oh, Irony!

Who says you can't tell a book by its cover?

Much love to John Gruber of Daring Fireball for bringing this to my attention.