Jan 24, 2008

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.

Jan 19, 2008

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.

Jan 17, 2008

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.

Jan 1, 2008

Banned phrases for 2008

Lake Superior State University 2008 List of Banished Words:

PERFECT STORM – "Overused by the pundits on evening TV shows to mean just about any coincidence." – Lynn Allen, Warren, Michigan.

WEBINAR – "Yet another non-word trying to worm its way into the English language due to the Internet. It belongs in the same school of non-thought that brought us e-anything and i-anything." – Scott Lassiter, Houston, Texas.

WATERBOARDING – "Let's banish 'waterboarding' to the beach, where it belongs with boogie boards and surfboards." – Patrick K. Egan, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan

ORGANIC – "Overused and misused to describe not only food, but computer products or human behavior, and often used when describing something as 'natural'" - Crystal Giordano, Brooklyn, New York.

WORDSMITH/WORDSMITHING – "I've never read anything created by a wordsmith - or via wordsmithing - that was pleasant to read." – Emily Kissane, St. Paul, Minnesota.

AUTHOR/AUTHORED – "In one of former TV commentator Edwin Newman's books, he wonders if it would be correct to say that someone 'paintered' a picture?" – Dorothy Betzweiser, Cincinnati, Ohio.

POST 9/11 – "'Our post-9/11 world,' is used now, and probably used more, than AD, BC, or Y2K, time references. You'd think the United States didn't have jet fighters, nuclear bombs, and secret agents, let alone electricity, 'pre-9/11.'" – Chazz Miner, Midland, Michigan.

SURGE – "'Surge' has become a reference to a military build-up. Give me the old days, when it referenced storms and electrical power." – Michael F. Raczko, Swanton, Ohio.

GIVE BACK – "This oleaginous phrase is an emergency submission to the 2008 list. The notion has arisen that as one's life progresses, one accumulates a sort of deficit balance with society which must be neutralized by charitable works or financial outlays. Are one's daily transactions throughout life a form of theft?" – Richard Ong, Carthage, Missouri.

'BLANK' is the new 'BLANK' or 'X' is the new 'Y' – In spite of statements to the contrary, 'Cold is (NOT) the new hot,' nor is '70 the new 50.' The idea behind such comparisons was originally good, but we've all watched them spiral out of reasonable uses into ludicrous ones and it's now time to banish them from use. Or, to phrase it another way, 'Originally clever advertising is now the new absurdity!'" – Lawrence Mickel, Coventry, Connecticut.

BLACK FRIDAY – "The day after Thanksgiving that retailers use to keep themselves out of the 'red' for the year. (And then followed by "Cyber-Monday.") This is counter to the start of the Great Depression's use of the term 'Black Tuesday,' which signaled the crash of the stock market that sent the economy into a tailspin. – Carl Marschner, Melvindale, Michigan.

BACK IN THE DAY – "Back in the day, we used 'back-in-the-day' to mean something really historical. Now you hear ridiculous statements such as 'Back in the day, people used Blackberries without Blue Tooth.'" – Liz Jameson, Tallahassee, Florida.

RANDOM – Popular with teenagers in many places.
"Over-used and usually out of context, i.e. 'You are so random!' Really? Random is supposed to mean 'by chance.' So what I said was by chance, and not by choice?" – Gabriel Brandel, Farmington Hills, Michigan.

SWEET – "Too many sweets will make you sick. It became popular with the advent of the television show 'South Park' and by rights should have died of natural causes, but the term continues to cling to life. It is annoying when young children use it and have no idea why, but it really sounds stupid coming from the mouths of adults. Please kill this particular use of an otherwise fine word." – Wayne Braver, Manistique, Michigan

DECIMATE – "Has been turned upside down. It means 'to destroy one tenth,' but people are using it to mean 'to destroy nine tenths'"' – David Welch, Venice, Florida.

EMOTIONAL – "Reporters, short on vocabulary, often describe a scene as 'emotional.' Well sure, but which emotion?" – Brendan Kennedy, Quesnel, British Columbia, Canada.

POP – "On every single one of the 45,000 decorating shows on cable TV (of which I watch many) there is at LEAST one obligatory use of a phrase such as ... 'the addition of the red really makes it POP.' You know when it's coming ... you mouth it along with the decorator. There must be some other way of describing the addition of an interesting detail." – Barbara, Arlington, Texas.

IT IS WHAT IT IS – "This pointless phrase, uttered initially by athletes on the losing side of a contest, is making its way into general use. It accomplishes the dual feat of adding nothing to the conversation while also being phonetically and thematically redundant." – Jeffrey Skrenes, St. Paul, Minnesota.

UNDER THE BUS – "For overuse. I frequently hear this in the cliché-filled sports world, where it's used to describe misplaced blame – i.e. 'After Sunday's loss, the fans threw T.O. under the bus." – Mark R. Hinkston, Racine, Wisconsin.