Category Archives: Presentation Skills

Why Apple’s Keynote keeps raising the bar when it comes to presentations – it’s all to do with why it was created in the first place.

Posted on November 8, 2008 | 15 comments
Is the Powerpoint style of presenting on the way down?

Is the style of Powerpoint on its way down?

There’s a long running comparison between Microsoft and Apple that suggests that while Apple can turn on a dime (or sixpence if you prefer) when it comes to dealing with the changing technology landscape, Microsoft is like the Titanic, unable to chart its way through troubled waters, and make the necessary rapid diversions to avoid obstacles, foreseeable or otherwise.

It had a chance to do so with mobile phone technologies, but CEO Steve Ballmer who saw the iPhone coming laughed it out of contention and continued on his predictable path. We’ll see where the SS Microsoft navigates to in a year or two with respect to cellphone software and market share.

It’s its sister ship, SS Powerpoint (above) that I’m considering in this post. Some time back, I wrote a blog entry entitled, “Just what is it about Keynote that is changing the way people present? where I trawled through the blogosphere looking for who was using Keynote and why. I was searching for others’ notions of Keynote’s ability to elicit creativity, non-conformity and and persuasiveness in its users so as to deliver impactful messages.

Since that time, I’ve noticed (because I look for such things) an increasing number of high profile presenters overtly using Keynote. I’ll update that blog entry soon, transferring over onto this Presentation Magic blog. Just this morning, on a discussion list I subscribe to, I saw the following message:

“My employer wants me to look into taking an advanced Apple Keynote course…. Our company is looking to migrate from PowerPoint to Keynote and I am the person who will be performing all of these tasks… I’m pretty versed in Keynote, but I think I’m just at the tip of the iceberg with the program. I know it can do more.

Well yes; it can.

In my travels where I’m just speaking about presentations, much like my friend Garr Reynolds with his Presentation Zen approach, I take a platform-agnostic stance. Audiences have not come to learn about software choices. But no matter whether the audience are teachers or CEOs, they know they haven’t seen Powerpoint in action.

They see razor sharp text (usually just a big word or two per slide), megasharp pictures (no pixelation), unfamiliar themes and backgrounds which don’t compete with what’s in the foreground (the message!), movies which play flawlessly within the slide without revealing the controls, spoiling the sense of a seamless presence, and they see intriguing, enhance-the-story transitions and builds (otherwise known as animations).

It’s not that Powerpoint, the application, can’t do these effects adequately – it can. Indeed, it goes one or two better than Keynote when it comes to picture manipulation abilities, for which one needs to leave Keynote 4 and seek third party assistance, such as Photoshop. And it has better timing controls, for sound and image “ins and outs”, something sorely lacking in Keynote 4, but which I expect to be addressed in an update, utilising the timing features we’ve seen in iLife apps. such as Garageband, iMovie and iDVD.

For me, in 2008, the historical differences in the products’ DNA is becoming glaringly obvious. Powerpoint, the app., can’t seem to shake off its corporate lineage, its graduation from being an ersatz overhead transparency producer for the Mac Plus and an adjunct for sales and marketing professionals, complete with bullet point templates for outlining a widget’s selling points.

Keynote’s origins, as a medium for Steve Jobs’ keynotes, where he would display his company’s wares, came as a cinematic, narrative device. Few will disagree that a Jobs’ keynote is a keenly anticipated event, often as not letting the non-techie world know where the techie world is heading. That’s not to say Jobs usually introduces unheard-of products. But he and Apple have displayed an uncanny knack since 1997 to reinvent the familiar, and turn it into something emotionally satisfying rather than a sterile object to be endured due to an impenetrable user interface or lack of reliability.

To help persuade us of Apple’s foresight and ability to provide emotionally satisfying products and future offerings, thus building up anticipation and desirability, as we witnessed with the iPhone introduction in 2007, Jobs uses Keynote to tell stories. Even when on rare occasions it fails, he tells stories such as when he and Woz would play pranks in their dorm using Woz’s gadgets, all the while no doubt hoping that the tech. gnomes in the support area are getting things working again. Pronto!

Keynote was designed from the ground up as a story telling device in the tradition of movie making, hardly surprising given Jobs’ involvement in Hollywood. It elicits in the user, scene construction, editing facilties, and high quality graphics and sound reproduction. A great deal of thought has been put into matching its themes with default fonts and photo cutouts. The reflection and shadowing effects, which Powerpoint has now added and in some ways exceeded, allows for lifting images and text off the page, playing into the audience’s depth perception capacities it takes for granted.

The capacity of Keynote to allow for exceptional vividness and presence is one of its secret herbs and spices, all too easy to neglect when all you’re doing is preparing the next bullet point series (must remember to keep to the 7 x 7 rule – as if!), and locating brain-wearying clip art. At least Powerpoint 2008 for the Mac has eschewed clip art for high quality photo objects.

One shouldn’t underestimate the story-telling, narrative-building capacities of Keynote. More than ever, the power to weave a story arc, with its beginning – middle – end, is essential for conveying complex ideas and concepts to naive audiences. By “naive” I don’t mean willfully ignorant, but an audience who is attending in order to learn and assimilate unfamiliar concepts into their own knowledge base. In order to do so, presenters would do well to make essential assumptions of the audiences prior knowledge, and build a story, using metaphors and similes and even biographical tales.

This is where Keynote’s advanced transitions and builds help the presenter weave his or her story, sometimes applying cinema quality dissolves Powerpoint is incapable of achieving, or advanced masking controls, much like matte artists at Industrial Light and Magic.

Indeed, it’s my guess that we will see in the next Keynote update even more acknowledgement of its cinematic heritage by the inclusion of the sort of effects we have come to see in such Apple products as Final Cut and Motion.

For the past five years since its introduction, Keynote has gently added new features, starting from a fairly low base compared to the bells and whistles Powerpoint users have come to expect. Long time users had to become quite innovative and clever in their use, making up for Keynote’s feature deficits, yet capitalising on its superior visual and text qualities. In Keynote 4, Apple unleashed some of the most desired and necessary features such as motion, alpha masking and scaling.

Keynote still lacks the diversity and multiplicity of features Powerpoint boasts. But if the feedback I receive is to be relied upon, audiences certainly don’t notice the disparity. Indeed, because they so often see the same unimaginative themes and unnecessary animations in Powerpoint, the simplicity of Keynote shines through.

It does mean that Keynote users work harder to achieve these effects, using the application’s precision features. This may come as a shock to those who expect Apple products to make life easier, but this is to misunderstand the desired effect: to make the audience’s task easier in understanding the presenter’s essential points.

I was once told that an expert makes a difficult task look so easy a beginner could contemplate undertaking the task, only to discover the task’s inherent difficulty.

Helping audiences understand difficult concepts, including ones they may intially resist, requires tools which help the presenter make the difficult seem possible. Keynote’s cinematic qualities taps into the dominant medium by which we learn and are entertained simultaneously.

Powerpoint will get there too, once its users shift from its cognitive style incorporating an overabundance of the written word, and it improves its graphics abilities. We are already seeing this shift with a number of books recently published acknowledging its deficits, and helping its users achieve more, focussing on essential presentation skills. Google the names “Cliff Atkinson“; “Stephen Kosslyn” and “Rick Altman“.

But by then, Keynote will have leapt ahead, improving its audio handling abilities, and incorporating sophisticated timeline features to assist presenters’ ability to have even more precise control over the slide and its elements. As Keynote’s strengths attract more third party developers, expect some thrilling breakthroughs in presentation capabilities.

That’s what I’m looking forward to including in my Powertools workshop – I won’t be surprised to receive news of such developments in the lead up to Macworld. Plus more rumours of a Keynote 5 on the way.

Powerpoint users may console themselves that it is still the dominant knowledge transfer tool on the planet. But today more than ever given financial circumstances, it’s time to stand out from the crowd and differentiate oneself. And with Macintosh market share growing, more and more switchers will peer inside their new Macs’ Application folder and wonder what this trial iWork bundle can achieve. Some will “get it” straight away, revelling in Keynote’s comparatively simple interface, while others will wonder how they will get by with such a “minimal” set of tools. But if they persevere, use facilities like Apple’s online seminars featuring Keynote or sign up for Lynda.com self-paced tutuorials, they will ultimately come to understand why Keynote generates so much enthusiasm by its long-term users, despite its shortcomings.

Please use the comments section to share your Keynote stories, especially if you’re a switcher. You can be assured Apple’s Keynote team will be listening!

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Will Obama’s Victory speech change the way people present for the better? And does that mean more acceptance of Apple’s Keynote software as the tool of choice?

Posted on November 7, 2008 | 6 comments

This week in Melbourne we’ve observed, neigh(!), participated in two races: a 22 horse race known as the Melbourne Cup, and a two horse race in the US, which will have a far greater impact on the world’s future than the horse race.

Nonetheless, in an ironic twist, so iconic has the Melbourne Cup become (it is the second richest race in the world after the Dubai Cup), that Victorians have a public holiday! Yes, we get a day off from work in celebration of a horse race, while the rest of Australia works. It’s not called “The race that stops a nation” for nothing!

This day off gave me time at home to further prepare some presentations, and try and get my Macworld 2009 workbook ready for publication. From it and my blogs, I hope I can publish a book (in print or pdf) which details some of my thoughts and actions when it comes to presentations.

You see, I believe being able to present well, whether it’s at a conference for scientists, or a small business proposal meeting to raise funds, be it a CEO delivering at an annual shareholders’ meeting, or yes, a Presidential candidate trying to get your vote, it is a fundamental 21st century skill. It’s also one of the most feared modern human activities! I count myself lucky to have had much exposure when I was young to presenting, whether it be in class at school or college, or on radio, in print, or on TV. I feel comfortable in all media, and indeed have taught media management skills previously.

When a tool like Keynote comes along, as it did in 2003, one grasps it fiercely, having recognised its qualities to elicit emotional responses to message delivery, quite at variance to the dominant message delivery platform for presentations, Powerpoint. Yes, I have seen bad Keynote and good Powerpoint, but each is rare!

With Obama winning on Tuesday, we were witnesses to two very important speeches: Obama’s victory speech, and McCain’s concession speech. Each was a emotional symbol of the man’s character, as I heard and felt them.

McCain revisited himself, without the weight of the Republican party hopes resting on his shoulders. Here in Australia, the power of the former conservative government was in keeping its factions in check, while pointing to the opposition’s “ownership” by powerful trade unions (sound familiar to my US colleagues?) in over-riding more moderate progressives within the party.

This year, the Republican factions became all too obvious and those more moderate Republicans and swinging independents refused to hear the same old FUD (see my previous blog entry, comments and all).

While Sarah Palin impressed many at the Republican Convention and held her own during the single Vice-Presidential debate, it was clear to me she had been well-rehearsed and coached, and had much presence and appeal.

But in her one-on-one interviews, her lack of depth, both intellectual and political, was on show for all to see. Like actors, she was only as good as her last performance, and while many will hold on to her initial presentation at the Convention, her later performances with the likes of Katie Couric and the merciless parodies by Tina Fey will likely see Gov. Palin reduced to a page on Wikipedia.

Obama left his best speech until last, following McCain’s concession speech, which you can see him watching below, courtesy of a Flikr link here.

Obama watches McCain's concession speech

Obama watches McCain

While those who had kept an eye and ear on Obama since 2004 knew he was going places through his oratory and passion, it’s only in these last two years and in particularly these last few months when many have really listened to the man speak.

His speech on Tuesday night in Grant Park, Chicago, will be listened to again and again, for all manner of reasons. It reminded me of one of my slides from my Macworld 2008 presentation, which I modelled on this book, below:

Peak Performance Presentations

Peak Performance Presentations

In my presentation, I wanted to remind the audience that we ought not rely on technology to help us be persuasive. That like lead actors, we need to use technology as support acts to help us get our message across, not be the message. Initially, I showed a humourous video of technology gone wrong, then referred to a blank slide where I reminded the audience that some of the most memorable and influential speeches in living (and recorded) memory came without technological assistance (albeit with microphones).

On a blank slide, I brought in a panel showing Winston Churchill behind a microphone, accompanied by a his voice: “We will fight them on the beaches….”

This slide occupied the left third of the screen, such that audience members were now expecting the other two thirds to be filled with more speeches. I then showed a picture of JFK behind the microphone on the slide’s right third, with his voice saying, “Ask not what your country can do for you…”.

This left the middle panel to be filled.

I chose to fill it with Martin Luther King behind the microphone, with his voice: “I have a dream…”

It was a powerful moment in the Macworld presentation, and I was taken back to that moment when I listened to Obama’s speech on Wednesday, my time. No doubt in a future presentation, I will likely include parts of it, perhaps leaving Churchill to one side, especially if I’m working with a youngish audience.

There are any number of phrases to select:

“It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.”

“The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America – I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you – we as a people will get there.”

“And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world – our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.”

And while it’s long, these three paragraphs, with their story telling, and emotionality, will no doubt bring a tear to some:

“This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing – Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons – because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America – the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.”

And while I will show a picture of Obama when we hear his voice, as the audio concludes, I’ll transit to this picture of Jesse Jackson listening to the speech (I think a very slow dissolve will add to the emotionality), and no doubt many in the audience familiar with him will be empathising with his feelings, knowing his struggles and how his hopes have now been realised.

jackson
You see, even though I might be telegraphing what I will do in a future presentation, it won’t spoil the emotions of the moment nor the persuasiveness of slide and my commentary.

What this all means is that we now have a President who is an orator of the first order, unlike the incumbent President Bush, whom Dave Letterman pillories each night in his “Great Moments in Presidential Speeches” parody.

My prediction is that now more than ever is the time when expectations of giving great presentations, whether in scientific or academic conferences, in business or in ministries and schools, will peak. Lacklustre Powerpoint-based “shows” will no longer cut it.

This will be the case especially in schools and colleges. This election had a huge turn out of young people, some voting for the first time, impressed no doubt with the change desired by so many, together with Obama clear technological savvy  with his exemplary use of SMS,  Facebook, iApps for the iPhone and so on.

This is a cohort who are themselves media savvy, creating their own entertainment and news reporting, and it is this group who will reject long winded, passionless speeches and bullet point-riddled presentations with accompanying chintzy clip art and moronic “beanie” people. This is the group who take megapixel-sharp photos with their cellphones, and share them on Flickr and Facebook.

This group will expect their teachers and figures of authority to present well, and Obama has set a very high standard indeed. Expect an increase in enrolments in speech coaching groups like Toastmasters.

But just as importantly, this is a group very switched on to the Mac, which as you know comes bundled when purchased with a trial copy of iWork and thus Keynote.

I’m guessing in the next update of Keynote we will see even more movement to a merging of Keynote and elements of iMovie and Garageband. We have already seen how the current version of Keynote has numerous export options suitable for podcasting. But I also expect to see more tools to help Keynote help you create memorable presentations. Like most things Apple, it will guide its users to be more creative, then get out of their way when they need to be centre stage.

This is why Paul Kent, MD of Macworld, and who invited me to present at once more at Macworld 2009, is such a smart guy.  But he has made life tough for me. He knows he wants my Powertools workshop to evoke the same reaction as this year’s presentation, where I showed Keynote in action rather than talked directly about it (to the disappointment of about 10% of the audience, judging by the evaluations).

But he also asked me to show how I go about thinking and creating with Keynote, so you get to see how the magic happens. Unlike a magician who never gives away his or her secrets, I am in my element sharing my knowledge, receiving feedback, and showing how to do things differently. Not just to be oppositional, but because my way of doing things differently is a better match for what the science of persuasion and influence tells us.

Teaching presentation skills is so much more than teaching the mechanics of how software works, which seems to be how so many workshops on Powerpoint operate.

Over to you now… regardless of your political persuasion and whether you think Obama’s actions can match his rhetoric, what do you think about my central thesis, that he has raised expectations for anyone who wishes to speak to an audience?

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What an Obama victory next week will mean for Apple and its users

Posted on October 31, 2008 | 40 comments

I’m in the process of making final plans for my next trip to the US, where I’ll be visiting Florida (Miami Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton), then off to Macworld in San Francisco for my Powertools workshop on Apple’s Keynote (details upcoming).

After, I’ll stay on to do some more training, hopefully picking up some workshops, but likely leaving California before the Presidential Inauguration in January. Certainly, I will be able to pick up some of the feeling of change by the time I arrive in Florida on Christmas Eve (look for my reindeer).

Here in Australia, we experienced our change from a tired, conservative, “let’s go to war with George W.” fear-mongering government almost a year ago, and the relief has been palpable. Many of those who took the time to write to newspapers and blog about the shift noted a sense of human dignity having been returned to the Australian landscape, when a more progressive government was elected in November, 2007.

Now, because of the way I think about presentations (and how to best use Keynote), I am very aware of the power of presentations to persuade, using engaging and involving methods based on cognitive neuroscience, adult learning principles, and knowledge management. I am picking up “gigs” from individuals and organisations who wish to learn how to use these methods with their particular audiences, whether they be colleagues, politicians and their advisors, or church attendees.

In many respects, the Democrat party has been lousy at delivering persuasive messages, ineffectual at dealings with Republican hubris. In my presentation at Macworld this year, I discussed the power of emotions to persuade, and referred to psychologist Drew Westen’s book, The Political Brain, as evidence of this.

Here is part of the slide I used, showing a quote from the book:

My slide from Macworld 2008, featuring Drew Western

Drew Westen and Macworld 2008

I wanted the Macworld audience to understand the pervasiveness of emotions, whether in presenting, in politics, or in teaching, and how this aspect of human behaviour could be harnessed to make message giving more persuasive.

Westen’s thesis is that the Democrats have been poorly informed in how to deliver messages, allowing the GOP and its fear-based messages to hold sway, none more so than what the world is observing with the McCain/Palin team. (Believe me when I say the world is watching the US elections intensely, and we can see how poor economic management in the US has global effects. Ask the Icelanders, whose state-based airline just went bankrupt).

In Australia, surveys have shown that about 75% of Australians want an Obama victory next week. And we’ve had a year of living through “You’ll be sorry” messages from the conservative elements within Australia. So far, despite the economic challenges, the current progressive Government is managing quite well, and we here have been afforded some protection from the worst of the impending global recession.

If you heard last week’s Apple Q4 earnings call (I played some of the audio from the iTunes podcast at this week’s iMUG AGM as part of my President’s report), you would have heard CEO Steve Jobs singing the praises of Apple customers, of how they cleverly choose Apple products despite their premium price, even if it means waiting a little longer to afford them. He spoke of the economy’s unpredictability while speaking of Apple’s being protected from the buffeting the PC world is experiencing with their razor-thin margins and lack of innovation. Great products and $25 Billion in cash and no debts is a great means by which to weather the current turbulence.

In an insightful column recently, Robin Bloor wrote of “the sound of crashing Windows” referring to his observations, backed by data, that the Mac is making incredible inroads into the public and corporate mind and market share, challenging Windows’ dominance.

About Microsoft he wrote,

“Microsoft has very little territory on which to fight. In fact it almost feels as though the game is already over. It has no direct retail footprint and it doesn’t do hardware. It even suffers from the indignity that while you can run Windows under OS X, you cannot run OS X under Windows. Because of virtualization, Windows has become a Mac app for running legacy PC applications in the Mac world – and the Mac world is currently expanding at 3 times the rate of the Windows world.”

In other words, at least with respect to IT, change is on its way and it’s inevitable.

I want to suggest to you that an Obama victory next week will hasten that change significantly.

It’s not just that Obama is a switched-on technophile (as compared to the near-technophobic MacCain), able to better use social media to get his message across, but he far more mirrors how Apple operates. He comes from a minority background and must overcome huge resistance to change by conservative elements who prefer a “the herd might stink, but at least it’s safe with them” mentality that has prevailed hitherto.

But pain in the hip-pocket, loss of jobs at home and children in a flawed war, and the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, appears to have Americans asking themselves if the Microsoft-style FUD the GOP is asserting about Obama remains tenable.

If Obama succeeds, then a shift in how FUD is experienced by the voting public (we here in Australia have compulsory voting) will be demonstrated. FUD can only be effective if the product you have to offer has “good enough” qualities compared to the “as good as it gets”, and thus price and conformity are preferred over innovation and difference. The failure of Vista to even make the “good enough” grade has proved a tipping point for Microsoftian FUD.

Obama winning next week will be like the horns at Jericho blowing, bringing down many walls of separation between sections of the American populace, in place for hundreds of years. It will have far reaching effects, locally and globally, and the world will definitely alter its attitude to the US and its citizens after eight years of President Bush and his administration.

My assertion is that an Obama victory will loosen up many prejudices, while others will harden in the first year when the vanquished sit around ready to pop out the inevitable “told you so”. But the overarching effect I expect many will feel, including nations other than the US, will be a sigh of relief together with the generation of hope.

Many of us who have been part of the Mac world, experiencing prejudice and being squeezed out from the mainstream despite preferring the better, more emotionally satisfying product, will perhaps also feel a sense of joy if Obama succeeds. That’s not to say all Mac users are Democrats – far from it. But even progressive Republicans will prefer change this election, having had enough of the present administration with its central message of “family values” and a “war on terror”, and not wishing its de facto continuation with McCain/Palin.

Just like the effects of Roger Bannister running the first sub-four minute mile in 1954 saw many others quickly follow with their own sub-four records, thus breaking through a shared psychological barrier, the breaking through the race barrier next week, should it happen, ought to see many other shared psychological barriers also fall over.

I believe one of those barriers will be that artificially imposed on the Mac in industry, schools, and personal use. If there is one negative here, it’s that despite the psychological shift that would occur with an Obama win, the economic recession America will experience (is currently experiencing?) may see excessive financial conservative belief reflected in a “stay the course” with Windows attitude, despite evidence of its failures, doubts about getting Windows 7 out on time, and of course total cost of Windows ownership. The continuing moves to Open Source, a further threat to Microsoft, will parallel the openness of an Obama led government I would hope, in strict comparison to the incumbent’s history of secrecy.

I can’t vote in the US election, even though my father served in the US military at Fort Bragg in WWII, but I have a real love for the nation and its original principles, and a dislike for the faux patriotism displayed by those who believe they represent “real Americans”. I’m hoping when I get to the US in December I will experience the winds of change blowing through.

We did it here in Australia, and we’re doing OK, all things considered. Perhaps we’ll chat about the election results at Macworld in January. See you there.

(Today’s New York Times has an interesting piece on how Drew Westen’s ideas are influencing the Democrat’s message delivery process here. If his process is show to be effective in an Obama win, it will also put another nail in the Powerpoint coffin, with its “just fill in the bullet point cognitive style”, in preference to a more visual and emotionally effective Keynote-style I will be teaching at Macworld 2009).

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While Wall Street went “meh” over the Let’s Rock keynote, Steve Jobs stealthily showed us the next version of his presentation software, Keynote

Posted on September 10, 2008 | 34 comments

Whilst Wall Street sighed with feigned non-interest at the outcome of Apple’s “Let’s Rock” presentation on Tuesday, and others wondered if Apple had lost its sparkle with no surprises – the rumour sites put paid to that – another group of Apple observers were watching keenly.

This is a group that has come to learn that there is one Apple product that Steve Jobs does not keep wrapped up tightly and hidden under a bushell, lest the rumour sites steal his thunder. Indeed, I think what I’m talking about is the only product that Apple regularly lets the public see ahead of its release, with nary a mention. Those who have visited my blogs from time to time know of which product I speak: Keynote, Apple’s presentation software first released at Macworld 2003.

Nowadays, during each of Steve Jobs presentations, Keynote observers watch for tell-tale signs that an update is imminent. We saw a little hint at this year’s Macworld keynote, when the Macbook Air was released: a few new transitions.

But at Tuesday’s “Let’s Rock” iPodfest, we got the message loud and clear that a significant Keynote update, perhaps a version update, not just a point-update (ie Version 5 rather than version 4.0.4) was on its way.

Evidence

Since my teachings with Keynote so emphasise the visual (“the visual system is to broadband what the audio system is to dial-up”), how better to demonstrate the likely forthcoming update by sharing with you screenshots of Let’s Rock presentation, in the order I spotted them. Perhaps there are others I missed, so please let me know: les-at-lesposen.com

Let’s Start:

The first hint comes very early in the keynote, just a few minutes in:

This is actually the placing of the word “Music” onto the screen, in a starburst kind of way, much like the old Screen Gems logo used in TV shows of long ago. Let’s see what happens a moment later:

Now we can see the word “Music” appearing. The effect is hardly subtle, but one that really draws your attention. Let’s see what happens next:

The starburst finshes its “orbit” and the full word is revealed. This is a full-on animation which these screenshots can barely illustrate in an adequate fashion. But even so, I see them as evidence of new effects. Together with what else we see as the keynote progress, it can be taken as evidence of continued improvement in the Keynote app.

Next – new image manipulation abilities or just an imported Photoshopped image?

Take a look at what comes next in the Jobs’ slideshow: an image of iTunes 7, below:

I want you to notice an effect I use frequently in my own Keynotes, especially when I’m showing book covers, newspaper articles, or journal papers. This is a skewed image where the left edge angles down to a shorter right edge, as if the image was rotated slightly. This has the effect of drawing the eye along the image from left to right, and in my own slides there is a large amount of black (or white space) where your eye moves to and you just “know” something will appear there. This is me taking control of the message delivery by directing your gaze where I want it to go – let’s call this “direction” as compared to the magician’s “misdirection” where he sets you up for a “gosh, how did he do that?” moment.

Currently, to do this effect in Keynote means using another software, such as Photoshop or GraphicConverter. Indeed, even Powerpoint for Mac 2008 has rudimentary image manipulation tools which I have used to distort and image then import it into Keynote. My guess is, judging by this image, Keynote is about to match Powerpoint’s ability, if not leapfrog past it. Look further at the image above, and note how the reflection leaves no gap at the bottom, which is what would happen if you just dropped in a Photoshopped image. This gives further support to the notion that Keynote has received upgraded photo tools.

Next: New text animations

Keynote has far fewer animation effects than Powerpoint, but what it does have screams at you that you are seeing a Keynote rather than more of the same Powerpoint. In the next series of slides we see a new text animation effect. We start with a number displayed, “8,500,000” and underneath it, “songs” in smaller print.

In actual fact, the animation has just begun, if you notice how the “5” and the third “0” are a tad brighter than the other digits.

In the next slide, a moment later, we see this:

There is the same “5” and “0” and the comma, but also notice that in the word “songs” some letters have gove missing. Transpositions are taking place, as we see in the next slide:

In fact, we now see a new text image: 125,000 Podcasts. But notice how the “5” and the “0” in 125,000, and the “o” and “s” in Podcasts are brighter, having remained from the previous text (8,500,000 songs). What an interesting transition, and I’m going to be curious to see when to use it in my own slide creations when I get my hands on this version of Keynote. And what the development team have called this effect!

Moving along… a “flip and hang” transition

In the next new transition, we start at the point where Steve is discussing the pricing of Standard Definition (SD) television shows (priced at $1.99) and how iTunes 8 will also now support High Definition (HD) at $2.99.

Here’s how we move from one price point to the other. We start with SD:

Notice in the next image a moment later how the price starts to flip upwards:

… and in the next slide, as it flips right over, it and the letters “SD” are being replaced by the $2.99, and the HD letters:

But in the next slide, below, we see the fun element. The “HD” has now appeared but the price $2.99 is still flipping around on a different time basis. Again, another transition that captures the gaze.

And in the next slide both HD and $2.99 rock on their horizontal axes – quite an unusual yet strangely familiar effect.

Next: Follow the bouncing hoola-hoop

One of the things I teach in my Presentation Magic classes is how to draw the eye to specific locations on the slide. There are any number of reasons for doing this, and any number of ways. Most presenters are utterly lazy and use those awful laser pointers to circle or point to something on the slide. Most times, it looks as if they have early onset Parkinson’s Disease because it’s very difficult to hold the pointer steady, and drawing circles around specific areas is usually of little help.

My preferred solution is to know ahead of time, when you prepare your slides, just what on the slide you want your audience to look for. You can state it: “Now, of you notice this column in the spreadsheet” or “Let’s take a closer look at this aeroplane’s engine exhaust”. Or, you can either circle these areas with a shape outline, or grey out the areas around the target location, leaving the target the only object in full colour or you can cut out the target, enlarge it, and bring it forward over a fuzzy background image. These are but two ways of drawing the audience’s eye where you want it to go.

In the slide sequence below, we see that Keynote’s developers have attended to this and we get a new way, probably one of several, to highlight a specific area of a slide. We start with the iTunes interface once more:

In the next moment, at the bottom left corner, we see a purple circle emerge – it actually bounces onto the slide from the left:

… and like a demented and distorting hula hoop keeps bouncing over to the right:

…bouncing and rolling…

… almost there…

… until fully formed as a circle, it highlights the new “Genius” icon in iTunes 8:

I’m guessing this is just one of a few new ways Keynote will allow you to highlight various aspects of a slide, and I am guessing its developers have been looking closely at how some of us have been using Keynote’s abilities and both making it easier for us (less clicks) as well adding features from their own imaginations.

Such as this graph below, which shows the “rock solid” growth of iPod sales. So why not use a slab of rock to drive home the point?

Jobs reaches the end of the new Nano announcements with a replication of the “screen gems” effect but its orientation is vertical, whereas at the beginning of the keynote it was horizontal. Let’s see. We start with the new Nano:

And with the curviness of the new screen, it’s a no brainer to “highlight” it:

… drawing attention to its new appearance, now added to by movement of the “screen gems”:

… which really gets the eye’s attention:

Were there other new effects I missed?

Well, I kind of got the feeling that one of my wishes for Keynote came true: A Ken Burns’ effect where one could enlarge and pan across the slide, dropping down onto a section to highlight. But perhaps I was only seeing things, and it was the camera videoing the keynote that was performing this effect.

Yet perhaps….

In any case, out of all this rather obsessional Keynote watching, comes the renewed belief that we are in for a Keynote upgrade, hopefully way before Macworld, so I can incorporate its new effects in my two-day workshop, shortly to be announced by IDG/Macworld.

I’ll write more about this in the next few weeks as the Conference starts to shape up, and perhaps the Keynote community can share with me some of their desires for Keynote. I have a strong suspicion the Keynote team at Apple will be listening closely to our ideas for how to further improve Keynote, and help it to help us elicit more creativity and less boredom in our audiences.

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Are my Keynotes killing Hollywood’s senior actors?

Posted on April 16, 2008 | 3 comments

Those of you who’ve been following my treatises on presenting or who have attended a workshop I’ve conducted on presentation skills, will know the emphasis I place on story telling.

I’m certainly not alone in this endeavour, and others like the Heath brothers have talked about the importance of story telling in their recent book, Made To Stick.

I’m always trying in my workshops to come up with new ways to persuade people of the importance of letting each slide become part of the overall story you’re telling, be it to sell ideas or goods, educate and inform, or brief an audience on your current research. And that each slide in its own way has a story to tell, or at least assist you to tell.

At Macworld 2008 where I presented on presentation skills (evaluation form available if you want to see it courtesy of IDG Macworld), I had planned to introduce a few new slides to illustrate to the audience, by involving them in a “theatre of the mind” activity, just how important story telling is in our world.

But I pulled the slides the night before because of worries over copyright, once I knew my presentation would be recorded. They were to be clips from well-known movies which were to illustrate my point, but being unsure of what constituted “fair use” in the USA I pulled the slides.

Later in Australia only a few days after returning from the US, and with no possibility of my all day workshop being videod, I included the slides, to great effect.

Here’s what I was trying to do.

Over several slides, I showed excerpts from films important to me, covering more than 40 years of filmgoing. Some of the actors in the clips were still alive, some had already passed on.

Not all in the workshop knew all the films, but most had seen some of them, enough to get my central idea of the importance of story telling.

I chose clips which were film highlights, perhaps even passing into common speech. But for this audience of mental health specialists, I let them know these clips told a lot about me, the presenter, because of what they all had in common. These clips illustrated not just memorable scenes, but collectively, they represented a peak in the story arc, an “Oh my gosh” moment where the story zagged into new narrative territory. These are scenes you wait to see again, even if you’ve seen the film many times. They are an emotional highlight.

Let me illustrate with some stills from the movies:

1. In the Heat of the Night (1967) – Sydney Poitier

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Martin Luther King was still campaigning for human rights when this Academy Award winning film was released.

In this classic scene, Sydney Poitier is confronted by a Mississippi small town police chief, played by the late Rod Steiger. An industrialist bullding a new plant has been found murdered in the small hours of the morning, and Poitier has been taken in for questioning having been found waiting in the train station by Steiger’s deputy, and with more than a hundred dollars in his wallet. (This is 1967 after all).

Aggressively questioned by Steiger (who thinks he’s got his murderer standing in front of him) about where he got the money, Poitier tells him he earnt it, only to be rebutted with “Colour can’t earn that kind of money.” Asked what work he does to earn the hundreds of dollars now on the table, Poitier responds, “I’m a police officer!” Soon enough, Steiger discovers that not only is Poitier a “colleague” but he is Philadelphia’s finest homicide detective.

Later, after he’s seconded to the case against his own wishes, Poitier doesn’t hand over some FBI lab evidence he’s sent for. Steiger makes fun of his first name, Virgil. “Now that’s a funny kind of name for a nigger boy that comes from Philadelphia. What do they call you up there?”

To which Poitier replies with a phrase that becomes the title of a follow up movie, “They call me Mister Tibbs!”

2. Planet of the Apes (1968) – Charlton Heston

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A year later, the first of a franchise of science fiction films featuring the evolution of man to ape began when Chartlon Heston landed on a planet where the apes ruled, and humans were mute and experimented upon.

In one scene, Heston, playing astronaut George Taylor, is captured and taken to the centre of an adobe village where he is taunted by the local adolescent chimps. Mauled once too often, he screams to an astonished crowd, “Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!”

But the scene I included comes at the very end of the film, where Taylor (Heston) has captured the Minister for Science, Professor Zaius, whom he thinks knows the answers to how the planet is the way it is, with simians running the show.

On horseback, armed with his rifle (of course), and local female companion, Nova, he confronts Zaius for the last time:

George Taylor: A planet where apes evolved from men? There’s got to be an answer.

Dr. Zaius: Don’t look for it, Taylor. You may not like what you find.

A minute or so later, as Taylor rides along the shoreline, he confronts the explanation for the planet’s situation. (I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t seen it).

3. Jaws (1975) – Roy Scheider

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Several years later, Steven Spielberg took a rather unknown novel and turned it into box office gold, keeping people away from beaches for years.

In the scene I’ve chosen, the fish hasn’t been sighted, his presence known to the audience by a musical phrase which must be one of the best known after the opening sequence of Beethoven’s 5th symphony. Scheider, playing a small town police chief joins old shark hunter Robert Shaw and young rich scholar of things fishy, Richard Dreyfuss, out in open waters to hunt the shark down.

In the setup to the scene, Shaw is quietly repairing fishing nets, Dreyfus is playing solitaire on the deck, while Scheider is “chumming”, throwing out offal to attract the beast. When he does, he and the audience share in the frightening moment, with Scheider slowly backing into the cabin, not taking his eyes from the ocean, before uttering the words, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat!”

4. Capricorn One (1978) – Sam Waterston

Almost ten years after the first manned landing on the moon, the general public had become a little jaundiced with NASA’s continuing Apollo launches. Mind you, some had put forward conspiracy theories that the landings were all faked, so taking this as a story plot, Peter Hyam’s film constructs a manned mission to Mars. But NASA’s budget has been cut to the bone, and so its director, played by Hal Holbrook, sets up an elaborate scheme to fake a landing and safe return, expecting the three man crew, played by James Brolin, O.J. Simpson and Sam Waterston to go along with the plan, for the good of the company.

When Holbrook suspects Brolin’s character, Colonel Brubaker, will not keep the secret, he unrolls plan B which will see the astronauts disappear. Breaking out from their desert-based Mars simulation, the astronauts escape in a sleek Learjet, only to crash land it in the desert when it runs out of fuel.

Each astronaut goes their separate ways according to the compass in the hope that one of them will make it back to tell their story. O.J. is captured first, while Waterston finds that his chosen direction takes him to a huge outcropping he’s got to climb. Exhausted and dehydrated, he begins the climb, telling himself a joke in the form of a long-winded story about how to to gently break bad news. As he reaches the punchline and the outcropping’s peak, he looks over the edge, only to find…

I won’t spoil it for you, but the camera pulls back from Waterston’s character and we get to see what he has just seen… and we know then that Brolin will soon become the last man standing.

An irony in the film is that Brolin’s character is eventually rescued by a journalist played by Elliot Gould who has been suspicious all long. Do you know the connection in real life between Brolin and Gould? (Hint: She’s a rather funny girl).

5. History of the World – Part 1 (1981) – Mel Brooks

...these fifteen.. oy..ten commandments

I had planned to show a scene from this film to 120 lawyers at a professional meeting on teaching presentation skills… but I chickened out. I was running short of time, having condensed a day’s workshop into an hour’s presentation, so decided to discard this sequence.

I wanted to draw the lawyers’ attention to man-made commandments when it comes to slides, especially the ones that say “follow the 6 x 6″ rule, no more than six lines per slide, with no more than six words per slide.”

I wanted to say that presenters follow this mantra as if it was a commandment, but it’s a hoax, with no evidence to support it. In the film clip, Moses, played by Mel Brooks come down from Mt. Sinai carrying three tablets, of five commandments each.

But as he speaks, he drops one: “Here are the fifteen (drop, crash).. oy… ten commendments the lord gives us.”

I wanted the audience to equate this humorous piece with challenging “laws” of presenting which have no foundation.

And so, in my workshops where I use these clips, I ask participants to share with their neighbours films like these that have them pausing to watch and wait for their favourite scene, to emphasise the power of story telling, and how it’s so important to acknowledge when presenting.

Oh, and the title of this blog entry? A few weeks after I presented this workshop, Roy Scheider from Jaws died, then a few weeks later after another presentation, Charlton Heston died. I am hoping like crazy I haven’t put the mozz on any surviving actors in my slides.

UPDATE: September 28, 2008 – I had thought of including the famous scene in “Cool Hand Luke” where the prison superintendent, played by Strother Martin, says “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

Strother Martin let's Paul Newman know of a failure to comminicate.

Strother Martin lets Paul Newman know of a "failure to communicate".

I include mention of it in this update to honour the passing of a true acting mensch, Paul Newman, on September 26.

What are your favourite scenes you would use if you were running a workshop like mine?

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Australia 2020 summit – an exercise in Powerpoint-poisoning or great use of dashboards?

Posted on April 10, 2008 | Leave a comment

In November 2007, Australia tossed out its conservative government of eleven years, rejecting the direction the government was taking the country. The prime minister of the day had strongly aligned himself with the US president, and taken the country to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many complained about the government’s attitudes to human rights both in Australia and abroad, and the then-opposition proved a most attractive alternative. This was despite Australia enjoying a particularly strong economy.

The now-opposition is in disarray with its new leader (the previous prime minister lost his own seat, something which has only happened once before in Australia’s history) having approval ratings of less than 10%, compared to more than 70% for the current prime minister, who is now in China and letting the Chinese government know his opinion of their human rights stance, particularly with respect to Tibet.

One of the election promises made by the now-prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was to have a summitt of Australia’s brightest thinkers, who would come to the nation’s capital in April 2008 for a multi-day talkfest, and set an agenda for future policies, constructing a snapshot of life in Australia in 2020.

Naturally, with numbers limited to about a thousand, many hoped they would be tapped on the shoulder, while others took advantage of application forms for the consideration of the talk-fest’s organising committees.

The talk-fest is divided into various categories designed to help plan Australia’s future, and the area of Health is one of these areas where “experts” have been invited to share their knowledge. The list of the those attending has been published, and it’s no surprise that the list is heavy on academics.

The Government has also published some orientation papers to help set the agenda. These have also been published online, on both Powerpoint and pdf format. The pdf file is a converted Powerpoint stack.

Now far be it from me to cast doubts on the process so soon, but it seems to me that if the talk-fest days are to be held under the auspices of the Powerpoint method of knowledge sharing, I have to wonder just how much can be achieved. I’m hoping no data projectors will be used, and handouts of the slides will be merely a starting point for discussion. I’m also hoping that some excellent scribes using techniques for recording and comparing ideas will be present. But given the stacking with academics who live and die by Powerpoint, my hopes aren’t high.

Let’s have a look at some of the slides so far made available. Here is the “cover slide” attendees will likely see projected somewhere in the meeting room:

Here\'s the first slide in the deck

Now my guess is that all the first slides in decks for all the summit meetings will look the same – you know, keep the brand. For me, since the talkfest is really about people, a crisp photo to get the attention would work better, but since this is a gabfest with lots of words being exchanged amongst academics (mostly), pictures have little place. That’s their loss, but my guess is that’s how most of those attending present anyway.

Let’s have a look at slide 3:

longevity

This is a very dense slide, stacked with data points. As it’s a handout as well, the very small print down the bottom won’t be an issue. It’s not the sort of slide I would include in a presentation, but given that the slide is really part of a briefing process to be consumed prior to the summit, it perhaps makes easier reading that a text-filled paper.

What I do like about it is that while the graph itself gets a header, the slide’s header tells the story: “Australians enjoy one of the longest life expectancies in the world.”

This is super-important when you use slides loaded up with either graphs or text (when you can’t do otherwise) which can overwhelm the reader when projected: i.e, cognitive overload. So label the slide right up top with what its take home message is. Later on, in private, audience members can delve into the details. But during the gabfest, treat each slide like a newspaper story: great headline to get the reader engaged, then show the supporting evidence in detail which you will talk to – either using the current slide or on a new slide drawing attention to detail.

Ok, let’s move further into the slide stack and see how things go:

Again, this is not the sort of style you want to include in a slide show presentation – it’s just overwhelming. But as a dashboard-style compilation of data and commentary, it has its merits. But let’s not kid ourselves that this is a good slide without an accompanying handout for people to read at their own pace. It’s an orientation slide, but I have real fears that the facilitator will use it as per a standard presentation, no doubt using a laser pointer to highlight various areas.

Personally, to highlight one of the areas, Mental Illness, I would have used different colour bars, as well as the text box over on the right. It’s interesting from a personal perspective to see how the slide mentions the rapid growth of mental illness, yet the new Health Minister is considering limitations to the population gaining access to psychologists as part of a new program initiated by the previous government.

Let’s leap into some slides which for me break some of my personal rules for presenting:

On this slide, we see two ideas set side by side, which could have better conveyed their message on two separate slides, somehow joined with an appropriate transition. The slides have no action, and make the audience work quite hard to make the causal connections. Now, the audience is very bright, and so they can more readily make the intended connections quickly. But when the summit releases its final decisions and recommendations, and begins a process of rolling it out to the general population who are not exposed to these dashboards on a regular basis, let’s hope that the slide design takes into account non-academic populations who would do better with a more dynamic presentation style.

One more slide for illustrative purposes:

Take a look at the left panel of the three above, and notice how close the dates are: 1999200020012002.

This is really making the audience work hard, as well as the density of the information on this one slide. If the author of the slide was trying to make cogent comparisons or lead us through a story of panels 1 through 3, it’s not easy to see. Again, as a dashboard, it’s OK, especially if as an academic you’re used to seeing such diagrams. But again, one hopes that in the final publication, such slides give way to more illustrative ones where the reader more easily grasps the ideas and their connections.

If you want to see the entire stack of slides, go the Summit’s homepage and download a selection just to see for yourself how the highest echelons of government doles out information. Ask yourself if you were presenting, how would you change the slides.

There’s a comment section, so please use it and provide some feedback.

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It’s time for a change! Welcome to Presentation Magic…

Posted on April 8, 2008 | 5 comments

After several years using Blogwavestudio as my blogging software, and housing my presentation thoughts on my Cyberpsych blog, it’s time for a change.

Actually the change was foistered on me, after my seemingly indestructible Powerbook G4 (c.2004) got a cracked screen courtesy of your’s truly, and Blogwavestudio couldn’t make the transition from a PPC to an Intel-based Mac. It didn’t help either that the software developers, from Korea, were nowhere to be found.

Blogwavestudio was hardware-bound: I had to have my Mac with me to blog and publish. Sure, I could write an entry then wait to get to the Powerbook and transfer it. But that was tedious, and with the iPhone due for launch in Australia sometime this year, the invitation to blog at will is likely to prove too strong. I can’t tell you how many blog entries I’ve developed on train trips, or while waiting for someone, and not had the opportunity to publish it almost immediately… in which case, it vanishes.

With WordPress, I’m hoping to blog more often, and enable a better comments system to run, as well as Web 2.0 features like tags, categories, and other social networking possibilities.

Why the title “Presentation Magic”?

Well, this was the name given to my presentation on using Apple’s Keynote at Macworld 2008 by Paul Kent, Macworld’s Director. This was my first time at Macworld at it came at Paul’s invitation, as he was a reader of my Cyberpsych blog which covered things Apple as well as presentations.

The actual presentation I gave went over well, and I’m hoping to return to the US this year to offer more presentations and training for those ready to change the way they present.

The “magic” in the title doesn’t refer to doing extraordinary things with Keynote or Powerpoint. It more refers to how magic is an important part of human life, something that both entertains, intrigues, confuses, and persuades us. All things that presentations are capable of performing.

As a psychologist, I have always been interested in illusions and how humans can be fooled. In my clinical work, patients are often “fooled” by the messages their bodies send them, and perceive danger where it doesn’t exist, thus narrowing their opportunities.

Good presentations are effective by understanding how the human mind works, and strive to use current knowledge of the cognitive sciences to help audiences understand complex messages.

More than ever, audiences are being bombarded with presentations which are presenter-focussed. Magicians are always audience-focussed, knowing how audiences function and surprising them when their misdirection leads to an “aha!” moment.

The audience doesn’t really care how you pulled off your magic, they just want to be entertained. Professional audiences who have come along to be educated, and wish to leave knowing more than what they knew beforehand, aren’t interested in how you performed your magic (ie., animations, transitions, etc). That might interest those in the audience who too are presenters. But the special effects are there as augmenters of the presenter’s knowledge base, to help him or her transfer knowledge in the simplest and easiest manner. Easy for the audience that is, often hard for the presenter, as they need to be creative, well-rehearsed, and of course, knowledgeable of the subject at hand.

That’s why good presenters are paid well, get invited back, and are sought for training: their talents are in short supply!

In the next few months, I’ll be elaborating on my presentation ideas, keeping this blog updated frequently as new ideas come to mind, and I give presentations and use the blog as a journal to debrief myself. I expect you’ll learn heaps as you read the articles.

But be aware that many of the ideas you’ll read are quite subversive, and you may not be able to present in your usual fashion once the ideas penetrate possibly years of traditional presentation giving. Certainly, that’s the feedback I get after people have seen me present about presenting: Doing the walk and the talk at the same time is profoundly interfering to how most people present currently.

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