Les Posen's Presentation Magic

Hi all,

It’s not every day that one gets a chance to visit with the team responsible for the ongoing development of one’s favourite piece of software, to be asked to do a presentation using that software for open discussion between developer and end-user, and to have a slide praised and queried by the manager of the team that put together the effects one used (motion)!

Well, that’s what happened to me Wednesday in Pittsburgh when I accepted an invitation from a senior member of the Keynote team to visit and present.

I want to thank the team for their warm reception of my work, their generosity of spirit and their reading of my blog which from time to time seems to have made some impact upon their conceptualising of future Keynote feature sets.

When I return to Australia next week, I’ll write in more detail of my visit. But off the bat, let me make it clear I signed no NDA and was given no secret information about upcoming changes to Keynote. Suffice to say, that work on improving Keynote continues apace, the team is focussed on the opportunities Keynote can give to presenters like me, and they are eager to understand how end users employ their product.

I can certainly offer guesses based on my observations and spontaneous responses to my ideas and slides, and formulate a speculative roadmap, but this should not be interpreted as anything more than educated guesswork. Moreover, I feel ethically bound not to speak of things I gleaned because the team acknowledged to me their race to best their competitors and the need for surprise and delight when introducing new feature sets, as we saw in the introduction of Keynote 09. While I and others had been steadily picking up  clues about KN09’s new features from Steve Jobs 2008 keynotes, the feature additions KN09 introduced were unpredicted delights, as well as extensions of previous feature sets.

I’m not the first presenter who uses Keynote to present to the team, and I understood that such invites are extended to those who use the product in either unusual ways (ie., in ways the team may not have expected Keynote to be used) or because there is recognition of the presenter’s status within the community, such as my workshops at Macworld these past two years. Both of these events have been related to my writings on Keynote, my obvious passion for the software, and the feature lists I have written of wanting, which have appeared in my blog writing over the years.

These feature requests have been written about with evidence provided as to why I want them included, how it would change my presentations for the better, and with evidence marshalled as to the impact on an audience should the features be included in a future version.

So in discussion with the team leadership, it was agreed that I would start with my philosophy of presenting, the scientific basis of my ideas, and then shown some real examples of presentations I have given to a variety of audiences.

I would do the talk by doing the walk.

And along the way, I would explain how I performed certain builds and why I chose to organise my ideas a certain way. Within the talk would be some feature requests of my own, plus those of others who had contacted me on the Apple Keynote group on Yahoo. I didn’t provide a laundry list, but preferred to do a presentation that offered the ocular proof of certain shortcomings, and offer evidence of how including my requests in version updates would be of benefit for a large number of presenters, justifying the development expense.

For every claim I made in my presentation, I tried to offer up evidence of its importance, and I did this by both example, as well as involving the team by having them observe my ideas in ways they couldn’t ignore. By this I mean I took advantage of my psychologist’s knowledge of neuroscience and perceptual systems to both amuse and educate the group. By the way, the group included both engineers and coders, as well as design interface folk, some of whom had only communicated with each other previously via videoconferencing (presumably iChat).

Some of the ideas I proposed for future versions had clearly been canvassed before, and had been either rejected eventually (for reasons I didn’t ask about), or are in development currently (I didn’t ask about those either, not wanting to get into NDA territory).

So both I and the assembled team had our own agendas to fulfil in this meeting. For me, it was a somewhat daunting task to use the builds, animations and transitions my audience has created, and who know how the magic was done, or who could easily work it out after a few moments. Quite different than other crowds where if you use Keynote in certain ways, you will get your fair collection of reinforcing “Oohs” and “Ahs” and even in front of a Keynote-crowd, a few “How did he do that?”

Nor did I want to do a dog-and-pony show to demonstrate my skills. There are others with far more talent at “Gee Whiz” stuff than I. No, the point was to illustrate my philosophy of presenting, provide evidence for how I see Keynote differentiating itself from its competitors, and how and why I see the world of presenting developing into “Presentation 2.0”. For Keynote to lead the way, I wanted the team to understand the improvements it could develop, and remove some of the hurdles (limitations and extra clicks) I have to work around currently.

I’ll go into more depth in Part II, and include material I only thought of afterwards (and regretted not saying while I had the team’s ears there and then), but there were two concepts I wanted to get across early.

These relate to the concept of “Presentation 2.0”, and for this I showed some slides from a stack I use in a presentation I give on Web 2.0 called, “Technology – how did we get here and where are we going?” This is a talk for technophobes (usually my psychologist colleagues) who are fearful they are out of the swing of things technical and need a crash course in technology updating. This talk allows me to expound on some of my ideas on the history of technology, and leads into the brain sciences and how, while technology may change swiftly, the reasons we use technologies haven’t changed much in thousands of years of human endeavour.

Now I need to point out that I had no idea of the level of knowledge the KN team had of my ideas, of whether they were au fait with the writings of Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte, leading Presentation 2.0 thinkers, and how the team used Keynote to give inhouse presentations. Was I preaching to the choir, or was there real learning to be offered up regarding presentation skills? Certainly, team management was very aware of Garr and Nancy’s work, and their philosophies and practices.

Nonetheless, I ploughed on, in the knowledge that my take on presentations was both complementary to Garr and Nancy, but also came from a different place, away from design per se, and more from human learning and the brain sciences.

I showed how contemporary media are employing some of the graphical designs I too employ in my slide construction, and why.

While showing these ideas, and asking for the team to consider making them come to life on the slide with less clicks and more options (within reason), I emphasised what I think is at the heart of Presentation 2.0 and its links with Web 2.0.

At the heart of Presentation 2.0

What’s at the heart of Presentation 2.0? Think for a moment where we are now with Web 2.0. There is a direct line between service and product provider, and consumer, such that consumers or end users can blog, or tweet, or facebook about providers and influence the decisions of other potential consumers. We get valid information about product reliability for instance from bloggers and commenters on blogs, as much as we do from mainstream media reviewers. Think about the reviews you read on Amazon which includes “official” editorial contributions and reviews by purchasers, perhaps much more like us, and thus to be considered more reliable than biased writers.

And there are a huge number of sites by which to locate reviews, recommendations, rumours and insider stories.

Put these the concepts together, as I did to the KN team, and you come up with two properties in short supply currently (or more than ever before): Authenticity (who do you trust) and Attention (who should I attend to, given competing sources of information and competition for my time?).

I wanted the Keynote team to understand that when I construct my slides these two ideas stay in my mind, and they are more to do with my audience than they are with me. I need to establish my Authority and Authenticity for my audience to keep engaged, and I need to know how the brain works, so that despite my endeavours to increase the former two A’s, I embrace the challenges to the other A, Attention, which can wander due to how our brains function.

I spoke of these concepts early in my presentation, because it helps explain why I choose to perform certain slide constructions, and how I contemplate the intended impact on particular audiences. This is why it was important not to do a dog-and-pony show, but to demonstrate my conceptualisations and how Keynote figured into them. Now I don’t know how any individuals in the KN team responded to my audience-centric approach, but I do know on occasions in responding to their questions, I had to work a little to get my point across, given the team is very much about the end user experience. But in my case the end user is my audience, and Keynote merely a tool to achieve a particular series of effects upon my audience.

So in offering up a set of features I wished to see included in future versions, I couched these requests in the context of helping me achieve my dual aims of generating Authenticity and demanding Attention. My hope on the day was that my audience in Pittsburgh would experience my authenticity, and thus my authority on the subject, not just from my writings, but from their own experience with me. And that I kept their attention despite competition from their high workload drawing them away from the meeting, and having seen all the Keynote razzle-dazzle before – since they constructed the effects!

Next week, when I return to Melbourne, I’ll write Part 2 of this blog entry, and include some of the features I requested, and show examples of things I overlooked to mention in the heat of the moment. And when the team members looked at each other, as if to say, so why aren’t we doing this?

Hi to all my North American readers,

Just to let you know I’m making a quick trip to the US in June, and would love to catch up with readers, especially those of you who’d like a Presentation Magic workshop, seminar or training session. My visit to the US is very brief, and I’ll be combining it with a visit to a major presentation software developer where I’ll present my latest ideas, and then some personal time with friends for family celebrations.

So, the dates I have available are: New York City, June 4 (Thursday), and Los Angeles, June 8, (Monday). Here’s a great chance to see what all those very positive Macworld evaluations are about! And no need to worry about airfare or accommodation!

Best bet  is to email me: les at lesposen.com and let’s set something up to promote better presentations.

Just got word from the Australian Psychological Society that my submission to present an all-day workshop as part of its annual conference – this year held in Darwin in late September – has been accepted.

It has been a long time coming, as I’ve been proposing it for the last three years and each time it was rejected. This year, I put in for three different workshops and a paper presentation, and was waiting for all four to be rejected! This is called “Learned Helplessness”. But the all-day Presentation Magic workshop has been accepted, and while it is aimed at psychologists in various academic and applied settings, it will have practical value for those in other professions as well. Not sure if you have to register for the entire conference to attend, or just be a day registrant to gain access.

Should be a lot of fun challenging my peers about their presentation styles, which generally are perfect examples of “Death by Powerpoint”. The workshop happens at the end of the conference so hopefully with my trusty iPhone (which by then might be a 4th Generation model) I’ll take lots of pics of others’ slides during their paper presentations, and then perform a “slide makeover” during the workshop.

UPDATE: This workshop will now take place on Thursday October 1. It is the only all day workshop at the APS Conference scheduled for Thursday, and with places limited to 25 it will likely fill up fast.

From the APS website, here is the list of all workshops. The link to read more about them is here:

“The following workshops have been confirmed:

• Dr Bruce Stevens
  Self care issues in the treatment of severe personality disorders
• Professor Graham Davidson
  Understanding and managing ethical distress in psychological practice
• Mr Les Posen
  Presentation skills for psychologists in academia, research, corporate and independent practice: using cognitive neuroscience to produce effective, memorable and engaging presentations
• Professor Alfred Allan
  A principled approach to ethical decision-making
• Dr Sabine Hammond
  Clinical supervision: Managing structure, process, relationships, problems and ethical issues
• Mr Tim Hannan
  The neuropsychology of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in childhood
• Professor Paul Martin
  Psychological management of chronic headaches
• Associate Professor Dennis McDermott
  ‘Deep Listening’ Workshop: beyond checklist approaches to cultural competence: engaging Indigenous clients by Indigenising praxis and integrating Aboriginal ways
• Professor Bob Montgomery
  Psychological responses to disasters: An empirically informed approach to helping the survivors of trauma effectively and safely, in the field and in the clinic
• Dr Jack White
  Writing reports for court: for criminal, family and civil matter“

Hi all,

My next Workshop on Presentation Magic is a combined morning event, culminating in a lunch, and including vocal coach specialist, Dr. Louise Mahler. It will be held in Brighton, Victoria on May 6, 2009.

You can see the flyer and all details below, but it should be an exciting and fast-paced dynamic morning’s work, and one where both of us expect you can immediately use what you’ve learnt. I’ll focus on presentations using slideware but won’t discuss the mechanics of the software itself except in passing. I WILL by necessity discuss the shortcomings of the “elephant in the room” – the Cognitive Style of Powerpoint – without going into the software’s shortcomings.

Nor will it evangelise Apple’s Keynote application, but I imagine those attending for the first time and who have worked exclusively with Powerpoint will have their eyes opened as to what slideware can actually do to better support your presentation in order to make it persuasive, memorable and engaging.

Contact me for my information, say if you want particular topics covered should you wish to attend, and I’ll also be attempting a slide makeover section of the workshop so you can see my ideas in action. Otherwise contact the Coaching Connection’s Jim Moore for bookings.

lesposenlouisemahler_invite

Hope you can join us - or send around to someone you think would do well to present better

Thanks to those who’ve contacted me about my upcoming workshop. It looks like it will now be post-Easter in April, and be a double bill with another presenter who specialises in vocal skills. You’ll be able to do one or both workshops. Keep watching this space, or subscribe via RSS to be kept updated with venues (likely to be in Elwood by the beach, below).

The likely venue for the next Melbourne-based Presentation Magic

One of the things I pride myself on when I hold Presentation Magic workshops is an adherence to an evidence base for almost all the guidelines and demonstrations I offer, such that attendees are ready to put into practice what they’ve learnt at their first opportunity.

I have long argued that there is very little evidence for how many people present with slideware in particular, something which has become known in the presentation criticism trade as the Cogntive Style of Powerpoint. (See my previous entry on the Ignite format for a description).

Rules such as 10/20/30 or 7 x 7 have no evidence for them other than anecdotal, or succumb to a “we’ve always done it this way around here” conformist mentality.

As a trained family therapist, I am always curious as to how family “rules” originate and perpetuate, often in the face of evidence that they’re no longer working. In the world of presenting, 2009 will see many books and blogs published which will continue to challenge customs of presenting, and this is a good thing.

In my Presentation Magic workshop at Macworld this year, I focussed day 1 on my philosophy of presenting, complete with hopefully compelling evidence. Day 2 was more focussed on the techniques I employed to convey my messages, with a strong emphasis on how to best employ Apple’s Keynote software to achieve favourable results.

I started the workshop by looking at the inclusion of presentation-style effects in mainstream media as evidence that consumers are becoming more savvy about information transfer. Talking heads in the news and current affairs programs no longer cuts it, it seems.

I started with an edited version of the opening scenes of the recent Ron Howard film, The Da Vinci Code, where Dr. Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is giving a guest symposium on religious symbolism in Paris, while an old colleague is murdered in the Louvre. I edited out the murder, wanting to focus on Langdon’s demonstration of symbolic images and how they can mislead us. We don’t know what software he uses but it’s not relevant. Here’s some screenshots of one of the scenes I used, showing his hardware setup and one of the images (Poseidon and his trident):

Tom Hanks (Dr. Robert Langdon) address his Parisian audience

Presentation Software close-up

Langdon and Poseidon

When I later gave a one-day version of Presentation Magic to an audience of Seventh Day Adventist ministers and youth workers soon after Macworld (religious groups are very attracted to my style of presentation training with its emphasis on history, science, visuals, and story-telling), a new TV program had just started that week (actually the night before!) called Lie to Me.

The drama series, starring Tim Roth, is loosely based on the academic and professional work of psychologist Paul Ekman (UCSF) who has studied cultural variations in facial responses to emotional states such as anger, disgust, sadness, etc. The psychologist and his team in the TV show help police and FBI verify whether suspects are telling the truth or not.

Lie to Me: Tim Roth play Dr. Carl Lightman play Dr. Paul Ekman

In the opening sequence, even before the opening credits roll, the Roth character, Dr. Carl Lightman, is seen lecturing an audience of FBI agents and illustrating his talk with a strong series of visual elements:

Lecturing to the FBI and displaying stereotypical scorn using two familiar public characters (the one on the left is an actor)

Throughout the series, common facial expressions are demonstrated using well known public figures, showing the series has an active research department tracking down stock images.

Here’s a few more from the opening sequence of episode 1 for your entertainment:

Public expressions of shame

Contempt

How I illustrated "Lie to Me"

Notice in the illustration above how I actually placed the video clip into a widescreen TV to help “contextualise” the story. Rather than just placing a video file onto a slide, I embedded it into a TV image. Most audiences find this an attractive metaphor.

In my talks, I also showed some current affairs programs and how they were illustrating their stories especially where newspapers were being quoted. What was seen were the words, and what was heard was a voice 0ver artist narrating. Here is a screenshot of a clip from the Australian media criticism show, Media Watch, I used:

Current Affairs program, the ABC's Media Watch

In my own keynotes, I emulate these semiotics, which is especially appealling to young people who have grown up with this kind of visual. It certainly is far more appealing than bullet points.

But what’s more important is that it lends an air of authenticity and authority to the presentation. I’m not creating an all-text slide and copy and pasting words – I’m showing the real McCoy, whether it be a newspaper clipping, a magazine headline, or the header and abstract from a scholarly journal, as shown below:

My preferred way of displaying actual article quotes

Notice in the illustration above, that I use a screenshot from the actual article, which having initially been shown, I then fade and fuzz it into the background. Doing this requires some effort on my part, perhaps taking ten minutes to construct for a slide that may only stay on screen for less than a minute. But it conveys to the audience my respect for them, in that I go to the trouble of locating evidence to support my contentions, which are usually quite challenging for audiences whose own presentation style is the dreaded cognitive style of Powerpoint, ie presenter-centric, not audience-centric.

Let me come to the main point of this blog-entry, the week-long argy-bargy between CNBC and the Daily Show, personified by Jim Cramer and Jon Stewart. This matchup occurred following Stewart’s commentary the week before (March 4) when CNBC’s Rick Santelli, below, labelled Americans who had lost their homes as “losers”.

CNBC's Rick Sanatelli and "losers"

This inflamed Stewart who took Santelli and CNBC to task for not being tougher on financial CEOs and calling out their duplicity. When Santelli withdraw his invitation to be on the Daily Show, Stewart let loose the entire week, focussing in particular on former hedge fund manager, Jim Cramer and his “Mad Money” evening CNBC program.

Stewart showed a series of clips wherein Cramer informs his viewers of the “safety” of certain financial institutions:

Jim Cramer recommends holding BearStearns

Stewart goes for the jugular, contrasting the over the top graphics and hyperbolic presentation style of Cramer and CNBC with a very Keynote-like simple and to-the-point graphic, white sans-serif font on black background for impact:

On his March 9, Daily Show, Stewart continued his evidence against the trustworthiness of CNBC and its talent:

Notice how the Daily Show uses exact cutout quotes from original sources

On Thursday, March 12, Cramer accepted an invitation to be interviewed by Stewart, and ultimately turned out to be a good sport, while Stewart aggressively filleted him.

Jim Cramer and Jon Stewart in discussion on the Daily Show

What would have interested many Apple followers was the section where Stewart showed a clip of Cramer discussing the Apple iPhone in the weeks leading up to its release in January 2007, when rumours of its existence were running hot. Essentially, Cramer discussed how easy it was to manipulate Apple stock prices (“shorting”) and getting away with it.

Cramer discussing how to short Apple stock

Stewart came to the debate armed and dangerous, despatching each of Cramer’s efforts to defend his actions with evidence from previous episodes of Cramer shows which showed him to be a disingenuous showman with debatable credentials for providing long term financial advice.

I was especially taken by Stewart’s approach, since I do the same when it comes to convincingly condemning the standard, socially normed presentation style of powerpoint (and Keynote if merely used to copy the powerpoint style). The best way to do this is not by arguing with words, but as Shakespeare has Othello tell Iago, “Show me the ocular proof”, below:

Olivier's Othello seeks ocular proof from Iago for Desdimona's infidelity

Involving audiences with visual proof, have them interact with the presentation such that they cannot help but see, feel and hear the evidence in action is compelling, memorable, and engaging – if not difficult to do, because it asks you to constantly think about your audience.

Stewart’s efforts clearly hit a nerve, and proved most convincing if the comments section in the New York Times is to be believed, which you can access here (login required). Many ask why mainstream media have left it up to the Court Jester to ask the tough questions (and some recall the lead up to the Iraq invasion when asking the same question.)

In some ways, we ought not be surprised. History has repeatedly shown that the clown, the comic, and the simpleton who knows no better (and nowadays we can include the lack of social graces displayed by those with autism spectrum disorders, e.g. Sheldon in the Big Bang Theory) can get away with questions and observations the rest of us shy away from. Witness any newspaper’s political comic section for cartoons that cut to the chase very, very quickly. I use them liberally in my talks, especially ones which make fun of Powerpoint (just Google <Powerpoint+comic>)

Next time you want to convince an audience of your authenticity and the logicality of your argument, go back and locate Stewart’s March 4 and 9 CNBC take down and remind yourself of the need to do proper research, using appropriate evidence, presented in a way for which few in your audience could disagree. And which packs an emotional punch or two.

If for nothing else, you will be remembered for doing the talk and the walk, something all too rare nowadays.

Vodpod videos no longer available.