More suggestions to the Apple Keynote team: EyeWonder’s Pagemorph and other attention-grabbing techniques

One of my RSS feeds I dutifuly check out each morning (and often when I have a moment throughout the day) is John Gruber’s Daring Fireball. Good, pithy Apple-oriented commentary, unafraid to speak his mind, and usually on the money with his opinions.

Today’s stories contain one about a newly released online advertising technique he bemoans, but one which offers up an exemplar of “one man’s poison is one man’s meat”.  Gruber draws attention to something called PageMorph (below):

He quotes Gavin Malley from the Online Media Daily:

“And consumers thought a blinking banner ad was hard to avoid. Taking attention-seeking to a whole new level, rich media company EyeWonder on Wednesday debuted a new home page-takeover ad that appears to manipulate a surrounding Web page by shrinking, stretching, crumpling or otherwise animating a real-time screenshot of the page.”

Gruber himself adds: “The only way to beat this would be if they could figure out a way to get Flash to extend a finger from your display and poke you in the eye.”

So he’s not particularly enamoured of this form of advertising. I can understand this, as I’ve had my local Age newspaper have flash-based animation jump all over a story I’m reading online, and I have to wait for the thing to stop playing. I usually don’t and head off elsewhere.

But as I was reading more about the technology which you can too here, I got to thinking this would be a great Keynote transition.

There already exists a curtain animation from Keynotethemepark.com’s John Driedger, right:

In fact, John has created multiple colours in SD and HD sizes for a very reasonable cost, and I have used them in a number of Macworld presentations.

These are used as builds (curtains open is one build, curtains close is a second).

Jumsoft has a very interesting zipper animation which achieves a similar effect, in the sense it is a Quicktime movie you can hide an element behind, play the movie and reveal the next element.

Here’s a screenshot of it half way through its “reveal”:

Remember, these are movies which play on each slide, and not transitions between slides. All they do is get out of the way and reveal what’s behind curtain number 1 or whatever you name it.

The animation Gruber talks about is one that could easily become a great transition in Keynote given its CoreAnimation capacity.

Here’s a movie screenshot I took with one of the first websites to use this device for BMW. The effect occurs about 20 seconds in, and then I click on the “close” (schleissen) button and the curtains roll back, below:

One of the things I also mentioned to the Keynote development team on my trip to them in Pittsburgh in early June which I blogged about was call outs: drawing attention to elements on the screen, in an engaging and “current” method, as compared to old world wooden pointers and laser beams.

The EyeWonder advertisers have a number of online promotional ads, where they tout the effectiveness of their use of callouts to draw attention to products which then become “active” onscreen for endusers to click on and follow through. Let me show you, because I described this desired effect to the Keynote team. Take a look below, where a hair product is highlighted, and becomes clickable, as an overlay:

EyeWonder ad overlay call out

If you want to see the entire 2.4 minute promotional video and see this effect and others in action (together with the CIO offering his tales of success), click on the video below:

Concluding remarks:

What to some people is an intrusion, and a sign we’re all going to hell in a handbasket, is to others an opportunity to grow a product, in this case Keynote because I’m not sure Powerpoint has the video cojones to manage such transitions. And here we have two possibilities to offer up to the engineering team as a challenge, but where the outcomes would be very worthwhile.

Presentation Magic visits Apple’s Keynote team part 2: presenting my wish list

A week after returning from the US, and after watching the WWDC Keynote featuring developments of Snow Leopard and the iPhone, I started this blog entry, ready to offer more from my visit with the Apple Keynote team in Pittsburgh. It’s taken a couple of extra weeks to get around to finishing it – it’s long – and I hope it’s worth your effort in getting through it. You can read Part 1 here.

Some Keynote observers believe they saw new effects in their favourite presentation        software during the WWDC Keynote, but I’m of the opinion that we saw an updated      form of Keynote displayed using Snow Leopard as the OS.

I’ll illustrate this assertion with some screenshots, and couch it in terms of the main     assertions of my own presentation to the Keynote team two four weeks ago.

Let’s get started.

One of the things I teach in my Presentation Magic workshops, as well as individual tuition and coaching I offer to a rather select group, is to give serious consideration to the outcomes they’re hoping to achieve via their presentation. Using Richard Mayer’s thinking, are you attempting an information update (”here’s our latest product line up”; here’s how our service betters our competitors’”) or are you seeking what’s called cognitive guidance? The latter refers to teaching new skills and the transmission of knowledge to be put into action, such as the desire of an academic to impart his or her knowledge to an aspiring professional, or a trainer hoping to give workshop attendees the means to perform new actions, such as pilots moving from one aircraft type to another. Here, it’s insufficient to simply know systems are different; the idea is to learn how to apply that knowledge of difference to display competence with the new systems.

Whichever, I usually offer that seeking to have three new ideas or concepts conveyed (and hopefully remembered) in one presentation is often the best that can be hoped for, especially for complex ideas. That often means, depending on the time available, there is much repetition of the same three ideas, but using different concepts, metaphors or examples to demonstrate these ideas in action.

In thinking about my presentation to the Keynote group, I reviewed my own writings on what I wanted to see change in Keynote to make it more friendly to how I work. And this was in fact one of the reasons I was invited to address the team, some of whom have been following my writings, helped along by Macworld Expo’s recognition of my presentation acumen.

And I also reviewed the emails and discussions of others who also used Keynote in a variety of contexts, including academic, Fortune 500 and legal, medical and industrial settings.

Not being quite sure how the day with the Keynote team would play out, and not knowing the roles of those who’d be attending except in very general terms (“they’re from the design and engineering teams”), I decided that I’d stick with my own advice and focus on getting across as best I could three important aspects of Keynote I wanted either improved upon, focussed on, or newly included within the next Keynote update.

Now my list will be different from your’s no doubt, and it’s informed by how I think about presenting, and how I use Keynote (or would use Powerpoint if Keynote was unavailable). So I decided the best approach would be to initially discuss my general philosophy of presenting, with a special focus on the neuroscience that informs my approach, and then put my philosophy into action by showing several samplings of my own work employed in my workshops on presenting, as well as workshops on clinical subjects I teach, and consultancies I have been retained for recently.

The latter would help me from turning my time with the team into a “dog and pony show”, and feeling the pull to show special effects for the sake of it. No, better to demonstrate how I use Keynote professionally if I’m to be genuine in my putting to the team my desired improvements in Keynote. I also wanted to show some effects which I wanted to see either reduced by keystroke number in a future Keynote or not require me to leave Keynote for third-party software.  Indeed, I wanted to focus in more general terms on presentation skills which would invite the Keynote team to put their intellect towards, and inspire them to come up with, unique “very Apple” like solutions. These are builds or transitions or user interface qualities that inspire creativity and delight in the end user .

The three focii of my presentation

The three areas I focussed on were:

1. Timelines

2. Portfolio of slides

3. Call outs

Now for some Keynote users, these three items, which I’ll elaborate on shortly, are insufficient to allow Keynote to move to another level of capability. Certainly, I mentioned to the team my concerns that exporting to Quicktime so as to allow Windows users to see Keynote presentations in all their glory is problematical at the moment, for at least two reasons.

1. The resultant files are huge. Perhaps with version Quicktime X we’ll see in Snow Leopard (and a likely Keynote update to tale advantage of OS X 10.6) they’ll be some changes to the size of files.
2. Slides with animation backgrounds, so far only available from third-parties such as Jumsoft, cause Quicktime with manual advance options to “stick” so that the background movie plays on and on, unresponsive to mouse clicks to advance to the next build or slide. Also, if you have the same animation on two separate slides, it stops as you transit from one slide to the other – not a good look, and I’m sure one of the reasons we don’t see such animations built in to Keynote – yet.

I learnt, after showing some examples of slides with either background animations or lots of simultaneous movies playing, that this is something that concerns the team in that animations do not always play predictably and smoothly, and any “hiccupping” is brand-destroying.

Me thinks the prohibition against such presentation no-no’s has come from his Steveness himself, but that’s just guesswork on my part. I had one slide which showed about nine small heart-beating movies from Jumsoft playing simultaneously, and I could swear some of the team were sweating bullets waiting for the slide to crash!

Indeed, I have numbed some audiences by playing a 3 x 3 matrix of videos simultaneously to display Keynote’s capacity to resemble a giant screen matrix, then flipped them all to reveal another nine movies! Of course, I use very small mp4 files, but still, it’s likely I’m pushing Keynote and the Macbook Pro to its limits. Perhaps the 2009 Macbook Pros with their twin video cards are even more capable.

So let’s look at the first of the areas I mentioned in particular as needing urgent attention.

1. Timelines

Currently, Keynote asks its users to put up with some rather anachronistic timing effects both on individual slides, and across several slides. To judge by the “wish-for” lists supplied to me by other users, having accurate timings for builds is very high on the hit parade, which would move Keynote closer to a “Pro” application. This is especially so since at least two of Apple consumer-level applications, Garageband and iMovie, have employed timelines since their bundling into iLife.

What’s more galling is that Powerpoint 2007 for Windows has timeline features (left, from the Powerpoint 2007 for Dummies book), and Windows users of Powerpoint have seen their application enjoy outrageous success in elementary and high school contexts due to its ability to move objects and play sounds according to predictable timed sequences. Keynote asks you to time events in relation to the previous event by making repeated empirical efforts to check how many seconds after a previous build the next build should come. And of course, this can only happen on one individual slide, so that if you want a sound file – perhaps some background music – to play over several slides, it can’t – you need to complicate one slide with multiple builds to keep all the elements and the sound file “together”.

I want to add a couple of other remarks in this section to reinforce why I placed Timeline features high on my wishlist to share with the Keynote team. It comes after spending many months observing how others are presenting using slideware in a variety of contexts, as well as keeping a bellweather eye on the presentation blogosphere.

I shared with the team my prediction that as the Mac market share grows, and more Keynote-based presentations are observed at conferences and workshops (predictably in the technology sphere first, then academia), we will see a fork in the presentation road appear.

Down one fork will travel those who value the creative, visually-oriented style of Keynote, crisp  but minimal text, together with rich photographic quality images and graphs. Not to mention movies embedded within slides which the next version of Keynote will allow for quite interesting manipulations (that’s my guess and desire, not insider knowledge!)

Down the other fork will go those who prefer the ease of constructing “traditional” slide shows in the cognitive style of Powerpoint: lines of text preceeded by bullet points, clip-art, and for more contemporary users, “SmartArt” graphics to better illustrate business processes.

As one senior communicator in a major Aussie telco told me, “We use Powerpoint for our internal communications (discussing business processes), but we use Keynote when we need to get out of the office and generate razzle-dazzle.” By this he referred to the business desire to generate memorable, entertaining and persuasive presentations.

Where Keynote faces an uphill battle is in the empirically-bound domains, such as engineering, medicine, research as well as domains reliant on verbal rather than pictorial knowledge transfer such as law and the humanities. I have yet to see many Keynote-based presentations in conferences I’ve attended nor available for downloads on the web. Now it may be the case that in regular lectures in colleges, professors are shifting the way they present to accord more with adult-learning principles (which would give Keynote a look-in) but I’m strongly of the belief that you’re not going to see too many PresentationZen-style lectures in chemical engineering or legal faculties!

That’s not to say that Garr’s writings aren’t appropriate for these kind of presentations. But more that those who only focus on the pictorial aspects of Garr’s writings are missing out on other aspects both he and I emphasise, in particular story-telling.

2. Portfolio of Slides

I blogged about this idea on my earlier CyberPsych blog here, in August 2007, entitled “The mashup of Keynote and Mission:Impossible – next on my wishlist“

The idea behind this is simple. If you regularly present your ideas to a variety of audiences, you’re likely to having several versions of the one presentation file. You modify it slightly to encompass ideas specific to an audience, or you update it to incorporate some breaking news. Perhaps you leave out some slides as irrelevant to this audience, and co-opt slides from a presentation stack for another audience because it’s become appropriate for the next audience.

If you’re like me, you have a variety of subject interests and find that you use a core of slides across these different subjects. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could gather all your slides from all your presentations into one library or storage area just as you can with iPhoto. Or as you can with Final Cut Server, drawing upon each slide as you need it?

I suggested to the Keynote team in Pittsburgh that one of the problems with current presentations is their emphasis on linearity. You stand before an audience and deliver your bon mots. Fine if it’s a twenty minute scientific presentation where the rules are simple: you’re one of several presenters in a colloquium or seminar and you take questions either at the conclusion of your presentation or as a panel member at the end of the seminar.

There’s no formal interaction with the audience (although in my Presentation Magic seminars I teach how to make your presentation interactive anyway using the principles of affective neuroscience), and they get no opportunity to ask questions during your talk.

That’s fine for a brief well-rehearsed presentation. But what of a different use of your presentation skills, such as a workshop, lecture or seminar where audience interaction is encouraged? One of the things I teach, which I’ll discuss in the next section of the blog entry, is directing your audience so that they ask predictable questions, or make predictable comments, which you are ready for, as if by magic.

This is where hyperlinking on slides becomes useful so that you can leap about in the one slideshow depending on the question asked and your level of preparation. (Believe me when I say this is a most under-utilized aspect of both Keynote and Powerpoint).

But what if you wish to illustrate the answer to a question with a slide or slide sequence contained in another file? Yes, you can hyperlink to that file, but you’d need to know in advance what to expect from your audience. To paraphrase ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky’s alleged words-of-wisdom co-opted by many CEOs, including Apple’s Steve Jobs: “It ain’t where the puck is, it’s where the puck will be.”

Slight digression: In searching for the exact quote, as well as a screenshot of Jobs’ use of this famous quote from the iPhone January 2007 Macworld keynote, I located a Fortune magazine article from December 2007, post-dating Jobs’ keynote. Written by Jill Rosenfield, she tracks down the quote, having failed to get Gretzky himself to confirm it’s his to his father, Walter, whom Gretzky’s childhood friend suggests is the originator of the phrase.

Walter Gretzky confirms he is the orginator.

Walter confirmed that he had originated the quote and clarified the exact wording. “The quote is ‘Go to where the puck is going, not where it has been,’ ” Walter says. And does the truly great Gretzky consider this a good piece of advice to give to a professional hockey player — or to a hard-skating new-economy businessperson?

“Mama mia, no!” Walter says. “That advice is strictly for little kids. It’s just simple basics, like the ABCs. You have to know the alphabet before you can write. And naturally, going to where the puck is going is something that pros take for granted — or they wouldn’t be playing professionally. Besides, I’d never give advice to a pro. I’ve never played professionally in my life.”

Aha, let’s move on! My point so far is that while you can include all manner of slides in your slidestack just in case you might be called upon to use them, you can only prepare so much for how an audience will react to your presentation. If you really want to appear on top of your subject and really delight your audience with your authenticity, authority, and attention-keeping ways, why not be able to call upon any or all slides you’ve created along the way, and be able to access them without missing a beat or dropping out of your current slideshow in search of where the slides may be. With some of my Keynote files being more than 1GB in size, I don’t want to have to open up several files and see my Macbook Pro freeze under the pressure.

Here’s where my metaphor from Mission:Impossible needs to be explored.

Almost every episode of Mission:Impossible started the same way, the revelation of the Mission via a taped message on behalf of the Secretary complete with photo dossier (one exception is where a holidaying Jim Phelps, played by Peter Graves, finds himself in his small home town where murders are occurring and he is captured is Season 2, Episode 21.)

From there, Phelps retires to his apartment and selects his team for the current               mission from his catalogue of agents (left). Some agents make regular appearances       in each episode, some (model, “Cinammon” – Barbara Bain) more than others                 (strongman, “Willy” - Peter Lupus). Often, Phelps chooses a specialist to go along         with the mission, perhaps a famous surgeon, or nuclear physicist, but usually                 someone with unique skills not even human chameleon Rollin Hand (Martin                 Landau) can emulate.

In one episode, the “specialist” was this moggie, shown in the famous lit  match opening sequence, below right:

In this model, you the presenter are Jim Phelps given a mission by the conference organiser (“bring the group up to date”; summarise your latest research”; teach them your new procedures”) and do so in an appropriate manner (“fun, persuasive, authoritative, engaging, but please – not boring”); you then come up with your strategy or story line, and construct your slides to carry out that strategy.

The slides are your Impossible Missions Force personnel, often ones you have used before to great effect, as well as new ones which may be unique to the current mission. Perhaps if they prove exceptionally popular and effective, they, like the actors, might find themselves used again and again. Some slides might be so popular and well-received, that they inspire you to create a new presentation based on them, much like certain guest characters in television shows become spin offs to their own (e.g., Mork and Mindy spinning of from a Season 5 Episode of Happy Days featuring Robin Williams as Mork.)

What I asked for from the Keynote team was a “Delicious Library” archive of slides, where I could quickly sort through all my slides, meta-tagged by me for better retrieval offering me a quick preview when I click on the slide on my Macbook’s screen in presentation mode, out of sight of the audience who is unaware of my searching. Naturally, I need to keep a patter up while doing this search and I’ll need to move back in a natural fashion to the Macbook (I prefer to present away from the Macbook using a small remote). One day, I may even be able to search on my iPhone where the presentation may reside, or where I can perform the search with the iPhone acting as archive index and remote).

Whatever the case, I am hopeful I displayed to the Keynote team the usefulness of an “on demand” server-like operation for Keynote, not dissimilar to that for other Apple apps. such as iPhoto and Final Cut.

3. “Call outs”

If there’s one area where knowing in advance where you want your audience to go can be assisted, it’s your use of call outs. It’s one area which trainers of Powerpoint and Keynote usually emphasise because

1. it’s easy to look like a pro using call outs

2. it matches principles of adult learning

3. it offers a form of interactivity and audience engagement even in those linear twenty minute conference presentations

4. it’s a meme young audiences with possibly shorter attention spans will recognise from other media such as TV

What do I mean by a call out?

Let’s look at the Schiller-led WWDC keynote a month ago in early June which featured some new call-outs in an Apple keynote.

The following series of images comes early (about 6 minutes in) where Schiller is calling attention to the improved battery life of the all-aluminium built-in battery Macbooks.

An App-like clock starts the sequence...

A time clock starts the timed sequence. This is an animation which will use a sweep hand plus a wipe transition to illustrate its point.

A sweep and wipe transition

On the right, the sweep sequence a moment later shows progress approaching two hours, highlighted (a coloured call out) by green, the colour having multiple meanings. We often associated battery power with green (on a Macbook going its battery reserves shows up in red) and of course Apple has been pushing its “green” credentials for its notebook range.

But also notice the artifact produced in this animation, probably using multiple animation sequences. Look at the 730 mark for the ——- line. Almost invisible in the Quicktime movie, it’s seen with a screen capture.

In this next screen capture a moment later, we see another colour        introduced to demonstrate the extra two hours of battery life in new  Macbooks. In Powerpoint style, you’d simply write “two extra hours” and not  go to the trouble of creating animations. But keeping audiences attentive in  2009 requires eye-grabbing animations using familiar icons, as long as it  doesn’t detract from the central image for the sake of exploiting eye candy.

Here’s a another set of screen shots from WWDC 09 showing new animations not yet available in Keynote 09, which while not callouts in the traditional sense are worth commenting on….

On the right we see an icon showing the number of recharges of a typical battery. The aim of this sequence is to demonstrate there is no need to fear non-replaceable batteries which offer many more charges before needing non-user replacement.

Like a fast moving speedo., the numbers quickly rotate...

The unit “0″ starts to rotate like a old-fashioned odometer picking up speed…

Now things are really on a roll…

Almost finished at 1,000, the animation at around  6min 26 sec, includes some “physics” as the  numbers finish rotating to align at 1,000.

Now let’s look at some specific callouts which can be performed currently in Keynote 09, using a little imagination. Again, the idea is to draw attention to an important feature but not make the audience work hard to “get it”. The following call out could be completed in a variety of ways, but NEVER NEVER using a laser pointer, so 1980s and definitelyverboten in 2009.

Here’s the setup: Apple has decided that the smaller 13.3″ Macbooks in the current iteration have sufficient power and capabilities that they ought to be literally, rebadged.

We start here (12min 54 sec):

Phil Schiller discussed the new Macbook range

But then the focus of our attention is shifted…

With Schiller out of the picture, but still commenting, a vague circle appears in the middle of the Macbook screen….

Things begin to become clearer: the words MacBook Pro appear, and the effect is one of magnifying the words on the Macbook itself just below the screen.

The appearance of the dock icons near the words MacBook Pro almost complete the call out….

The call out is complete, and we learn that the Macbook moniker is to be retired (temporarily while awaiting a new product perhaps), and all aluminium Apple laptops are now worthy of the Macbook Pro title. Again, Schiller could have just made a lame Powerpoint style slide (below), but he would have been throttled by Steve Jobs even from his hospital bed!

How often do you see these unimaginative efforts to convey change?

There’s one more call out I want to highlight, because it too displays a shift in Apple presentations. Keynote contains a number of shapes available to help illustrate ideas, but they are few in number and style when compared to Powerpoint’s, which also has multiple call out shapes, below.

call out shapes in Powerpoint 2007

At the WWDC 09 we see Apple emphasizing a meme which has become stronger and stronger since the introduction of the iPhone and its iTunes-based App. store with their reflections and efforts to lift off from the screen. Take a look, below (1hr 50min):

Notice the effort to give some 3D life into the callout bubbles, not possible at the moment in Keynote 09 without considerable effort and manipulation of gradients. I suspect in the next version we’ll see this kind of effect made possible with just one click or image choice. Right now, if a consultee asked me to reproduce this effect, I’d leave Keynote and go straight to BeLight’s Art Text 2 which gives you these effects immediately… just add text. (see below for part of the Template Gallery that comes with Art Text 2 – a real must-have for presenters).

BeLight's Art Text 2 template gallery - lots of fun!

To conclude this entry, the other call out style I showed  the Keynote team is one that has become popular in many current affairs programs where the host wants to draw attention to a published article and help the audience be sure it’s an authentic quote. Here’s one way of doing it, using the Daily Show and Rachel Maddow show coverage of the Mark Sanford affair:

We see here a quote from an Associated Press coverage attributed to Gov. Sanford. This form of quotation – just printed text – is common and acceptable. See below the Maddow show version:

What helps us believe it’s his quote is the picture of Sanford, just as the Daily Show has done. Text on its own is boring most of the time, especially on television, where a graphic designer will use it alone only for an important intended effect.

But the call out I emphasised to the Keynote team and animated in my own presentation to them, is a lift off from the actual AP media release, below. I use this effect with scientific publications too, about which my colleagues express surprise and discomfort. They like it, but they’re not sure if they should (like it), so conforming are they in using Powerpoint for text only, or for charts and graphs.

The quote lifts off the page which is too hard to read in detail but conveys to the audience you’ve done your homework and tracked down the original source. The main point is then enlarged and brought front and centre. I asked the Keynote team for help in making this a task I could do in far fewer clicks and with more choice of methods.

In Conclusion

So that’s all I have planned to say about my trip to Pittsburgh to meet with the Keynote team, and share my ideas, vision and practices. There was more said of course, and I was briefly asked about graphs and charts which I illustrated showing how I break many rules to effect a story-telling effort when using graphs. Thanks to the team for indulging me for a few hours.

I’m hoping to see some of the Keynote team again soon when I revisit the US in August/September with visits to New York City and San Francisco, so here’s also an opportunity to catch up with any of you who like a to meet and discuss Presentation Magic principles.

Presentation Magic’s visit and presentation to the Apple Keynote Team – Part 1

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?

How about a Presentation Magic Workshop in New York or Los Angeles in early June, 2009?

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.

All day Presentation Magic workshop in Darwin October 1

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“

Presentation Magic Workshop May 6, 2009

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

Presentation Magic upcoming Workshop update

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

The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart takes down CNBC’s Apple-shorting Jim Cramer – lessons for presenters to learn (especially Apple’s Keynote users)

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.

Learning from the bravery of others – the Ignite 20slides/15secs/5mins presentation style

An RSS feed pointed me to the latest IGNITE presentation gathering in Phoenix in late February, 2009. The purpose of an IGNITE gathering is simple – allow a community to gather and be an audience to a special kind of presentation. Speakers each have  20 slides which stay on screen for 15 seconds each and automatically move to the next.

There are no screen builds or transitions and no limits on the speakers’ subjects.

Commercial pitches are allowed but there are provisos, to wit:

“BIAS/PITCHES/SPAM

We want Ignite to be about promoting and sharing burning ideas. If those ideas happen to take the form of the company you work for, the startup you’re trying to get funded, or any other self-serving commercial interest, then so be it. We’re fine with it, really. But whatever you present had better be interesting, because that’s what it’s going to be judged on in people’s minds. if you’re going to market to people at Ignite Phoenix, you’d better be smart about it. Because if you’re not, it won’t be pretty…”

Think about this for a moment. You have 15 x 20 = 300 = 5 mins to present on a topic using slides you’ve created which will change on cue every twenty seconds. Your task is to keep the audience engaged, amused, entertained, informed, and most likely provoked while keeping in memory 20 slides.

To be frank, when I saw some of the presentations, they acted as a reminder of all the rules and guidelines I teach in my Presentation Magic workshops, mainly what not to do. First, let me show you how I went about viewing the presentations, using software I located at Macworld 2009 called Web2 Delight from an Indian software company, called Global Delight.

Web2 Delight allows you to search a number of popular video and picture aggregators sites such as YouTube and Flickr. It then allows you to either stream the videos in a separate window, or download them, choosing to convert them on the fly for import into your iPod, Apple TV, iPhone or burn them to CD or DVD – a great time saver.

Using the URL for the Phoenix Ignite BlipTV location here, this is what the screen looks like when Web2 Delight locates the videos:

Web2 Delight display of some of Ignite Phoenix's video collection

By the way, Web2 Delight has a sister product called Voila, which is an advanced screen shot maker and library which I will blog about in another entry because it has some great features presenters who use slides will want to utilise. I used it to create the screenshot, above.

When you pass your mouse over each thumbnail, an icon appears allowing to either stream the video, or download it to a desired location on your hard drive. A red progress bar appears in the thumbnail window, and you can simultaneously search and view other videos.

The download is a one-pass operation, whereas other YouTube apps. have a two-pass operation, once to download the flv file and the other to convert into your preferred format, such as mp4.

Ok, enough of the technologies, I’m using… why my interest in Ignite? And why am I sharing it with you?

Because, despite the look and feel of some of the presentations which look suspiciously like the Cognitive Style of Powerpoint (you know what I mean,

• 7 x 7 rules for lines and words per slide,

• chintzy clip art,

• overexposed backgrounds,

• pixelated images, and

• basically a presentation that is presenter-centric, not audience-centric)

• oh, and lots of pointless bullet points ,

the emphasis with the Ignite community is to help people think more about their presentations, and break some rules.

An Ignite was held in Sydney in late January, 2009 (I didn’t know so I didn’t go – perhaps Melbourne is ready for one) and here is the guff from its website:

“Why Ignite?
You may have heard of Ignite. It’s a presentation style pioneered in the US by some guys who wanted to spice up their presentations – and it quickly became a worldwide phenomenon.

The idea is simple – make the presenters stick to a rigid format of 20 slides, each of which changes automatically after 15 seconds, giving a guaranteed 5 minute presentation.

Why is this a good idea?

It forces the presenters to think long and hard about every slide. How many times have you heard the presenter say “this slide isn’t important”? Well – get rid of it then!

Conversely, there are the presenters who talk to a single slide for 10 minutes, by which time you’ve lost interest, the plot, and probably the will to live.

Ignite is all about making the slides dynamic and exciting, and forcing the presenters to think about what they show.

If you’re sick of Death By Powerpoint, then come along to Ignite Sydney, where you’re guaranteed a fun night of entertaining and educational presentations.”

Now both Sydney and many other cities’ Ignites are online now, some using BlipTV and others YouTube.

What is clear when you watch some of these videos is how tough it is to organise one’s timing, such that one doesn’t break some of the Rules of Multimedia knowledge transfer which have been offered the presentation community by evidence-based researchers such as Richard Mayer and John Sweller.

The most prominent rule I’ve seen broken (and hey, I’m as guilty as the next person, perhaps more so since I do know better!) in the Ignite videos – and the format of a fixed 15 seconds doesn’t help – is the overload produced when audio and video channels collide. That is, our two main senses for retrieving data and beginning the process of making sense of it – every pun intended – are the auditory and visual-spatial organs. When the two offer the brain much the same message, albeit in two different forms, there is a better chance of not being overloaded and remembering the main message, than when the two channels are receiving dissimilar material.

With the 15 second rule in Ignite, presenters are faced with either having really rehearsed their timing and words, much like an actor hitting their marks, or an opera singer being one with the orchestra; or allowing the slides to cue them in to what to say. Each is not without its difficulties. The former requires hours of rehearsal and practice, most likely more than most presenters will want to spend for what’s really just a fun night out.

The latter, while much easier, runs the risk that the slide runs the show, and the presenter becomes an adjunct to the visuals, not a very satisfactory outcome. In other words, if the slide changes while the presenter is still talking, guess where the audience’s attention will go?

I spend a considerable amount of time both discussing this and demonstrating in my Presentation Magic workshops such that the audience experiences what I’m demonstrating, and hopefully will make an effort to change their ways.

I don’t want to select for you some of the IgnitePhoenix casualties – those who really had a hard time integrating what they were saying with what they were showing – because what they did deserves positive reinforcement, not public humiliation. You can go look for yourself and see if you can detect what I’m talking about…

But I did find one or two who not just gave engaging presentations, but seemed to hit their marks nicely, such that from the video alone I didn’t suffer overload or channel conflict.

The one I liked the most so far (and I haven’t see all) is Pamela Slim’s, whose newsletter and blog on being entrepreneurial I subscribe to.

You can see Pamela’s Ignite presentation, here. (You can scroll to the bottom of this blog entry for the entry)

(UPDATE: I’ve looked at a few more from Phoenix, and the one more that stands out is called “Toilet Training” by Dan Messer. He takes us through a history of effluence, from Roman times through to the modern electronic self-flushers. What makes his presentation stand out is his ability to weave seemingly unconnected historical events into a seamless storytelling for the entire five minutes he has to present. So many of the other presenters are telling the audience facts with little use of the slides to enhance their message delivery. Truly, see each of these presentations as mini-lessons in presentation giving. Most are what not to do, a few are gems, and they will be easily recognised, even if the subject matter holds no initial curiosity for you.)

Now there are some concerns I have with the Ignite idea, in that we might just be replacing one cognitive style of Powerpoint with another. But clearly, in its favour, Ignite will simply not sustain the way so many presentations continue to be conducted (all text and reading) and so it does represent a small advancement.

But I’m not sure it represents a necessarily brilliant advance which best matches how information can be shared. I mean, could you imagine a film as brilliantly edited as “Apocalypse Now” (Walter Murch) being held to 15 second scenes?

For now, the Ignite concept, which began in Seattle in 2006, represents another effort to help us question the social norms which have seen Powerpoint become the lingua franca of information exchange, and anything which helps us question its dominance in 2009 gets a conditional vote of approval from me.

Update: Trawling about the blogosphere, shows my hometown of Melbourne will have its own Ignite on April 1, 2009, and yes I have put my hand up via email to have a go, all my caveats above notwithstanding.

I’ve writtent to the local organiser, Stephen Lead, with some questions of clarification (e.g. is 20 secs a maximum or fixed amount, are movies allowed to be embedded, animations too? etc) and I’m having to assume that if it follows the Ignite guidelines it will be shown via ..ugh, Powerpoint. But at least it will restore Powerpoint to what it’s good for – as a picture show application.

The Melbourne information is here, so enrol and come along and have some fun!

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