Indie 2.0

Having just spent two weeks working on Powerpoints for a client, I’ve been thinking about presentations.

Clearly the best presentations are ones that teach you something new, in a new way, while entertaining you. But if you’re reporting on last month’s sales figures to your boss, or trying to close a deal selling complex software more “focus on objective” and less “teach, new, entertain” is in order than, say, if you’re Steve Jobs unveiling the AirBook or an opinion-shaper at TED.

But given any set of contraints and objectives, there’s always room for improvment.

In the spirit of Edward Tufte and presenting data in visually compelling ways, check out this presentation by Hans Rosling on “Ageing Europe,”

Very cool. Time-series data presented as beautiful drifting bubbles–whose paths and expansions and contractions tell you something useful. And just like time-lapse photography, it only gets interesting if you have enough time-series data, and capture data from transitions and inflection points. The key is getting the data, as Rosling points out. Check out this one on sex in Sweden, or the whole Gapcast Channel on YouTube.

Development of the software, Trendalyzer, from Rosling’s non-profit institute (Gapminder) has been taken over by Google. You can try it yourself, to create iGadgets (which are like Apple Widgets, but run on any OS).

And if you want your presentations to get more Zen-like (or at least more Jobs-like), check out this new book, Presentation Zen, by Garr Reynolds:

I just got my copy from Amazon and will write a review here shortly. Looks good. Punchline is: less is more (when it comes to text). Here’s some guidelines I’ve come up with for myself, inspired by Garr’s blog: Cut the the text to a few words. Cut the cheesy Powerpoint graphics, opting for good photos, e.g., from istockphoto.com. Which means you need an excellent memorized script now (because your slides no longer serve as your teleprompter). And you can’t email your slides to someone as a surrogate brochure (because, sans text, your presentation is now just a bunch of pretty (albeit calming and zen-like) pictures…). Quality, not quantity. And while you’re at it, ditch PPT for Keynote.

The real need, as I see it, is for software that focuses on form not content: picture online collaborative Web 2.0 software which helps you

1. write well (pick a compelling topic, write an outline, tell a story, reach a specific audience, attain your objective, hammer at the ‘take-aways’ and ‘calls to action’); think of screenwriting software here, which helps with both form and content

2. re-purpose and output those forceful lean paragraphs into all the distinct format we use today in business and academia:

• Visually compelling slides with little text. Use above-said “forceful lean paragraphs” as script. Memorize. Keynote, not PPT.
• A self-running video presentation (with embedded narration of your voice), i.e. excellent high def and easy-to-create video podcast of the presentation.
• A printable pdf “white paper”, sans graphics, but including charts.
• A pdf brochure (using some of the compelling graphics as background, perhaps 2-column).

Today’s Powerpiont presentations try to be all four of the above at once–and invariably fail miserably at being good at anything. Anybody heard of any such software? Anybody want to work with me on it?