What was amazing wasn't merely that they did this at all (that would have been bad enough).  What took the cake is that he repeated this performance.  He knew we couldn't read it.  He said so himself.  However, he still presented it to his audience as a guide to help explain the slides on projector 1 and the tasks performed on projector 2.

In a previous article, I wrote about a couple large visuals that I created that could not be read, even by myself.  However, it was not meant to be read.  I was after visual impact, demonstrating a large scope of effort.  What  he had on his easel was intended to be a reference for the audience, but in turn ended up merely a pointless distraction.

When using visuals, it goes without saying:  make sure they serve a purpose.  Do you need it to gain the audience's attention?  Do you need it to help tell your story?  Do you need it to help make a point?  If it doesn't fulfill its intended purpose or if it really has no purpose, then leave it out.  Time is limited.  Your audience knows when you're wasting their time.  If they think you're wasting their time, they'll tune you out.

Of course, the slides aren't the presentation, but with as much riding on the line as it was, every little detail mattered.  One detail that I had to contend with was how to convey to the audience that we had evaluated 24 products against our requirements.  Most people in my building tend to stop at 3; 5 at most.  We evaluated 24.  The reason was simple:  Ensure we find the best product, period.  Our plan was to be so thorough that when we presented our proposed solution, the forces in the room that wish to default to their favorite company's product won't have an argument to use against us.

So, how do you convey the magnitude of the work we had done?  Many would list the 24 products on the slide.  The problem there is most people would try to read each bullet and in the time that they're spending on that effort, they're not listening to you at all.

Another approach would be put a big 24 on a slide along with "products reviewed against our requirements" in smaller, though legible text.  That approach is better, but I used that on other slides where that would have maximum impact.  What I needed was more punch and creating such a slide would just dilute the impact of that kind of visual.

Instead, what I opted for was a visual that was not on a slide.  What I did was I printed the row in our spreadsheet with all of the names of the products reviewed on our office plotter.  The sheet of paper was 22 inches by 5 feet.  Even then, you had to have the paper right in your face in order to read the text.  Yet that's the thing.  I didn't want any distracted by reading this long list of products.  What I was going for was the visual impact of me holding this monster piece of paper with this list of products we evaluated.

When I was done showing the audience that paper, I placed it on the ground in front of me, out of reach of anyone who might be tempted to pick it up and try to read the list.  Not only would they be distracted, but they'd pass it around the room and I'll have lost everyone.

I didn't stop there.  Oh, no.  I also printed out the matrix of all those 24 products scored against each requirement.  This time, instead of printing in landscape, I printed in portrait mode.  This time, only if you worked at it with the paper in your hands, could you have a hope of reading it.  Again, that didn't matter.  It wasn't meant to be read.  It was meant to be seen.  The visual impact obtained through these two monster print-outs could not have been obtained on a slide.

When it was over, everyone remarked on how thorough we were with this project and I even received comments about how powerful a presentation it was.

When presenting, don't be afraid to mix in some low-tech visuals if it will help you drive your message home.  And to think, I didn't even mention the effect it has refocusing the audience's attention on you.

Would the remote survive a nuclear holocaust like the Twinkie?

With my curiosity and need for a better remote in hand, I ordered the remote.  Given the small size of the Keyspan remote, I figured that it too would be quite thin.  Instead, it is fairly deep and when I first caught glimpse of its profile, it immediately reminded me of a Twinkie.  That might be a bit of a stretch, but my mind works in mysterious ways sometimes.

With the initial visual impression aside, I did notice that it has a very different feel compared to other remotes I've used, including the Logitech device I was offered once at work.  The physical dimensions seem to put this in between the Keyspan and Logitech devices while the Targus remote has much more heft.  This extra weight can be attributed to AA batteries.  If this gives me longer battery life than my Keyspan remote, then I'm happy.  The Keyspan's battery is so obscure, the only local store that carries it is Radio Shack.  Then again, what don't they have?  It fits my hand perfectly, but if you have a smaller hand, then you might find it bulky.

Since I have a big presentation this week, I spent the past Friday working from home rehearsing over and over.  I also took the opportunity to put the Targus remote through its paces.

Setup was simple.  Turn on Bluetooth up in the Mac menubar if it isn't already on and choose "Set up Bluetooth Device."  Follow the prompts and you're good to go.

I fired-up Keynote, hit the "slide show" button on the remote and got going.  I eventually got to a slide with a in-slide build and hit the next button.  It promptly took me to the next slide.

Rut-roh.

Apparently, the "Next Slide" button really means just that.  Next slide.  The only way to get the behavior I need is to switch it over to "mouse mode" and use the left button, which is what's used for "previous slide" in presenter mode.  This is a serious flaw that I really hope Targus fixes.

There were a few occasions when the computer would lose its connection with the remote.  Whether this was a problem of my MacBook Pro (unibody 15") or the remote, I can't say.  I moved 20-25 feet away as I practiced my presentation and was still able to advance my slides, so distance wasn't an issue.  If anyone has any insight into what's going on there, I'd love to hear from you.

Over all, my experience with this remote was a mixed bag.  Even with the issues I encountered, I did have more confidence in this remote over the Keyspan remote for one reason:  I could reasonably trust that when I pressed the button, Keynote would respond.  With the wheel on the Keyspan remote, I didn't have that assurance.  I did learn later when showing my wife how to use it that the Play/Pause button on the Keyspan remote can also control the slides, but their positioning is too far down the remote.  What's worse is "Play" is "back" and "Pause" is "forward."

Pros:

• Good feel
• Good range
• No USB dongle
• "Slideshow button"
• "Blank Screen" button

Cons:

• "Next slide" button skips build steps
• Occasionally lost connection

Lisa Braithwaite has a great post where she discusses why you should avoid the lectern if you can.  The first of her three points is that the lectern "creates a physical and psychological barrier between you and the audience."  Personally, I'd like to take that a step further.  One thing I noticed at the conference was that not only was a barrier there between the presenter and those of us in the audience, but it seemed practically impossible for the speaker to form any sort of emotional connection with the audience.  That emotional connection is critical because that is what can drive someone in the audience to act upon your message.  If that emotional connection was unnecessary, then all our presentations would need to be are data dumps.

Likely a main reason why people stand behind a lectern, even when they don't have to, is because of the perception of safety.  When there's nothing between you and your audience, you're in a more vulnerable position whereas the lectern provides something physical to hide behind should the pitchforks and torches come out (trust me, they won't).  However, it is that vulnerability that allows for that emotional connection.

Of course, there will be times when, as was the case at the Open Government conference, you won't be able to free yourself from the lectern.  It's in this situation that Lisa makes some excellent suggestions.  Another I would add is if your can bend and extend the microphone far enough to the side, do so, and stand to the side of the lectern.  Take the initiative to make yourself more vulnerable for the audience.  Granted, in most cases, doing this might sit somewhere between a Herculean effort and impossible, but if possible, I'd suggest giving it a try.

Top Image credit:Reith Lectures 2009, used under a Creative Commons license.

As you can see, there's a lot to read.  The audience can't possibly be expected to read all this and absorb what the speaker is trying to share.  The story was important and of great value.  It's just too bad the slides hurt her efforts.

Below is my effort at redesigning the deck.

As you can see, the deck shrank in half from 22 slides to 11.  Much of the content on the slides were details that didn't need to be on slides.  Even coming up with visual metaphors for each slide or each chunk of content on the slides would have been too much.  The presentation is what she was up in front saying to us in the audience, not her slides.  I'll address each of the new slides and what I did and why I did it.  As always, please feel free to add your comments below.

1. Title Slide - I decided to follow a similar path on the title slide that I took with the Coast Guard make-over.  The difference here is the title and subtitle are moved up to take advantage of extra space and take advantage of the rule of thirds.  For this deck, I used Keynote's "Showroom" template.  I did tweak it a little bit, though, to make it more appropriate for the subject material and to try to avoid the "I've seen that before" that you get when using built-in templates.  The green line ties in with the environmental theme of the Greenversations blog.  I added a reflection to give it a little more thickness without overdoing it.
2. Agenda Slide - For this and subsequent slides, I carried on the line from the title slide.  The agenda items, rather than being bullets in a list, were instead represented by conversation bubbles.  This too was an attempt to reinforce the theme of the blog.  The agenda items are brought in one at a time, allowing for commentary and for the focus of the audience to be squarely on what the presenter is addressing at the moment.
3. Slide 3 - In this slide, you can see an alternative approach to the standard and unimaginative slide title.  Instead of having slide-specific titles, I brought the conversation bubbles from the agenda slide to the bottom of the slide and adjusted the opacity to keep the focus on the content and not the bubbles.  For the "Why?" slide, I decided to focus on her message of putting "a human face on the big blank box (government)."
4. Slide 4 - This slide focuses on the organizational structure that they have for managing their blog.  Though crude and simple, this reinforces the message better than a few slides of text.
5. Slide 5 - When it comes to the important message of encouraging bloggers to reply to comments on their posts, a simple, straight-forward photograph accomplishes this.  A little bit of text in a caption reinforces this.
6. Song of the Coqui - Easily my favorite slide in this deck, this replaces slide 10 in the original deck.  Using a photograph that goes to the edges and shows the face of the frog has far more impact than the embedded photograph looking down on the frog's back.  The commentary was distilled down to concise points that minimizes reading.  Again, the details will be in what the speaker's saying.
7. Weekly Features Slide - This slide needs more work.  However, it's a good start at getting away from the text-heavy original.  Spacial representations work well for time-based information.
8. Flow of the River - This slide's design is similar to the Coqui slide for visual consistency.  Though the image isn't the one she talked about in her presentation (the original was way too small), that's not as important as having a visual to reinforce what she is talking about.
9. Policy & Legal Slide - Here, I'm going for humor.  I'm not going for the laughs (or chuckles) at the beginning of the presentation, but rather at about the 10 minute mark when the brain starts struggling with paying attention to the current presentation.  This little shift in gears grabs the audience's attention anew, buying the speaker more time to get through the talk.  Now, humor isn't something that should be used haphazardly.  If the joke isn't relevant, then you can easily lose your audience.
10. Comment Policy Slide - This is one of those slides where I'm using a bulleted list without bullets.  A list works for what she's trying to get across, but if you can, avoid using bullets themselves.  This keeps the slides clean and you avoid those lethal bullets.
11. Last slide - Here, the audience gets to see the blog with the contents of two slides condensed to one slide and three "bullets."

All photographs are credited in the slide notes.  For the subject matter of the presentation:

• The Greenversations blog
• Greenversations on Twitter

As I mentioned earlier, please feel free to comment on my slide make-over and/or suggest alternative approaches in the comments area below.

The problem with putting URLs in your slides is that though the intent may be noble, the end result is the opposite of what was intended.

Take, for example, the slide deck I made over recently:

On the second slide, we have a list of URLs.  The intent here is that the audience could either click on the links when they received the electronic copy after the presentation or they could copy them down (and possibly visit them) while he was talking.  Instead, what we, the audience were presented was a distraction.  They were a visual distraction that took our attention away from the important points, even if they were in mind-numbing bullet points.  If any of us had the wherewithal to copy them down or even go to those sites on our phones or laptops, then we're even more distracted.  There would be no hope at all for our paying attention to the presentation.

If the intent was for the speaker to click on those links and demonstrate the sites, then it's an invitation to disaster.  Granted, there are plenty of examples where the web page launched successfully, but this practice is just inviting Murphy to make a grand entrance.  Rather than clicking on a link on your slide, instead have the page already loaded in your browser.  That way, the audience won't have to wait for any HTML, graphics, Flash, or any other components to load.  If you lose your Internet connection, you'll at least have something to show.  Another thing to consider when launching links from within your slide is that it takes time for your computer to switch to your browser, open a new window (or tab), and start the page load process.  Granted, it may take only a few seconds, but that's enough time for your audience's attention to be commandeered by something else.  You also want them to be focused on you, not what your computer is or is not doing.

So, what to do?  Leave the URLs and links out of your slides.  Instead, put them in your handouts.  The purpose of your slides is to function as a visual aid, and not a detailed information resource.  That's the purpose of your handout.

Top Image credit: frankfarm, used under a Creative Commons license.

Watching this video, I also saw something I didn't expect.  Murphy got up on stage, not once, but twice during the iPhone 3.0 demos.  He may have ruined the demos, but the presenters (and their assistants) saved their presentations.

The first incident was during Pasco's demo of their Spark application, presented by Wayne Grant.  Wayne and Apple's own Scott Forstall attempted to demonstrate the "Balloon Burst" experiment in Spark, using some equipment connected to an iPhone.  There was an equipment failure and they couldn't complete their demo.

The second incident was a demo of Midi Mobilizer by Line 6 and Planet Waves and was presented by Marcus Ryle.  During his presentation, the application failed to produce the appropriate sounds for the selected amplifiers.

In both of these presentations, the presenter did not let Murphy completely take over.  Instead there three things I noticed in common in their reactions:

1. Show Good Humor - In both cases, they didn't let the mishaps get to them emotionally.  Instead, they took the incidents in stride and even laughed a little.  Keeping a good sense of humor helped them stay in control at times when the audience might otherwise get restless.
2. Don't Immediately Give Up - Both presenters reaffirmed their commitment to their audience by not throwing in the towel the moment something went wrong.
3. Move On - Eventually, if it just won't work, move on.  Don't dwell on the mishap and just move to the next part of your presentation.  If you have practiced your presentation enough, then this is made easier, since you'll know where to go next.

These obviously weren't the first mishaps to occur in an Apple keynote.  Steve Jobs himself has had to deal with temperamental computers and software as you can see in the video below.  He handles the situations quite well with the exception of the camera that failed to work.

How have you successfully handled an interruption by Murphy?

Unfortunately, this often isn't considered.  Whether it's organizational narcisism or general lack of empathy for the audience, presentations are often developed as simple rote regurgitation of facts.  There's no attempt to engage with the audience or make it meaningful for them.  The message, inadvertent or not, is that the speaker does not value them or their time.

If the audience is there against their own free will, then that's already one strike against you.  If you fail to gain their attention, that's strike two.  Send a message that you don't care and it's strike three.

Show empathy. Understand why they're there.  You may be a member of the committee.  Thus, it's probably quite obvious to you why they're there.  However, consciously remind yourself of this when you're preparing your presentation.  Having a genuine understanding of where your audience is coming from and how they value their time in this meeting is crucial for establishing true empathy for them.

Give your message real meaning. Why does what you have to say even matter?  Why should your audience even bother listening to what you have to say for the next fifteen minutes?  Give them a reason to not sit there and mindlessly doodle while they wait for you to shut your trap.

Offer real value. If, at the end of your fifteen minutes, they don't have something of value to take away with them, then you have just wasted their time.  The value can be in the form of a call to action for them or the group to follow through with.  It can be in the form of a message they can apply to their lives, projects, etc.

If your audience isn't there because they chose to be there, then don't make the assumption that just because you care about what you will be talking about, they will too.

Top Image credit:  Jeremy et al, used under a Creative Commons license.

It's not malicious.  They don't know they're harming their presentation.  They think they're being helpful.  However, except for the extremely rare occasion, they're not.

One of the reasons people use these devices is to make sure people can see what it is they're talking about.  If you need a pointing device to emphasize some text, then you've got way too much text.  If you need a laser to point out an element in a diagram or chart, then it's way too complicated.  Use of laser pointers is most often a symptom of a greater problem; namely the slides are not designed appropriately as visual reinforcements.  Unfortunately, laser pointers don't help.  The audience is still going to be overwhelmed by excessive or excessively complex slide content.  The small laser dot just forces them to try to concentrate on yet one more thing, which brings me to my 2nd point.

In a normal bad slide situation, you basically have 2 points of interest competing for attention:

1. the presenter
2. the slides

Your brain can only pay attention to one thing at a time, so this is already a nearly impossible task for the audience.  When you introduce a laser pointer, you double the points of interest competing for attention.

1. the presenter
2. the laser pointer
3. the little red dot
4. the slides

While trying to listen to the presenter (1), you're looking at the presenter's (2) hand with the laser pointer to gain an initial visual reference for the location of the little red dot (3) as they address the content on the slide (4).  Occastionally, the audience will go back to the hand (2), especially in cases when the little red dot (3) is moving around a lot.  Asking anyone to be able to follow along and remember the message is just asking too much.

If you feel compelled to use a laser pointer, stop.  Evaluate your slides.  Are the diagrams complicated?  If so, simplify them.  Are they text heavy?  If so, reduce the text so that no more than 3 seconds is required to absorb the message of the whole slide.  You should even consider using something more visual.  The written word is a terribly inefficient form of communication.  Text is recorded by the brain as a complex visual, specifically as a sequence of shapes, and then processed by the verbal section of the brain.  That's twice the effort of a visual alone, or even the spoken word (verbal) alone.

So, please, put that laser pointer down and back away.

Top Image credit:  Ushlambad, used under a Creative Commons license.

It happens.  It goes with the territory.

Well, when it came time for the presentation, I was scrambling to get the laptop set up, the virtual machine launched, and everything else that needed to be hooked up hooked up.  Desptie all this, there was a good reason to not abandon the slides.  There were some key visuals in there, that if not used, would have made comprehension of the material much, much more difficult.

After I got everything all set up and configured, I was already 5 or so minutes late in getting started.  As soon as I was sure that everything was set to go, I started with my presentation.

Big mistake.

With the adrenaline pumping from the effort to get set up as quickly as possible, I dove right into the talk without giving myself a chance to catch a breath.  I was a few words per minute slower than John Moschitta in the famous FedEx commercials.  OK,  that's a bit of an exageration, but you get the idea.  If I had taken just ten seconds to catch my breath, my pace would have been more measured and would have conveyed the confidence and authority that I needed.

Ten seconds out of a twenty minute presentation in a fourty-five minute meeting.

If circumstances out of your control force you to rush to get set up, invest in a brief pause to catch your breath and relax.  You don't have to look like you're doing it.  You can also use it as a moment to get your audience to get quiet to listen to you.

Image credit:  dlemieux, used under a Creative Commons license.