If you’re interested in working with us on a project, contact: info@duarte.com
If your question is specific to our workshops or webinars, send it to: training@duarte.com
For all things media-related, including speaking engagements, contact: tracy@duarte.com
All fan mail, and additional questions/comments go to: comments@duarte.com

We recently realized that “slideology@duarte.com” has been dropping emails into a black hole instead of our inbox, so if you’ve sent something in the last year, please send it again but one of the above addresses… we’re so sorry to have missed you.

I’d like to share one piece of mail that did make it through…because it is one of my absolute favorites. Admittedly I have received thank you notes on personal stationary from some cool people, like Phil Knight (Nike), Al Gore (VP), Warren Buffet (very rich nice dude), but this one takes the cake.

Isn’t that nice?

It’s from a guy named Scott Lynch who works at Sustain Dane, a nonprofit organization based in Madison, Wisconsin. He decided to apply slide:ology principals to his family’s holiday newsletter. He delivered the essential info of a holiday letter–what do you look like, what have you been up to, what are you thinking about? And to avoid the two pages of 10-point drive,l he made it visual so people with a 21st-century attention span could be entertained.

Great work Scott! Keep it up.

His book has also inspired a blog, to which Meryl Evans is a frequent contributor. Meryl recently interviewed Nancy Duarte on behalf of the Beyond Bullet Points blog. (Say that ten times fast.)

Nancy and Meryl chatted about what makes a presentation effective and memorable (a story), what makes a story good (it moves your audience), and why sketching and drawing at any skill level can make you a better presenter (it gets you thinking outside the box.) Nancy also shares a few of her favorite presentations, all of which can be viewed online.

Check out the interview here:
http://www.beyondbulletpoints.com/blog/?p=365

Each month I receive a publication called “Vital Speeches.” Last month’s issue included a transcript of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s launch presentation. Please don’t let this speech discredit the folks at Vital Speeches, it’s a great publication.

But really, couldn’t Microsoft’s herd of press folks have come up with a catchier title?

While writing the next book, I’ve been in speech analysis-mode, and have considered including an analysis on this speech as an example of what not to do… but I love PowerPoint too much to do that.

Below I’ve color-coded various sections of the speech, and included a poll so you can chime in at the end.

My first observation was that he refers to his audience as users, PCs, developers, and beta-testers. He could have called them all robots; none of those terms are very human. Next I noticed how much of the speech is allocated to conveying that that very same community built–or rather, fixed–the OS. He made it sound like they’re all building a camel instead of a visionary or revolutionary product. Oh, that’s right…they didn’t. I think this speech could be turned into a great object lesson for college (or high school) speech class.

Roll ‘em…

KEY:
Apple campaign reference

Unnecessary filler words or phrases

Confusing words, phrases or statistics.

Ballmer’s references to himself

Upgrade fixes problems

Bold statement with no supporting information

It is a great honor and privilege for me to have a chance to be here today. I’m an enthusiastic personality, I think. I get a little fired up about things. And I’ll tell you, there’s not much that gets me more fired up than the chance to start selling, delivering, and letting customers enjoy Windows 7.

So today Windows 7 is available—45,000 stores around the world. It’s available on new PCs, the upgrade is available, and it’s just out there for all to start, hopefully, to appreciate and enjoy as much as our 8 million beta testers have done.

So today I get to say not only that I’m Steve Ballmer and I’m a PC, but I’m Steve Ballmer, and I’m a Windows 7 PC effective immediately. What is Windows 7 at the end of the day? What were we really most trying to do? We were trying to make the everyday usage of the PC better in the ways our customers wanted: Simpler, faster, more responsive. And so for the billion people who use Windows, for the perhaps as many as 300 million people who may buy a PC during the course of the next 12 months, we want to give a chance for people to have a better and better experience and at the same time, enable a world of new opportunities, new applications to do new things that you’re going to have a chance to see and witness as you’re here with us today.

What’s special about Windows 7 and the way it came together and why I think we have a little extra special secret sauce somehow in the making of Windows 7. And it really came about from an intense collaboration between our own engineering organization and our partners, a group of about 50,000 partners, software vendors, hardware vendors, peripheral vendors, and our customers. And our customers. Whether it’s all of the data that we get back from customers about how they’re using Windows and what they’d like to see different and improved, whether it’s the feedback we got from the 8 million beta test customers, all of that came together in a very unique blend. 3,000 world-class engineers at Microsoft, 50,000 partners with umpity-ump engineers there, and then the 8 million customers. And the 8 million customers were people from all around the world, 200 countries. You had teachers, small business owners, soccer moms. You had people stretching, if you will, from grandparents to gamers, people stretching from Australia to Iceland. Across the planet, feedback coming in from people in all walks of life really helping us think about and improve and make Windows 7 and Windows 7 PCs what our customers, I think, will really, really want.

One of the favorite things that the development team did during the course of building Windows 7 is create this thing in one of the R&D buildings that they called The Wishing Wall. And on the Wishing Wall, they collected and put up just a ton of customer feedback. Things that they called technical feedback, emotional feedback, to try to really bring alive in the physical world all of that information that we were getting back in the virtual world to help us tune the product. And to all of our customers who participated in giving us that input and feedback, I really want to have a chance to thank the beta test customers, and I want to thank all of our Windows users as we’ve gone over the last several years and literally hundreds of millions of new people have bought new PCs with Windows Vista and Windows XP. They’ve given us a lot of feedback that has allowed us to build a product that I think takes things really to a very, very new level.

I talked about simplicity but I want to give you a little bit broader characterization of Windows 7 overall. I think of Windows 7 in three major buckets: No. 1, it works the way you want to work. You want that computer to fire up quickly, boom. You want it to feel responsive, boom. You want longer battery life, boom. We needed to make those things work — simpler, faster, more responsive, leaner, less busy. And I think we’ve accomplished that with Windows 7.

No. 2, the things that you do all the time need to be simpler. You want to manage the windows on your desktop, you want to find the documents you most frequently use. Let’s make that stuff super, super simple. And then No. 3, let’s enable a world of new things, new possibilities for software developers and hardware developers and for end users. So you get a technology like multi-touch, which enables people to build new computers and new software. You get literally, I would say, from an end user perspective, dozens or hundreds of new features. And our experience throughout the beta test program is that everybody finds their own unique set of features to fall in love with. A road warrior like me, I love the new wireless networking. Media lovers like my three teenage sons—well, one of them is a little younger than that—my three sons, they really love the home group features. And everybody finds, from an end user perspective, the things that delight them and we’ve enabled a whole new world of possibilities for the hardware and software community. And I think that forms kind of the essence of what Windows needs to be. Windows needs to be an incredible opportunity for innovation for hardware companies, software companies, and it needs to be a place that is simple and easy to use and opens up the world of diverse innovation for the end user in a way that is manageable and consumable by billions of people around the world. Windows 7 takes us a step closer to the vision that we articulate that focuses in around three different screen sizes—PC, phone, and TV—all connected and communicating across the cloud, the Internet backbone.

We launched a new generation of Windows phones a few weeks ago. Today, you’ll see how that connects in and fits in the Windows 7 environment. We’ll show you new approaches today to use Windows 7 PCs to power scenarios that are entertaining, that run on your television set. And so we continue to move down this path of allowing the intelligence and information that you expect to be across all of the devices in your world, at home and at work, giving you the information, the entertainment, and the socialization, in addition to the productivity that you would expect. We’ll have a chance to show you some of how this comes together in just a minute as Brad Brooks starts his demo.

Today is a very good day. But the center, I think, of the day is really the product itself. And so what I’d like to do now is to invite up on stage Brad Brooks, Vice President from our Windows Marketing Group, and Brad is going to give you a fairly extensive walk-through of the product that is Windows 7 and some of the new Windows 7 PCs.

In the year 2010…

1. Presentations and social media will blur.

Audience and presenters will have 2-way communication. It won’t just be about the audience twittering to the backchannel.

2. There’ll be another movie about a slide show.

Or, if there isn’t a movie about a slide show… there might be a movie about slides. Or a celebrity will use slides to create a tipping point for their cause. You know, like Oprah or someone. Just sayin’.

3. Face-to-face engagement will trump mouse-to-mouse engagement.

People are human, and desire human connections. The ones who make people feel are the ones who will be heard. Logical arguments and web traffic aren’t enough anymore.

4. Remote presentation vendors will solve their technical limitations.

Gads, could it get any worse? It’s only up from here. Meaningful best practices for presenting in this medium will to emerge, too. ‘Cause it’s bad. Real bad.

And last but not least:

5. There’ll be a more broad understanding of how design thinking shapes business.

The picture below speaks for itself (that’s a real Facebook exchange with an old classmate from Hattiesburg, MS–the home of Tiger Wood’s recovery program).

Enjoy 2010, everybody!

No, this does not mean packing seemingly endless charts, tables, and graphs onto every slide. What it does mean is that with the right finessing, even incredibly complex data can be picked apart and rearranged in a simple and engaging way.

“The Power Gap” (a new animated infographic by Airside) is a great example of making a complex story look effortless…

“Demos came to us with an intensely detailed statistical study, which rated every single constituency in Britain according to a number of different social and economic aspects. Each of these aspects has an effect on the power held by the individuals in each area, and by the constituencies as a whole. For Demos, this survey explained theoretical concepts about power as well as showing its practical implementation in 21st century Britain. For us, it was a lot of multi-layered information to squeeze into a short animation.

Over the course of several meetings with Demos, Airside wrote a script that communicated the main concepts behind Demos’ survey, as well as showing the practical significance of the survey results. We set the problem in a historical context in order to create a narrative that would help ordinary members of the public understand these concepts.”

–Airside

This “epic spreadsheet of numbers” is the data that Airside received. Ouch!

Airside’s Nat Hunter speaking at Design Event 09 in Newcastle

Check out the project’s process at Airslides’s Blog: http://www.airside.co.uk/blog/?p=420

But wait! There’s more! If you have not seen Jonathan Jarvis’s “The Crisis of Credit Visualized”, you really are missing out! Seriously– is there anything more complicated to explain than the credit crisis?

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

“The Crisis of Credit Visualized distills the economic crisis into a short and simple story by giving it form. It is also argues that designers have the ability to see a complex situation, then turn around and communicate it to others. By giving graphic form to the credit crisis, it becomes comprehensible. Not only do economic activities take shape, but new relationships can emerge between these shapes.”

–Jonathan Jarvis

Everything great starts with a sketch!

Jarvis’s storyboards–look like something?

Print spreads made from the same assets as the video

Check out the project’s process at Jarvis’s site: http://jonathanjarvis.com/crisis-of-credit

How would you explain your story to a friend who knows nothing about it? How would you get your grandmother to understand and be moved by your message? Before jumping into your next presentation, take a deep breath and remember that for an audience to comprehend your message, you’d have better luck by making it comprehensible.

Garr’s new book PresentationZen Design is beautiful. He carefully studied all the design principles and ensured that he expressed them in a unique way from either of our books. There are multiple perspectives on how to apply the principles, and the book is packed with visual before and after samples that not only tell you the principle, but show you.

I have bopped my hand against my head several times wishing I’d expressed some of the concepts as well as he did. His white space section is amazing–makes me wish I had an entire section devoted solely to white space. His idea of consciously designing the white space first instead of focusing on the elements is profound and the before and after examples throughout the book I’m sure will be everyone’s favorite part.

I feel like I’ve had a front row seat to the development of his book. It’s a painful process I tell ya. Watching all the blood and sweat he put into the book was tough, but wow it will all pay off by transforming thousands of presentations around the world. I’m buying it for all my designers as a mandatory read. Great job, Garr!

Once Garr finished the book he took his very pregnant wife to Maui for the first time (my favorite place on earth). Now that he’s back to the grind in Japan, I wanted to send him a little congratulatory gift, sung to the tune of Tiny Bubbles.

Wow…I haven’t pulled out my ukelele since college sorority rush (and that didn’t go so well). But I adore Garr and the book is fantastic. Aloha Garr and Happy New Year from me!

(Our excitement, Exhibit A: http://blog.duarte.com/2009/11/the-microsoft-office-2010-public-beta-is-available-and-we%E2%80%99re-in-it/)

We used PowerPoint 2010–and only PowerPoint 2010–to create a short trailer sharing “5 Rules for Creating Great Presentations.” (See below.) It includes everything from Photoshop-looking graphics to Flash-like animations, all done within PowerPoint.

Nancy recently took a turn as a guest writer on The PowerPoint Team Blog, to expand on the process, and outline the top “5 tips for Getting PowerPoint to Sing!” Check it out here.

On CNBC, the newscasters compare today’s Google Nexus One launch with the iPhone launch Steve Jobs hosted just two short years ago. Here’s the clip, scroll forward to 3:44.

Steve Jobs definitely plans and rehearses more than this guy did. This old article in the Guardian states that Steve Jobs spends weeks planning a presentation and almost two full days rehearsing it.

The newscaster comments the slides were so bad he thought they were done on an old overhead projector, which isn’t true. It was the delivery that was bad.

In defense of well designed slides, I thought the launch presentation was lovely. We didn’t create these slides but I sure wish we had. They’re beautiful. And the Boy Genius Report did a great job capturing images of the slides that were projected. Lovely.

So I can go on long rants about how spending time on attractive slides is a waste of time if you don’t have anything to good to say. The newscasters came across like the entire presentation was a disaster. Now, there are times when presenters try to camouflage their lack of content by creating attractive slides. They are trying to disguise their lack of preparation and inferior insights with making things look attractive. At times the audience is so thrilled to be given visual breathing room it lures them into thinking that the content was actually okay when it was either poor or non-existent.

However, I don’t think that is the case with this launch presentation. I think the poor guy just didn’t practice. It was a big day, with big stakes and well… he shoulda known better. The press picked up on his foible and I hope he catches a break.

My advice to the guy? Practice, practice, practice.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t accept everyone. That’s how the Alt-MBA was born.

What is the Alt-MBA?

The Alt-MBA program is a group of motivated and connected learners, leapers and agents of change who want to build better brains with other like-minded people from around the world. The group was originally inspired by the Alternative MBA program created by Seth Godin in December 2008.

A handful of applicants that were not selected to work with him in New York decided to launch their own version of the program. Two of the founding members put the idea out to the pool of unaccepted applicants on December 15th and since that time the group has grown to 100+ members (including Seth Godin).

Paul Pettengill is the founder of the Alt-MBA. He’s also a really nice guy. And aside from being a really nice guy, Paul is an excellent interviewer. We were lucky enough to have him come visit our office and talk to Nancy Duarte. (We were even lucky enough to have him come twice, but you’ll hear about that in the interview.)

Paul and Nancy talked about presentation design, business, family, and family business.
Listen in on their conversation here.

Photo by Mark Heaps

We recently worked with Michael Pollan to design a presentation for the Annual Pop!Tech Conference, (http://blog.duarte.com/2009/11/visualizing-the-sun-food-agenda-with-michael-pollan/) and I have officially been transformed from appreciative fan to groupie.

He’s wicked smart, and a great communicator; and until his recent appearance at Pop!Tech, he had never delivered a presentation with slides. Scary, right? This approach keeps all the attention focused on his story, which means he’s gotta have a damn good story. (And he does.)

He’ll be speaking at several places next year, and giving the Sun Food Agenda presentation at least a few times. If you’re nearby, go check him out!  I might just see you there.

Speaking Schedule:

January 13, 2010; Pullman, WA. Washington State University.

January 14, 2010; Bellingham, WA. Western Washington University

January 20, 2010; Petaluma, CA Copperfield’s Bookstore at SEED Bank (199 Petaluma Blvd N, Petaluma, CA 94952) event for Food Rules

January 23, 2010; San Francisco, CA 10AM SF Ferry Building, Farmer’s Market event for Food Rules.

January 27, 2010; Campbell, CA. Silicon Valley Reads.

February 23, 2010; Decorah, IA. Luther College

February 25, 2010; Meadville, PA. Allegheny College

February 26, 2010; Bloomington, IN. Indiana University

February 27, 2010; Richmond, IN. Earlham College.

April 12, 2010; East Lansing, MI. Michigan State University

April 13, 2010; Baltimore, MD. Goucher College

April 14 & 15, 2010; Granville, Ohio. Denison University

April 22, 2010; Stockton, CA University of the Pacific

May 12, 2010; San Mateo, CA. College of San Mateo