Presentation Advisors Blog

The Best Presentation Design Tool of 2010

Back in January I wrote a personal review of Seth Godin's live Linchpin Session in NYC.  While Seth is known for his Marketing guru-ness, he's also a fantastic presentation designer.  He even wrote one of the earliest e-books on presentation design called "Really Bad PowerPoint (and how to avoid it)".  He has written a number of posts about the topic as well (just search "PowerPoint" on his blog).

In that review I had mentioned that Seth had some fantastic imagery that clearly was not stock.  I knew about sites like Flickr where I could get free Creative Commons licensed photography, but the search engines on most of those sites are crap.  Seth was nice enough to comment on the post, filling me in on the most useful presentation design tool I've come across this year - CompFight. 

CompFight is a Flickr search tool that uses the API to accomplish what the built-in search box in Flickr obviously can't do - intelligently find the images you're looking for.  It also has search criteria you can turn on and off like Creative Commons (commercial, only, or off) so you can decide if you want images that are free to use or copyrighted and Safe Search. 

Since Seth turned me on to CompFight, I've never looked back.  I have spent a fraction of the money on iStockPhoto this year as I have in any previous year.  iStock is almost an afterthought now, but it's still the best joint in town (IMO) for vector photography and more "corporate" yet affordable imagery.  However, many of the presentations I work on buck the corporate trend and embrace vivid, original imagery.  I also use it very often for imagery for my blog posts.  If I credited the image to Flickr, you can rest assured I used CompFight to find it.

Here are a few slides that I've created with Creative Commons imagery on Flickr via CompFight.  If you're familiar with typical stock imagery, you'll see the difference.  Simply click on the image to go directly to the image's original Flickr page.

I hope this tool proves as useful for you as it has for me.  I'm not 100% sure of the guidelines and protocol around Creative Commons licenses, so please do your due diligence before using images from Flickr, and do so at your own risk.  

Have you used CompFight?  If so, what do you think?  What other tools have you found useful for PowerPoint presentation design?

Book Review and Giveaway: Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh

When a business becomes so successful that there is an article-a-day written about them, it's only a matter of time before the CEO writes a book about how he/she achieved such a feat.  What you expect is 200 or so pages of business processes and advice.  That's absolutely NOT what this book delivers.

Instead, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose offers a first-hand account by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh of what shaped him as a person which would eventually lead him to creating an online company whose values were developed from the inside out.  Zappos invested their time, money, and resources into customer service, culture, and employee training.  Three areas often pushed aside by companies whose only goals are dollar signs.

I had expectations for this book and it completely missed the mark - in a good way.  This isn't a business book (or a customer service book), per say.  It will DEFINITELY help you look at business differently, from Tony's perspective as a CEO unlike any other.  This book provides Tony's account of his journey, from grade school to Amazon.  I am familiar with Zappos but was unfamiliar with their history, from an idea on a napkin to a 1 billion dollar business.  Let's just say it wasn't all rose petals and double martinis.  It's not a complete history of Zappos, nor Tony's autobiography, although it includes many elements from both.  It is simply Tony trying to tell the story of his journey while also offering insight into the science of happiness, complete with graphics and resources. 

While I'm a fan of all things related to business, there was actually a specific section in Delivering Happiness dedicated to Tony's experiences with public speaking which I featured in my post Presenting Happiness: Tony Hsieh's Rules for Public Speaking. 

This book will teach you what passion can accomplish, and how sometimes all you can do is have faith.  In the end, this book will do nothing less than inspire you to deliver happiness in your own way, whether it be to your culture, your customers, or yourself (or all three).  I highly recommend it. 

Want to win a FREE copy of Tony's Book?

The folks at Delivering Happiness not only provided me with an advanced copy to honestly review, but a second copy (paperback, which I think is more convenient) to give away to one of my readers!  Very cool of them.

If you would like to receive Delivering Happiness free to your doorstep, there are two ways:

1. Simply ReTweet this post with the hashtag #FreeDHBook (that's VERY important!) and/or
2. Leave a comment below with the title/author of a book that has changed your life personally, professionally, or both

If you do both #1 and #2, you will be given two entries, although retweeting multiple times (while appreciated) will not improve your chances of winning.

Good luck, and thanks so much for reading!

Book Review: The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo

“How to be insanely great in front of any audience”

That’s pretty much what Steve Jobs is, right? Insanely great. It even sounds like a phrase Steve would use to describe the products he’s so passionate about.

It’s not to anyone’s surprise that Carmine Gallo’s book, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience is a great resource for anyone interested in not only presenting, but also communicating. Steve Jobs is widely recognized as one of the world’s best presenters – turning his Keynote talks into entertainment experiences more similar to the opening of a blockbuster movie than to a CEO talking about his new products. “Some people go to great lengths to…[watch Steve Jobs present], even spending the night in freezing temperatures to ensure the best seat at one of his speeches” writes Gallo. But I’m figuring if you read this blog, I don’t have to explain to you who Steve Jobs is.

Gallo takes a fantastic approach to this book, not just examining and explaining Jobs’ presentation style, but quoting educational psychologists like Dr. Richard Mayer and award winning presentation designers like Nancy Duarte to prove exactly why Jobs’ presentation style is so effective. Along the lines of Jobs’ presentation style, Gallo separates the sections of the book not in chapters, but in Acts with multiple scenes and even intermissions to offer extra presentation tips. Gallo even wraps up each scene with “Directors Notes”, encapsulating the major takeaways from that particular scene.

Much of the information offered in this book can be had if you read Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen and Nancy Duarte’s slide:ology, but this is the only book that connects the presentation tips to Jobs’ execution, giving readers the confidence to implement this type of presentation style.

Connecting Job’s presentation style to the methodology based on simplicity and storytelling that Reynolds, Duarte, and many others teach is quite important. As a presentation designer and consultant, I often run into opposition when explaining why the text heavy, bullet-point ridden slide presentations we often see are not only bad but counterproductive. It’s hard for anyone to accept this “radical” way of presenting because it’s utilized correctly by so few (relatively speaking). Lucky for us, Steve Jobs is one of those few, and Apple’s success is proof enough. That’s exactly where this book comes in handy – to connect those dots.

This book is an obvious must-have for presentation designers, but I think it can be a handy tool for anyone in sales and marketing, or basically anyone who has an idea to share. It goes beyond just the visual design of Jobs’ presentation and highlights how he conveys his passion and ideas so well. It outlines audience needs, offers a framework for the Ultimate Elevator Pitch, and even talks about leadership.

I highly recommend it, and you can purchase it here:

Full Disclosure: All links to the book are referral links, but all opinions on this book are 100% honest.  I purchased the book on my own and was not asked to review it.  I only recommend books I've read and believe my readers will find value in.

Presenting and Public Speaking Do's and Don'ts

A recent post over at the 6Minutes blog (by Andrew Dlugan, @6minutes) broke down some survey data gathered by Chris Brogan (@ChrisBrogan) about speaker Do's and Don'ts.  I thought the findings were GREAT and many of the responses were insightful and spot-on.  If you're a presentation newbie, this is one of the best resources to learn the best traits of effective presenters. 

Some of my favorites were (my thoughts in italic):

• Involve the audience; Make your presentation a conversation (a.k.a. a two-way street)
• Focus on the message; avoid lengthy self-promotion
• Provide useful handouts (not just slides) - in other words, create a takeaway separate from your presentation slides.  Don't fall into the trap of creating a slideument
• Know your audience
• Don't go over time; Leave more time for Q&A
• Don't read your slides, they're not a script

There are plenty more, and Andrew took the time to separate them into more defined meta-groups as well.  Hop over to his blog to read the entire post, but make sure you come back!

-JT

Do This Before Launching Your Presentation

I rarely link to other blog posts in my own blog (I do it all the time on my twitter account), but I thought this would be very useful and wanted to pass it along to my readers.  Take a look at this post about what to do before you launch your PowerPoint or Keynote presentation to avoid any embarrassing mishaps.  It may save your presentation.

New eBook - Ten Tips and Techniques for more Effective Presentations

For the past few months I've been writing and designing an eBook and I'm happy to announce that it's available for download.  It's entitled Ten Tips and Techniques for more Effective Presentations: Breaking the mold and standing out from the crowd.  It's a short read (12 pages), hence the eBook status, but has valuable information for all types of presenters.  I encourage you to read it and then pass it along to anyone who may benefit from it.  No registration necessary to download.  Just click on the link above and enjoy!