Those who’ve heard my thoughts on presentations in general (most are bad … including most of mine), you’ll also know I think Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen (the blog and the book) is the most insightful guide to contemporary presentation design currently available. Thus, I was fascinated by Garr’s take on the differences between Barack Obama and John McCain’s national convention speeches and the graphic elements which accompanied them. The short version: Obama presents like a deity, while McCain bombed in visual terms. In terms of teaching presentation, though, Garr did mock-ups of how McCain’s talk would have looked in different styles which really get you thinking. Here’s the difference between an MBA and Steve Jobs presenting so you can see what I mean (and why this would be useful when trying to get others to think through presentation in visual terms):
[Images all from Presentation Zen.]
Tags: McCain, Obama, powerpoint, presentation
Interesting links for June 30th 2008 through July 2nd 2008:
- The Internet Has the Power to Transform Your TV Show into a TV Brand [Deep Focus/Yahoo!] - New research (from a survey of 2000) which shows viewers under 35 treat the TV show as part of a franchise or brand, and that engaging with the franchise online strengthens brand ties (viewers > 35 see the TV show as the main event). [Via Nancy]
- World’s Best Presentation Contest [SlideShare] - Online slide sharing service Slideshare are running their annual competition to find the best slides (ppt, keynote, whatever else in pdf form) from around the world. We need many examples of powerpoint done better, so get sliding! (Entries close July 31st 08).
- Fast-talking Fred is the toast of YouTube [The Age] - Fourteen year old Lucas Cruikshank and his online persona, 6 year old Fred (with anger management issues and a chipmunked voice), is YouTube’s latest (and very annoying) micro-celeb. Visit Fred’s Channel.
- The romantic appeal of the “long tail hypothesis” [PopMatters | Blogs] - An interesting critique of Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory: “With our identity riding on what we consume, we come to believe that there’s something valuable about having unique tastes, but we don’t actually pursue such a course in practice.”
- That Violet Blue thing [Boing Boing] - Boing Boing respond to accusations of censorship, stating their own position (they can retrospectively delete whatever they want) and getting quite a few comments in response!
- MySpace suicide: new law outlaws cyberbullying [The Age] - “Missouri Governor Matt Blunt signed a bill today outlawing cyberbullying, just kilometres from where a 13-year-old girl committed suicide nearly two years ago after being harassed on the Internet.”
- EA Grabs Your “Spore Creature Creator” IP [Clickable Culture] - “Talk about harshing my buzz. Electronic Arts is going to let us design creatures with its long-awaited Spore game and stand-alone Creature Creator, but in using the game and creator, we agree to hand over all rights in our creations to the megalithic publisher…”
- swedish teenager making millions off her blog? [jill/txt] - Jill Walker Rettberg looks at the fascinating case of a Swedish teenager who appears to be making a very healthy sum blogging by inserting paid ads and editorial comment without disclosure. [More links here.]
Tags: boingboinged, celebrity, censorship, cyberbullying, digitalculture, digitalhistory, economics, ethics, fred, ip, law, legal, longtail, marketing, myspace, powerpoint, presentation, slideshare, socialnetworking, socialsoftware, spore, sporn, stats, sweden, wired
Interesting links for June 8th 2008 through June 11th 2008:
Tags: academia, changecongress, creativity, film, harrypotter, jkrowling, keynote, lessig, marketing, politics, powerpoint, presentation, sexandthecity, speech, talk, usa
