In just a few days, an old bearded man wearing red will swoop down from the skies in his sleigh, land on the roof, slip down the chimney and leave Christmas gifts under the tree for my two amazing boys, before drinking a glass of milk and eating a couple of mince pies, and then climbing back up the chimney – without forgetting to take the carrot we’ll have left for his flying reindeer.

Yes, Christmas is upon us, and perhaps we presenters could learn a thing or three from Santa Claus about the art of presenting.

Santa brings gifts

Firstly, Santa comes a very long way to deliver gifts, in return for a bite to eat, a glass of milk and a raw carrot, and more importantly, the smile of a child. As a speaker, you might be paid a little more generously, but whether you are paid thousands or nothing, you should treat a presentation as a gift you are offering to your audience.

Santa only comes because children believe in him and behave well enough to deserve presents. You are only on stage because your audience believes in your ability to change them in a positive way. You are there for them. Your presentation is your gift to them. Treat it as such, from the moment you begin to prepare for it. Their smile, their thanks and the positive change in them will be your greatest reward.

Santa chooses gifts carefully

Every child is different. They wish for different presents. Often they create detailed lists for Santa. My kids were very disappointed last year when Santa got it wrong, and brought Super Mario Galaxy instead of Super Mario Bros. (Imagine the uproar if he’d brought Sonic the Hedgehog instead…)

Likewise, every audience is different, and you need to adapt your talk to your audience’s expectations. Don’t give them something that was on someone else’s wish list. Usually my university talks get very high ratings, but on one occasion this year, the ratings were merely good. Why? On examining their comments, it turned out that the students had been led to expect something completely different to what I’d been asked to talk about, and they were measuring my talk against their (wrong) expectations, even though I’d set out my objectives clearly at the start. So as far as you can control it, work out what your audience is expecting, and then meet or exceed those expectations.

It doesn’t matter how great your talk is: if it’s not the one they have set their heart on, they will be disappointed. Santa (usually) gives kids what’s on their wish list. Do likewise.

Smile

Could you imagine meeting Santa in the living room, and finding him scowling or growling? Santa is a happy, jovial chap, or so we imagine, and behind his white beard there is a perpetual smile.

Presenters should smile too. There are many reasons for this, and I strongly recommend this article by Garr Reynolds on the Presentation Zen blog about smiling. Garr notes:

A presenter or entertainer who actually looks like she is happy to be there—because she really is—is well on her way to engaging her audience naturally.

Another key reason for smiling is the power of mirror neurons. What you visibly feel, the audience subconsciously feels too. If you look happy, they will feel happy. And just as Santa wants kids to be happy, you want your audience to enjoy your presentation. After all, if they enjoy it, they will pay more attention, and that means they are more likely to get your message and even do something with it. Making your audience enjoy your talk should always be a major objective. Smile, and you are halfway there.

RECAP

So there are three things to learn from Santa Claus: treat your presentation as a gift to your audience; tailor that gift to that particular audience; and smile.

With that, let me wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and a happy, healthy and inspiring 2012.

So just as I shared my Top 10 of 2010 last year, here is a rundown of the Top 10 Phil Presents posts of 2011. Whether you read them at the time or missed them, this is a chance to recap the most popular articles of the year (not including event reviews etc).

And let me say a warm thankyou to you, because it is the growing popularity of this blog and the many fine comments you make that keep me writing, sharing, and doing my bit to help change the world, one presentation at a time. Just as a presenter is on stage not because he or she is important but because their audience is important, I don’t write this blog because I am in some way great or important. I write it because you are important. You matter. You can change the world. My role is merely to help you do that in some small way.

So best wishes for a successful 2012, thanks for reading and listening, and enjoy the recap of the most popular posts of 2011.

10. DSK: How emotions beat logic every time

Written before Dominique Strauss-Kahn‘s New York trial was dropped, this took two key presentation lessons from the DSK-Diallo case and the public reaction in France.

9. Adapt To Your Audience

A presenter who takes the time to understand his or her audience, and tailors their presentation accordingly, is worth their weight in gold.

8. Do Investors Like Slideuments?

One of many pitch-related posts this year, this asked the question whether information-laden slideuments are appropriate in an investor pitch. (Clue: they’re not.)

7. Animate Your Audience – Not Your Slides

A follow-up to the year’s #1 post, this one talked about how animation on the screen is bad unless it helps to deliver your message more effectively; but on the contrary, animating your audience is absolutely critical for the success of any presentation.

6. Keep it simple…

As experts in our subjects, we tend to present with far too much complexity. Keep it simple, and your audience will understand far more.

5. When you think Presentation Zen isn’t appropriate, that’s when you need it most

The post that debunks the myth that you can’t use Garr Reynolds’ approach in certain situations like technical presentations.

4. Video: Introduction to Presentation Skills

This post features a 90-minute video of yours truly, giving a presentation skills talk to entrepreneurs at Le Camping in Paris. If you have 90 minutes to learn about what it takes to give a great presentation, sit back and enjoy.

3. First Impressions Last

All about the vital importance of your introduction.

2. Perfecting Your Pitch

Another pitch-related post, and this is about putting the finishing touches to your pitch, and turning it from a good pitch into a great memorable pitch.

1. Two Reasons I Don’t Recommend Prezi

The most-viewed and most-commented post of the year was this one, about how I believe Prezi stops the presenter focusing on the audience before the presentation, and stops the audience focusing on the presenter during the presentation. I believe Prezi is a fine tool for certain niche uses, but in most cases, it is solving the wrong problem, and making an existing problem worse.

And a few bonus posts…

Here are a few other posts which didn’t make the Top 10 in terms of hits, but which I believe deserve another look. Some were from the start of the year (when the blog was not as widely read as it is now), and others were very recent and didn’t yet have time to accumulate enough hits.

Take The Drive-By Test

Treat your slide as if it were a road sign, and make it simple, clear and quick to understand. It’s a simple but powerful test. And this short post from early January also features a hilarious video which is well worth watching.

Show And Feel

About the importance of mirror neurons – this is vital information every presenter should know.

Pitch 2.0 (Video)

A video of my 8-minute presentation at Le Camping Festival in June 2011, in the style of Steve Jobs. Six months later, people still tell me they remember ‘Magic, Vision & Passion’!

Presentation 2.0: Resonate Naked

This was my joint review of Resonate and The Naked Presenter, two fantastic books about structuring and delivering great presentations. For me, these two books usher in the era of what I call Presentation 2.0.

So which of these was your favourite post of 2011?

Related articles

• Beyond 10-20-30 (philpresents.wordpress.com)
• Animate Your Audience – Not Your Slides (philpresents.wordpress.com)
• Two Reasons I Don’t Recommend Prezi (philpresents.wordpress.com)
• Garr Reynolds: Great keynote at the Ideas on Stage Conference 2011 (philpresents.wordpress.com)

He is basically saying: don’t overload your audience; keep it simple; and use text that’s big enough to be legible by the whole audience. Amen to all that.

However, many people take Guy’s advice out of context and apply it to the letter. Yet Guy was giving advice to entrepreneurs pitching to venture capitalists – a very specific presentation context. He was saying that you should aim to pitch in 20 minutes, with ten slides – and not just any ten slides, but these ten slides (he lists what should be on each slide).

Now for an investor pitch, that’s pretty good advice, although it can be taken to extremes, and I’ve already talked about how you need to go beyond being informative, and also make sure your pitch is memorable.

But the 10-20-30 advice just doesn’t hold up for any other kind of presentation. The spirit is spot-on, and I applaud Guy’s intentions, but you shouldn’t take his advice to the letter – Guy certainly doesn’t follow it religiously in his recent (very good) Enchantment presentations. Here’s why we need to go beyond 10-20-30.

10 slides

So you’re not doing an investor pitch. You therefore aren’t going to use exactly the same ten slides Guy told you to use. At least, I hope you’re not going to have a slide about your business model if you’re speaking at a wedding. But should you use ten slides?

I always say that there is no right number of slides – just use one message per slide, and if that slide needs to be on the wall for three seconds or three minutes, so be it. If you need no slides, use no slides – many of the best presentations use zero slides. If you need a few slides here and there, ensure the screen is blank at times when no slide is required.

Clearly there’s no point in overwhelming your audience with information. But the main reason for that is not that the audience can only remember a small amount of information: it is simply because a presentation is not a good way of sharing information. As Garr Reynolds wrote in The Naked Presenter, “If the lone goal is the transfer of information, you are better off distributing a handout and canceling the presentation.”

So I don’t buy the argument about giving an audience only ten things to see because they can’t remember any more. Getting the audience to remember each slide is not your goal. But you want them to remember your call to action, your key message, your inspiration – and the images you project are ways to help you achieve that goal.

So don’t blindly use ten slides. Use as many as you need – no more – whether that means zero or hundreds.

20 minutes

So I don’t buy the 10-slide rule. Do I like the 20-minute rule any better? For an investor pitch (at least, for a first pitch), I tend to think it’s too long. Investors decide in the first 30 seconds whether they care about you and your idea, so get your key value across well in the first 30 seconds, and then aim to tell them more for about 5-10 minutes. And then open up for questions and let them find out what they most want to know in whatever time remains.

For any other kind of presentation, 20 minutes is a long time. TED keeps every presentation to 18 minutes, based on 1970s US Navy research showing that was the maximum span of full attention for a student. Yet Garr makes the point that attention spans are getting shorter:

My own experience tells me that the average attention span of an audience is much shorter than 18 minutes today, and the amount of time people are willing or able to endure a speaker they find boring is pretty close to zero minutes. (The Naked Presenter, chapter 5)

This is why for our Ideas on Stage conferences, we have the 12-25-90 rule: most presentations last 12 minutes; a few keynotes last 25 minutes, although that requires a top-notch speaker to maintain the audience’s attention for that long; and the audience is never seated for more than 90 minutes at a time. Even the 12-minute talks require an experienced, trained and well-rehearsed speaker. And in fact, this year some of the best talks lasted less than ten minutes.

So what do you do if you are scheduled to present for an hour? Well, I often run three-day training courses. And the key to maintaining attention for an hour, a day or three days is to reset the audience’s attention every 10 minutes or so, as recommended by Dr John Medina, author of Brain Rules. That means breaking the presentation up into smaller chunks. It means running an exercise, or showing a video, or having a coffee-break. When Garr was running his Presentation Zen European Seminar with us in Paris last month, the five hours simply flew by, because the seminar was full of exercises and videos to reset the audience’s attention.

So I’m not a fan of the 20-minute rule either, although I agree entirely with its spirit. Ten to twelve minutes should be your aim if possible, and if you are required to speak for longer, break it up into ten-minute chunks with something to reset the audience’s attention between chunks.

30-point fonts

So do I like the 30-point rule? Well, again I agree with the spirit. You need to make sure that any text or numbers on your slide (yes, even the labels on your pie chart) are easy to read for the sexagenarians in the back row who don’t want to put their glasses on. If you’re not sure your text is big enough, it’s not.

Guy offers a further rule: take the age of the oldest audience member, and divide it by two, and that’s your optimum font size. So in most business presentations, you’re rarely going to need anything bigger than 34 points according to that rule.

Sadly, this is too simplistic. Most often, when I talk about the 30-point rule to slideument addicts who are just being introduced to Presentation 2.0, the reaction is “Wow, that’s big!” But no, it’s not. It depends on your software, the resolution of your slides, the size of the projection screen and the distance from the screen to the back row. (And the font.)

If you are using PowerPoint in a standard mode, 30 points often seems just about big enough. If you are using Keynote in a fairly high resolution, 30 points looks very small. And again, it depends on the room and the screen. I took the photo below in a large French government amphitheatre. I was only halfway back, yet from where I stood, and indeed from the front row, the only legible text was the title. Can you read it? Can you read any more? Can you guess how big the title text was?

The title was 64 points. That was still not really big enough in that room with that screen. It might have been enough with PowerPoint, but not with the high-resolution mode in Keynote. Yet in some of my slides, I can use text as small as 24 points if I am in a small room with a large screen.

Quite simply, any presentation is meant to be delivered to a specific audience in a specific room on a specific date, in a particular context. You can’t try one-size-fits-all with a presentation unless you want a poor result. So if you’re going to take that approach with your presentation, do the same with your slides. Work out what size of text is big enough in that room on that screen with that font with that software and for that kind of audience. And if you’re not sure, make it bigger. Often, 30 points won’t be anywhere near big enough.

Conclusion

So I don’t much go for 10-20-30 as a set of hard-and-fast rules. They have some relevance for investor pitches, and if you look at the detail of Guy’s advice for entrepreneurs, it is fantastic. Their spirit is also very good in terms of any other presentation. I just disagree with the numbers. In fact, for me, if a presentation should last 10 minutes, 20 slides would be a pretty good number to use in many cases, so I’d like the rule better if the 10-20 parts were the other way round. And while big fonts are necessary, 30 points often won’t be big enough.

We need to take the spirit of Guy’s advice, and go beyond 10-20-30. Don’t overwhelm your audience, but inspire them; don’t let their attention wane or take too much of their time, but keep them interested and reset their attention regularly; and make sure your slides are clear and easy to understand for your whole audience. It’s not as catchy as 10-20-30. But I believe it’s better advice. And it’s certainly what Guy does when he’s on stage.

Our aim with this conference was to inspire people to transform their businesses with the power of innovation, communication and entrepreneurship. So it was partly about great presentations on those themes, but it was also about networking, bringing people together and inspiring people to have their own great ideas. Judging by the feedback, and by the many connections people made, it was a real success.

We were particularly delighted to welcome the brilliant Garr Reynolds back to Paris, and honoured to have him as the keynote Communication speaker. So it’s only right that the first talk I share from this conference is Garr’s fantastic keynote about on-ko-chi-shin or learning presentation lessons from the past.

I’ll be sharing more talks from the Ideas on Stage Conference in the coming weeks. Big thanks to the guys at present.me for cutting this together and getting this online on their great site, so we can see the slides as well as the speaker; and thanks also to Buzdig for the filming.

Enjoy!

Direct web link: http://present.me/view/3642-garr-reynolds-presentation-zen

It is vital to ensure your presentation has a natural flow. That doesn’t mean that everything has to be completely linked, as if it were all one chain of ideas. But you should not just jump around without making that clear. Your audience shouldn’t have to play catch-up to work out what you’re talking about.

My advice is to use one of two simple devices between items. (You could interpret this as being ‘between slides’ although I prefer to talk about the parts of your presentation, because you might not be using slides at all, or perhaps not all the time.)

This is simply ‘Link or Break’.

1. Link.

This means that you need to link the new idea to the previous one. You can do this in a number of ways. You could use the list approach, as used by Steve Jobs when launching the iPhone 4. He said he would talk about 8 different features of his new phone, and then proceeded to go through them all from #1 to #8. That provides an obvious link and structure to the eight points.

You could use an acronym, and then go through the different letters – for example, at Ideas on Stage we talk about IMPACT in slide design: Image, Message, Positioning, Animation, Colour and Typography. This is another kind of list approach.

Alternatively, you can have each idea build on the previous one, as you develop your arguments. Sometimes it is useful to make this very clear: “So now we’ve seen that there’s a clear market for a new kind of widget, let’s take a look at our new iWidget.” Never assume that the flow is as obvious for your audience as it is for you. That link sentence can be all-important.

2. Break.

Sometimes, however, you’ll need to move from one point to something completely different, and there isn’t any obvious link even to you. Once again, the late Steve Jobs was a master of this.

One of his undercelebrated skills was turning the page in his presentations. He knew that it isn’t enough just to start talking about a new topic: first you have to close the previous topic properly so the audience is satisfied and ready for something new. His method was simple:

a) A one-line conclusion

b) A pause

For example, in his iPhone 4 launch in 2010, he first talked about the first three months of the iPad, with sales figures etc. Before moving on to the next part (iOS 4), he closed the chapter with a line something like:

“So that is my update for the iPad.”

His subsequent pause gave the audience time to applaud. They won’t always do that for you, but at least it will give them time to close the chapter on that part of your talk, and prepare for what you’re going to say next.

You can see the video here (this part is at around 10:20).

I personally hate watching US TV because most of the time there is no clear break before the commercials kick in, and I find myself thinking “is this part of the show?” whereas in France and the UK, there is always a clear pause with the channel’s logo and a statement that the commercials are about to begin.

Likewise, your audience will appreciate that clean break. Close the box on the last point with a simple concluding statement, pause, and then begin the next topic.

Conclusion

With these two simple techniques of ‘link or break’, you should ensure your presentation flows naturally, and your structure helps your audience to enjoy and appreciate your messages, and hopefully ‘get’ them, instead of leaving them perplexed and wondering what you’re talking about.

One more thing…

If you are always very clear about your links, then it will have a very strong impact when you suddenly show or say something completely unexpected.

You can use this to your advantage by showing something surprising or provocative, making people wonder why, making them listen attentively to find out why, and then explaining why it is linked.

This is a great way to get people’s attention levels up again when they might have been starting to wane. But it is only when your audience fully expects your ideas to be properly linked that you can have a positive impact with this kind of device.

Make your ideas flow properly with good links, making clean breaks when necessary, and your messages will have more impact – and your audience will thank you.

Every battle is won before it is fought.

So said Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese warlord-philosopher and strategist, and Apple proved him right again yesterday.

In Tim Cook’s first public outing as CEO, Apple’s fans were led to expect the much-trumpeted iPhone 5, and they were disappointed. Instead, Apple announced a new iPhone 4S, which has many cool features and is much more powerful than the original iPhone 4, but it looks the same and it’s not a 5.

The immediate reaction was one of disappointment among fans and commentators. A poll showed 81% of respondents were disappointed. The AAPL share price dropped, at one point by up to 5%, although it later recovered, but the market was hit, and a Business Insider article was entitled “Apple’s Disappointing iPhone Kills The Entire Market Comeback”. Jay Yarow said “People were right to feel let down! They didn’t get what they expected.”

Steve Jobs is a hard act to follow by any measure, and all eyes were on Tim Cook’s performance on stage to see if he could match the master. But if his performance was competent enough, the event still disappointed, because expectations had been raised and the event had been hyped, and the substance of the message failed to match the expectation. The BBC reported that “you could sense a great wave of disappointment rolling through the Apple community”.

Now I can hear you saying that Apple never announced that they would release anything called an iPhone 5, not yesterday, not ever. True. But the media speculation was so high in recent weeks that it was almost a fait accompli, and everyone was talking about the event as “the iPhone 5 launch”. TechCrunch announced a very certain “We know the iPhone 5 is being debuted soon.” LoopInsight announced the event as “the iPhone 5 event”. And there had already been plenty of leaks about the new teardrop design of the iPhone 5 which had originally been expected in June, and so they couldn’t possibly delay it any later than October, could they?

So were the media completely wrong to lead people to believe this was going to be the big day? Perhaps. But Apple were wrong to allow it.

I’ve already blogged about how it’s important to raise expectations to a level that’s high enough to make people interested, but not so high that you can’t then meet or exceed them. Apple just got this the wrong way round. To put it crudely, people were expecting a cool new iPhone 5. They got Cards.

That news sites and influential blogs gave people false expectations is certainly Apple’s problem, because what could have been a great event with some cool announcements turned into an event which disappointed people because of what it didn’t say, so it does affect Apple’s image – even if they will still sell shedloads of phones.

It was like going to see Jurassic Park 8 and leaving the cinema disappointed because there was only one small and docile dinosaur. If that’s what you’re expecting, it doesn’t matter how great the cinematography or acting are.

So since the resulting disappointment was Apple’s problem, it should have been Apple’s responsibility to influence expectations beforehand. That’s what PR is there for.

What, then, could Apple have done before the event to set expectations to a level that was high but achievable? Plenty. Here are some ideas.

1. The event name and invitation. Having detected that people were expecting something unrealistic, they could have set clear expectations in the invitation or even the event name. If the invitation had mentioned something like “You remember the leap forward between the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS? That’s nothing compared to what we’ll be announcing on October 4th” then people would still have expected a lot, but they’d have probably expected an updated 4 series and not a 5. And if a few journalists had received that, they’d have picked up on it and relayed it, and started speculating along the right lines. Instead, on receiving the press release, sites like LoopInsight immediately called it “the iPhone 5 launch”.
2. A strategic leak. Apple should have realised that the battle was going to be lost unless they reset expectations, so a strategic leak to an influential blog or journalist might have been enough to achieve that. “We’re not calling it an iPhone 5, but it’s still a big step-change from the iPhone 4″ might have been enough. Or “The outside is the same as the iPhone 4, but what’s inside is completely new.” Would that steal some of Cook’s thunder (or Schiller’s, as it happens)? Perhaps. But it raises the question “so what’s new inside, in terms of hardware and software, and what will it do for me?” – and that’s the right kind of question for people to speculate about before the event.
3. A teaser. Imagine a video on the Apple web site, building up to the brand-new phone, and then unveiling what looks like the iPhone 4. Then someone saying “Hold on, that’s just an iPhone 4!” And the answer could come: “It only looks like an iPhone 4. Find out what’s inside on Oct 4.” And then perhaps the new phone’s screen could open one eye invitingly. The slogan “It only looks like an iPhone 4″ takes something that people will say anyway, and adds the important word “only” which then raises expectations about what’s inside.

Frankly, there are all sorts of things Apple could have done. Yes, it is in a ‘quiet period’, but if it can make such a major product announcement during a quiet period, it can also set expectations properly. Its failure to do so has rebounded on it, and has caused the first perceived failure of Tim Cook’s tenure.

It just goes to show that it’s not always the delivery that lets a presentation down: it’s often mis-setting or misunderstanding the audience’s expectations. And with all it could have done to set expectations right, Apple can’t go blaming the media. Worse, when you willingly allow so many journalists to bark up the wrong tree, they end up getting angry at being made to look like fools, and they could decide to turn on Apple, which is no longer the cool underdog that inspired cult status, and which could end up portrayed as the next big corporate villain surprisingly quickly if they are not careful.

It’s a pity, because the iPhone 4S seems pretty cool, and deserves to be judged on what it is, not criticised for what it is not. And giving away the iPhone 3GS is a market-shaking announcement. If only they’d ensured expectations were set right, perhaps people would be talking about a successful debut for Cook, not a disappointment.

Every battle is won before it is fought. Tim Cook didn’t lose this one through his performance on the stage. Basically his PR people led him into an ambush even Jobs wouldn’t have escaped unhurt.

One more thing…

Apple’s product launches are quite long. This one had a lot of padding. The more stuff you announce at the same time, the lower the overall impact. If Jobs got one thing wrong in his most recent launches, this was it. One hour is enough, half an hour is better. Apple has absolutely no business giving air-time at an iPhone launch to an underwhelming app like Cards, or a few new skins for an iPod Nano. They can launch those with one of their regular emails.

BBC News Online’s Rory Cellan-Jones called it “an extremely long and ponderous event“. And many of Jobs’ events fell into that same trap.

When he launched the iPad2, he had three key messages. It’s lighter, it’s thinner, and it’s faster. That was all it needed – but it went on a long time. If Apple’s agenda yesterday had been to get three key messages across, it would have been these:

• Here’s a fantastic new iPhone 4S with Siri and iOS5
• We’re giving the iPhone 3GS away for free
• iCloud is launching next week (I was wondering when it would finally launch, so it’s good to mention it)

And quite frankly, they should not have felt the need to add any more subjects to the agenda. I’d allow them a brief intro (a brief one) talking about some of their recent successes. But that’s all.

Lessons for presenters

1. Delivery isn’t everything. Yes, it’s important, but your message is just as important as the way you deliver it.
2. Understand your audience and their expectations.
3. Set (or reset) expectations to a level where you can meet or exceed them. If you can’t or won’t do that, it will become your problem, so make it your responsibility.
4. Choose 1-3 key messages and work to communicate them memorably. Cut out anything that doesn’t help deliver those key messages.
5. Be brief, as FDR would have said.

Last year, the fantastic Garr Reynolds came to France for a one-off Presentation Zen European Seminar. It sold out well in advance, and was a rousing success. People came from nine countries, including the USA, to learn from the world’s leading presentation expert. This year, he’s back for more.

On November 14th 2011, Garr will return to Paris to deliver his only public seminar in Europe this year. Tickets are now on sale exclusively at ideasonstage.com – so don’t miss your opportunity: sign up now.

But that’s not all. We are also delighted to announce the Ideas on Stage Conference 2011, which will be held on November 15th 2011. This is the first in what we hope will be a series of top-class social conferences, bringing together amazing speakers and leading innovators, entrepreneurs and communicators for an event which will be as memorable for its networking opportunities as for the top-quality speakers.

You could think of it as a ‘TED for business’. The focus is on innovation, communication and entrepreneurship:

• Innovation, which is the lifeblood of any business, large or small;
• Communication, without which even the best innovations get nowhere;
• Entrepreneurship, which is vital for transforming great innovations into profitable, sustainable businesses – as much for big firms as for start-ups.

We’ll be announcing a line-up of top-quality speakers, and social tools to facilitate networking before, during and after the event. Garr Reynolds will be one of the keynote speakers (so that gives you an idea of the quality we’re aiming for) and we have many others who will leave your minds buzzing with creative business ideas.

Places are strictly limited for this first event in November, so get in early and take advantage of special Early Bird prices (valid until October 1st). You can also buy a combined ticket for the Presentation Zen European Seminar and the Ideas on Stage 2011 Conference, and save even more.

You don’t normally need excuses to come to the beautiful city of Paris. Here are two great ones – and we hope they will convince you to come to Paris, have a great time, and take home top-class presentation skills, brilliant business ideas, useful new contacts, and happy memories – as well as those little plastic Eiffel Towers.

Sign up now and we look forward to welcoming you to Paris!

Animation should only be used when it helps the audience to understand a point – i.e. the movement or effect should be meaningful. Text does not need to fly in from all parts of the screen – it can just appear, or fade in, at the right time. Building up a slide point by point is fine and in fact often highly recommended – just don’t have things moving around for no reason.

‘Animation’, of course, means different things. It doesn’t just mean moving things around on the projector screen. While that kind of animation should be strictly rationed, another kind should be strongly encouraged. That’s the animation of people: specifically, you and your audience.

As you communicate with your audience, you need to be animated. I don’t mean that you should be jumping all over the place like Steve Ballmer on hot coals. But in your movement, your body language and your intonation, you need to be animated in order to keep people awake, and more than that, to animate your audience.

Move around the stage (if possible) with clear, deliberate movements, stopping in certain places, speaking for a while, then moving to another part of the stage. This has the effect of breaking up what you are saying into ‘verses’, each of which is easily digested. Make sure, therefore, that you are moving at logical break-points in your speech, and not in the middle of a paragraph. Each movement then awakens the audience to the beginning of a new ‘verse’, so it does not seem like one long monologue.

It also won’t seem like a monologue if you animate your voice. There so many ways you can modulate your voice – faster vs slower, higher vs lower, louder vs softer, excited vs dead-pan, one accent vs another, etc. – that there is no reason at all for you to use exactly the same voice (speed, pitch, volume etc.) throughout. That’s called monotony, and there’s a good reason why it is synonymous with boredom.

At the end of the day, your aim is to animate your audience. The more awake they are, the more interested they are, the more likely they are to listen to your message and do something with it afterwards. So get them involved. Get them to think. Ask them questions. Ask them to do little exercises in pairs. Ask for a show of hands on a particular point. Ask them all to stand up, and then sit down if they meet a particular condition, e.g. “you may sit down if you have never seen a boring presentation” (continue with additional conditions until only a few are left standing).

If you and your audience are more animated than your slides, then you’re doing something right. If however you spend all your time worrying about animating your slides, then you’re barking up the wrong tree.

Animate your audience – not your slides.

Prezi is different in that it gives you one big canvas, and allows you to zoom in and out, and pan around, while still including photos and videos. The developers talk about the many uses of non-linear presentations, and the limitations of slide-based competitors.

Now I’m all for innovation, and Prezi is a fine idea which is quite well-executed. You can criticize it for the limited built-in fonts or various other technical points, but in general, what it sets out to do, it does well.

Sadly, when it comes to live presentations, I am not a fan of what it sets out to do.

For me, the visuals you use when presenting need to do three things. They are there to help you to communicate your message:

a) more effectively

b) more interestingly

c) more memorably

You could well argue that a cool and eye-catching show on the wall will be more interesting than a set of bullet points, and you’d be right. It’s possible that you could use Prezi to produce visual effects which are especially memorable.

The trouble is that you don’t really want people to remember your visual effects. You want them to remember your messages, and the visuals are merely hooks on which they can hang those memories. When the hook gets more attention than the message, you have the beginnings of a problem. It’s not because an all-zooming, all-twisting, all-panning Prezi visual is more interesting than a set of bullets that it is the right solution. A blank wall is better for communication than a set of bullets too.

I always say that visuals should be simple and clear. They should help the audience to better understand the message the speaker is trying to communicate. They should also take as little of the audience’s attention as possible, and only when necessary. Most of the audience’s attention should be on the speaker, and where nothing needs to be projected to enhance the spoken message, that’s exactly what should be projected: nothing.

And this is for me the main difficulty with Prezi, as well as with highly-animated slides created with other slideware apps. The main challenge of the Presentation 2.0 revolution is not to banish bullet points to the dustbin of history: it is to reestablish the connection between the speaker and the audience, while using the best modern techniques to enhance that communication.

I contend that using Prezi – in most cases – will in fact make this worse, not better. There are two key ways this happens.

1. While preparing a presentation, I ask presenters to focus as much as possible on their audience, to ensure they gauge the audience’s needs and expectations right, target their messages properly, use appropriate language, and ensure their audience will be able to receive and understand the presenter’s key messages. While the big problem with some slideware apps is that it is too easy to produce bad slides, the problem with Prezi is that to make it all look exactly right and design a fantastic-looking visual treat, it takes a very long time. I have seen this happen. The result is that the presenter is focusing too much on the visuals, and not enough on the audience. This can lead to beautiful visuals, but a failure to communicate effectively. That is one way in which the use of Prezi breaks the link between the presenter and the audience.
2. During the presentation, it is important for the audience to focus as much as possible on the speaker. This way, the speaker can create a connection with the audience, and convey meaning through the exchange with the audience, through their body language and through their passion. If the audience spends all its time looking at the projector screen, rarely looking at the speaker, that connection is lost, and the speaker might as well not be on the stage at all, and instead just record a voice-over. I’ve seen some fantastic Prezi visuals. But they are just so eye-catching, particularly with all that movement, that they become the star. I believe that is counter-productive unless your sole objective is to impress the audience with your ability to create stunning visuals. (And enough people have now seen enough Prezi shows for the novelty to have worn off.)

So there are the two reasons I don’t recommend Prezi: it stops the presenter from focusing on the audience before the presentation, and stops the audience from focusing on the presenter during the presentation. It therefore goes against everything I teach.

There are good examples of the use of Prezi. TED’s Chris Anderson gave a fine talk with Prezi – but because he toned down all the animation, in a laudable attempt to avoid having the audience look only at the slides, there was nothing there which couldn’t have been done equally effectively with Keynote or PowerPoint. In fact, in all the really good Prezi-backed presentations I’ve viewed (and I’ve viewed many), the other tools could have been just as effective.

So there’s the irony. Prezi is a great tool for producing stunning swirling visuals which don’t help communication; whereas if you choose to use it in a way which doesn’t stop communication, you might just as well use Keynote or PowerPoint instead. The one situation where I think Prezi is simply brilliant is for producing videos with a voice-over. That’s where you want the audience to focus on the visuals. It’s not what you want in a live presentation.

I’ll leave the last word to Guy Kawasaki: “If you need animation to make your presentation interesting, you must suck.” The answer is not animating more – it is sucking less.

In other words, the answer is not a cooler tool like Prezi – it is learning to communicate effectively with your audience. Focus less on your visuals and more on your audience, and you’ll be on the right track.

However, even these PZ disciples often tell me that they think Garr’s approach isn’t practical for certain types of presentations. It’s fine, they say, for a TED talk or a sales pitch, but you can’t use a Presentation Zen for a detailed technical explanation of how to run a particular widget.

I disagree. But I see where they are coming from. Many PZ readers get the impression that a ‘zenified’ presentation is one which features slides with lots of beautiful photos and very little text. The attractive design and plentiful visual examples in the book naturally have something to do with this.

But Presentation Zen is not a style: it is an approach. It is a different way of thinking about presentations, which does not prescribe the use of quality stock photos, although they may often feature in a resulting slide-deck. The end-result of using the Presentation Zen approach is an interesting, relevant and memorable presentation – not just some pretty slides.

Here are three situations where people say Presentation Zen isn’t appropriate.

1. A boring subject. You are required to present a study of 19th-century economic theories and their impact on the Crimean War to a group of 16-year-olds. They are fully expecting to be bored stiff and have no interest at all in the subject, you know this, and you’re all going to be very relieved when it’s over, after which they will remember precisely nothing because they weren’t listening. How can you possibly use the Presentation Zen approach for something so boring?

The answer is that if the subject is worth presenting, it is worth presenting in an interesting way. It is worth thinking about your audience and finding a way to make it relevant to them, to make them want to listen, and to help them to learn. In fact, it is the most boring subjects which can benefit the most from the Presentation Zen approach.

I recently heard an example of a bailiff who needed to make a presentation to other bailiffs about the rate of repossessions. Boring job, boring people, boring subject, boring presentation, right? Wrong. This bailiff used the Presentation Zen approach to craft an interesting and engaging talk, with a few clear and simple graphs and a little humour, which the audience loved.

The bottom line is that people don’t like to be bored, and if they are used to being bored, or are expecting to be bored, then it’s all the more important to find a way to make your talk interesting to them. This in fact is where Presentation Zen can be of greatest value.

2. A technical presentation. Imagine you need to use a presentation to explain how to use a particular piece of software.  There’s no chance at all of using Presentation Zen here, right?

Wrong. Once again, Presentation Zen is not a style. With the Presentation Zen approach, you will shut down your computer, consider your key messages and the success criteria for your talk, and think creatively about the best ways to help your audience to internalize those key messages. While the end-result may not include stock photos with a few words, it should be an interesting and engaging way of getting your messages across, with or without visuals, and in any case it’s unlikely to feature too many bullet points.

Many years ago I was a trainer for an IT infrastructure course we gave to all IT new-hires in a major corporation. This covered a lot of technical detail in many different areas, and it was in need of a new approach. I reinvented the course using a storyline – where participants had to imagine themselves starting a tiny company with nothing more than a phone, and building up additional bricks of infrastructure as the business grew until they had their own centralized data center and wide-area network.

This new structure helped participants to stay engaged, and to realize not just what each piece does, but why it is needed and how it fits with all the other pieces. I also introduced a large number of exercises to break up the flow, keep people involved, and help them to learn by doing, not just by listening.

This was before the time of Presentation Zen, but the approach is just the same. Find a relevant and ideally enjoyable way for the audience to learn. Think creatively, use the power of storytelling, and make the key messages memorable.

Coming back to the software explanation example, you might use screen captures, or videos, or a live demo, or you might get the audience to learn hands-on with their own computers. Any of those would be more effective than throwing out dozens of bullet points over a two-hour monologue and hoping some of it sticks.

3. A review of business results. Quarterly or annual results – absolutely no chance of pretty stock photos here, right? Correct – but that doesn’t stop  you using the Presentation Zen approach.

A customer approached my company Ideas on Stage asking for our help with his procurement department’s annual all-employee review, where he had to present the year’s results and the plans for the year ahead to 250 people. He gave us 108 highly detailed graphs as a starting point – most years, these would have been the slides. There is a lot to measure in procurement, especially in such a big group.

We helped him to simplify his messages, showing only the information which supported his main points, and we produced a deck of about 35 slides, all of which were simple, clear and attractive, often with simple graphs showing only the relevant information and making the key message stand out, and without a single stock photo. We then helped him to rehearse delivering those key messages with passion and belief. It was a resounding success. The Presentation Zen approach works very well for results presentations.

There are two simple conclusions.

1. Presentation Zen is about more than just pretty slides, and Garr’s approach could lead you to deliver a presentation with no slides at all.
2. It’s at those times when you may think this approach is least appropriate that, on the contrary, it can make the most difference.

If you haven’t yet read Presentation Zen, I strongly recommend it. If you have, I recommend re-reading it. Over time, we tend to forget much of what we read, and remember only a key takeaway or two. The two obvious takeaways from Presentation Zen are “don’t use slideuments” and “use simple slides with photos”, and sadly that’s all many people remember. Yet there is far more to it than that, and it is one of those rare books which thoroughly deserve to be revisited regularly.