The description of the fictitious Turbo Encabulator has long been used by engineers to warn against the use of technobabble. It has a lengthy and fascinating history, which includes this 1977 performance by Bud Haggart.

There is most definitely a lesson here about avoiding the use of confusing jargon in our presentations. We should be conscious of our audience and sensitive to their familiarity with the terms that we use. We should only use jargon, acronyms and other technical terms if we are sure that our audience will understand them. If there is the slightest chance that they won’t understand, then we need to simplify our language. Remember, if they can’t understand your message, they can’t adopt it.

Here at Duarte, we also saw this as a challenge. We believe that visuals can help bring clarity to otherwise confusing information. So, we took this on as an exercise in graphic recording, wondering if illustrating this epic masterpiece of nerd-dom might somehow make sense out of the confusion. Here are the results of our efforts:

Now re-listen to the video while looking at the visual. Does it help? Can using a visual make even a purposely confusing, technical-jargon-filled message clearer? What do you think?

So, if you have very technical information to convey, consider evaluating the words you use and eliminating jargon that won’t resonate with your audience. Then, visualize! Use a picture to replace those thousand (technical) words. If you do, your presentations will be so strong, it will be as if they are powered by the modial interactions of magneto reluctance and capacitive deractants!

Presentations have been through many (delightfully positive) changes in the last few years—but believe it or not—the most dramatic change is yet to come. Come along as we roll back the curtain and predict what the future looks like.

1. Tablet war will shape future of presentations

Tablets are hot and are creating new ways to engage customers with rich content and immersive experiences. iPads get passed around a conference table the same way yellow pads used to. But delivering a presentation on these devices requires different design considerations and a more immersive experience. Navigable stories and short video clips will win on this presentation platform. You want the folks at the table to hold the tablet and “see” what you’re saying quickly. A recent HBR blog posting said that, “Designing documents to be a sensual physical experience and not just a visually cognitive one demands different aesthetics and sensibilities. This nascent transition will be as profoundly important for future interpersonal communications—and branding—as the transition from radio to television. Having the right touch to get the right touch will become a desirable communications competence.”

2. Authenticity trumps “spin”

The instability in our world continues to make people skittish about the future and skeptical about the “truth” they’re being told by government and business. That leads to an even greater hunger for authenticity and transparency in communication — “spin” is out, “sincerity” is in. Hint to communicators: the audience can tell the difference no matter how you try to disguise it. Read Nick Morgan’s book Trust Me and Garr Reynold’s The Naked Presenter (review to come!). Both will help you come across as more authentic.

3. Hand made by [insert name here]

One way to come across as sincere and authentic is to present slides or sketches made by you. Almost all my internal slides delivered at Duarte staff meetings are all hand-sketched and scanned in. You can achieve the same result by hand drawing slides or even whiteboarding instead of slides. When my IT department was faced with buying new, expensive networking equipment, we brought in three vendors. The most expensive vendor—who also happens to be a Duarte client– had us sit and watch flash overview pieces on the web (the same ones that we created for them!) We felt like they didn’t know us or understand our problem. So we went with the vendor who could whiteboard a vision of how they might solve our problem. If you feel you can’t draw, use your favorite hobby to tell a story and take pictures along the way.

4. Increase in NO SLIDE ZONES

Speakers will stand up and talk. I didn’t say they won’t plan, they’ll talk without slides. We’ll see this more at the executive level and it will filter down through all layers of the business as well. People will get over the urge to sit behind the security blanket of a badly-designed, word-riddled PowerPoint slide. They’ll present “naked” or they’ll put in the effort required for great visuals.

Here’s a great example of a speech by Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg.

You’ll notice that her comfort monitor has dense text slides that serve as her teleprompter but they are not projected behind her. She’s very lovely on stage and her talk is chock full of stories. If she’d chosen to project her slides, it would have diminished her gracefulness on stage.

Less and less people will stand in front of poorly constructed visuals. Presenters will use great supporting visuals or none at all. The public’s tolerance for bad PowerPoint will eliminate the majority of bad visuals out there. Social stigma and peer pressure from having poorly constructed and distracting visuals will be career limiting.

Thanks for feedback from the Twitterverse: @viperblueuk @stephenRemedios @jwgorham @mpascoe @story_jon @reggyMortier @pediatricINC @tlgerglund @advanceUrSlides @anafxfz @matthewmccull @brataas @janschultink @twid @paulflanigan @toddbullivant @jaeSelle @edlee

What you think is a tantalizing blog title, is in reality the titles of two of Nick Morgan’s books. His first book Give Your Speech, Change the World was introduced to me by Mitch Joel.

Photo courtsey of www.ducttapemarketing.com

This last year he wrote Trust Me—Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma. One particular passage he wrote has changed my delivery style immensely. I mentally walk through this process now before I walk on any stage:

Most of the non-verbal mistakes that speakers make stem from not being open to others. So the goal is to be open without thinking too hard about body language at all.

To accomplish this, you simply think about someone with whom you would be delighted to be open. You think about your spouse, your child, or a friend. You imagine that you’re about to see that person after a long absence and you’re delighted to be together. In other words, you role-play in your mind a communication between you and your favorite person.

Nor form a memory of what that feels like physically, not about what you say. Notice everything you can about your behaviors. What are your facial gestures? What are you doing with your hands? How is your torso positioned? How close are you? Catalogue and remember the behavior, and then use that behavikor when you’re in a crucial meeting.

[audio:http://blog.duarte.com/audio/NickMorgan_interview.mp3]

Listen to the podcast where he answers these questions:

1. You defined authenticity as “the frank expression of emotion of some kind, whether positive or negative. It has to do with transparency of motive and intention or when people show us their hearts.“ I agree with that but get pushback from analytical types who say people don’t need heart, they need information. What do you say to that?
2. You state that there are two conversations going on when communicating and we need to become skilled at both verbal and non-verbal because non-verbal trumps verbal. Does everyone have a gap between what they’re saying verbally and their body language?
3. You say that “leaders who rely on ad-libbing and improvisation risk looking unprepared and stilted”. And that leaders need to practice to look spontaneous. To me, when people over-prepare the opposite happens, they seem stiff and rehearsed. How do you propose presenters find balance?
4. I was happy to see Maslow touched on in both your books. I loved the section on being connected and agree that people listen to ideas that fulfill a deep need. Is there a process for helping find that “great need” for even what some would say is a boring type of presentation like a staff meeting update?

Subscribe to Nick’s blog and Twitter @nfrodom1 (I know, weird twitter name, so I had to ask. Apparently when AOL was out of normal e-mail addresses, he used that handle. Same happened with Twitter so he used his AOL name. He’s a huge Lord of the Rings fan. So it’s his first initial, then Frodo, then last initial, and a number one. I guess someone else already had it without the one.)

Two years ago, I set out to uncover how story applies to presentations. There seemed to be a story-like magic to the presentations that caused change and spread broadly. Since I already had the context of thousands of presentations my firm had created for smart companies and causes, I studied what I didn’t know: screenwriting, literature, mythology, and philosophy—allowing myself to be led on a fascinating journey.

Early in my research, I stumbled on this graphic made in 1863 by German dramatist Gustav Freytag that he used to visualize the five-act structure popular in Greek and Shakespearean dramas. It shows the “shape” of a dramatic story. The drama builds toward a climax and then resolves.

When I saw Freytag’s pyramid, I knew that powerful presentations must also have a contour. I just didn’t quite know what the shape looked like yet. I also knew that presentations are different from dramatic stories because in a presentation, it’s rare to have a lone protagonist whose story builds toward a single climactic moment. Presentations have more layers and have disparate pieces of information to convey. Dramatic stories have a single climax as the crowning event whereas great presentations move along with multiple peaks that propel them forward.

I’ll never forget the Saturday morning when I finally sketched out a shape. I knew that if it was accurate, I should be able to overlay it onto two very different yet game-changing presentations. So I painstakingly analyzed Steve Jobs’s 2007 iPhone launch and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech. Both mapped to the form I had sketched. I cried. Literally. It felt like such a mystery had been revealed.

There’s something sacred about stories. They have an almost supernatural power that should be wielded wisely. Religious scholars, psychologists, and mythologists have studied stories for decades, trying to determine the secret to their power.

It’s still the dawn of the information age, and we are all overwhelmed with too many messages bombarding us and trying to lure us to acquire and consume information (then repeat the process over and over). We live in a more selfish and cynical era, which makes it tempting to be detached. Technology has given us many ways to communicate, but only one is truly human: in-person presentations. Genuine connections create change.

In the early 1400s, Florence, Italy was a hotbed of artistic competition. There were cathedrals to be built, giant baptistery doors to be sculpted, and lots of artists wanting to get in on the action.  Up-and-coming sculptor and architect, Filippo Brunelleschi, was one of those artists.  He had spent much of his life studying ancient Roman architecture and had entered his share of design competitions only to come in second to his more showy, but less qualified, peers. 

As a resident of Florence, Filippo lived in the shadow of the Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral, the largest cathedral in the world at that time.  Construction on the cathedral had begun in 1296, but after its original architect was unable to come up with a way to construct a dome over the cathedral’s massive nave, the building had remained unfinished for nearly a century.

In 1409, the group in charge of the construction of the cathedral asked Filppo’s opinion about how the dome (cupola) should be built.  He offered several ideas based on his studies of ancient Roman domes, but to his frustration, none of them were implemented.

Nine years later in 1418, the group announced that they were accepting new ideas for how to design the dome.  While at first the competition was only open to local artists, the group eventually opened it up artists all across Europe.  Filippo submitted his name to be included and was eventually invited to participate.  He traveled to Rome to study ancient structures and worked out his design for the dome.

The day of the presentation arrived.  Master builders from all over Europe assembled in the unfinished cathedral.  Each architect presented his solution in turn.  Many ideas were presented.  One thought the dome should be made of “spongestone” to keep the weight down.  Another suggested that they put a giant pillar in the middle.  Yet a third proposed that the dome be filled with earth mixed with money during the construction, and then once it was finished, that citizens be allowed to dig for the money, removing all of the dirt in the process.

Filippo was last to present.  He was confident that he alone, based on his knowledge of ancient methods of dome creation and study of the Gothic techniques, had the answer.   He verbally described his solution: a dome within a dome, octagonal in shape, capped by a lantern to let in light, all of which would be constructed without scaffolding.  They were astonished by his claim and demanded to see his model.  Fearing that the other architects would steal his design, or that (even worse) his design might be given to someone else to build, Filippo flatly refused.

Filippo then issued a challenge, saying that the commission to build the dome should be given to the man who could make an egg stand on end, as that man would have the skills required for the job.  After the various architects tried in vain to accomplish it, Filippo took an egg, whacked it on its end and then placed it on the table where it stood upright and did not fall over.

The other architects protested that they could have done that, too, to which Filippo replied that they could have built the dome, too, had they seen his model.  Impressed, the judges awarded Filippo the commission to construct the dome.

The dome was completed in 16 years and is the largest dome ever created with bricks and masonry.  It has been credited as an inspiration for St. Peter’s dome, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and even the Capitol Dome in Washington, D.C., and is a must-see destination for all those who visit Florence.

Do you operate in a competitive environment?  Have your great ideas not gotten the chance they deserve?  Do you need to stand out from the crowd in order to be heard?  Sometimes it takes a little extra effort to push a great idea through the cloud of politics and jealousy into the light for everyone to see.

You can do that with your presentation.  Take a cue from a 15^th Century architect and be bold!  Consider using a S.T.A.R. Moment™.  Make yourself memorable.  Take a risk.  Your idea (and possibly the world) will thank you for it.

Listen in as Nancy chats with Alex Osterwalder about his latest book, Business Model Generation. Alex offers insight on how to create and manage successful business models, and explains how his visual approach allows him to illustrate complex concepts clearly and beautifully.

Several days ago, one of my co-workers sent out a link to a video entitled “Embrace Life”, a commercial promoting seat belt use. Apparently The Sussex Safer Roads Partnership decided that it was time for a seat belt awareness campaign that didn’t use the shock and awe approach. Sussex must be a lot like where I grew up, because the only seat belt awareness messages I’ve seen involve threat of punishment… and punishment by way of fine, personal injury, or death.

The video immediately arrested my attention,  a feat nearly impossible when I am two cups deep into a pot of coffee, and juggling multiple tasks. But by the time the father’s expression changed to concern, I was reacting emotionally to this thing… in my cubicle, of all places. How embarrassing.

I thought to myself, “Don’t blink. Just finish the video, collect yourself, and get back to life as usual. And in the event of a total emo-meltdown, there is Kleenex nearby.”

But I could not go back to life as usual. For some reason I found myself thinking about it the following morning while brushing my teeth. I couldn’t stop thinking about how quickly that video got inside my head. Why did it have such power over me? Was it luck, or was there a formula to charging something that fully with emotion? And how could I bring that same level of emotion to my own creations?

As it turns out, it was no accident. On the production company’s website there is a “Making Of” page, where I learned the method behind this masterpiece.

“I wanted to create a visual metaphor addressing how a single decision in a person’s day can greatly influence both their own and their loved ones’ lives. Choosing to film the story inside the family living room represents the feelings many people equate with their own car, in that it represents a level of safety and protection from the ‘outer’ world.”

This was true for me. Instantly I was thinking about my own family and friends… the people I owe my personal safety to the most.

“So to create the emotion of this dramatic moment, I wanted to tell the story using slow motion to allow the audience the time to be drawn into the film’s world and to let them connect with and project their own feelings onto the scenario playing out before them. I wanted to give the audience the time to breathe, to absorb our message and using slow motion was the right technique to allow this to happen.”

Ahhh so that’s how I got so absorbed. It takes a lot to yank us out of the hypnosis of our routines, but I was completely halted in the first 15 seconds.

“I wanted to keep the audience in the moment and so we kept the film’s look to be subtle and natural, complimenting Luke’s onset lighting.”

Although I didn’t notice it at the time, that may have contributed to my initial impression… that the piece seemed to have no wasted energy. No wasted pixels or motions. Every component has purpose.

“Embrace Life’s music … started with Daniel giving examples of the music he felt best optimised the emotion and tone of Embrace Life and from these guide tracks Sid worked his magic until the right blend was achieved.”

There is a moment of tension when the piano changes key at the 50-second mark… and then there is the impact… and the glitter in the bowl showers down around them like pieces of safety-glass or the fragments of one’s fragile life.

The moral of this story is obviously “fasten your seat belt”… but for us creative types, a secondary message exists: Slow down… eliminate clutter… take the high road to emotional impact and really ENGAGE your viewer. Respect your audience. Don’t threaten them… create imagery that they will WANT to remember and maybe even share… and if you can make them want to call their families after your presentation, well then everybody wins.

Read the full “Making of” page: http://www.alexandercommercials.co.uk/Makingof.html

Alexander Commercials: http://www.alexandercommercials.co.uk/index.html

The Sussex Safer Roads Partnership http://www.sussexsaferroads.gov.uk

Language and power are inextricably linked. The spoken word pushes ideas out of someone’s head and into the open so humankind can contend with adopting or rejecting its validity. Moving an idea from its inception to adoption is hard but it’s a battle that can be won simply by wielding a great presentation.

Presenting those ideas can either evoke puzzled stares or frenzied enthusiasm. The outcome is determined by how well the message is delivered and how well it resonates with the audience. After a successful presentation, you might hear people say, “Wow, what she said really resonated with me.”

But what does it mean to truly resonate with someone? While doing research for Resonate, I learned about lovely  phenomenon in physics. If you know an object’s natural rate of vibration, you can make it vibrate without touching it. Resonance occurs when an object’s natural vibration frequency responds to an external stimulus of the same frequency.

Below is a beautiful visualization of resonance. My son poured salt onto a metal plate, then hooked up to an amplifier so that the sound waves traveled through the plate. As the frequency was raised, the sound waves tightened and the grains of salt jiggled, popped, and then moved to a new place, organizing themselves into beautiful patterns as though they knew where they “belonged.”

How many times have you wished that students, employees, investors, or customers would snap, crackle, and pop to exactly where they need to be to create a new future? It would be great if audiences were as compliant and unified in thought and purpose as these grains of salt.

And they can be. If you adjust to the frequency of your audience so that the message resonates deeply, they, too, will display self-organizing behavior. Your listeners will see the place where they are to move to create something collectively beautiful. A groundswell.

The audience does not need to tune themselves to you—you need to tune your message to them. Skilled presenting requires you to understand their hearts and minds and create a message to resonate with what’s already there. Your audience will be significantly moved if you send a message that is tuned to their needs and desires. They might even quiver with enthusiasm and act in concert to create beautiful results.

End Note: Visualizing sound is called cymatics. Evan Grant did a lovely TED talk implying at the end that maybe even the earth was formed from a sound.

When I met with the CIA for very the first time to discuss presentation training, I was alarmed at how prevalent PowerPoint was in their culture. Apparently the analysts create reports in PowerPoint and then from those briefings, a subset of pages are pulled out and included in the President’s briefing book each morning. Oh my! At the time of this conversation, GW was still in office, so of course I asked, “Do you think PowerPoint could be blamed for the confusions about WMDs?” Their answer is off the record.

I first heard about the military’s overuse of PowerPoint from my brother-in-law, a former Lieutenant in the Navy. While visiting him in Maryland, he and I had a long discussion about what he could do to make his slides clearer. The poor guy was hungry for advice. He told me that career advancements go to the people with the best slides. Gak.

So it’s no surprise to see today’s article in the NYT. (Thanks, Guy Kawasaki.) Looks like PowerPoint is the enemy again. Positioning PowerPoint as evil first surfaced when Edward Tufte blamed the space shuttle disaster on PowerPoint. The app isn’t the enemy, but I have to agree with General James N. Mattis that “PowerPoint makes us stupid.”

Writing thoughtfully crafted correspondence and communication takes time. More time than people care enough to spend. Writing thoughtfully takes time, and several refinement cycles. But we’ve become a first-draft culture. Write an e-mail. Send. Write a blog post. Publish. Write a presentation. Present. The art of crafting something well is reticent in communications. Bullets are a cop-out. Here’s the most frightening paragraph from the article:

No one is suggesting that PowerPoint is to blame for mistakes in the current wars, but the program did become notorious during the prelude to the invasion of Iraq. As recounted in the book “Fiasco” by Thomas E. Ricks (Penguin Press, 2006), Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, who led the allied ground forces in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, grew frustrated when he could not get Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander at the time of American forces in the Persian Gulf region, to issue orders that stated explicitly how he wanted the invasion conducted, and why. Instead, General Franks just passed on to General McKiernan the vague PowerPoint slides that he had already shown to Donald H. Rumsfeld, the defense secretary at the time.

Click here to read the full article…

It’s fine to use PowerPoint to create documents. But if you are creating a document, fill it in. Really fill it in. Pack it in. Fill the page with every detail and use fully formed sentences. We have adopted a half-breed form of communication. Pages of bulleted lists without nouns or verbs. These half-breeds are not a documents or presentations. My friend Garr Reynolds calls these slideuments.

No wonder there’s confusion. How many battles have been lost in your organization because of poor communication?

Have you ever thought about what you’re doing when you update your Facebook page, change your LinkedIn profile, or tweet? You’re telling a story. With simple phrases and pictures, you’re presenting to the world your opinion on world events, or your favorite restaurant.

With the explosion of social media and mobile devices, the impact of these presentations has the potential to be felt far beyond the board rooms and conference halls for which they were originally designed. However, your audience has access to–and is bombarded by–thousands of sources of information, which means your message needs to work harder to stand out from the rest.

Presentations have existed for thousands of years, starting at least as early as humans began gathering around campfires. And though presentations have drifted from this intimate, expressive environment, their roots are firmly planted in story. Modern presentations tend to value information over inspiration, and often eliminate the story to make room for bullet points and statistics.

Utilizing humans’ natural penchant for storytelling is an easy way to increase the effectiveness of  your message. Presentations were made to be passed on from meeting to meeting, stories were made to be passed down from generation to generation.

Recently, I heard a quote that beautifully illustrates the relationship between presentations and the digital movement:

“Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories.”

–Laurie Anderson

Come join Nancy Duarte at ad:tech SF on April 21st, as she speaks about transforming ideas into action through storytelling and amplification via social media.

Storytelling through social media is just one of the topics us Duartians are exploring for 2010, and we want to hear your thoughts! Join the conversation by posting to our blog, or Twitter Nancy at #nancyduarte.

And as a small token of appreciation for your social media support… Register for the Full Conference or Premium pass as Duarte’s special guest with code: SPKRGUEST and get 25% off the online price.