Last night President Barack Obama delivered what could be considered the biggest presentation of the year. In outlining his vision for America and his legislative priorities for 2012, the President attempted to persuade a variety of different audiences – including the United States Congress, business leaders and 25 million members of the American public – that he has a plan to continue improving the lives of Americans.

So how did he do? Leaving aside the merit of his proposals, did he tell a story compelling enough to convince such a broad audience?

Graphic recording of the State of the Union address created by Duarte designer Dave Nguyen

President Obama used several valuable tactics to make his case. Rather than focusing only on statistics when trying to communicate employment figures or strategies to create jobs, he contrasted these statistics with stories of real Americans struggling to make ends meet. After pointing to “millions of Americans” who “are looking for work,” he talked about Jackie Bray, a single mother from North Carolina who found a new job after participating in a training program, and Bryan Ritterby, a man who lost his job in the furniture industry but now works for a wind turbine manufacturer. The president’s speechwriters clearly gave thought to how to personalize the hardships facing many Americans and how to suggest that the president is in touch with these struggles.

Interestingly, both President Obama and Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana (who delivered the official Republican response) evoked the late Steve Jobs as an example of a job creator. Although the two men told very different stories about the role of government in job creation, their common allusion suggests that American cultural references don’t differ as much from Republican to Democrat as we may think.

President Obama also used several clever rhetorical tricks to make certain ideas stand out. He created contrast between “what is” and “what could be” should Congress take his suggested action. For example, he used this strategy when describing the tax code.

Even his call to action contained this contrast by comparing what we need to “stop” and what we need to “start.” He used this type of language repeatedly throughout the speech to help reinforce his message that America’s “future is hopeful” if we move forward.

He also consistently used visual language and phrases meant to resonate and be repeated. When describing Washington partisanship the president said we have to “lower the temperature in this town” to end the “perpetual campaign of mutual destruction.” He evoked the ideas of historical figures like the “Republican Abraham Lincoln” to emphasize the possibility of uniting Washington and the country. And he played on the words of President John F. Kennedy when he challenged business leaders to “ask yourselves what you can do to bring jobs back to your country” and promised that “your country will do everything we can to help you succeed.”

President Obama saved the most memorable part of his speech for the close. But his S.T.A.R. moment for the night was also his biggest missed opportunity. In detailing his personal recollection of the mission to apprehend Osama Bin Laden, he constructed a striking metaphor for creating unity across America.

“Those of us who’ve been sent here to serve can learn from the service of our troops. When you put on that uniform, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white; Asian or Latino; conservative or liberal; rich or poor; gay or straight. When you’re marching into battle, you look out for the person next to you, or the mission fails. When you’re in the thick of the fight, you rise or fall as one unit, serving one Nation, leaving no one behind.

One of my proudest possessions is the flag that the SEAL Team took with them on the mission to get bin Laden. On it are each of their names. Some may be Democrats. Some may be Republicans. But that doesn’t matter. Just like it didn’t matter that day in the Situation Room, when I sat next to Bob Gates – a man who was George Bush’s defense secretary; and Hillary Clinton, a woman who ran against me for president.

All that mattered that day was the mission. No one thought about politics. No one thought about themselves. One of the young men involved in the raid later told me that he didn’t deserve credit for the mission. It only succeeded, he said, because every single member of that unit did their job – the pilot who landed the helicopter that spun out of control; the translator who kept others from entering the compound; the troops who separated the women and children from the fight; the SEALs who charged up the stairs. More than that, the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other – because you can’t charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there’s someone behind you, watching your back.

So it is with America. Each time I look at that flag, I’m reminded that our destiny is stitched together like those fifty stars and those thirteen stripes. No one built this country on their own. This Nation is great because we built it together. This Nation is great because we worked as a team. This Nation is great because we get each other’s backs. And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great; no mission too hard. As long as we’re joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong.”

This story was powerful because of its personal nature but also because of the themes of commonality and the powerful visual imagery he used.

But this message could have been even more impactful had he built on it throughout the speech. The best presentations have a common theme or message, a purpose that we at Duarte often call the “throughline.” Although the president’s address was powerful in pieces, it often lacked a common overarching theme to tie the elements together. While he may have intended to create this throughline by introducing the military as an example of unity in the beginning, this common message was often lost in the bulk of his words.

Audience members who viewed the “enhanced content” online may have had similar thoughts. Although the president avoided some of the worst PowerPoint crimes – he generally avoided bulleted slides and he made good use of statistics by not overwhelming the viewers with information – the materials lacked a common visual theme and did not always take advantage of the images painted by his powerful words.

President Obama did a lot right last night. When picked apart, sections of his address resonate with the type of language that good writers challenge themselves to craft. But as a whole, the 2012 State of the Union needed a good dose of the unity that the president challenged the nation to create.

To view last night’s State of the Union, visit:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/

You can also find the “enhanced content” on SlideShare at:
http://www.slideshare.net/whitehouse/state-of-the-union-enhanced-graphics

The Republican Response is available at:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7396293n

The forecast for Friday, July 22nd at Duarte called for heavy downpours of creativity with intermittent showers of inspiration accompanied by flurries of sticky notes, pens and paper.  The deluge of out-of-the-box thinking began mid-morning and continued throughout the day as  Dave Gray and Sunni Brown hosted their day-long Gamestorming workshop, designed to equip individuals with tools to change boring, unproductive meetings into engaging, productive (and even fun) game-like encounters.

The class gave me the perfect opportunity to do some visual note-taking. Below are a few pages of my notes. Scroll down to the bottom of the post to see the rest.

Sunni and Dave began the day by building trust and commeriaderie within the group through a series of games.  One such game—World Café—literally brought attendees closer together as they answered questions about themselves within a series of concentric squares, starting with general questions in the outermost band and ending with more personal questions in the innermost square.

To get everyone on the same page about the pitfalls of poorly designed meetings, Sunni and Dave had attendees role play a typical meeting and assigned some roles (nay-sayers, “yes” people, problem solvers and meeting disrupters) for added realism.  Who knew that a meeting to come up with a new name for adult diapers could get so heated?

For the meat of the day, Dave had participants brainstorm all of the different meetings that they attend and then had them cluster those into categories on the wall.  Four distinct groups emerged—status meetings, client meetings, critiques and creative/ideation meetings.  These served as the fodder for the meeting re-design activities throughout the day, as teams adopted each of these meetings to reimagine.

Dave then had groups ask a series of firestarter “what if…” questions to help them envision each of these meetings in a new way.  Questions like, “If you could wave your magic wand, what would happen?” helped people break through previous assumptions about meetings in order to come up with new ways of designing them.

From there, Dave and Sunni led the group in some sketching exercises (Graphic Jam!) so they could visually communicate their ideas to others.  Teams developed vision drawings of their reimagined meetings and shared them with each other.

Sunni went through the anatomy of a game and Dave had the group brainstorm game mechanics—points, territory, surprise, challenge, race, taking turns—so that teams could bring elements of their favorite games into their meetings and thus make them more enjoyable and engaging.

Teams worked together to develop a pitch for their new type of meeting and presented them to the group. It was amazing to see the ideas that were generated—a status meeting run as if it were an ESPN sports show, a critique meeting where attendees punched train-like tickets to establish evaluation criteria, a client meeting that involved card laddering and secret voting, and a creative/ideation meeting that started with 20 questions and ended with attendees presenting their ideas to a “shark tank.”  Amazing.  Now those are meetings I would like to attend.

To wrap it all up, Dave and Sunni asked each participant what they would take back with them to their offices and gave attendees a look behind the curtain to see how they had used the principles of Gamestorming to design the day’s workshop, which in hindsight felt much more like an enjoyable day playing games (where we happened to learn a ton of valuable skills) rather than some day-long information dump.  I guess it works!

“A meeting is a game,” said Dave Gray, “there’s no reason it can’t be fun.” Imagine if more of our meetings incorporated principles of games in them.  I think they would inspire a lot less aggrevation, agitation, and apathy and instead evoke anticipation, action and appreciation.

Below are Eric’s visual notes from the workshop.

On July 22, 2011 at our Mountain View offices, we will be hosting Sunni Brown and Dave Gray who will be facilitating a workshop based on their book Gamestorming.

XPLANE made a video that describes the story and practice of Gamestorming.

And the endorsements aren’t too bad either:

“Everybody knows the problem: We need to be more innovative. Now we’ve got the solution: Gamestorming. This smart, fun, hands-on book will energize your brain and mobilize your creativity–and do it using stuff you already have in your supply closet!”

–Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and A Whole New Mind

“At Zappos, one of our core values is to ‘Be Creative, Adventurous, and Open-Minded.’ “Gamestorming” is a great how-to manual for achieving that.”

–Tony Hsieh, author of NY Times #1 Bestseller Delivering Happiness and CEO of Zappos.com, Inc

Who can benefit from the Gamestorming workshop?

If you nod in agreement to any of the descriptions below, this workshop will be of real value to you.

1. My organization rarely runs effective meetings. We often leave meetings wondering what just happened and why we were asked to attend.
2. People in my company talk about innovation but few people know any real techniques. We could improve in so many areas – team performance, strategic planning, customer service – if we knew how to visualize and manipulate complex information.
3. I need to get good thinking from my people in a short period of time, but I don’t have the bandwidth to learn the nuances of meeting facilitation. Somebody help me.
4. My employees live in organizational silos. It’s a constant struggle to get coordination and innovation across divisions.
5. I want my company to be leading in the marketplace, not following. I need to learn the secret sauce of Silicon Valley pioneers.

What are some of the topics covered?

A peek at the “How-Tos” you’ll learn and be able to take back to work:

• How to design meeting agendas that drive you to a desired outcome
• How to use simple visual language to increase comprehension and retention
• How to apply improvisational discovery to keep participants physically and mentally engaged
• How to map systems, visualize process problems and innovate as a team
• How to use visual meeting artifacts to give decisions forward momentum

Gamestorming gives you the secret sauce, my friends.

Details:

LOCATION: Mountain View, CA at Duarte Design
DATE: July 22, 2011 (overflow day July 21)
TIME: 9 am – 5 pm
COST: $675 (includes breakfast, lunch, a copy of Gamestorming and all workshop materials)

Click here to register for Gamestorming.

And if that’s not enough exciting opportunity, Duarte has launched our Resonate workshop! Here are the dates for upcoming Resonate and Slide:ology workshops.

Resonate

June 15
July 13
August 10
September 21
October 19
November 16
December 15

Slide:ology

May 25
June 8
June 22
July 20
August 17
September 14

Mac Slocum interviews Nancy Duarte at Web 2.0

The kind folks at O’Reilly had me speak at Web 2.0 and then Mac Slocum asked some s-m-a-r-t questions at their booth.

Watch the video below to hear answers to these four questions:

1. Are presentations inherently broken? Are we going about it the wrong way?
2. If you ask most people if they like lectures they’ll say “No”, yet we default to that when it’s time to do a presentation, why do you think that is?
3. Do you feel that every great presentation has a meta component to it–a language that’s being spoken outside the visuals or what’s being said?
4. Do you think we’re getting better at business communication?

Enjoy!

Earlier this week, we shared the lessons we learned while trying to get a talk to fit into 18 teeny tiny minutes, now take a look at the talk that taught us.

This talk reveals the hidden structure that the greatest communicators and persuaders have used over thousands of years. Insights from literature and cinema helped reveal why the greatest communicators are riveting.

These 18-minute talks are hard to do. It’s easier to blather on for an hour than talk for a tight 18 minutes knowing that if you go over, you (literally) will get the hook.

The talks I give usually take me a comfortable 45 minutes but I needed to get the insights out in 18 minutes. The culling process forces you to convey only the most important information for spreading your idea. The amount of rehearsal time is inversely proportionate to the length of the talk. The shorter the talk, the longer the rehearsal time. In this case, for an 18-minute talk, we took approximately 18 hours to rehearse. An hour a minute? That’s probably fair for someone who’s a professional presenter like me. A less seasoned speaker may need more!

I delivered one talk at TEDxEast and was thrilled to look up at the clock just as it was ticking down with :06 seconds left on the clock. Victory! Then, I delivered a similar talk at the INK conference in India but was restricted to 15 minutes. Even though I practiced like mad and timed it to a perfect 14 and a half minutes, I was medicated for a severe chest cold and my time somehow spread and I got the dreaded “hook” because I ran one minute over, but would have run two minutes over if I hadn’t had tip #10 in place.

Here are the ten steps I went through in rehearsing for my talks.

1. Print your current slide deck as 9-up handouts. The 9-up format is conveniently the same size as the smallest sticky note. I arranged and re-arranged my message and added sticky notes until I was happy with the flow. I also made sure I cut at least half the slides I use for my 40 minute talk.

I trimmed and trimmed and trimmed until I felt like it was close to 18 minutes. During this process it became clear to me that my big idea could be communicated much more effectively than it had been.

2. Solicit feedback. Assemble a handful of people you trust to give honest feedback on your mini little sticky note slide deck. Verbally run the ideas by these folks (doesn’t have to be a formal presentation.) The purpose for having them look at all the slides at once is you want feedback on the “whole”, not the parts. Have them give you feedback on the content you’ve chosen and whether they think it will resonate with the TED audience. I did this four times–twice each with my ExComm Manager and twice with Duarte’s President. After they added their insights, I was ready to have the slides digitally produced.

3. Rehearse with a great (honest) communicator. In my case, I rehearsed with my ExComm Manager Krystin. She has gotten very good at rehearsing me and became a trusted coach. She would say “When you say it that way, it can be interpreted differently than you intended”, “When you use that term, you come across derogatory”, “I thought that when you said it last time it was better, you said…”. She worked hard tracking phrases and rounds of what was said. Honesty is the best policy. Make sure your coach is not afraid to speak up. 18 minutes goes by fast–you love your material and you want to include all of it–-but for a TED-format talk you need someone you trust to help you murder your darlings.

4. Close the loop. A lot of times, as the presenter, you know your material so well that you think you’re making each key point clear. You might not be. Your coach should make sure you are telling people why. It’s the “why” around our ideas that make them spread, not the “how”. Articulate the why so your audience understands what’s magnificent about your big idea.

5. Practice with clock counting up. The first few times, rehearse with the clock counting up. That’s because if you go over, you need to know how much you’re over. Do NOT be looking at the clock at this time. Have your coach look at it because you don’t want to remember any of the timestamps in your mind. Finish your entire talk and then have your coach tell you how much you need to trim. One minute, three minutes. Keep practicing until you’re consistently within 18 minutes. Your coach should be able to tell you to trim 30 seconds here or add 15 seconds there so that your content is weighted toward the most important information.

6. Practice with clock counting down. Once you’re within the timeframe, begin practicing with the clock counting down. You need to set a few places in your talk where you benchmark a time stamp. Calculate where you need to be in the content in six-minute increments. You should know roughly where you should be at 6, 12 and 18 minutes. You should know the slide you should be on and what you’re saying so that you will know immediately from the stage if you’re on time or running over.

7. Noteworthy. Your coach is there to jot down what you say well and what you don’t. They should work from a printout of the slides and write phrases you say well so they can be added to your script. They should help capture phrases so you can type them into your notes.

8. Don’t be camera shy. Videotape some of your final practices. It doesn’t have to be the best setup ever–we used our Flip camera on a tripod in the hotel–you just need to feel like something’s at stake. It helps you get used to looking at the camera, and you can review the video to look at your stage presence, eye contact, gestures plus identify any expressions that need modification. Also, if you do an especially good practice run, you can go back and listen to the audio and add the best snippets to your slide notes.

9. Do one more FULL timed rehearsal right before you walk on stage. This is where I blew it in India. I practiced fully several times that morning but didn’t feel it necessary to pull out a timer. I confess, I didn’t time it for a week, but rehearsed like mad. It would have been even better if I’d rehearsed via Skype with my coach Krystin. I would have averted a disaster.

10. Have two natural ending points. I wanted to accuse the India show operators of not really giving me a full 15 minutes on the clock. But I was the one who blew it. It might have been the meds I was on for my chest cold, but my timer was *blinking* before I was done. Fortunately, I’d embedded two natural places to end my talk. I had an ending that made the talk complete and I stopped there. What I didn’t have time to get to was the inspirational ending that would have had them on their feet and screaming (well, they did end up on their feet, they just weren’t screaming.)

Yesterday was the day I’ve dreaded now for a long time. Politicians using slides. It’s been tough enough to sit through executives’ abuse of PowerPoint, I loathed the day the politicians would try to visually express what they were saying.

Last night if you watched the State of the Union through whitehouse.gov, there was an “enhanced version” of his speech that incorporated graphic “slides” to the right of the stream. Obama, being the clear communicator that he is, had marvelous and relevant graphics. Visually, they weren’t a disruption and added meaning to the speech. It was a marvelous use of the medium.

And most of the people commenting on Twitter really liked the enhanced version:

@claresayas loving the accompanying slides to the #SOTU . oh you fancy, @BarackObama ! “The future is ours to win.”

@netshirley supporting slides shown at #SOTU live stream http://bit.ly/dZcPsZ HIGHLY recommend!!

@curtian4 whitehouse #sotu live video is a good 5 seconds ahead of networks & it’s interactive. It has keynote slides mapped to speech. Cool!

@samps Damn, this is a slick PowerPoint deck. #sotu (Ima get to work on them quals talk slides.)

But the GOP didn’t fair so well with their slide debut. In Michele Bachmann’s speech she used two charts:

The Twitterverse wasn’t as kind to her:

@andremichael: rep. michele bachmann is scary! AND SHE’S GOT POWERPOINT SLIDES.

@ QueenofSpain oooh she has CHARTS! Well SHIT! She MUST NOT BE CRAZY IF SHE HAS CHARTS! #sotu

@akmcquade I liked Bachman’s rotating powerpoint slides. My senior thesis defense included something similar, set to U2 music. #sotu #nationalparks

To make matters worse for her, the teleprompter placement was poor and the speech wasn’t spectacular:

@thomsinger Um, I feel like Michele Bachmann is talking to someone standing off to the right side of the room. #Cnn #sotu

@sethmeyers21: I hope whoever is standing over my left shoulder is enjoying Bachmann’s speech. As that’s who I think she’s looking at.

Obama and his team have set the communication bar high. Anyone contending HAS to be a great communicator, or the contrast is just too great and you’ll look like a bozo. GOP is going to have to value communications and the investment it takes to do it right. Take note of this video showing the amount of energy that goes into making Obama’s speeches. He does rounds and rounds of edits.

So, this morning I woke up feeling hopeful that not all politicians will abuse the medium, but please wield it wisely.

For the fifteenth year in a row, Duarte has caught Pumpkin Fever.
And I must warn you, it’s highly contagious.

This year’s contest has brought 50+ creatively carved, carefully crafted works of pumpkin art.
And YOU get to pick the winners.

Take a look and vote for your favorite!
http://www.duarte.com/halloween

Don’t wait, polls close Friday, October 29 at 3 p.m.

By popular demand, we will be hosting an additional presentation of That Resonates With Me!, with Nancy Duarte. This FREE webinar will be held on Thursday, September 30, 2010 from 10 – 11 a.m. PDT.

Please click here to register.

Thank you so much for your passionate interest in Duarte.
Hope you can join us!

If you say “I have an idea for something”, what you really mean is “I want to change the world in some way.” You might not be able to change the entire world, but what is “the world” anyway? It is simply all of the ideas of all our ancestors. Look around you. Your clothes, language, furniture, house, city, and nation all began as visions in other minds. Humans love to create. And creating starts with an idea that can change the world.

“The only reason to give a speech is to change the world.”

–John F. Kennedy

Presentations are the lingua franca of business and those who master communicating with them rise faster than their peers, reach more customers than their competitors, and turn causes into a groundswell.

Pioneering presentation innovator Nancy Duarte, CEO of Duarte Design, will demonstrate how to apply the methods in her book Resonate: Presenting Visual Stories That Transform Audiences, to build meaningful connections with audiences that compel them to action. Her groundbreaking work details a new way of structuring a presentation and connecting with an audience, helping the presenter create a human connection.

Changing the world starts with transforming an audience, and an audience will only change if you resonate with them.

In this session, you will learn to:

• Leverage the hidden story structures inherent in great communication

• Connect with your audience empathetically

• Create captivating content

• Craft ideas that get repeated

• Inspire enthusiasm and support for your vision

This session is for leaders who are tasked with communicating clearly and persuading through verbal communications.

Join us from 10-11 a.m. PST on Wednesday, September 29 for this free webinar!

Click here to register!
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