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

To honor one of one of the greatest communicators of all time, we’d like to re-post a popular blog from last year: The analysis of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech from the March on Washington.

MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech is not only literarily brilliant, its structure follows the presentation form perfectly, by traversing back and forth between what is and what could be, and ending by describing what the new bliss of equality looks like. In addition, MLK carefully chooses phrases and metaphors that resonate deeply with his audience.

If you’re struggling to create your next big presentation or even just crafting the message for your next staff meeting, take a few minutes to be inspired by the brilliance of one of America’s most beloved orators. Thank you, Dr. King, for standing up and speaking out to change the world.

I spoke in Beijing on Saturday, and worked with an interpreter for the first time. Public speaking is hard enough, and working with an interpreter complicates things… unless you’re prepared.

I had two interpreters. One was the primary and the other was a secondary interpreter, plus they had two on stand-by (paranoid event planning I guess). The primary interpreter, Sally, was a subject matter expert, and the secondary interpreter, Rebecca, was a professional interpreter. Sally kicked it off and was doing great (I thought) and then I got a note to have it switch to Rebecca. Then a note to switch back to Sally. Apparently, because Sally wasn’t a professional interpreter, she was looking at me and at her notes and not at the audience. Even though she is a compelling communicator when alone on stage, they felt she was bringing down the energy of the talk. They slipped in Rebecca, coached Sally and had Sally come back on and she kicked it up! She and I both learned from this experience.

Interestingly, it was when Rebecca was interpreting that she created a S.T.A.R. Moment. That’s an acronym for Something They’ll Always Remember. In my talk, I was describing in what a S.T.A.R. moment is. But when Rebecca relayed in Chinese what a S.T.A.R. moment was the place roared with laughter (they didn’t laugh when I explained what it is.) Rebecca had inserted a traditional 4-character Chinese saying that means “something you’ll remember until you’re so old your teeth are falling out.” She did a great job mapping my information to the local culture.

Here are six tips for working with an interpreter:

1. Prepare half as much material. If you are given an hour, prepare half an hour of material. It takes twice as long to convey your information with an interpreter.
2. Transcribe or write out your talk. A week ahead of time, I sent over a transcript of a similar talk that I had delivered so the interpreters could read through it and practice. Even though I didn’t deliver it exactly the same way, most of the material was incorporated.
3. Work through idioms and metaphors. Many of the phrases and sayings we use have no direct interpretation into other languages. Since my interpreters had the transcript ahead of time, by the time I landed, they had already identified areas where they had questions, so they could make sure they applied regional stories and metaphors that would work. They also identified where some of my language should change or simplify so the English-as-a-second-language audience members would understand what I was saying.
4. Practice for pacing and pauses. You need to practice with the interpreters. Each interpreter has a different length of phrase they can handle interpreting at one time. They also need to coach you on the speed you’re talking, so the English-speaking audience members can process what you’re saying.
5. Complete your thoughts. Each burst of content you say should be a complete thought. Sometimes I would say a phrase that felt like the length the interpreter would need, and I would leave the last few words off for the next phase of interpretation. It broke the content into odd blocks and opportunities were lost for laughter and understanding.
6. Have good chemistry with your interpreter. I was very fortunate that I knew Sally before I went to China. She writes a blog in Chinese about presentations, so I knew she would know the material. Rebecca spent most of the morning with me getting me to laugh and relax. I knew both these ladies so well. Several times on stage we would laugh together and even hugged on stage as we pulled the audience along. It made me more comfortable to feel like they were comrades, and being able to trust they would value my material and represent it well.

One of the greatest things I’ve learned on this trip is that when you’re presenting in another country, knowing your audience is almost more important. The studying I’ve done about the culture and how it communicates paid off. I modified my natural communication style and even answered questions with more nuance to their culture and, threw in historical context and cultural examples that were relevant. So, know your audience and know your interpreter and everything else will fall naturally into place.

Marshall McLuhan was one of the earliest scholars to discuss the changing nature of media in the electronic age and today would have been his 100th birthday.  Famous for coining the phrase “the medium is the message,” he devoted a great deal of attention to explaining how television changed the way the audience understands and participates in content.  In his commentary on the landing of Sputnik, he called this new type of viewer a “simultaneous man” who prefers “flexibility and diversity” and lives in a “global theatre.”  “On Spaceship Earth there are no passengers; everybody is a member of the crew.” He unpacked some of these ideas on the television program Our World in 1967.

McLuhan’s ideas have recently resurfaced, as many are now applying his theories to the proliferation of electronic media forms.  If television once created a generational gap between parents and their children, one can only wonder what McLuhan would have thought of the internet and the new era of transmedia storytelling.

In McLuhan’s posthumous work Laws of Media, he argued that all forms of media have a tetrad of effects, or four different types of influence on society.  He posed these effects as questions: What does the medium enhance? What does the medium make obsolete?  What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced? What does the medium flip into when pushed to extremes?

Although McLuhan focused most of his writing on television, it is worth thinking about how his ideas intersect with another medium – the presentation. Unlike television, presentations often include a combination of in-person communication and electronic media that offers good presenters an opportunity to use their medium to engage their audience.

But how do presentations fit into McLuhan’s tetrad?  The answer may depend on what the presenter does well.  For presenters who give thought to how to use their slides successfully, presentations can enhance communication, and form a connection that causes the audience to embrace the speaker’s goals.  They can retrieve the spoken word from seeming obsolescence in our visually focused culture (TED talks come to mind). For presenters who use technology poorly, however, mediums like PowerPoint run the danger of making the speaker themself obsolete as the audience focuses on the slides instead of the story.  Taken to the extreme, they may ultimately flip PowerPoint into obscurity as bored audiences try to find ways of avoiding yet another bad slideshow.  In order to prevent this fate, presenters should consider taking McLuhan’s advice and embrace the needs of “simultaneous man”: flexibility, diversity, and a need to be engaged in a meaningful way.

To explore more of McLuhan’s ideas, this great commemorative site celebrates his life.  Many examples of his work are now available electronically, marking his part in our cultural zeitgeist.  He even appeared as himself in the film Annie Hall.

Perhaps McLuhan’s ideas can help inspire our next great communication theorist, as he has helped inspire us here at Duarte!

Communicating in any medium is hard work. Graham’s dances did not come easily to her. When the idea for a new dance was starting to take form, it was “a time of great misery.” Graham worked late into the night, propped up in bed, writing down thoughts, observations, impressions, quotations from books—anything that could help feed her imagination. “I would put a typewriter on a little table on my bed, bolster myself with pillows, and write all night.”

She read widely as she searched for ideas and inspiration, studying psychology, yoga, poetry, Greek myths and the Bible. Gradually, the ideas that filled her notebooks would begin to reveal a pattern, and she would write out a detailed script.

In her work, Graham repeatedly portrayed a woman called to a high destiny and forced to overcome fear before she could answer the call. This was personal, as Graham herself believed that she had been given “lonely, terrifying gifts”—a sort of divine command to penetrate the interior of the human spirit, no matter what comfortless truths she might find there.

In 1955, the U.S. government asked Graham to tour major cities in seven countries as a cultural ambassador. She gave lectures at each stop, but was a very nervous presenter. In her biography of Martha, author Agnes de Mille describes the scene: “She hung onto the barre, clung to the walls. She couldn’t think what to do with her hands, with her robes, with her feet.” Finally, she escaped into her dressing room and locked the door. But Graham tried again and again, and overcame her fear. Eventually, the State Department officials named Graham “the greatest single ambassador we have ever sent to Asia.”
Until she was 90, Graham continued to deliver lectures, which she had developed into an art form. A striking figure with a seductive voice, poetic insights and a faultless sense of timing, she learned how to hold an audience spellbound.

You could say that by trying to discover herself, she founded the world of modern dance. During her long journey, she invented a new way of moving, a unique dance language that has thrilled audiences all over the world and enlarged our understanding of what it means to be human.

She was protesting. Stark. And American. Some called her ugly, others called her revolutionary.

All of us are unique. We each have our own pattern of creativity, and if we do not express it, it is lost for all time. Graham defied customs, broke through barriers and presented new ideas. She was loved and reviled, yet persistent in overcoming her fears to communicate what she felt in her soul. By remaining committed to communicating how she felt, she changed dance for all time.

P.S. Happy belated birthday, Martha. On May 11, Google paid homage to her with this lovely animation. We wanted to honor her with our own little piece of the web.

Although primarily known as a dancer, Martha Graham was also a powerful communicator. She developed characteristics that anyone who aspires to become a great presenter must cultivate and nourish. She stood out by moving against the grain of society. She persevered in spite of seemingly overwhelming obstacles. She fought against and overcame her fears. She respected and connected deeply with her audience. And she never held back from communicating her deepest feelings.

Graham spent her life challenging what dance is and what a dancer can do. She looked upon dance as an exploration, a celebration of life, and a religious calling that required absolute devotion.

Graham became a dancer against the odds. When she finally began to study dance with the idea of making it her profession, she was considered too old, too short, too heavy and too homely to be taken seriously. “They thought I was good enough to be a teacher, but not a dancer,” she recalled. But she knew what she wanted to do, and pursued her goal with the intensity that marked her entire life. Dance was her reason for living. Willing to risk everything, driven by a burning passion, she dedicated herself absolutely to her art. “I did not choose to be a dancer,” she often said. “I was chosen.”

Graham was ready to discard traditional ballet. She invented a revolutionary new language of dance, an original way of moving with which she revealed the joys, passions, and sorrows common to human experience. In place of graceful soaring leaps through space, she introduced stark, angular movements, blunt gestures, and stern facial expressions as she sought to lay bare fundamental human moods and feelings. Her dances were meant to be challenging and disturbing.

This new kind of dance wasn’t to everyone’s liking, as it was neither beautiful nor romantic. Graham was often the object of ridicule and the butt of hostile jokes. Women in America had won the right to vote only a few years earlier, in 1920, and many people were still uncomfortable with the image of the “new woman” who sought a career and voted. It was all right to be a high-kicking, scantily clad chorus girl, but a woman who ran a dance company and created works that commented on war, poverty, and intolerance seemed unnatural and suspicious.

But Graham was resolute in her desire to communicate how she felt.

Graham believed that the secret emotional world made visible by a dancer’s movement could not always be expressed in words. She wanted her dances to be “felt” rather than “understood.” Graham drew inspiration from the ugly side of life and put it on display. Each of her dances had a special significance to her, because they expressed a fear she had conquered in her own life.

In 1930, Graham premiered a haunting solo dance of mourning called Lamentation. She sat on a low bench, wearing a tube-like shroud with only her face, hands and bare feet showing. In the dance, she began to rock with anguish from side to side, plunging her hands deep into the stretchy fabric, writhing and twisting as if trying to break out of her own skin. She was a figure of unbearable sorrow and grief. She did not dance about grief, but sought to be the very embodiment of grief.

Graham recalled “One of the first times I performed it was in Brooklyn. A lady came back to me afterwards and looked at me. She was very white faced and she’d obviously been crying. She said ‘you’ll never know what you have done for me tonight, thank you’ and left. I asked about her later and it seemed that she had seen her 9 year old son killed in front of her by a truck. She had made every effort to cry, but was unable to. But when she saw Lamentation she said she felt that grief was honorable and universal and that she should not be ashamed of crying for her son. I remember that story as a deep story in my life that made me realize that there is always one person to whom you speak in the audience. One.”

Graham moved in a way that gave anger and grief back to her audiences. She had a genius for connecting movement with emotion. She could make visible all those feelings that people have inside them but can’t put to words.

In celebration of what would have been Mozart’s 255 birthday, here’s a look at the sonata form of Eine kleine Nachtmusik visualized.

The sonata form in classical music has a similar structure to the presentation form. A sonata has standard “rules” to follow; yet each sonata sounds unique. Just as the presentation form is a guide, but it pays to be flexible within the form.

You’ll see a clear beginning (exposition), middle (development), and end (recapitulation) in the sonata form. Also, contrast keeps the sonata interesting, just like in a presentation. Sonatas have tonal, dynamic, and textural contrasts, which are labeled along the left-hand side in this visualization, made by my son, Anthony.

Turn up your speakers and enjoy!

Mozart Sparkline from Duarte Design on Vimeo.

As an extra bonus for all the fans of beautifully visualized classical music, I came across this other example of Dubussy’s Arabesque #1, piano solo. Looks pretty similar to the presentation form once again.

In celebration of the birthday of one of the greatest communicators of all time, let’s take a look at his most famous speech from the March on Washington.

MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech is not only literarily brilliant, its structure follows the presentation form perfectly, by traversing back and forth between what is and what could be, and ending by describing what the new bliss of equality looks like. In addition, MLK carefully chooses phrases and metaphors that resonate deeply with his audience.

If you’re struggling to create your next big presentation or even just crafting the message for your next staff meeting, take a few minutes to be inspired by the brilliance of one of America’s most beloved orators. Thank you, Dr. King, for standing up and speaking out to change the world.

You saw the talk.
Now watch the video.

That Resonates With Me!
How to Change the World One Presentation at a Time

To access the video, enter the password: webinar

Thanks to all of you who joined Nancy at the end of September for her two free webinars. Many of you asked if we’d post the video online. And we’re happy to say,  we did!

So grab a cup o’ Joe, sit back and watch Nancy talk about her new book Resonate.

Nancy Duarte spent “two years working nights and weekends” writing Resonate, and Forbes’ Bruce Upbin managed to boil it down to forty-six words. Actually, I’m not even mad. That’s amazing.

The conclusions are: Don’t be too cerebral. Tell stories. Figure out what the audience cares about. Create common ground with them. Move back and forth between opposing ideas to create energy. Deliver facts but put them in context and make them shocking if possible. Find inspiration anywhere you can.

Yup, we couldn’t have said it better, or more concisely, ourselves.

Check out the whole article here. And please, please follow Bruce’s advice and watch the video of Ben Zander. It’s eighteen minutes of loveliness. Here, we’ll save you some time and repost it here, too.