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.

With an increasing number of mobile design options emerging by the day, creative people are finding new and powerful ways to flesh out their visual concepts while on the move. The era of the mobile studio is upon us, so we thought we’d share a handful of brilliant apps to help you capture your inspiration whenever–and wherever–it may strike you.

Adobe Ideas

A vector app for iOS and Android that lets you finger paint and sketch. In addition, It works seamlessly with the desktop versions of Illustrator and Photoshop so you can take your creations to the next level when you get home.

http://www.adobe.com/products/adobeideas.html

Source: http://www.adobe.com/products/adobeideas.html

Adobe Photoshop Touch

Create multilayered images, apply filters, and share your creations using your Android tablet. Not only this, the layers are preserved when you bring you creations into Photoshop on your desktop.

http://www.photoshop.com/products/mobile

Source: http://www.adobe.com/products/touchapps.html

Air Display

Brought to you by Avatron. Multiple monitors in a coffee shop for ten bucks. Hard to argue the creative benefit when paired with your laptop and your favorite creative software.

http://avatron.com/

Bamboo Paper

A simple and effective sketchbook app from Wacom, the ever-popular tablet people. Use your fingers or try their Bamboo Stylus for even greater precision.

http://www.wacom.eu/index2.asp?pid=294&lang=en&gm=3

Moodboard2

Collect and organize things that inspire you. Plan your creative projects when the mood strikes, then share with friends or clients.

http://www.atinytribe.com/apps/moodboard

Source: http://www.atinytribe.com/

Photoforge2

Full resolution editing and layer support make this one powerful tool for creative nomads.

http://photoforge2.com/

Source: http://itunes.apple.com/app/photoforge2/id435789422?mt=8

Procreate

Savage Interactive delivers a whopping 1920x1408px canvas to your ipad. Use their intuitive interface to sketch, paint, and even edit photos.

http://savage.si/procreate/

Source: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/procreate/id425073498?mt=8

Sketchbook Pro

Autodesk introduces their digital sketching software to iOS and Android. Voted one of the “5 Must-Have iPad Apps” by Wired Magazine.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?id=6848332&siteID=123112

Snapseed

Nik Software brings us a stunningly simple photo editing app for iOS that features some innovative new filters and options.

http://www.niksoftware.com/snapseed/usa/index.php?view=intro%2Fmain.shtml

Source: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snapseed-for-ipad/id439438619?mt=8&ls=1

And last, but not least… the zero dollar app that requires no installation:

Light Table Pro-Series Alpha: Championship Edition

Photo courtesy of Andrew Heine. All Rights Reserved.

Now go download one or a bunch of these apps and hit the road!

The word “rhetoric” gets a bad rap as a form of oratory manipulation; I view it as a communication device. When used well, it can be very moving.  Prevalent in politics but not in business, let’s take a look at some the rhetorical devices Mr. Jobs used in his 2007 iPhone launch presentation. Simply brilliant.

Anaphora (means carrying up or back): The repetition of a word of phrase at the beginning of every clause.

“As you know, we’ve got the iPod, best music player in the world. We’ve got the iPod Nanos, brand new models, colors are back. We’ve got the amazing new iPod Shuffle.”
—Steve Jobs

Epiphora: The repetition of a word or phrase at the end of every clause.

“Well, these are their home screens. And again, as you recall, this is the iPhone’s home screen. This is what their contacts look like. This is what iPhone’s contacts look like.”

Symploke: The combination of one or several anaphora(s) with one or several epiphora(s).

“In 1984, we introduced the Macintosh, it didn’t just change Apple, it changed the whole computer industry. In 2001, we introduced the first iPods, and…it didn’t just change the way we all listen to music, It changed the entire music industry.”*

*With parallelism and germinatio

Germinatio: The repetition of a word or word group within one sentence.

“That’s 58 songs every second of every minute of every hour of every day.”

“And so I’ve got voice mail how I wanna listen to it, when I wanna listen to it, in any order I wanna listen to it with visual voice mail.”

Anadiplosis: The repetition of the last word of a sentence that is also the first word of the following sentence or sequence.

“And they garnered two percent market share. Two percent market share. iPod had 62 percent market share, and the rest had 36.”

Asyndeton: Sequence or words or similar expression without the use of conjunctions.

“We’ve got movies, TV shows, music, podcasts, photos.”

Polysyndeton: Repetition of conjunctions in a series of coordinated words, phrases, or clauses.

“It’s got everything from Cocoa and the graphics and it’s got core animation built in and it’s got the audio and video that OSX is famous for.”

Interrogatio: A rhetorical question in which the answer is self-evident.

“Isn’t that incredible?”
“Want to see that again?”
“Pretty cool, huh?”

Exclamatio: An exclamation that expresses the emotional affection of the speaker.

“I just take my unit here, and I turn it landscape mode, oh, look what happens! I’m in cover flow.”

“Wha, whoa, what is this?”

Aporia: A feigned statement of doubt by the speaker and a question to the audience about how he should act.

“Now, how are we gonna communicate this? We don’t wanna carry around a mouse, right? What are we gonna do?”

Hyperbole: An exaggeration of the characteristics of an object or circumstance.

“Best version of Google Maps on the planet, widgets, and all with Edge and Wi-Fi networking.”

Simile: An explicit comparison between two things, usually using “as” or “like”.

“It works like magic.”

Antitheton: The opposition of two facts of contrasting content.

“The kind of things you would find on a typical phone, but in a very untypical way now.”

Metaphor: A comparison made by referring to one thing as another.

“A huge heart transplant to Intel microprocessors.”

Climax: The increase from a waker to a stronger expression. Thus, a word sequence is arranged in ascending order.

“First was the mouse. The second was the click wheel. And now, we’re gonna bring multi-touch to the market.”

Personification:  The attribution of human properties toward things or animals.

“It already knows how to power manage….and if there’s a new message it will tell me.”

Slogans
Mr. Jobs also had specific phrases he wanted to repeat over and over. According to Carmine Gallo, this was all intentional since “reinvent the phone” was in the press release Apple sent out before the keynote.

“Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone, and here it is.”

“So, we’re gonna reinvent the phone.”

“We wanna reinvent the phone.”

“…You’ll agree, we have reinvented the phone.”

“ Today Apple is reinventing the phone.”

Blog post inspired by the work of Bernhard Kast.

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.)

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.

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

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.

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.

If you have an important idea to spread, you’ll probably want it to spread beyond only the folks sitting in the room. Using social media tools can help give you and your idea further reach. Since it takes hours to prepare for a big presentation, it makes sense to get as much visibility for it as possible.

I got a sneak peek at a very interesting research study from Dan Zarrella (check out his book) over at HubSpot. He’ll be hosting a webinar about the findings from his paper The Science of Presentations. He analyzed extensive surveys and Twitter feeds to determine how social media tools can make an idea–in this case a presentation–contagious.

The audience surveyed was primarily social media folks so the first statistic was a bit of a surprise for me. Even though people spend a vast amount of time in presentations, thirty-five percent of respondents said they tweet about presentations never or less than once a year. Then, later the research showed that most presentations are tweeted for the audience to share information or novelty insights. In other words, people like to share things they’ve never heard before. So if you tie those two statistics together, it sounds like most presentations aren’t very informative or novel enough to tweet about. Let’s fix that!

There are tons of interesting insights from the study. And if you attend his webinar on Thursday August 19 at 1pm EDT and you’ll get a copy of his new e-book.

Here’s what I particularly enjoyed from the study:

1. 52% surveyed said they’ve joined a presentation because of a tweet. I’ve personally seen that happen. While delivering a presentation at Web2.0 in NYC about 20 minutes in, there was a nice surge of new attendees. I found out afterward that a Twitterer with a hefty following said my presentation was good so folks bolted from the boring sessions. Make sure your presentation is the one people are flocking toward, not from!
2. Notify the audience at the beginning of your presentations that you have an automatic PowerPoint-to-Twitter application running like SAP PowerPoint Twitter Tools. Using a tool like this auto-tweets important points as you’re presenting. This allows the audience to focus on your presentation and simply retweet your key points.
3. People are more likely to Tweet or blog about a presentation if they like the person giving it. The study also pointed out that the excitement and passion of the speaker impacted whether they would share via Twitter.

Caring about Twitter is important. Reviewing your Twitter feed after a presentation is like being a fly on the wall near the water cooler after your talk. People share what they thought was insightful and repugnant. It’s a great feedback mechanism for you as a communicator and also for the quality (or novelty) of your idea.

The end of the e-book has some great points about simplicity that you should print out and post on your wall. Also, Austin Carr over at Fast Company interviewed Dan on insights from Dan’s study and feedback on how simplicity works for Steve Jobs. It’s a nice read.