Category: presentation

God made a farmer

The beautifully simple Dodge RAM commerical during super bowl 2013. Wow. A visually telling story. The commentary is awesome as well. Full of emotion. Just looking at those images, and the commentary on why God made a farmer, brings in a single simple thought in the mind – “God made the farmer. And the farmer needs a great vehicle. He deserves it.” That is the power of a good presentation.

Update: Watch this parody too. This gives the true state of farming in the USA.

The CEO who did demos

Yeah, you know who I am talking about. Steve Jobs. I was reading the blog of Don Melton (who led the first Safari development team), where he describes the feeling of being in the audience of rehearsals of the ‘master presenter’.

Most of the time during those rehearsals, Ken and I had nothing to do except sit in the then empty audience and watch The Master Presenter at work — crafting his keynote. What a privilege to be a spectator during that process. At Apple, we were actually all students, not just spectators. When I see other companies clumsily announce products these days, I realize again how much the rest of the world lost now that Steve is gone.

And then there was also a link to the 2003 macworld keynote where Steve released Safari. I liked the way he demo’d Safari. It was typical Steve. Superlative adjectives. Practised fluency. But, what came next was what blew my mind. Steve also announces Keynote on the same presentation. My rough transcription:

The folks at apple created Keynote for me. I needed something that I can use to create these keynote presentations for you. Very graphic intensive. Powerful. Something that you want to use to create meaningful presentations. Now, <pause>, I want to share it with you. <applause>

This has been in the works for over a year now. For a year, we hired a very lowly paid beta tester, who tested it for a whole year. <screen shows Steve Job’s picture> <applause>. I have used Keynote for every keynote that I showed you in 2002.

I think that is just amazing. A CEO who not only demos, but also beta tested a product for a whole year. And not in his own private tasks, but for a very public demonstration. Amazing.

 

Project Update Presentation

I have always been a fan of good presentation design. But the most common push back I get is – “All those single word 72 point stuff is for Steve Jobs style presentations or marketing folk. Well, here is one preso, which is a status update presentation, that will fix that perception. Sure, it is not single word all the way, but it is one sentence + an optional graph per page. Check this out.

Life After Penguin [slideshare id=13410949&w=425&h=355&sc=no]

View more PowerPoint from Ian Howells

Joe Costello – Keynote in DAC 2006


Quick blurb about Joe – ” He was president and COO of SDA Systems from 1987–1988 and CEO of Cadence Design Systems, which became the largest EDA company under his tenure, from 1988–1997. In 2004, he was awarded the Phil Kaufman Award in recognition of his business contributions that helped grow the EDA industry.” from his wikipedia page.

A fantastic presenter – someone whom I even sometimes compare to Steve Jobs. If you doubt me, see this keynote presentation video. (warning: large file if you want to download – can view on demand if you have vlc plugin in firefox)

A colleague of mine and me were chatting about this video today, and I thought I would share it with my readers. This video always gets me pumped up. The photo above is when he was giving his keynote talk at DAC. And yes, he came wearing a hawaiian shirt. 🙂

PS: I could not find this video on youtube – else I would have embedded it.

Worst Tech Presentation Ever ?

And yes, it was by Apple. Wow. Gil Amelio at his worst.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhhFQ-3w5tE&w=420&h=315]

I am still sniggering at

  • “It had an 128K OS!”.
  • “It needs the internet, so lets throw some Java in there”.

Yes. Actual quotes. Look at the full video.

  • Wow. Steve Jobs comes in for a ‘cameo’ appearance for a crisp preso and walks away. This is the event where Apple announced that it was acquiring NeXt.
  • Notice the great applause when Steve walks in (awful suit and pants, but whatever!).  Also notice the change in style of slides and the presentation style.
  • Jobs blinks at the number of photo flashes and says – “you guys need to stop flashing, or I will go blind and fall off the stage.”
  • Notice the dead-pan bored look on Amelio, while Jobs is talking.
  • Jobs goes over the over-arching plan. And then says – “At this moment, I would like to descend into some details, <pause> at the risk of boring you”. Notice the fake-warning. He knows super-well that the audience is just hungry for more details. Amelio had not given any details until then.
  • The OS is called MACH OS. And he says – “It runs on Intel Processors today.”
  • Jobs shows 5 quicktime videos running seamlessly together. Wow. And he just pauses a scene from one of them (Space Jam), drags and drops into Mail, and the clip (screenshot) is pasted as an attachment picture. Beautiful.
  • What we found out a long time ago was, the line of code that a developer can write the fastest, a line of code a developer can maintain the easiest, and a line of code that never breaks is <pause> a line of code that he never had to write.

 

How Not-To: Give a Presentation

There are quite a few how-to’s on Good Presentation. Some that are obviously very good like PresentationZen. But there are times when we learn only we see the worst that can happen. Hence the How Not-to. Wow. When you watch this video, I am sure several things will ring bells. We have seen such presentations over and over again. Enjoy.
 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rHFNJnDPYY&w=560&h=315]

[via GAS]