Jon DiPietro is Domesticating IT

PowerPoint doesn't kill people, bad presentations kill people.

I used to think I was pretty good at creating presentations. I took a business communications class in graduate school and learned the same old rules; limit your fonts, three to seven bullet points, don’t read your slides, blah blah blah. I withstood others’ horrible presentations, invisibly smirking and silently mocking the 250 word novels slides with their horrifying color schemes and monotone, stammering presenter.  I congratulated myself on not being “that guy.”  But the truth is that I was just as guilty of Really Bad PowerPoint as anyone else.

Then I read Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds and everything changed.  My goal in this blog post is nothing short of paying forward that same change, and so I’m using myself as a case study to show what my presentations used to look like, what they look like now, and what I aspire them to be in the future.

But before we go down that road, in case you’re dubious about whether or not really bad PowerPoint is a problem, here is a presentation that Guy Kawasaki put together that was used as the forward to Presentation Zen.

The Presenter As Storytellter

The number one lesson I’ve learned is that “slides do not a presentation make.”  Rather, they are simply a prop for the story you’re telling.  The following slide show contains a series of before and after shots from the same presentation, which I completely overhauled after reading Presentation Zen.  They illustrate the first major change; move the narrative off of the slides and into the oratory.

[View with PicLens]

Once the presentation is transformed from a distraction to a storytelling prop, the burden of communication falls on the story itself.  Based on the recommendation in Presentation Zen, I also read “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive And Others Die.”  This indispensable book presents six principles that make stories “sticky.”  It’s invaluable to crafting messages of all sorts, not just creating presentations.  Whether writing an email, composing a blog post, or crafting a memo outlining your thoughts on your organization’s next mission statement this book will help you do it more effectively and memorably.  These six principles can be represented by the acronym “SUCCESs”:

1. Simplicity
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotions
6. Stories

The Presenter As Designer

Duh.  That’s the one word that best describes how I felt while reading Presentation Zen.  Reynolds eloquently and convincingly makes the case that design is important, poorly understood, and badly implemented (by and large).  Those were the “duh” moments, as I realized that those are all true and that I had never realized it or paid much attention previously.  But next came salvation, as basic design principles and techniques are presented that make it possible to learn how to improve design.  Imagine that – you can actually learn how to design!  Looking back, I can’t believe that design wasn’t part of the core curriculum for my engineering degree or any of the computer science tracks I’ve seen.  And now that we live in the age of Web 2.0 where we are all content producers, it seems to me that it should be required in all college programs.  But I digress.

Reynolds begins by stressing simplicity, balance, noise suppression, and space.  These are all related and as I look back on my old presentations it seems as though I was deliberately violating as many of these guidelines as possible on every slide.  Take the slide shown below, for example.  This is not simple at all; there are too many ideas at once and even the screen shot, while appropriate was still complex and distracting.  The layout is completely unbalanced and top-heavy.  The slide template is noisy with lines and the “ISA” logo implanted in the corner of every slide.  Finally, there is a small amount of empty space on the slide, but it is concentrated in one corner and looks more like something is missing.  They eye darts around this slide searching for meaning with no help provided from the design.

My personal design renaissance has begun with what Reynolds calls “The Big Four:” contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity.  I’ll now provide examples from my own presentations on how I’ve implemented these principles.

This slide uses contrast in two different ways.  The first is the color contrast between the dark gray background and the pure white text. The words jump off the page in way that bullets never can.  The second use of contrast is the emphasis of the words “interesting” and “boring” by changing the font size. For some reason we seem to be afraid to make things BIG enough or bold enough.

One of the central themes of this particular presentation was the abundance of free tools available on the Internet in our Web 2.0 world. Therefore, I made use of design repetition by placing the “Free” price tag graphic element on eight consecutive slides in the exact same spot. I also made sure to emphasize this in my delivery by asking the audience to guess how much each solution cost. Of course, the answer was the same and the audio and visual repetition made sure that this point would be driven home. Plus, the audience had fun with it.

Alignment stresses the importance of making objects appear as if they were placed in a particular place deliberately, rather than simply thrown anywhere there was space available. This slide aligns the letters of an acronym quite deliberately to show their relationship. While this is a good example of alignment, I’m not sure it’s a great example of contrast, balance, or noise. I’m sure there is a better way to present this idea, so I will keep tinkering.

This title slide demonstrates the use of proximity.  The graphic and title are strongly related and so they are grouped together in close proximity.  My name, company, and position are also grouped together and separated from the title in order to distinguish and de-emphasize them.  You can also see elements of contrast and alignment in play here as well.

Photo credits:
“death-by-presentation” from HikingArtist.com on Flickr (Creative Commons)

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Thinking about ways to expand and improve the Society

The ISA (International Society of Automation) is facing a challenging time.  As I prepare to attend the Fall Leaders’ Meeting and ISA Expo in a few days, I know that major cuts and dramatic changes are in store.  Depending upon how you look at it, I am personally either blessed or cursed not be part of the most important and far reaching decisions that will be inevitably be announced in the coming weeks. I understand that many of these changes are necessary due to shortfalls in revenue resulting from the same economic conditions facing everyone.  However, I want to put forth a few ideas that will no doubt sound crazy to some and may even brand me as a “heretic.”  Incidentally, I would take that as a compliment and if you’re curious as to why, you should watch this Seth Godin video.  The ideas are too lengthy to include a single post, so I present them in summary here and will link them to sub-articles, where more detail is provided for those who are interested.

Sell Scarcity, Give Away Abundance

Many thanks to Jim Pinto for bringing this into focus for me with his recent InTech article, “Sell scarcities, not abundance.” I’ve taken the liberty of expanding on his thesis by leveraging the concepts of “freeconomics.” I am intrigued by the possibility of making ISA membership free. Yes, I said it – free.

I go into more detail in “Sell Scarcity, Give Away Abundance”

Build a free army equipped with web 2.0 tools

Build an Army Using the Long Tail

Making membership free will not, in and of itself, build an effective army. First, they must be recruited. This is where the long tail comes into play. Next, they must be equipped with the latest technology, afforded competent and inspiring leaders, and trained in effective tactics. The “Long Tail” is a phrase attributed to Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson, who wrote an article in 2004 about “Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More.” Engineers and economists would already be familiar with the numerical component of this phenomenon, known as the power law distribution curve or more colloquially the “80/20” rule. I think the current strategies are more focused on maintaining the 20% than pulling in the other 80%. Once free membership and the long tail begin filling the membership hopper, the next step is to “arm” them with the latest web 2.0 technologies.

I go into more detail in “Build an Army Using the Long Tail”

Switch from Filter/Distribute to Distribute/Filter

Content is the fuel for this new paradigm’s engine. A wide variety of interesting, thought provoking, authoritative, and even mundane content will increase member engagement and improve search engine results, driving more and more web search results to ISA. However, under the current publication infrastructure this is difficult if not impossible to realize. That’s because the current approach is to filter, then publish. The alternative is to distribute, then filter. In other words, the long tail of the membership should be enabled to become content providers.

I go into more detail in “Members as Content Providers”

Be Respectful in Our Marketing

Let’s talk about email. This has been a controversial subject for many years and for several reasons. The mistake here is that ISA has been wrestling with the best way to interrupt people, sort of like looking for the friendliest way to insult somebody. The solution is, once again, permission-based or opt-in marketing.

I go into more detail in “Be Respectful in Our Marketing”

The Elephant in the Room

This may sound like implementing these ideas requires the current web site to be blown up and rebuilt from scratch, which will cost a fortune. Yes and no. The current framework will not support these tools and tactics for a reasonable cost. However, the revolution in open source web content management systems (CMS) allows the rapid development of extremely powerful web sites by non-professionals for zero or little licensing cost. These CMS have enormous commercial third party add on markets that provide extensibility for very low cost – we’re talking less than $10k.

There is no getting around the fact that it would be a time consuming task to migrate all of the existing content to a new platform. However, it can be done by any mildly computer savvy user after about an hour’s worth of training. The job could be outsourced to the membership in large part and I am willing to bet the call to arms would be well received.

Don’t Panic!

These thoughts are meant to provide food for thought, not necessarily a road map. It is a momentary cross over from the way it was to the way it could be. The way it is unsustainable. Applying a tourniquet may stop the bleeding, but that is not a solution. I believe that ISA can not only survive but thrive if we can recognize and embrace the trends that will define how professional institutions organize their members for the next fifty years.

My hope is to provoke conversations that lead to innovation and positive change.  To that end, please use the comments section below and provide your thoughts.  As Linda Richman on Saturday Night Live’s “Coffee Talk” skit would say, “I’ve given you a topic. Talk amongst yourselves.”

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Oklahoma Bricktown Land Run

By now, many people are familiar with Cybersquatting – a process whereby a person registers a domain name in bad faith with the intent of reselling it later for a profit. Recent legislation has made it easier for trademark holders and famous persons to obtain their domains from squatters, but the process is by no means full-proof (just ask Kevin Spacey and Bruce Springsteen).
However, this is just one layer of an increasingly complex wired world…

I Registered, Therefore I Am

All large and most small/medium/micro businesses (though still not enough) are finally coming to the realization that online invisibility is a tremendous liability. But what about your personal online visibility? Many people have registered their personal names as domain names. Indeed, most domain registrars beat you over the head with requests to do so. But this article is about far more than domain names – that ship pretty much sailed years ago along with Gmail and Hotmail addresses. This is about establishing your online homesteads to be prepared for the current and future waves of social networking.

“Do you have a flag?”

This is a brilliant and hilarious skit by comedian Eddie Izzard. He satirizes imperialistic England, who claimed ownership over indigenous civilizations “through the cunning use of flags.” And so it goes with the new wired world – possession, as they say, is nine tenths of the law. You need to claim as much territory as possible as soon as possible and all you need is a flag: your name.

More and more every day, web sites are becoming tools for learning more about individuals. Sites like LinkedIn and VisualCV are becoming de facto online résumés. Blogger and WordPress are windows into peoples’ expertise and opinions. Flickr, Delicious, and Netflix allow people to share their interests and experiences. Of course, there are the mothers of all personal identity sites; Facebook and MySpace. Finally, there are aggregators like FriendFeed and Plaxo that attempt to tie them all together. You may utilize few if any of these sites right now, but do you want to bet your online future on the fact that you never will?

He Who Hesitates Is Lost

I’m fortunate in the sense that my name is not all that common. My identity is pretty readily available on most platforms. However, I’m not leaving it to chance. I registered my domain name years ago and have been on a land-grabbing tear recently, snatching up my identity on any site with which I come into contact regardless of whether or not I think I will use it. It’s the sports equivalent of “the best offense is a good defense.” I firmly believe that more and more prospective employers and customers will be using online searches for individuals sooner rather than later. If nothing else, don’t let them find the other “Jane Smith” before you.

On Your Mark, Get Set, Register

If you’re new to social networking and/or personal branding you may have no idea where to begin and that’s understandable. In my opinion, these are the top priorities:

• General
  • Domain name (e.g. www.janesmith.com)
  • Email (e.g. jane.smith@gmail.com, jane.smith@hotmail.com)
  • Twitter (e.g. twitter.com/janesmith)
• Professional
  • LinkedIn (e.g. www.linkedin.com/in/janesmith)
  • Blogger (e.g. janesmith.blogger.com)
  • WordPress (e.g. janesmith.wordpress.com)
  • Technorati (e.g. www.technorati.com/people/tecnorati/janesmith)
• Personal
  • Facebook (e.g. www.facebook.com/people/JaneSmith)
  • YouTube (e.g. www.youtube.com/user/janesmith)
• Sharing and Aggregating
  • FriendFeed (e.g. friendfeed.com/JaneSmith)
  • Delicious (e.g. delicious.com/JaneSmith)
  • Digg (e.g. dig.com/users/JaneSmith)
  • Flickr (e.g. www.flickr.com/photos/janesmith)

Have I left anything out?

Photo credits:
‘Oklahoma Bricktown Land Run’ courtesy of Serge Melki from Flickr (creative commons)

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