Archive for the 'Presentations' Category
March 6, 2006
Purple Search
Google has posted a video of a talk that Seth Godin, my favorite marketing guru these days, gave to Google employees recently. It is a synthesis of material from many of his books and is great stuff. Seth has been following up with several blogs posts, going into more depth on points he discussed in the video.
I spotted this via about 30 feeds I subscribe to. When something shows up multiple times in several feeds in a short time frame, you know there is something to it.
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February 3, 2006
Burritobility
I thought I would share an example I used in the Web Site Usability Workshop that I conducted with Dave, Frank and Joanna earlier this week at the ASAE Tech conference.
I started off by asking anyone in the room who likes burritos to raise their hand. 90 out of the 100+ people in the room shot their hand up. I had the right crowd!
What is the number one thing a freshmex burrito restaurant chain’s web site should do? Get you into one of their restaurants to buy a burrito. Simple enough.
Now, go look at BajaFresh.com. The store locator has a convenient search box right at the top to put in your address or zip code and find the closest store. Simple and effective.
Now go to the Chipotle.com web site. Look out for the flying burrito zeppelin! What is that spinning tomato/tortilla chip/hot pepper thingy doing in the middle of the page? How can I find a store? No way to tell without mousing over the chip and then futzing with an animated menu with no labels displayed by default. The only plain text link on the home page is to the privacy policy. (For once, a lawyer has a positive usability impact on a web site design!)
Both sites have a store locator feature. Only BajaFresh makes it easy to find and use that key functionality.
I asked the people in the room, “Who has the more usable site?” Answer: “BajaFresh!”
Then I asked, who probably paid more for their web site? “Chipotle!”
A usable burrito site doesn’t have to be an expensive one.
The lessons here include:
- A great product can be undone by poor usability;
- Usability can be a competitive advantage if your site makes it easier to do business with you;
- If your product is sub-par, making it usable alone won’t help much;
- Flying burrito zeppelins are kind of distracting.
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January 31, 2006
Thornton May
Thornton May gave the keynote presentation this morning. His presentation was all over the place but generally talked about how we should think about future technology in a way that doesn’t introduce bias from our current frame of mind.
It basically boiled down to being careful the questions you ask, referencing the old chestnut of IBM comissioning a market study that said the worldwide demand for computers at the time was 50. However, the question that report asked was what was the demand for computers that can break codes and calculate artillery trajectories. Given that question, it was an accurate answer but was not about the demand for computers that could solve lots of productivity challenges for any corporation.
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January 19, 2006
Guy Kawasaki on How to Kick Butt On a Panel
Guy Kawasaki, who started blogging recently, posts his 10 tips on how to be a great panelist. Great post and I highly recommend subscribing to Guy’s blog.
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January 13, 2006
Behind the Scenes at an Apple Keynote
Here is a great article by Mike Evangelist in the Guardian that talks about what goes into one of Steve Jobs’ apparently effortless presentations:
With the demo set, my role was to stand by in case of technical problems with the software, or if Steve wanted to change anything. This gave me the opportunity to observe what was going on around me. The big keynotes require a very large crew with separate teams for each major task. One prepares the room to seat several thousand people. Another group builds the stage with its motorised pedestals, risers, trap doors, and so forth. A third manages the stage lighting, audio and effects.
Yet another sets up and calibrates the state-of-the-art projection systems (complete with redundant backup systems), and a huge remote video truck parked outside has its own crew handling video feeds for the webcasts and playback of any video needed during the show. Then there are the people who set up all the computers used in the keynote, each with at least one backup that can be instantly brought online with the flick of a switch.
It takes a few hundred people a couple of months to prep and deliver one of those presentations. The fact that Steve’s demos always just work is a big part of Apple’s brand. This is not by accident. (Via Presentation Zen.)
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December 2, 2005
Association Glogging
I am participating in two group blogs (glogging?) at the moment.
One is the Great Ideas Conference Blog, developed in conjunction with ASAE’s Great Ideas conference. It is being written by several folks who will be presenting at the conference in Orlando starting this Sunday.
The other blog is one that I am writing with several association consultant colleagues that we hope to eventually publish as a short book. We’ve Always Done It That Way: 101 Things That Associations Must Change. Our premise is that doing things the same way as you’ve always done it probably isn’t working out too well these days. We are helpfully providing a few changes (101) you might want to consider. Jamie speaks for me in his post about the group of folks we are working with on this.
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November 18, 2005
Conference vs. Unconference
I’ve been thinking lately about how an unconference style event for an association could work. I’ll be posting some ideas on that later on. I thought it would be good to start by comparing the characteristics of conferences and unconferences. So, in no particular or meaningful order, here is my initial list:
| Conference | Unconference |
| Attendees | Participants |
| Exhibitors | Participants |
| Recruiting speakers | Recruiting participants |
| Content planning | Content facilitation |
| Direct marketing | Word of mouth marketing |
| Handouts | Wikis |
| 12 month planning cycle | 12 week planning cycle |
| Sponsorships | Donations |
| Once a year | As often as needed and desired |
| Large budgets | Shoe-string budgets |
| Maximize value for organizers | Maximize value for participants |
| Best practices | Innovation |
| Top down | Bottom up |
| Wisdom of experts | Wisdom of crowds |
| Magazine coverage 2 months later | Live blogging/podcasting |
| Slides | Stories |
| Panels | Conversations |
| Best practices | Practicing |
| Hierarchy | Networks |
| Directive methods | participatory methods |
| Participants | Contributors/creators |
| Speakers | Conversation starters |
| Sharing information | Learning collaboratively |
| Instruction | Discovery |
| Best learning in the hallway | It’s all hallway! |
I’m sure a lot more can be added to this but it’s a start.
I also just created a Wikipedia entry for unconference. I was surprised it didn’t exist yet.
Update: Added a couple more items suggested by Rich Westerfield. (I changed Powerpoint to Slides.)
Update 2: Added several more contributed in the comments by Nancy White and Jeff De Cagna. Thanks Nancy and Jeff!
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October 22, 2005
My First Podcast
Jeff De Cagna and I are partnering up on a presentation for ASAE’s Great Ideas conferences where we will introduce podcasting and discuss its possible use by associations. The fun part is that we will actually record and assemble a podcast during the session by recording interviews with some of the attendees.
The Distance Learning Coalition was kind enough to invite Jeff and I to present to their group on Thursday, which was a wonderful opportunity for us to make a dry run through our material and the process of recording with a live group. Here is the podcast if you would like to listen to it. Two of the attendees decided to hijack our podcast and record their own mini show within ours, which was a lot of fun.
Jeff and I pre-recorded some sections of the podcast via a Skype call. As you can tell, I need to get a much better microphone for these things.
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October 7, 2005
Presentation Zen gets all Zenny
I mentioned the Presentation Zen blog earlier this week. Love this zen-like line I just read in a recent post about Larry Lessig’s presentation method:
The number is not important. To be concerned with the number of slides shows that our head is in the wrong place. Because…it is the wrong question to ask.
And what is the right question? You’ll have to read the post to find out.
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October 2, 2005
Presentation Zen and eHub
Here are two new blogs I started reading recently that I would recommend adding to your subscription lists:
eHub is a constantly updated list of web applications, services, resources, blogs or sites with a focus on next generation web (web 2.0), social software, blogging, Ajax, Ruby on Rails, location mapping, open source, folksonomy, design and digital media sharing.
Garr Reynolds blog on issues related to professional presentation design.
eHub is great for keeping tabs on the latest web applications and services that are fully 2005 buzzword compliant. Presentation Zen is wonderful source of ideas on how to create presentations that won’t put people to sleep.
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