I’ve listened to Claudio’s views on presentation style over lunches and pints and I’ve experimented for a recent presentation I made…. so here’s some thoughts.

Adopting a visual story telling presentation style is time consuming and fraught with the risks that any new technique brings. Claudio that looking back his earlier efforts felt a little like a special effects show without a script. I think that it’s easy to find images that grab the imagination (if you are prepared to pay . You need to make sure that it’s not -just- your imagination that they grab. I’m wondering what your thoughts are on image consistency through a story. If I dramatically switch from slide to slide do I risk losing the thread of the story. Imagine The Godfather a film shot through darkened doorways then suddenly flipping into an amusement park with bright vivid colours and then onto great open plains, constant transitions could confuse and annoy. I saw a themed presentation delivered by Don Smith on P&P Architecture Guidance (http://blogs.msdn.com/donsmith/). All the images were of asian children. It worked well but I imagine it took a lot of discipline to create. As Steven pointed out alot of stock slide decks suffer from the creator trying to pass the message to the presenter through the slides and not the notes. Microsoft standard presentations have always suffered from this; have you guys any thoughts on how to create multi-presenter slide decks.

Last couple of points; learning to craft a presentation is very like learning to write, when you look back at earlier creations you always get the feeling that they are like stories you wrote in school ‘…last summer I went to the beach……’. You are mentally aiming higher but are probably doing well if you end with a children’s pop-up book ‘Cá bhfuil mamaí?’ (every country must have the book ‘Where is mummy?’ with popup pics and little animals).

Finally you can put a great presentation together -but- it ends up being about more than the slides on the day. Preparation, timing and delivery.

Take a point of view, any point of view and try to convince people that “you are right”. No matter how “right” you are, it almost never works. People don’t change easily, not even if you can factually and objectively prove your point.

Yes we are constantly manipulated. Do you see a car as a vehicle of transportation or something that strikes an emotional response? Status, performance, reliability? How much rational is really in our choice?

Someone I know in a marketing department of a large organization told me once that if you hear from 13 different people that a given product is good, you’ll start believing it. I was shocked to learn that (at least according to the same marketing guy) you will have the same perception EVEN if you hear it 13 times FROM THE SAME SOURCE!!!
I so hope this is not true
Anyway, I will further elaborate on story asap!

I agree with what you and Boettinger say, and often for a presentation to clients it’s quiet easy to incorporate the advise. Making a presentation at a conference is harder: there often isn’t a clear call to action that could be made to such a diverse group. You’re not really allowed to sell yourself or your company as consultants, let alone push your products, so there’s no real expectation that an audience member will have any contact with you after the presentation.

A lot of conference presenters end up basically selling themselves as presenters for the next conference, by doing an informative and interesting presentation. The other possibility is more like a tutorial: simply teaching the audience what you know. Whilst the two are by no means incompatible, the different aims generally show through in the glitter/substance ratio.

Interestingly, I don’t think anyone goes to a conference to be influenced to make changes. To be entertained or educated, yes, maybe even to be (re-)inspired. And the speakers, even more than the audience, generally aim to make rational decisions based on overall knowledge rather than emotional responses to a speech. Attempts to invoke emotions or change behaviour are often recognised and turn us off from the message. I suppose that’s always been true: this media-savvy generation just [thinks it] is better at spotting such manipulation.

Still, unless our presentations influence future behaviour in some way, why are we wasting our time on them – whether we’re presenting or in the audience.

Inspire change vs. just Inspire: People don’t do anything unless they want to. So you can only really suggest and “inspire” change, but you can’t persuade anyone with 100% accuracy (thank god..otherwise we would all be so screwed!).
Arguably, I like to be “inspiring”. In fact, audience’s feedback often says that I’m “inspiring”. I’m actually not sure when/if I actually inspire change.
But I find this goal (of simply being inspiring) a bit static and too self-centered. Is is what you mean when you say “Why do I need to give this presentation”?

Storytelling is hard: yes it is. Is it a reason to give up? Are we talking about good or great presentations here? There are different styles and ways to achieve greatness I’m sure. I doubt any of those is easy, I’m afraid. Software development is hard too. That simple reason does not stop us from trying hard though.

Can you learn good storytelling? Absolutely. With the right tools, commitment, and knowledge it may not be as hard as you may think…watch this space

And I agree with Chris above. Story telling is very, very hard.

This is great experiment. Now, I’m scared to give the plot away on Chris’ blog post