Gizmodo wrote this rather funny piece about Elon Musk’s latest rash of announcements, such as fully autonomous cars and a million robotaxis by 2020. Now, Gizmodo is not exactly known as a staple of great journalism, but sometimes they have a knack to hit the nail on the head. In this case, the fact that for several years Elon Musk repeatedly promised—and failed to deliver—full autonomous driving. Honestly, s eeing how hard it is to achieve full autonomy, and how many problems are left with Tesla’s current autopilot system, it is hard to believe these new promises will actually materialize.
This is a quick list of seven common problems that we see with slides created by non specialists. However they are relatively easy to spot, and you don’t have to be a graphic designer to avoid them. Read on and your next slides will look much better!
Too much content. The goal is not to cover every single inch with content. It’s not because you have some space left at the bottom of the slide that you should put something there.
A few weeks ago someone spoke a name that I hadn’t heard in a long, very long time: Barbara Minto. She’s the author of the Pyramid Principle, a book that was long considered, and sometimes still is, the gold standard of presentation structuring in the consulting industry. But it was back in the eighties. So I’ll dare to ask the question: is the pyramid principle outdated?
If you’re not familiar with the pyramid principle, it is a method to lay out the information in a presentation in the most efficient way possible, based on how people with little time, especially executives, absorb information.
Recently my computer, a MacBook Pro, needed to be repaired. I had to do without a laptop for several weeks. And of course, during those weeks I needed to present with slides. Luckily, with my iPhone and a couple of accessories I had everything I needed:
A (not too old) iPhone or iPad A lightning to HDMI adapter A lightning power cable and brick (using the HDMI adapter drains the battery fast).
Seth Godin coined the term “meatball sundae” several years ago in a book that explained that putting two great things together does not always create something better. And in the worst case, such as a meatball sundae, it can actually create something nobody wants.
The meatball sundae presentation effect can happen at two levels: at the event level, and at the individual presentation level.
Let’s take Apple’s latest keynote as an example of the meatball sundae effect at the event level.
It may sound weird, but this is a question we get asked from time to time: “Do you know a prescription drug that would help me reduce my stress on stage?”
We’re not talking about illegal drugs, but legal drugs sold in pharmacies. There are a lot of those designed by pharmaceutical companies to reduce stress, anxiety, blood pressure, cardiac rhythm, etc. We are not doctors, so we cannot say anything about them from a medical perspective.
It’s a trick I learned when studying how movies and TV shows are written. You don’t do a flash back, you do a flash present. For presentations, that means that you don’t tell the story as something that is over; that makes the audience passive. Instead, you bring the scene from the past into the present, or you bring the audience to the past, and tell it as if it is happening right now.
This March Andrea Pacini joined Ideas on Stage as UK Presentation Director, meaning that Ideas on Stage now has a direct presence in France, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom - and we serve the rest of the world from these four locations.
We sat down with Andrea for a short interview.
Q: What is your background? A: I am Italian, and I studied in Italy and Ireland. I then did an internship in Cambridge, where I fell in love with the UK and decided to stay there.
