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 So I’ll dare to ask the question: is the pyramid principle outdated?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.
The best presentations have three stakes, three reasons “why” they are important:
The first stake is about you: why is the topic important for you? This is the reason you, and not somebody else, is on stage to deliver the presentation. The second stake is about your audience: why is it important for them? This is the reason why your audience is there to listen to you instead of doing something else.
“Don’t worry, I’m experienced, I speak at conferences all the time!” How many times have we heard that sentence from speakers who never did a TEDx style talk, yet think that, because of experience, they can just wing it? For us, it’s not reassuring. Quite the opposite, it’s a clear warning sign that the speaker doesn’t really know what is expected of him. Here are five warning signs that give you clues that your speaker may not be ready to give a TEDx style talk.
