Presentation Zen | Garr Reynolds | Talks at Google

Hi Everybody. Welcome to AuthorSoogle. I'm pleased to introduce Gar Reynolds today. He actually said he was going to do an introduction of his own, so I'll keep this one really short, but Gar is a leading authority on presentation design and delivery.

You're reading that?

I am. So cut to the chase. He's the creator of the web's most popular blog on presentation design, Presentation Zen, as we see here. And I did want to talk about it on a personal note that he's definitely influenced my sense of design and I've probably given this website a few more hits by sending all the people that I work with there. And given that we do hundreds of PowerPoint and presently presentations every day, I think what he has to say is definitely sorely needed. And with that, I'll give you your welcome.

Oh, thank you very much. I have my. Thank you. Give it up, ladies and gentlemen. Katina. Thank you. First of all, I do want to say thanks to everyone for coming. But not just a small thank you, but a really big thank you because I know you're very, very busy and it's also sort of lunchtime. So I'll Talk for about 45 minutes, 50 minutes or so, and then I'd like a good Q and A as well. And I have only four books left that I can give away free. So if you ask a question, you get a book. Right? So that's how we're going to do it today. So a little bit of the self introduction. I come from here originally or specifically here, which is Oregon in the United States. Anyone from Oregon? Anyone been to Oregon? Okay, thanks for participating. So this has sort of been my life for the past 20 years, basically. Hawaii, Oregon, Cupertino, Palo Alto, and Japan. Japan is where I live now. Anyone been to Japan? Anyone from Japan? Nobody from Japan. So this is where I live specifically, if you want to come over later. This is what it looks like outside my house. So you can see the old and the new. This is sort of my environment. This is outside my house as well. So again, sort of the noise. I'm around a lot of noise as well and can kind of learn from that. I used to be a traditional salaryman. You know a salaryman, right? The guy that wears a tie. I haven't worn a tie since I left Sumitomo, fortunately. And currently I'm associate professor of marketing and management for Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka. I also run a design group called Design Matters. And we have every month we have little TED like presentations, different designers and business people come in, do their presentations in the Apple Store theater. We're agnostic. It doesn't have to be Apple related, of course, but that's something really cool. It's kind of hard to see on these slides. You can see it better on the net. But I still play music. How many musicians do we have in the audience? Few people. So I'm actually kind of a jazz guy and I still play just for fun. Now, of course, even in Starbucks they don't pay well, but get lots of coffee. But there's a relation to this because the art of presentation to me is very similar to the art of jazz. Are there any jazz fans here? A few people. Right. And Sir Ken Robinson is a great presenter. Maybe you've heard of him. Anybody hear of Sir Ken Robinson? I'm just trying to get a feel for the audience. A few of you know he's an expert in creativity and he's a wonderful presenter. He doesn't use slides. He has a few ideas that he sort of writes down on a card and then he knows it. But he says that presentations, because there's a lot of improvisation in it, that it's very similar to jazz. And I agree with that. And I want to show you something. I don't know if you know this guy, Bill Strickland, he's an entrepreneur, very famous guy. You can see this presentation on the TED site, but he actually did a presentation talking about his story, which is an amazing story. It's a business presentation. PowerPoint up here on the piano. As he listens to Bill, he's sort of adjusting. Gary Burton the music to go with that. Now I'm not suggesting that you take Herbie Hancock with you for your presentations, but it's just another example of ways that you can sort of present different and you don't have to present with slides. Of course, that's just what I'm doing here today. But there are many different ways that we can present more self introduction. I used to work here, you know where this is, right in Cupertino and I had to give presentations. Like how many of you have to give sort of stand up presentations with PowerPoint or something else? Quite a bit. So maybe half of you. So I had to do that, you know, in my job managing user groups. What the heck happened? Well, this is very Zen in a way, I guess. So we're not getting a feed. Oh, I saw myself. So there I am giving a presentation. Here I am now giving a presentation. And this is when I was working at Apple. Sometimes Very formal, sometimes quite informal. This is a more formal situation. So many different kinds of situations that I was out presenting. And the thing about Apple audiences, maybe, you know, is they're quite demanding. They're sort of enthusiastic, they're into the product. The audiences are very smart. And so you have to prepare well. So I worked really hard to prepare often the night before. Well, you got to keep up, learn new stuff, get new information, and stay awake, right? And work hard to prepare. And eventually it goes into the computer. And then I made presentations, situations like this, and it was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot. Actually, one of the reasons I joined Apple that sort of attracted me to leave Japan was Steve Jobs ability to present. And that's always been my interest, and I wanted to sort of see how they do it, how they prepare for the Mac worlds. He's a very inspirational figure, at least for me. When he presents internally in the company, he doesn't use slides, of course, but pulls up a stool, you know, and just has a conversation. And it's very, very conversational. But when I was living in the States, I realized that presentation was huge and that if you could really master this, it isn't everything. It's one thing, but it's one thing that can make a big difference in your life, you know, as a business person. But as I went around the U.S. i found actually that most very creative, very smart people were not really good at giving presentations. And a lot of meetings were pretty boring and kind of felt like we were wasting time. Anyone ever been in a boring presentation? Raise your hand. A few people. Hopefully not today, but, you know, maybe so you can be blogging this right now. This guy sucks. Get off the stage. Okay. Why does it matter? Who thinks presentations matter? Anyone? It matters, right? It's not everything, but it's one thing. Now, I look at all of you as leaders. Now, you may not be CEO someday or a vice president or a director, but you all are leaders. Or many of you want to be a leader of some type. And if you're going to be a leader, you have to be able to tell your story, right? You have to be able to communicate. Usually if you wanted to rise, for example, to the level of president, you would want to be a great communicator. Usually it works out that way, right? Not always. Now this. I love jazz, so I like to quote some jazz guys, a great Art Blakey said, if you're not appearing, you're disappearing. And it's true within a company, too. One way to get out there and tell your story is to volunteer for presentations. Things like I'm doing now, and I'm sure internally, too, you have many opportunities to do that. And this reminds me of sort of a meme, maybe you've heard of this before, by Guy Kawasaki. You all know Guy Kawasaki. Maybe you've heard of him. But he has this. Oh, this is Guy, actually. This is in the backyard of his house in Atherton. It's kind of hard to see on this screen, but some of you know, he's written about eight books. These are his recent books, but I think it was in Rules. Oh, you can also see that Guy wrote. If you get the book, hopefully you've gotten it free today. He wrote the foreword, but it's not actually written. You'll have to get the book to see how he did it. But Guy always says, eat like a bird and poop like an elephant. And that's sort of my philosophy, and that's why I'm here. That's the spirit. We call it the pooping spirit. And that's what I come here today with. And what does that mean? Well, birds actually eat a lot. And of course, elephants, you know, they do their thing a lot. Well, what does that mean? It means to get out there like you're doing, consuming information, knowledge, growing. I mean, Google is great for that, giving you all these great opportunities to expand yourself and then spread it around, right? Give it away. And it's infectious and it changes the world, right? So I think that's sort of a good meme. So remember that, right? Eat like a bird, poop like an elephant, makes the world a better place. And that's why I'm here today. So why does it matter? It matters, I think, to all of us, because it all matters, right? The little things matter. And that's sometimes the difference between winning and losing. It certainly is in sports at the highest level and in business, right? What's the difference? Often in those very, very small details, right? The competition is great. That's why we call them competition. So presentation isn't everything, but it's one way that we can make a big difference. Here's an example. Or can you think I should ask you, can you think of an example, someone famous who was not known for presenting well, and he had a story, and then he learned how to present better, and then suddenly the same story he's been telling for many years kind of took hold. Can you think of anyone? Al Gore. What? Brilliant. It's like I've known you my whole life. So yeah, Al Gore is my example. You all know him, of course, and you know him from this movie. Many of you maybe have seen this. He sort of presents this way, no bul bullet points. It's a somewhat technical topic, but to a non technical audience, to a sort of a lay audience. Right, but he's front and center, you know, simple graphics behind him, but he's in the front telling the story. But this is Al Gore of old. You remember this guy? You remember that phone, by the way, not that long ago, but what were some of the things we said about Al Gore in those days? He's a nice guy, all of that. But you might have said stiff robot, like whatever. No one said what a great presenter that guy is. I can't wait to hear him speak. But you know, he sort of reinvented himself, I guess, but he didn't learn the new story. It's the same story he's been telling for a long time. What he did though, is he got together with Duarte Design. How many people know Duarte? Probably the biggest design firm when it comes to presentation anywhere. Certainly in the Valley. They're just across the road here. This is what their office looks like. Started by Nancy and Mark Duarte. They have about 60 employees now. I don't work for them. This is not a commercial. But if you have any serious kind of presentation presentations you want to do, go see these guys. They do the stuff for Apple, hp, Cisco, all those guys. And they're great. So they helped them sort of do it this way. Right. And before after is very, very effective if you're using visual. So that's why it's one of the techniques they use before, after, now and then, and that sort of helps you get it instantly. You can focus on the presenter, in this case Al and his message. And of course he really benefited from that. Right? Sort of becoming same message, becoming a better presenter. He won an Oscar, Nobel Peace Prize, and they were even clamoring for him to run for president months ago. Right. So I'm not saying that could have the same effect on you, but it's just one example how presenting differently can make a difference. Do you think people would be saying the same thing about Al if he presented this way, I wonder. Or how about this? If he's talking about Antarctica, maybe it's more simple, simpler to talk about it this way and then concentrate on the data and the content, the visuals don't get lost that way. So the point is, if your ideas matter, we know presentation matters, right? Presentation matters, communication matters. Everyone knows that. But we have a problem, don't we? Do you know this problem? Have you ever experienced this problem? How many people here have Experienced death by PowerPoint? Anyone here? So you know the pain. And I'd like to hear. These are actual slides from actual presentations from actual very, very smart people. Has nothing to do with intelligence. Have you ever been in this sort of situation? One slide after another. You're daydreaming. I wonder what free food I can get today. Right. So this is the chance, when I ask you if we had more time, we could break up into groups and all of that, but just shout out your experience. Think about, like the worst presentation you've ever seen. And it might mean more than one. Right? But why? And you can just shout it out. I don't know if we have to send the mic around, but if you repeat it, I'll repeat what you said. So think about the bad ones. Can you give an example? And it could be like the slides, the text, the length, whatever. Whatever. I was going to say a dense slide where the center really just reads line by line. Just reading slides. Have you seen that? Is that common? Still common, reading slides, people are saying, yes, thank you, sir. Anyone else? This was more of an overall bad problem. The person pedestal slides decided the night before to completely change them. And then as he was walking up to do the presentation, decided to go back to his original presentation without changing the slides. Okay, so this had the wrong slides up there.

Yes.

Right. That's not very elegant solution, is it? Okay, thank you. What else? We're talking about bad ones. You've seen sort of two presentations. One is on the slides and one is in the voice, and they sort of don't. Oh, so the slides don't jive with what he's talking about or she's talking. I see. Yeah, that's a good point. What else? I was gonna say Ross Perot's running mate. Wait, who was that? Ross Perot's running mate in 90 gridlock. Is that the gridlock? Yeah. What am I doing here? Okay, so. Right, so being coherent is important in a presentation. Is what you're saying a given? Thank you. Yeah, thanks. What else? Bad ones you've seen. And the bad ones that you think are not just a special case, but rather sort of endemic. Anything else? Poor pacing. Poor pacing. Too fast, too slow. Right. Okay. How about the good ones you've seen? Have you seen some really great presentations? Silence. Edward Tufte. Right. Interactive, engaging. Right. Yeah, I've seen Tufte. I really. I'M a big fan of Edward Tufte, Guy Kawasaki. So he, you know, in his case, he's funny. He doesn't appeal to everyone. Perhaps that's the thing about humor. I think he's funny, but he gets. He's not boring, no matter what you think. Right. He gets people involved, he gets people engaged. He's also very conversational. Conversational, right. It's a bit meta, But Peter Norvig's PowerPoint version of the Gettysburg Address. Oh yeah, the Gettysburg Address. PowerPoint. You can see that. Just Google it. You can find it. He works here. He does. Okay. Yeah. That's a great one. Humor, Humor. Humor is good. I mean, if people are laughing, they're listening. You can learn a lot, actually, from comedians. Anyone here like stand up comedians? Stand up comedy. It is so hard. I mean, I could never do that. Can you imagine trying to have to make people laugh, try to evoke emotion. But that's what we're trying to do. If you're a CEO on stage, you still. It's the content, of course, but you also can't forget the emotional side of it. Well, as well. So we want clarity when we go to a presentation and we want meaning and we want great content. We want those things. But what we usually get, as some of you alluded to, we get boredom and confusion. And some of you said you feel like you waste time sometimes in meetings or presentations. So I felt I want to sort of go on a mission to stop bad PowerPoint. And it's not the tool. I mean, PowerPoint PowerPoint is like Kleenex. It's just the name. It just means presentations with some sort of multimedia. So what could I do? So I still go out and give a lot of free presentations wherever I can, and a lot of business people and technical people as well to try to get them to think differently about presentations. There are no panaceas. Each case is very, very different, as we say in Japanese, case by case, a day, case by case. Right. Each case is very, very different. But if we think differently about it, I think it can improve things. So why me? So I should tell you a little bit about the genesis of the presentation. Zen sort of idea. Not this genesis, by the way, but a different genesis. It is related to music, though, because I am a jazz guy. In fact, those eight pixels are me right there on the drums. So I still play in Japan, but fun. But I started playing in nightclubs when I was 17. So this is me at 17. And I did something else at 17. I made my first multimedia presentation with some. Do you remember these things? Some of you probably go, what the heck is that? Some sort of UFO contraption. And these are called slides, 35 millimeter slides. And you could really make great presentations. You have two carousels, beautiful transitions, very high resolution. You have a cassette tape with audio and a silent pulse. So it's just beautiful stuff. It just took a long time to do it. But the end result was great. And that was my first experience. This is before computers. This is how old I am. This is back in high school days. So that was my first experience of doing sort of what we do today, of having visuals and then storytelling with your voice, maybe with some sound. And of course, strong visuals, not lots of words. We never thought to put bullet points in the slides, at least when I was a kid back then. So those are 35 millimeter slides. But what I found since then is what you found too, is that a lot of presentations sort of go like this, right? Even though the inventors of PowerPoint really never designed it to be used this way. How many of you know Seth Godin? A few of you know he's got a lot of great books out there. This is his latest book, which I highly recommend. But there's a slide he did many, many years ago. And he talks about spreading ideas. And that's what we're trying to do, or I'm trying to do, presenting sort of differently. And he says, the more people that know your idea, the more powerful it becomes, right? So that's why you just give it away, try to spread the virus. And that's sort of what I'm trying to do. So I made a website about four years ago and put a lot of information about presenting differently. But the thing is about websites, they're pretty static, I found. You know, you go to a lot of work to make one, and then, you know, people come. They come two or three times, but they never come back. Need a way to do a conversation. So I was kind of late to the game. But about three and a half years ago, I started the blog. And then it just turned into this big thing and allowed me to have a conversation with people. This is the Presentation Zen blog. Then it became a book. But you might be saying, what is Presentation Zen? What has Zen got to do with it? Right. Zen means different thing. You know, in Japan, we don't even talk about Zen. Zen is really very Japanese. It's at the heart of Japanese culture in many ways, but we don't verbalize it. That's sort of A more Western thing to talk about it, but it means many things to different people. But to me, I'm talking about Zen in terms of simplicity, right? But simplicity ain't easy, actually. Simplicity is very hard. Google is extremely simple for me to use. It's unbelievably great and simple. But of course, it's very, very complex to get to that level of simplicity for people like me to use. Right? And of course, Da Vinci said it many years ago. So my idea of Zen and what I talk about Zen in the book is restraint, simplicity and naturalness, Right? So restraint and preparation. You can't do everything. You have an hour, you have 20 minutes, whatever it is, you can't do everything. So you have to cut some parts and let that go and focus on what's important. And then simplicity in design. Simplicity means many things. It means subtraction, often more than addition. But it means many different kinds of things when it comes to design and then naturalness and delivery. Conversational. You mentioned Guy Kawasaki and others. Steve Jobs is great at that. I've seen Dr. Schmidt present only a few times, but what I've seen, he seems great. Very, very natural. I think I have a picture of him coming up later. But how would you finish this sentence? This is Dr. Okawana, who passed away about 15 years ago, but he's an architect of Zen gardens or tea gardens. And how would you finish this sentence? What does it mean to you? Simplicity means what to you? I wouldn't finish the sentence. That's good. Simplicity means beautiful, perfect. What else? If you were to finish the sentence. Effortless, clear, clarity. What else? Minimal core. Core. Good one. That's in the book a little bit too, as well. Yes. Easy to grasp. Real. Yeah. This is how he finished the sentence, Right? Maximum effect with minimum means. I mean, that's sort of a good. Sort of a good mantra. How can I get maximum effect with a minimum of effort? That doesn't mean laziness, but I mean, you know, a minimum of means. Sometimes that means a minimum of money, you know, whatever it is. Right. So a little bit about my influences, because the kinds of things I talk about don't necessarily save time, and they're not conventional, perhaps, but I come sort of from a different place for the past 20 years or so, except when I worked at Apple and when I was in Hawaii for a while in grad school. I've been in Asia, Right. So I live in Japan. This is where I live. This is my environment. So very, very urban. I live in an urban environment. But Also the countryside, where there's a lot of simplicity and a lot of beauty. Sento or ofudo. Anyone been in a Japanese bath? You can just see design everywhere, right? In tea ceremony or sado ikebana, Sumi E, of course, Zen gardens. There's all sorts of places you can see design. Living in such a crazy urban center like this. This is in Tokyo. But look at the design everywhere, right? Even here. You can learn about how a full bleed photo bleeding off makes things. Since they're trying to make it look big. It's big, dynamic text contrast. You can see design concepts everywhere if you open your eyes. So when I'm waiting for the train, even I see slides everywhere. And I notice, oh, that might be a good slide. Or that might be a good slide. And I just. I'm always thinking in these terms, right? Or this is just a poster in the window of a department store. Hmm, might be a good slide, right? If I'm talking about this meme, you can see really crazy kind of things too. Do you know this product? They don't call it this in the States. Do you know this one? Say, say that three times fast. Not a good choice for a name. Fortunately, this is in Japan, so it doesn't carry over. And then graphically, if you just remove the M and the W, which is sort of mirror images of each other Anyway, I hope McDonald's doesn't sue me, but you can see it everywhere. A Nike sign across from the Apple store. Very simple. A few words and the graphics. Again, this is just one way this lends itself to marketing, for example. But whatever you're doing, you can keep things simpler just walking in an onsen. This is near Obama. Seriously, this is a place called Obama Japan. This place is. And I'm going to see Obama next week. Not the presidential candidate, but the town. This is near there. And even just walking around here with my wife, it's cold. So we want some tea. Two glasses or two cups of ocha. And just the way the cakes are presented and the flour and it's no big deal. This is not a fancy place. It's just a regular kind of tea shop on the street. And you can kind of see asymmetry, balance and all this kind of stuff. So if you open your eyes, it's everywhere. Having dinner, for example, some raw fish on the ice because there's snow all around us, right? This right here is going to be boiled. So that's water, right? It has a little like candle thing underneath it. But so the function is, if you Put water in. It would be hard for the waitress who's in kimono, to carry. So as a solid, it's really good. So it has a function, but it's also beautiful because it's this beautiful sphere which is like a snowball, right? And I'm explaining all this to my wife, who is a professional designer, and she thinks I'm nuts, right? So if you've ever been married, you know what I'm talking about. So, okay, but the point is. The point is the lessons are all around us, if we open our eyes. And the first chapter of the book, I talk about obento. How many people eat obentos? Sometimes O Bento is popular, very healthy. And I sort of use that as an analogy. O Bento, beautifully, simply packaged, right? All the content is delicious and nutritious and it's just enough. How much? Not too much, not too little. And it's designed beautifully. But nothing goes to waste, right? It's just all right there. And I thought, why can't presentations be like that, right? Nothing superfluous. Everything has a reason and beauty matters. But it's also the content, especially the content that matters. So design is all around. But remember, you don't have to use slides, of course, but if you do use slides, you want to avoid something like this actual presentation in Tokyo. Have you ever seen something like this? No, really, this is actual thing. And so you have to be wondering, why not just send an attachment? Why not, if we're just going to read, send a document, cancel the meeting. Is that reading from the slide? Yes. Yeah, I know. So you see, it seems unbelievable. God bless him. Very, very smart guy, I'm sure, this guy, you know. So we'll move on. So we know the current approach to presenting isn't working. So what's the solution? I mean, you have many ideas and each case is different. There are no panaceas, as I said. But we often don't think of creativity when it comes to presenting, like our really important presentations, often because we don't have time. But if we're talking about simplicity, simplicity sort of needs creativity to get to that. And again, quoting the great Charles Mingus, the late Charles Mingus, he says, making the simple complicated is commonplace, but making the complicated awesomely simple. Man, that takes creativity. That's hard to do. Anyone can be complicated and noisy and messy. It's hard to make things simple and clear. So some of you, it seems, most of you didn't know about as popular as this is, still most of the world doesn't know about ted. But Katina, would you say this is pretty cool? There's so many great lessons to learn here for free. You can download it, put it on your ipod, whatever. There's some great presentations. I'll show you a clip of1ted.com and you'll see some amazing talks to go to the conference. It's sort of invitation only. Really hard to get to $6,000 to attend for three days or so. But what's great about them is they record everything with three cameras. They do a really good job, and then they just put it online. Throughout the year, you'll get to see the presentations. So this is what the website looks like in the past. Sir Ken Robinson is one of the people who has a great presentation. I highly recommend you go see this one. But he was talking about creativity and saying that, you know, he's talking about children and how, you know, with children, they're not afraid to make mistakes. And he's not saying that making a mistake is the same thing as being creative. But as he says, if you're not willing to be wrong, if you're not willing to make mistakes, you can never, never be creative. And of course you guys get that. You guys get that at Google. But this is a lesson that we sort of have to remind people of. We have to remind them of the child's mind or the beginner's mind. You know, in Japan, in the elementary schools, if you were teaching and you asked a student or asked a class, who knows the answer, all the hands would go up, right? So you choose one. Kenji, what's the answer? I don't know. Why did you raise your hand? I'm involved, right? But then if you've been to Japan, you know what I'm talking about. But then junior high and high school and exam pressure, and it's all about the exam, then we're afraid to make mistakes. We don't reward mistakes, we punish mistakes. That's why you haven't seen a lot of entrepreneurism in Japan until recently. Recently there's a lot more. Since the bubble broke 10 years ago, you see more. But being an entrepreneur is risky. You have to take a chance. So, you know, this is sort of a good mantra. Maybe you've heard this quote before, that in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind, there are a few. So we are all experts. You are an expert. But what this means is to, although you are an expert, to think sometimes like a child, the creativity of a child, to look for different angles and not be afraid to make mistakes. This is a picture I keep at my desk. Just a friend's daughter. It just reminds me a live bird she walks around with. That's inspiring to me. You know you're not supposed to do that. Why not? Right. Children aren't afraid to make mistakes. So with the time that we have left, I have some tips. I mean, we could talk all day about different tips, but I want to hear from you as well. So I have just a few things, broke it down into terms of three. So a little bit about how to prepare and then some talk about design a little bit and delivery. So when it comes to preparation, what I say and what I say in the book is at first you have to step back and find some alone time. And you might. There might be other people around, but somehow you've got to get yourself in a different space so that you can focus on what's important and what's not, rather than jumping right into the software. Because when you do this, then you can ask yourself the so what? Or as we say in Japanese, Dakkara Nani. What does this mean? It isn't just the what. The content's important, obviously that's what it's about. But it's also the so what? What does this mean? What are we going to do with this information or knowledge? Right? And this is the time when you really focus on this idea of inclusion and exclusion. What do we keep? What do we remove for now? And that's a very sort of Zen idea too. This is a great book. I recommend the Zen of creativity. Right? Make a choice about what's important and then let go of the rest. You have to let go for now, right? In a presentation or sometimes it's when you're building software or whatever it is, you have to let go of that so you can focus on what's important. And it's related to jazz too, as Dizzy said, right. It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play. Sometimes it's not just the notes, it's the notes that you avoid. Right? And that's what story is about as well. Right? I mean, stories cannot be so long. They can't be so complicated that people don't get the heart of it. They don't get the meaning. So there are two books I recommend. This is the first one. How many people have this book made to Stick by the Heath brothers? You all should get this. So buy 100 of them and give them away. Or have these guys in get the Heath brothers or one of them in here, Chip or Dan. Which one is it? Is it Stanford? Great book. Just amazing stuff about how to tell sticky stories or sticky messages, right? And it could be advertising, it could be presentation, it could be leadership, could be anything. And they have six key principles that they go through, so I'll share them with you. Now, maybe you can save money on the book. But the six key principles, the essence of the book is that all key messages have simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness. Not just abstraction, but also something very, very concrete. Credibility. You guys have that instantly, right? If you're presenting outside, I mean, Google, one of the greatest companies on the planet. So that's a lot of credibility right there. Emotion. And you talked about that with Guy and some others. You got to have emotion in it, right? Emotion isn't everything, but it's a necessary thing. We're presenting to human beings, after all. Story again, right? So simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, which you have loads of emotion and story. So I have an example here. This is a presentation. It's 18 minutes. Best one I've seen in years. This is the best presentation at TED this year. People are saying Ben Zander is the other one. Dr. Taylor is a brain scientist who had a stroke many years ago now. It took her eight years to recover. Pretty, you know, very bad stroke. And as a brain scientist, she learned a lot from that. But there's just something. I won't show you the whole thing, but just this clip. She had slides. Not too many, but the visuals were very simple about the brain and all that. The slides helped. She was very engaging, very emotional. And this is something very visual. Just watch this.

If you've ever seen a human brain, it's obvious that the two hemispheres are completely separate from one another. And I have brought for you a real human brain.

Listen to the crowd.

Thank you. So this is a real human brain. This is the front of the brain, the back of the brain with the spinal cord hanging down. And this is how it would be positioned inside of my head. And when you look at the brain, it's obvious that the two cerebral cortices are completely separate from one another. For those of you who understand computers, our right hemisphere functions like a parallel processor, while our left hemisphere functions like a serial processor.

Okay, you get the idea. And then. So she has that as a powerful visual. She also has slides, and then she has the visuals that she creates through her narrative. So out of these, there's elements. Her presentation has all of these. It's very, very sticky and People are talking about it, I'm talking about it. And certainly having a real brain pulling that out. I thought it was going to be a plastic one because I've seen Dan Pink do that with the brain. It was a plastic one and he dropped it and he goes, ok, but that's okay because it's sort of comedy at that point. But when it's a real brain. So you saw the audience go, yeah, plastic brain. A real brain. That's unexpected, right? And that's just one example of sticky. This is the other one. How many people have read A Whole New Mind? Okay, so order hundreds of these and just spread them out. Great, great book about how the world's changed and creativity. Dan Pink is author of two best sellers. This is his second one. But as he says too, six key things. He talks about six key aptitudes that we all need to be successful moving forward. Is this the. And one of them is the ability to tell story, to understand design, to do design. But story, again, it's right there, right? We are storytellers. But when you're preparing your presentation and we talk a little bit about this, don't start at the computer. I know there are many books and Microsoft will tell you it's sort of just common. Start. I have a presentation tomorrow. Open the computer. Let me jot down some ideas. But as you know that, you know, the development of the ipod or software, anything at first, you don't develop it right at the computer. You come to a meeting, you have whiteboards or paper sticky notes, whatever. It's really, really useful to get away and plan analog. Even my book, I planned analog in Hawaii. Sorry about the shorts. That's kind of. But I was on the beach. But even the book, which is, you know, I designed it in indesign, it's written in word. It's a very digital sort of experience, of course, but the planning of it was very messy and very analog at first. And then that helps clarify everything. And with presentations too, right? I do it this way. You may have your own method. This is after the brainstorming, when you identify the core. Someone said the core. So I have a core of what's important. If people can remember only one thing, and you're lucky if they do, if it's a long presentation and then usually threes. Three is a good number. Three or four. Drama's often three. But what is it that you really want to say? You can't say everything and sometimes you don't have to go to this length. But some people prefer to actually at least have some of the slides down, as they're sort of brainstorming, printing out the slides and writing them down here, at least the beginning parts. And you could see how. Well, then we could make slides from this quite easily once we have it down in an analog world. And when you do it sort of analog, then if the computer breaks or blows up or whatever, it doesn't matter. You can just go on, you know, your story. And if you're pitching for, you know, venture capital and you have 20 minutes and your computer freezes, you can't say, excuse me, let me reboot this. It'd be all over. So you just. Your reaction, though, could really win you points. Computers freeze. We know that could happen. So you just say, ah, it doesn't matter. Here's my story. Here's what I want to tell you. And if you did that in the analog phase, then you would really know your story. Right? But you might be saying that this guy's nuts. This takes a lot of time, what he's talking about. I'm just saying you have to find the time somehow. You gotta find the time. Probably we could find more time by canceling a lot of presentations, right. And just have a discussion or a meeting or a talk, whatever. Or send an attachment, read this, check the box, whatever. Then we'd have more time to focus on the presentations that are important in front of customers or whatever it is. Right. So that's a little bit about the prep. So the takeaway is just experiment with the idea of closing the computer and going someplace else with some paper and a pen. So when it comes to visual simplicity, we're talking about using slides. If I say Zen aesthetic, which we never talk about in the context of slides, but why not? We often talk about it now in the context of web design. Why not? We can learn from many different places. So what comes to mind when you hear Zen aesthetic vis a vis like, and relating this to something like slides or websites? Like natural materials. Natural. Oh, you're right. Very natural. Like a woppy, soppy stuff. Imperfection. White space or empty space. Yes, Hallelujah. Empty space. And Google is great at that, isn't it? I won't say there are other search engines, but of course I love Google. I just love the empty space, you know, that's refreshing. And of course, everyone talks about that. What else? Exact placement of elements. Exact placement or careful, purposeful placement that's not accidental or random, but there's a reason. Yeah, like a Zen garden or ikebana to the untrained eye. That's just done. But it takes years and years of training to do that. Thank you. What else? What comes to mind? Presence. Presence and being in the moment. Yeah, but all of these things you've thought about before, right? Simplicity, clarity, unclutteredness. Certainly that relates to web design. That's hard to do. It's very easy to add on more things. So design is important. But I don't think this is design. This is great. I love birthday cakes and Christmas trees, but I tend to think of it more as sort of decoration, which is also good. But that's sort of on top. Design is more soul deep. You really put a lot of thought into it and you know, a long effort into what it's going to look like. But you might say I'm not a designer as a business person, but people like Tom Peters say, tough, you are a designer. We're all designers in a sense, maybe small D. We need to be more design mindful, learn about design so that we can better work with actual designers. Right. And it's all design. So we know design matters. But a lot of presentations look something like this. This is fake Latin. But have you ever seen a presentation like this coming in? Seriously, still today, right? And it's very therapeutic. If you can't sleep, just put this on. Yada da. Put a footer for some reason which no one can possibly read in a website and page number, although it's not a book. And some clip art or something that you can because you don't want. There's empty space. We want to fill that because we can. So you know the rule. The rule is of course the 177 rule that all the books, most of the books talk about one concept, one idea per slide, seven lines of text and seven words per line. But the problem is that's what this is. This follows that rule. So could you imagine today you may be sleepy now, but could you imagine if all my slides looked like this? It repeated basically what I was saying. Design is important. Google is great at design. Could you imagine? You would all be asleep, Right? So never read your slides. I had a great video from Guy Kawasaki, but I cut it out where he says if you read slides, the audience is going to quickly figure out that you're a bozo. Right? But that's Guy. But what he means is if you're reading your slides, it's because you don't know your material. You don't need lots of stuff up there. And he's seen more presentations, more bad presentations than Just about anyone, right? I mean, people are pitching to him all the time. So don't read your slides. This is something from a year and a half ago, I guess. The Last Mac world in 07. And this is something I compiled and put on my blog. Talking about this guy. I don't like to say bad things about people, so I won't mention names, but the top three guys did a really good job. The middle two only had like three minutes on stage. So we don't need a long history of anything. Just come up, very energetic, really great. And the third or the fourth person down here was reading cards and you know, okay, was reading cards. And it just, you could see people. Actually a lot of people were live blogging at the time and they were saying, who is this guy? Total snooze fest. All this stuff. You just can't read notes. You don't need that. If you know your story, you shouldn't need that. And of course two guys in the middle did a great job with that. Only three minutes. They knew what they wanted to say. The guy on top also knew what he wanted to say. He had prompts, but he didn't have bullet points to remind him he knew the story. Right? So don't do this. We know that, right? We can't do something like that. So here's an idea. Go back to your office this afternoon, find an old presentation. Maybe it looks like this. You have the notes view a bunch of bullet points up there, remove those, put them down in notes view where no one can see them. And maybe you make six slides now because there were six key points. Then you can put one key thing up there, maybe one visual that is not decoration but that somehow supports the point. Then the audience sees something very simple. And then you have your notes. If you want them, you can print them out for practicing, but you can keep it very, very simple. What the audience sees is simple because they're listening to you and you're talking to them, right? So what about images? Where do you get them? How many people know istockphoto istockphoto.com actually, if you get the book, you can get $150 worth of credits in a sense. In other words, you can get 10 free high res photos that appear in this book. So it's just a little thing to add value. But I really love these guys and they've been a big supporter of me for many years. So words and image. Have you ever seen a slide like this? This is something going through some very simple data. Actually Just on obesity rates across about 30 countries or so. So this would not be a very good slide. It wouldn't be a very good handout either. But the data is interesting. So instead of doing it this way, I don't want to tell you all about this. I put that in the handout to compare other countries. I just want to talk about Japan and vis a vis the usa, for example. So I don't want to do the whole thing. I just want to focus on what's important. Or it might be something like this, right? Or perhaps something like this. Again, it's the same stuff I'm talking about, but it's a more visceral, more visual way. But in the handout, I give all the details and I may even pass the handout during Q and A or maybe even now so that you can refer to that later during the Q and A. This is one on Hara Hachibu. Anyone know Hara Hachibu? If I was going to talk about it, if I had a slide like this to introduce the idea, you're already reading ahead, so you're already getting there, right? So why would I do it that way? So this is not uncommon. And then the website there, which is. Which you could never possibly write down. But this is my handout, right? Except it's not a very good handout. There's not much information there. So instead I might do something like this to introduce the idea of Hara Hachi Bu. What is it? It just means to eat until you're 80% full and then that's it. That's all you eat. You actually can lose a lot of weight, stay very healthy. It's wonderful and very easy to do in Japan, actually. So these are just some samples. I might do something like this. What does it mean? It doesn't mean waste food, by the way. Only take 80% of what you need and not waste, right? Anyway, that's just one idea. One example. Again, Hara Hachibu here. So this is on the train, Before, After Before After. It's a simple idea, but visually, boom, you got it. And I highly recommend it. You can use it for meetings, use it for presentations. If you get an hour, take 50 minutes. If the meeting, you know, if you got 18 minutes, take 17. Never go over. So you can apply it to many things. Of course, before after is very effective. This was an actual slide. I won't say who, but someone used this recently, last year. It's hard to believe we could take this kind of thing. It looks much better this way. Very easy to understand. Same data actually very easy to compare instantly. You don't have to use a pie chart for this kind of data. If we. We don't need this. But if you wanted. Again, this is emotion now. But if you wanted to put emotion into that narrative, save the planet, you know, whatever it is, that's fine. Here are some examples and these are all tongue in cheek. There are no real methods. But on my website over the years we've talked about different methods. The Godin method, Takahashi method, the whatever method. And I don't have a method. The book talks about an approach which is more like a philosophy or a general approach to it. There are many different methods that can work for you. I call this the Jobsian method. It isn't really. But the way he's done it for many years of course is very, very simple. Visuals, very conversational. There is some data but it's, you know, it's displayed quite easily. But even his developer conferences, which is more technical audience still visually it's quite simple, right? He uses quotes sometimes but no bullet points or very rarely would there be a few bullet points. Microsoft method. It's not a real method. And Bill is getting better. I really like Bill and he's getting the message. He's getting better with his visuals. But not too long ago it was something more like this, right? Or like this doesn't help. He's a very smart guy, a remarkable guy. So it'd be great if he was a remarkable presenter as well. This is an old Microsoft slide. Actual slide but. And I wondered where they got their inspiration. And then I remembered my. Remember that. Not too bad. Bad. I love that stuff. By the way. Great. 100% sugar. So the Lesig method. Who knows? Lawrence Lezig and a few people. Law professor down at Stanford has a very unique. It's his method. I'm not saying it should be your method but for him it works. It's the way he does it. And if you. And most professors by the way cannot present to save their life and I am one. So there. Right. So I think that's where a lot of us learn how to present badly is because we all go to college and we see our professors do it but he has a different way. Larry Lezig, so very visual. There's a lot of content in his story but he tells the story right. And I wanted to show you something here on Remix. I'm going to show you. I have a video of a guy making a presentation with a video in his presentation. It's kind of weird we might go back in time if I do this real fast. But this is just an example. If you're talking about something I could do, bullet points or try to explain to an older audience, what does remix mean? What does that mean for copyrights? All this kind of stuff, right? It's a new world. It's a remix world that we live in now. Well, I could do that in bullet points, but why not just show some examples? And so that's what Lawrence did. So let me just show you this one. Maybe you haven't seen this one. Maybe you have. Very short. There's only you in my life.

The only thing that's bright.

My first love.

Your every breath that I take? Your every step I make and I, I want to. Oh, my love with you no one else will do. And your eyes, your eyes, your eyes they tell me how much you care. Oh, rebalance, take dictation. So this is remix, right? So then people get, well, that's remix. I get that. And it's important to emphasize that what this is not, is not what we call, quote, piracy. I'm not talking about nor justifying people taking other people's content in wholesale and distributing it without the permission of the copyright owner. I'm talk. So that was very effective. And it, you know, engaged the audiences at the end of his presentation, that gets people awake. It's also a great example of what he's talking about. It's visceral, it's emotional. People laugh. But it's not for no reason. It actually supported his point. What is remix? Then he goes on, that's a free culture presentation. One of his last ones. You can get. Just Google it, you can find it. It's totally worth your time to watch this. This is kind of similar to Takahashi Method in Japan. This guy is a programmer, specializes in Ruby, Ruby on Rails, some other things. But Japanese is actually very visual and he's not a very good presenter. A lot of, you know, he's kind of a shy person. So he came up with this method and he actually has a book on the Takahashi Method. This is dekai presen, just means big, big presentation. So this would be the whole slide. It's actually HTML. He doesn't use PowerPoint. But this means the history. So when he's talking about his method, here's the history. He's talking about history. This word means history. Here he says, I didn't have PowerPoint as he's talking about it right here. He says, make your letters really, really big. I mean, super big, man. That's what it says. I mean, really big. This is another way of saying really big, Right? And when he has four points, he'd go, I have four points first. And it just goes on and on like this. 20 minutes, about 300 slides. But for his audience, it works. They're all programmers. It's very engaging, lots of humor. But it's not just comedy. It supports what he's talking about. Right again here. He says it's very easy to see. It's also very simple, practical, cheap to do. Right. The Darth Vader method. I thought if Darth gave a presentation with PowerPoint, what would it look like? And I thought it might look something like this. Right? So you just go through the points. I'm probably not as convincing. Force is with you. You can destroy the Emperor. There's parenthetical. And then in Sub Bullet, it's your destiny. He repeats that which is good. Repeat that, it's your destiny. And then there's a web down at the end. If you didn't get there. And I thought as a juxtaposition, how would Yoda do it Differently. And I thought it would be much simpler. Right? Front and center, not in the dark. Very naked approach. Or Hadaka no tsuki AI, as we say in Japanese, naked communication. Nothing to hide, right? He's an old man, can't walk very well. Right. Out there in front, empty slate with endless possibilities that could be there. So that's quite the juxtaposition. Yoda and Darth. Right? So where do you fall in there? And that we should make a scale, right? Okay. And just a few things about delivery. And then we'll wrap it up with some questions. The thing about a presentation, the more formal ones with slides, is that it's not just the content. I mean, it's not just the logic part of the content. We need emotion too. Logic is not enough. Of course. It's a necessary condition, but it usually isn't sufficient. We need emotion too, and it's nothing new. Aristotle was talking about this long, long time ago, right? We need the emotion, and we need the logical and the passion and the enthusiasm. And when I think of enthusiasm and passion, I think of this guy. So I won't play. You guys know all this. You've seen this a million times, but you cannot fake that kind of sweat. And I'm not suggesting you present this way, but for him, it works. It's who he is. And you can't fake the sweat. And it's not boring, you know, this mean I won't show the other one. You know that. Anyone see that for the first time? Is that first time? I think you all know first time. Well then go Google it. You can watch it some more. There's some better ones than that. He's consistent. But I like Steve. Maybe you saw this at Mick's guy. This was really, really an odd couple for sure to be on stage. But it worked somehow. And Steve was Steve. So here's a little example of him doing something a bit different. Someone asked him if he'd do not just developers, but how about web developers too? Somehow we lost the audio from that. That's too bad. What are you shouting? He's saying web developers. Web developers. Web developers. Well, that's too bad. Anyway, so he's, he's not afraid. He's a very good sport. Just get out there and let it hang out. Right? Why not? So I hope we get the audio back because I wanted to end on something. I have a last bit of audio. The other thing Steve kind of does both Steve's, but certainly Steve Jobs does as well is when he's presenting, he's presenting. You have to be in the moment. Not someplace else, just here, be somewhere else later. Right. Have you ever been to a presentation where maybe the person's preoccupied or it was very last minute kind of thing. Ever have that happen? Yeah, we got audio back. So being here right now in the moment. And this is also related to jazz, think about the great Charlie Parker said the same thing, right? Master your instrument, master the music. You know, you got to practice and practice, but then you forget all that shiitake and just play. When you play, you just play. You don't think, is this a B flat? Are they going to like it? You just play. And that's what jazz is. Of course, you put in a lot of practice and a lot of rehearsal to get, you know, with your ax to get it down. And then there are just little things you can do. Keep the lights on, move away from the podium, try to connect with people. Use a remote control that's not the actual size, but usually they're quite small. Use the smallest one you can. I wish someone would invent a kind that just sort of slips on your finger and you know, like a piece of rubber and it could have forward back. Wouldn't that be cool? Why not? I don't need this thing small as possible. You just want to go forward basically. Right. A few more examples from ted. TED is great. So I highly recommend you go to the TED site. Some people present, they just Get a chair and sit down. Connect with the audience. These are different ones. Majora Carter did one a couple years ago. She was a bit nervous, but she had such a great story. She did a wonderful job in spite of her nerves and it's understandable that she would be nervous in that situation. But it was a great job. Very visual. Visual with slides, but also visual in her story about the kind of work she does. And this is the last one I'd like to end with because some people say, well, but what about data? How do you present data? So this is simple data, you know, Gap Gapminter. Thanks. In fact I saw it out here in front and he Hans Rosling co developed it and he has a simple data set. But just watch how he sort of interacts with this simple data and then we'll end it here, hopefully.

And they said the world is still we and them and we is Western world and them is third world. And what do you mean with Western world? I said, well that's long life in small family and third world is short life in large family. So this is what I could display here. I put fertility rate here, number of children per woman, 1, 2, 3, 4. Up to about eight children per woman. We have very good data since 1962. 1960, about on the size of families in all countries. The error margin is narrow here I put life expectancy at birth from 30 years in some countries up to about 70 years. And 1962 there was really a group of countries here that was industrialized countries and they had small families and long lives. And these were the developing countries. They had large families and they had relatively short lives. Now what has happened since 1962 we want to see the change. Are the students right? It's still two types of countries. Or have these developing countries got smaller families and they live here? Or have they got longer lives and live up there? Let's see. We stop the world and this is all UN statistic that has been available. Here we go. Can you see there? It's China. They're moving against better health. They're improving there. All the green Latin American countries, they are moving towards smaller families. The yellow ones here are the Arabic countries and they get larger families but they no longer lives, but not larger families. The Africans are the green down here. They still remain here. This is India. Indonesia is moving on pretty fast. And in the 80s here you have Bangladesh still among the African countries there, but not Bangladesh. It's a miracle that happens in the 80s. The Imams start to promote family planning and they move up into that Corner. And in 90s we have the terrible HIV epidemic that takes down the life expectancy of the African countries and all the rest of the world moves up into the corner where we have long lives and small family and we have a completely new world.

So that guy is a great presenter, very excited about the data and you don't forget it. So what was his point again? He's talking to students who sort of believe something differently. But what is the point? The world today is basically right. Longer life, smaller families, except there is an exception and, you know, a good part of the African continent. And to my students, my Japanese students are surprised about that, that AIDS is still a problem because we don't hear about it, it's not on the news, so therefore it must be cured. But visually they get it. Wow. AIDS is still a big problem, yet the rest of the world essentially has moved forward at a very rapid pace. So that's just one example. We'll end it there. So we sort of touched on a few aspects of presentation, but the point to remember is that PowerPoint is just a tool. Whether you use Keynote or Flash or whatever you use, these are just tools. You are the presentation. You don't have to use slides, but if you do, try to use it in a way that augments you and think of these kinds of things. It's all about the story. Right. In a more naked approach. Right. We're just exposed, we're out there, we're human, very open, visual, natural, honest. Right. Creative. Bring all of that in. Right. So we have a few moments so we can take some questions. And I think they would like the microphone.

Yeah. First, I want to say thank you. I'm definitely inspired. I don't like. I don't necessarily always want to give a presentation, but that actually makes me want to get up and talk. So, yeah, you're doing it. So, okay, so. So for questions, we have to use the mic and I'm just going to bring the mic around, so just raise your hands.

And so the first four get booked, but I'll stick around. Some of you have work to do. I think it's Friday, but I'll stick around. I'm leaving tomorrow, but until then I have to go. I really appreciate you coming out. You were first, though. Oh, that's okay. You'll get a book, too.

I had a really quick question. What tool were you using? And if you were going to start a presentation like this a week, say a week before the talk?

A week before?

Yeah, yeah. Would it Be reasonable. Because I mean, with PowerPoint you can just slam it together fast. That's one of the things that comes up. But what tool are you using? And I mean, is it, is it comment on time, time that it takes to do something like this?

Like I said, it just. Each case is different. It depends on how much time you have. A week isn't very much if it's extremely important presentation. If Dr. Schmidt said this is big, you got to prepare it for me, well, I put all my time into that. A week is enough time. Right, but that would be how many hours, 50 hours of work. It takes a long time. But the first thing is to get off the grid and get away from the computer and really get down the story. What is the story? What is it? I want to say what's important. Then it becomes quite easy then to storyboard. You can storyboard into PowerPoint if you want to do it that way and skip the sort of more analog, the longer analog approach, that's fine. The actual tool is keynote. But it doesn't matter. I mean, that's really my point. I don't care what you use. And you don't need the latest PowerPoint either. How many, by the way, have PowerPoint 2007 or Office 2007? Is that most people still some of you using the older and there are some Apple people here, some Mac users, so. But it really doesn't, it really doesn't matter. Flash would be great, actually. I'd love to use Flash. It's just for me since I'm not really good at, you know, it would take a long time, but if I had someone who could work with me. Flash is just. Is wonderful. But this is a very easy tool tool to use.

So my question is based on an experience I had when I tried to use an approach similar to this a few years ago in a different company want to emphasize different company. And the feedback I got from management was that the presentation had to contain all of the words so that somebody else could repeat it just by reading the slides. And they were uncomfortable even with having all the content in the notes. How do you explain to that mindset?

Yeah, it's a very common approach. Right. And they do that at Apple, I think at every company to give it to the engineers in the field, make sure they do those six points. So you put it in the slide, you put it in the notes, but to be sure, let's put it up there. It doesn't mean it's effective. It's just, it's culture. Not Everything about our culture is efficient or good. We need to change parts of culture too. So I think, and it's hard, you're going to come up, you're going to meet resistance. But I get a lot of email every day from people where, you know, it's worked for me, but it doesn't work in every case. I tend to hear, you know, the positive reports, but you know, I say we got to strive forward and try to change things. Thirty years ago, how did people present? I mean there were ohp sheets, you know, the overheads. But mostly, you know, in my parents generation they had meetings and they might write something, right. Or they would talk and they didn't need bullet points. How did we do it for centuries without bullet points? Why now we need bullet points which contain too little or too much. Right? So you can't read and listen at the same time. So just ganbatte, as we say in Japanese, never give up, you get a book. Thank you. I have a question. What if you have something very complex in algorithm that you want to present fine details of it? Do you have any advice if something, or at least seems to me as it is very complex and at the same time you have a very limited time to show it, how not to like, stuff all the details and just overwhelm the audience. I wouldn't use a slide. I mean slides are very low resolution, aren't they, compared to paper. So if it's something like that and people need to see the whole thing, then just hand out a paper. Even in a stand up presentation it breaks things up too. Rather than saying turn to page 10, you might actually just have people now look at this document and then we talk about it. So again, this isn't for every case, it's very low resolution. So if you actually need all of that data, I mean you have to have it. I say, you know, that's a handout. And then Tufte I think would definitely agree with that is well, as a non native speaker I constantly worry about my accent. So I tend to put some bullets on my slides. Do you think that's a good idea? And in general, do you have any advice for non native speaker? It's a good question. And it's like I said, every case is different. And the thing is about the slides, they are not for us as presenter, they are for the audience and it's supposed to help us, but help our message. So I understand, believe me, I understand the pain. If I was doing one in Japanese, what I have to do is I don't put it there, but I put it in the notes view. You know how you can. In PowerPoint or Keynote, I can actually have my notes. You see a different image here. It's still not ideal, but at least it's better. Since my Japanese is not good enough, I have to read Japanese sometimes. So I would be doing more of this traditional thing, but I don't recommend that because then you're glued to the PC, right? You want to try to get away from it. All I can say is that I do work with young Japanese students whose English is not so developed yet and they're shocked that they can do it this way. At first they're very nervous about doing it, but they find that going analog, getting their story down, it's actually easier because they don't have to memorize things. It's sort of liberating in a way because now they really know their story. This visual sort of instant instantly reminds them, oh, yeah, this is the point. I want to say the grammar doesn't have to be perfect. Once they let that go, just tell the story, what does it mean? And actually their confidence goes up. It's sort of liberating, seriously. So I know it looks like it's crazy, but try it and I think you'll be happy with the results. You can keep the notes. You can just print them out just in case. Right? In case you have a total, you know, blowout. That could happen. Probably you would never use the notes, but just because they're there, it gives you, you a little sort of security. But thank you very much. You get the book. Could you pass it? Would you mind passing the book back? Thank you. That's the last book. I'm sorry, I wish I had more. I have a bottle of water that hasn't been open yet, but you get everything free, so it doesn't matter. But it doesn't have much value, does it? But if you're thirsty, you can get this bottle of water. I'll pass on the bottle of water, thanks. You talk a lot about stories and, you know, a lot of the good presenters. Yes, a lot of good presenters seen, you know, have a. Have a story and a message as part of their presentation. But in addition to that, they have either, you know, tangent stories or sub stories that are not that support some point that they're making. And I was wondering, in the preparation for a presentation, are you coming up, are you thinking about these stories then? Or are you kind of trained yourself to, you know, in life, something happens and. And you're like, you know, that would be a great story to tell that would make this point in a presentation I might give at some point. It's a good point. And I think it gets easier the older I get. Right. You get more experience and just opening your eyes. And that's why it's great to go to seminars, try new things. If you've never done martial arts, do martial arts, become a designer, you know, whatever. You just. The more you get out, the more sort of stories that you learn that you get. So, I mean, that's basically how it happens during the brainstorming, though, is when I. You get the ideas and you go, oh, this would really be good to support that. And so you might jot something down. It's quite messy in those stages, but being able to brainstorm like that brings those stories out for sure. Thank you. Sorry I don't have a present for you. There you are. No book.

Too late.

I've seen Larry Lessig as well, and I'm curious. I have a very mixed reaction to this approach. And I think the sort of. The mixed part comes from the potential for propaganda to hide the ball and to not be transparent. Because the standard clunky PowerPoint is I say something, you see it, it's there. The dynamic in these a lot is this complex fluidity of speech and image. And the effect of it can be very much to misunderstand, mislead, because you say one thing, comforting image on there. And I'm just curious your. In other words, it's a very powerful and thus dangerous tool. And so I'm curious, sort of your thoughts about that dimension to this. No, it's an excellent point, isn't it? And that's true. I mean, advertising, for example, is very powerful, isn't it? I mean, look what we buy, the crap that we buy. I mean, it is a very powerful image and narrative. But like anything else, like the Internets, they can be used for good or used for evil. So, you know, do no evil is sort of my mantra. So you absolutely can hide things. And I think a lot of, especially a lot of marketing presentations do that. And one way to be more transparent, besides actually just really having that philosophy of doing no evil is giving a handout that has more of the details. It's all right there. I'm not hiding anything. You can see it, right? And Les explains Case. I know it doesn't work for everyone. It does kind of go fast and. Well, I'm not accustomed to that, but for him it works. I think if he didn't have that he would be a less engaging speaker. They're kind of his notes, although they don't seem like his notes because he's developed his own style. But your point is really, really good. And that's the trouble. If you have someone who does something like this and then they aren't transparent, they're actually trying to be duplicitous or trying to. To sort of hide something, then that gives this kind of approach a bad name, doesn't it? And people will blame the method rather than. It's actually the motivation behind it. And I actually think that bullet points can. Yes, it's written down, but it's so confusing that it actually can be more. It's easier to actually sometimes hide the truth. I mean, look at the. Well, I won't get into it. Maybe we'll edit this part out. But look at the slides on the Iraq war, for example. You know, you've seen all these, right? I mean, there's tons of of them that explain. They're trying. What does this mean? Right. It's so complicated. But anyway, thank you, that's an excellent point. Last question. Yes, sir. That's Katina's fault. It's not my fault. And then we'll go to you. Quick question. I have to do a lot of teaching. So, like having a lot of source code on slides. What is an effective way to teach using this kind of technique, especially for computer source code? Right, right. So it's common. And does that work for you to build the code? Sort of animate and then. Yeah, it really helps the audience show it. Yeah. And they also have a handout of it. Right. I haven't been doing a handout attachment. I think it's the same principle. I mean, how much. Not too much is only as much as you need. I remember my undergrad was in philosophy and the class I did the weakest thing was logic, only because it was symbolic logic, because the equations were so long. And I said, and I got it, I got it, I got it. I don't got it. Right. So if there's a way to somehow simplify, not, you know, make it dumb. I think politicians do a lot of this where they dumb down things. I don't mean that, but how much is necessary? And then if building it helps, rather than the whole thing, blah, which is sometimes overwhelming, can you build it in steps that helps people get it more easily? That might work in that case, PowerPoint's very useful, I guess. You mind if we squeeze in one more question we had? Yes, sure. I was wondering, I noticed you draw a lot of your inspiration from the Japanese culture, and I was wondering, if you draw inspirations from other culture, whether it's necessary to actually move to that location to draw inspiration from that culture. And if you plan to move again in the future, I highly recommend moving to Japan. If you are, you know, seriously to anyone, if you're a young college student and you have a chance to do a study abroad, you just got to go to Japan. My other favorite, which I haven't been to, but I've always wanted to go, and I put this on my blog and I'll be going in August, is India. And I've always, you know, since I've been a student of Zen Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism, it still has its roots in India. And I've always just been fascinated. I mean, when you go to a place that's so completely different that just sort of. It blows your mind. And now I never would have to tell you the truth. I loved working for Apple, but I wasn't sort of stimulated enough because I'm from America, and when I living in Asia, it's just everything's different and you notice things. You would be a foreign national in a foreign country. You notice things that other people don't. Right. I'm sure foreigners come here, foreign nationals come here and notice things. We don't usually talk about individualism here. Isn't it great? We're all individualistic. We don't do that. Right. Yee haw. Sorry. Apologies to Jon Stewart. Yes, I'm sorry.

Okay, finally, my question is, sometimes you're up there and you don't know where to put your hands or kind of, how do you use your body to emphasize something? I mean, I'm using.

See you using your hands quite often, you be yourself. If you're. I mean, again, if you're Steve Ballmer, then be Steve Ballmer. That's what works for him. So I think you can't be mechanical. You can't fake it. And, you know, you've seen boring presentations. But most people are not boring, right? I mean, they date, you know, they're getting along with somebody. Right? So it can't be. 99% of presentations suck, according to Guy in the forward. But 99% of people are not boring or, you know, or unintelligent. They can't be. So we get up here, we get nervous. It's very unnatural to give a presentation, right? Which probably in our brain stem is to get in the crowd, get in the middle, and go with the Group so that the lions can't attack us. Right. I mean, it's a very rare breed of person that can stand up and do it. Well, I don't think it comes naturally to anyone. Jobs is great at it, but he practices a lot. And there's a level. There's always a level of nerves. Even I, of course, I have it right now. It's much. I'm much less sort of, you know, intense if I'm just sitting down with a few people. So just do what comes naturally. I tend to do this a lot. Get your hands out of your pockets. You know, the old thing, that would help, but it can't be mechanical. Right. We have great market share increase. Right, Right. Our problems are not small, they are large. I mean, that becomes a little silly. So don't worry about it. That's what I'm saying. Just be natural. Get a coach. You have videos. Do a presentation. Have someone take a video. You don't even need a coach. Once you see it, you're like, what am I doing? Right. Seriously. I learned how to play tennis better, not by getting a coach, but by videotaping myself once. And then I saw, well, why is your butt up in the air? Why are you turning that? You know, I know what to do. So just see yourself and then you'll notice. Except that Bill Gates is criticized for using his hand. I know. You know, I do. I really like Bill Gates, especially when he's not so much for the software he developed, but for what he's doing now with his foundation. And. And I think he's an amazing person, obviously. And I wish someone would work with him. His visuals are getting better. I think they're getting that message. If you saw him at. I forget what it was in January, whatever that one was, but very simple visuals. But, yes, there's that sort of Mr. Burns thing, you know, going here. Excellent, Smithers. Right. So there are little things, and I'm sure I have habits. We all have little habits that the coach, you know, can help us with. That is one little thing. What do you do with your hands? This is not good. You're cold or you're negative. Right. Or I'm mad. So hands in pocket. They say not to do that. I say, just relax, be yourself. Thank you. Is that it? Thank you. Thanks.