HN Books @HNBooksMonth

Three kickass books I found very helpful in improving my slide-foo and hold the attention of my audience:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596522347/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470632011/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1101980168/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...

If you only have time to go through 1 book, I would recommend Slide:ology.

The only two rules that I think matter are:

1) make the presentation interesting to sit through

2) have something that you are convincing the audience to do, you should be telling them to "do X" not just tell them "about X".

Whether you have page numbers (I don't) or builds (I do) or executive summaries (I don't) is not going to meaningfully add to the chances of your presentation landing.

Structure is key. The "Tell ’em what you’re going to tell ’em; then tell ’em; then tell ’em what you told ’em"[1] method works well.

The Duarte Method's[2] "Big Idea"[3] is a good approach:

> A big idea is that one key message you want to communicate. It contains the impetus that compels the audience to set a new course with a new compass heading.

Presentations without a key message are just somebody standing there and talking at you.

[1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/08/15/tell-em/

[2] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470632011

[3] https://www.duarte.com/presentation-ideas/

⬐ moreati

What is a build? Another word for an animation? Web searches just throw up guides to making a presentation.

Edit: Found it. A build is a type of animation that builds up a slide in multiple steps, e.g. revealing steps of a flow in sequence https://www.techrepublic.com/article/creating-animated-build...

⬐ WWWWH

It’s jargon. I think of it as animations are a subset of builds.

⬐ gav

Builds are ways of trying to avoid the audience reading ahead and getting to the conclusion before you've told the story yourself.

For example, if you were explaining your business plan that had three steps:

    Phase 1: Collect underpants
    Phase 2: ?
    Phase 3: Profit

Your audience isn't going to be giving you their full attention while you walk them through Phase 1, because they've trying to understand the whole process think through it themselves.

Instead a build would use animations or duplicated slides to present this flow:

    Phase 1: Collect underpants. (click)
    Phase 2: ?                   (click)
    Phase 3: Profit              

Now you are controlling the visibility of each step. It's very quick to author: create one slide, duplicate it twice, delete content off those two slides.

The slides should be there to reinforce your point. You shouldn't be showing a slide and then reading over the content.

It's one reason that some of my decks have a lot of slides, some may only be shown for 5-15 seconds.

This 'advice' is a really great re-skin of Nancy Duarte's book Resonate.[1]

Nancy is one of the genius' behind Duarte Designs[2] whose client list includes Steve Jobs and his infamous Apple presentations as well as Al Gore and his 'Inconvenient Truth' presentation.

1. http://www.amazon.com/Resonate-Present-Stories-Transform-Aud... 2. http://www.duarte.com/