SlideMagic Blog

The current crisis in Israel (this Economist article sums things up pretty accurately) is waking up a whole group of the population that until now was not really involved in politics. People start posting politically charged messages on LinkedIn and other social media platforms that they used only for work or family updates. As a result, things can get out of control quickly, with heated debates turning up in the comments. Some thoughts.

• The people you are most likely to convince are the ones in the center. A die hard believer in an extreme position will never change her mind. So write for the people who might be sitting on the fence.
• Aggressive images, rude language, calling people stupid, is unlikely to work. It confirms stereotypes of you being unreasonable. “Hmm, that person just called me an idiot, maybe she is right, and I should change my mind / upgrade my intellectual capabilities” Nope.
• Write your post with a real person in mind, a friend who might disagree with you, but is not unreasonable. What would you tell her? What are her beliefs?
• When you get flaming comments back, count to 10, and either ignore, or post a polite reply. “Everyone has the right to their own opinion”. Maybe correct a fact that was wrong. As a result, the aggressive heckler will look bad, not you. And remember, you are not replying to the heckler to convince her that she is wrong, you are writing to other people who could be more reasonable and are glancing over the comments.

Israel is going through a major political crisis now that has little to do with the traditional conflict here that usually makes headlines around the world. As a result, I have been attending a number of large rallies pretty much for the first time in my life, to try to prevent the current government from making the Supreme Court and legal system subordinate to the parliament with a simple 51% majority vote, effectively ending the separation of power that is crucial for a democracy to function properly.

Some lessons here when it comes to public speaking at these events with 100,000 attending:

• Your script is basically a list of sound bites, paragraphs of tension / release. Build up tension one way with a problem, then provide release with a punch line. There is very little room for sophisticated story lines.
• Don’t be afraid to put really, really long pauses in between, to get the crowd to calm down.
• Make sure your punch line is short and does not get washed out by the noise of the crowd.
• Balance your voice volume. If you are at the top of your voice all the time, you can no longer add extra drama to the punch line. (Yes, some people have a microphone voice with lots of lower frequencies, giving them an unfair advantage).
• Use the crowd creatively. “Raise your hand if you…” “Turn on the flashlight of your mobile phone if you…”

Most of the people in these rallies follow the speaker on giant screens. In between speakers, video clips are shown with a mix of regular footage and “slides”, usually big text messages that come in and out with animations.

Adhoc brainstorm meetings are very hard to manage. If you have to discuss a complex issue, it might be worth to prepare and rehearse your white board sketch before entering the room.

On its own, a white board (or a black board at school) is not very meaningful. A bunch of words and drawings out of context. For the person who sat through the meeting, the board is very meaningful. Every scribble on a specific location on the board is a visual anchor for the entire rich discussion that was held about it.

So rather than prepare a big slide deck, maybe you should prepare your white board. Where do you put what. How do you connect elements. The whiteboard gives you the perfect excuse not to make perfect drawings. Try 3, 4, 5, or even more versions until you are left with one you like.

Most people visit ChatGPT, create an account, type in something, are amazed by the results, and then move on. But how could you actually use it for real?

One obvious use case is “homework cheating”: copy-paste entire pieces of text to save time and effort. But the results will still be a bit impersonal. (I suspect that in future versions of the program, you could feed it your own writing style so that the bot adjusts to you personally, the back archive of my blog since 2008 would be great for that :-))

But there are a few others:

• The bot answer might be a great way to get a basic structure/setup for your text. You copy they layout of the argument to start, but then fill in the paragraphs with your own language.
• The algorithm can create a check list to see whether you covered everything that should be covered
• ChatGPT can be better than Google to get tutorials or “how to” articles. At the moment the pages that are best optimized for search engines float to the top. This might not always be the best articles. ChatGPT has read them all and will summarize them for you.
• The software can be a great source of examples or analogies that you would not have thought of.

“Google it” is now an essential part of writing pretty much anything. “ChatGPT it” will have to be added to the list.

CONFESSION: Yesterday’s post about the use of humor in presentations was a complete homework cheat…

The people you are most likely to convince to change their mind, are the ones who are in the center. It is virtually impossible to argue successfully with people who sit at the far end of the spectrum, basically telling them that everything they believe in is wrong.

So this Tweet is a smart communication strategy. Whether he is right and/or you agree with him, I leave up to you.

In computer programming (and math), things are stored in variables. A variable has a name and can point to pretty much anything. A numerical value, a user, another piece of code, a device, a map, an image library.

The variable is a little memory shortcut to access information. In the world of presentations, our brain works with variables as well. Visual symbols that are a shortcut to a fragment of a story.

Used in a bad way. After you have given a presentation dozens of times, the slides in your deck become ‘variables’. The page becomes a trigger for you to deliver a piece of the story. It does not really matter what the slide actually says. The audience who sees this for the first time however, misses this context.

Used in a good way. When brainstorming a story line, I often write down pieces of my store on stickers. Each sticker contains a fairly cryptic description. “The lazy point”. “Flipping is not possible”. Meaningless to anyone but me. For me however, it is a very condensed way of putting a label on a section of my story, and enables me to move things around to try out different story lines quickly.

I tried the above brainstorm a few times in a group: writing very simple text bullets in an email and move things around. The other members of the group missed the context, started editing the bullets into full sentences, discuss these, and before you know it, you have a 5 page document that is worse than the original you wanted to improve.

If you are pitching someone who is making a choice between you and your competitors, chances are high that that person in the end will have a better understanding of the competition than you, so be careful when describing them.

I am evaluating some SAAS vendors and over the past week I asked two companies to give their perspective on each other:

• Company A about B: ‘People who want something cheap, pick them” [In a second call I found out they are not cheaper]
• Company B about A: A pretty accurate description of pros and cons of each, a good prediction of how company A would pitch, and why in my situation, company B is the better choice.

Guess which company scored higher on credibility.

Each industry has its own jargon, the way people like us say things. If you are sitting in a meeting and trying to pitch your services as a senior management consultant or lawyer, lowering your voice and using the jargon will show that you are one of them.

But being one of them is only one part of the pitch. Being understood is the other one. And for this purpose, it is probably better to keep things human. Especially if you do not have a lot of time: the cover email of a pitch deck, the description paragraph of a conference panel.

Be understood first, then worry about blending in.

Hundred pages is a bit long, let’s add an executive summary

Hmm, this chart should go in here as well, and this, and this, and this one (that analysis took a long time)

The summary needs some structure, let’s add tracker pages

Wait, is this thing we are actually saying, let’s change the recommendations in the summary

Shouldn’t we change the full document as well?

Maybe the summary has become the document, but it is a bit long…

Let’s add a summary

Summary presentations of strategy projects are usually a ‘greatest hits’ of slides that were produced during the project. Copy, paste, shuffle, done.

Project working document slides are not the same as final results communication slides.

It can be good practice to write out the story behind your conclusions on 1 page. Don’t summarize the analytical work, but explain why the action your recommend is the smart one. Now go back to your slide pile. You might find that not all subjects need to be covered, not every subject needs a slide, and that the order in which you tell your story might be different from the contents page of the project working document.