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It took a bit of time, but I finally included a meme in an actual presentation…
I will add this chart to the SlideMagic slide library, search for “meme” in the app and it will show up for your to use. It is tempting to try to adjust the image, for example by removing the background, but the color scheme is actually an integral part of the visual concept. For people who are not familiar with this, some background on Drakeposting.
This is an interesting video in which a bass player (Cici) explains how she copes with memorizing dozens of (cover) songs that she has not heard before in a short period of time. The lessons here can be applied to any performance, including a presentation.
The key is the memory shortcut: compressing lots of information into something short and “catchy” that is much more easy to remember than the individual bits and pieces. Examples:
Leaving political viewpoints aside, Obama did a great speech yesterday. This short clip starts about 30 minutes into a 1 hour speech.
It is tricky to understand this stacked column chart I found here on Twitter, given the negative, below the horizontal axis boxes.
After a bit of studying, I get it (I think). Categories below the axis show a decline. But what does the height of the column above 0 represent, and the height of the total column (the sum of the absolute values of all the boxes).
Eventually, you will figure it out, but “eventually” takes too much time to put in a live presentation.
I grabbed this screenshot of the evolution of dashboard design in Mercedes cars (can’t find the source anymore). I think the fake “analogue” looking displays do not look good at all in modern cars. On top of that, information that you don’t always need is screaming at you. combined with shiny interior materials and LED lighting makes the whole cabin look cheap. It does not look good today, for but will for sure age pretty poorly.
(The first one though would look a lot better without the wooden background though).
A new version of SlideMagic is deployed, and should automatically install. This version includes security patches, and a slightly less strong background color difference between the main slide and the explanation box view.
The explanation box is one of 4 views of SlideMagic:
The text in the side panel stays saved in the file even if you go to another view, so you can decide when you want to show it, and when to hide (for example in a live presentation).
Presentation software like PowerPoint or SlideMagic have 2 modes: one for slide editing, and one for showing the presentation to an audience. In video calls, I often see the presenter leaving the presentation in edit mode. The slide is visible, but with all the edit controls around, plus grid lines and other markings. On the side is a list of thumbnails of all the slides in the presentation. For the presenter, this can be handy. She knows the deck in and out and can quickly jump around the slides.
For the audience it is confusing.
In SlideMagic, presentation view creates 2 separate windows: one for the slide to be shown to the audience, one with the controls for the presenter. So in Zoom, or other video conference tools, you can share just the slide, while staying in full control of the presentation in a window that is not visible to the audience.
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:
Guess which company scored higher on credibility.
A quick make over of a chart that flew by on Twitter, explaining differences in GDP / capital between France and the US.
In SlideMagic, it is very easy to replace tabular data in bar charts. I have added [this slide](
) to the SlideMagic slide library, search for ‘GDP’ in the app and it will show up for you use in your own presentation.The productivity proximity between US and various EU countries and the difference in GDPs per capita is explained by the social choice of fewer worked hours, longer vacations, demography and labour market features, as illustrated in the slide below for France and the US (2021).1/ https://t.co/kffwt7VWLE pic.twitter.com/rvIi0sxokC
— Vitor Constâncio (@VMRConstancio) October 18, 2022