Reviewing the SlideShare financial crisis presentation contest winners

The winners of the SlideShare presentation contest about the financial crisis were announced a few days ago.

• My general point about SlideShare-style presentations being great for online viewing but not always the best solution for live audiences still stands.

• The content of the winning presentation is not surprising, most of us will have picked up the messages from the newspaper. It is a shame that none of the winners used visualization of data from original analysis to give us a really new insight in the subject matter.

• It is great to see how contests like these can spark so much creativity in people submitting their work. 

Having said that, let's discuss the graphical execution of the winners:

The winner:

The Financial Crisis: an Historical Perspective

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: contest mortgage)

I like this presentation, especially the use of images (the historical paintings look great, the falling knife almost makes you feel the pain in your own hands.)

Number 2:

The crisis 101 (US economy 2008) - put simple serie

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: consumer banks)

Not judging the content here, I like the execution of this presentation less. The link between the text and the images is not that strong. 

Number 3:

Cooking up an International Global Finance

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: finance global)

UPDATED. While I generally do not like simple graphics like clip art in presentations, this presentation uses this technique beautifully. All graphics are custom-made. They have a consistent style, and the "simplistic" graphics provide a good tongue-in-cheek contrast to the really complicated subject matter and the whole thing hangs together well.

Chart concept - using cinematic effects to provoke real audience emotions using PowerPoint

A combination of big (sometimes huge) projector screens and high-quality images creates an opportunity for (PowerPoint) presenters to enter the arena of the movie director to provoke real emotions in the audience.

• A bright light or a beaming sun beaming right at us, although there is no risk of dammage to our eyes we intuitively squint
• A sudden pop up and disapearing of a big spider ("booh", never used this one though)
• A gun pointing at the audience (or less dramatic: a remote control zapping you away)
• Large close-up of eyes (beautiful, innocent, scary)
• Nails and a blackboard (makes you feel the chart)
• Looking down a roller coaster track, training coming at you, base baller about to hit a ball
• The list can go on

Image purchased from iStockPhoto.

Great visualization of people connecting on Facebook

See the video here. Full details in the original post on TechCrunch. Update: if you like these type of visualizations, Mashable has a whole stack of them, including videos, in this post.

McKinsey interviews Gartner CFO on communicating with investors

Presentations to analysts and investors are very important for publicly traded companies: they have a direct impact on the share price.

In this interview for the McKinsey Quarterly, Gartner CFO Christopher Lafond lays out his investor relations strategy:

• Segment and prioritize investors you want to talk to (in his case funds that have a long-term interest in Gartner, and do their homework to understand the fundamentals of the business)
• Focus on a very limited number of performance metrics, not shying away from internal, operational metrics that are usually only discussed by management
• Educate investors why these are important

Note: (free) registration to the McKinsey Quarterly might be required to read this article.

A "Google Chrome-style" comic novel about the pioneer behind the laptop

Steve Hamm is a writer for Business Week who is about to publish a new book: The Race for Perfect: Inside the Quest to Design the Ultimate Portable Computer

Joe Lambert produced a graphic/comic version of chapter 4 of the book, about the development of the laptop and the contributions of Alan Kay, one of the main visionaries of mobile computing. Alan worked on a number of very important innovations: the graphical user interface and the mouse, the portable PCs, and the PDA just to name a few.

I think that the illustrations are beautiful, and the story is really interesting. However unlike the case of Google Chrome, I do not think that the comic format does a lot to add to delivering the message of this book. Neither Joseph Lambert nor Steve Hamm are to blame (on the contrary the art work and the story are great). The Google Chrome book confirms that comic graphics can do a great job of explaining complex technology. A historical time line simply leaves less room for creative expression. For more about Alan Kay and his ideas see this video at TED, the source of my inspiration for this blog post.

Sending files up to 2 GB - yousendit adds Microsoft Office plugin

Big PowerPoint files are becoming an increasingly big problem. Yousendit is a convenient service that allows you to send very large files. You upload a file to the server, the recipient receives an email with a link to download it. FTP without the hassle.

Today, yousendit launched a plugin for Microsoft Office. It's the same functionality that the web site offers, but now with a tighter integration into Excel, PowerPoint and Word.

Be aware of security issues though. If you use the standard transfer mode, anyone "guessing" the download URL can get to your file. Secure sending options are available but are not free of charge.

You don't have to be dyslexic to benefit from these presentation design guidelines

Reading through a web site with guidelines for designing web pages for dyslexic users, I realized how valuable these recommendations can be for any audience, not just people with this condition. 

This is a PowerPoint presentation design guide 101:

• Choose a big, san-serif font
• Avoid capitalization
• Apply a calm background, no watermarks
• Don't righ-justify text
• Minimize use of italics
• Keep things short, write in a simple style
• Use bullets (if you have to), don't write proze
• Refer to the reader as "you"
• Stick to narrow columns, text lines
• Use pictures

A new source of vintage images: LIFE (now hosted by Google)

Google has just put the massive archive of images from LIFE magazine online (Google blog post). The majority of which never made it to print. Google will ultimately scan in the entire collection of about 10 million images. Large-format print can be purchased.

Another example of how online media is unlocking the "long tail" of historical information.

This opens up a great new source of vintage images for use in PowerPoint presentations. They are very hard to find (stock image sites hardly list them).

The Parisians

Wide range of facial expressions on children at puppet show - The moment the dragon is slain, Guignol puppet show, Parc de Montsouris, Paris, 1963. Photographer: Alfred Eisenstaedt

I like using vintages images:

• Non-disturbing, neutral B&W colors
• Iconic images that have become part of our common culture can get a point across quickly
• It provides a nice conctrast, especially when used in presentations on high-tech subjects
• There are some good examples of concepts that can be explained using vintage images: i.e., the old grocery counter is a much better visualization than a cliche image of a smiling call center rep.
• Vintage images can get across raw emotion, like the image of the children above, much better than searching a stock image site for "happy children"

To search images from the LIFE archive, simply add "source:life" in your Google Images search bar (example: search results for Picasso)

Seth Godin on "Blah, blah, blah, blah..."

No audience member [...] has ever said, "it was exciting, useful and insightful but far too short."

Read the full (short) post.

Great visual - you can almost feel the headache

I am adding adgoodness to my blog roll. This is another great find.

Data visualization - correlating 2008 election and 1860 cotton production

The issue of race and the 2008 U.S. presidential election sparks big discussions everywhere, I am staying out of this here. This blog is not about politics. From a presentation point of view, the election offers some interesting data visualization opportunities. Maps can be powerful presentation tools. Via strange maps, which also has a chart overlaying the 2 maps. I actually think that visually, leaving the 2 charts separate looks better, keepin the ancient look and feel of the 1860 map intact.

Nokia E71 - great phone, screen graphics could be more "Zen"

My wife had to swap her mobile phone because my 2 year old son decided to empty a bottle of water on her previous one. These things happen. The new phone is a Nokia E71. Phone reviews are a bit out of the scope of this site (it is a great phone by the way), but I can comment on the graphics of the user interface.

Nokia could have done so much better:

• Like almost all mobiles, there is a busy wall paper crowding the display
• Overly sophisticated icons with random colors
• Different font (sizes), poorly aligned.

Mobile phone screens can also benefit from a "Zen" make-over to transform them into calmer and more minimalist user interfaces

PowerPoint and mobile phone interfaces are the same: the fact that you can make that sophisticated watermark background does not mean you have to use it!