- Gmail: emailing a Keynote file as attachment does not work
- Box: file syncing, or sharing a download link does not work
- Dropbox: seems to have fixed the issue.
Has anyone had issues or is it just me?
Keynote with Dropbox/Box/Gmail
The new Keynote creates files that look like a single file on a Mac, but on other machine appear as a folder with multiple files in them. This has implications for online file sharing:
Screenshots are great
Aspect ratios, dots per inch, file formats and conversions, forgetting where you saved that file, these are all problems that are disrupting my creative workflow. More and more I just work with screen shots. If the image looks sharp on my big 27" monitor, I crop it as I want it, and use it in my presentation. It could have been a JPG, a PNG, a web page, a PDF document, a Keynote file, it does not matter. CMD-SHIFT-4- and “click”, done.
The green Mac OSX + button
The behaviour of the green + button at the top left of a window is unpredictable. I found out that option-clicking it will maximise the window to the full screen, every time, completely predictable, at last for non-Apple software (Keynote does not play along).
This has probably all to do with Apple’s full screen mode, the two arrows at the top right side of the screen. I use it rarely because this feature does not work very well with multiple monitors.
This has probably all to do with Apple’s full screen mode, the two arrows at the top right side of the screen. I use it rarely because this feature does not work very well with multiple monitors.
Bunkr presentation design app
The presentation creation and sharing app Bunkr has not appeared on my radar screen until recently. The company raised EUR 1m in a recent fund raising round. In the not too distant future, I am becoming a player in the market myself, so I am watching developments with interest.
I clicked around a little bit in the application and here is my impression. Things I like:
I clicked around a little bit in the application and here is my impression. Things I like:
- Snappy, fast, clean user interface
- Nice intelligent rulers to snap your objects against
- Social technology integration (Disqus comments on slides)
- Online image search integration (Google images, Flickr), but watch those usage rights
- Easy sharing and embedding
- Different objects for titles and paragraphs, not just a text box
- No bullet point template when you create a new slide
My main comment is, is that all PowerPoint alternatives in the market, still stick with the same fundamental approach to slide design and drawing on a computer screen that has been around since the 1980s. And that is the problem I am trying to solve 24/7, and it is not easy...
Confusing Keynote?
Apple is known for making beautiful and easy-to-use software, but I am struggling with the new Keynote, especially with the simple task of colouring shapes, and the text inside them. I always pick the wrong colour box, and need to switch a number of different menus to complete very basic actions.
From a UI design perspective the user interface looks perfectly clean and organised. For power-editing at very high speed, it breaks down. This is the reason that the QWERTY keyboard was invented: the logical thing would have been to make ABCDEF keyboards, at high speed though they are less efficient.
Maybe it is me or is it that “the emperor has no clothes”? I got used to working in a certain way? I am in my mid-40s and my ability to learn new UIs slows down? I am not a typical Keynote user and it works perfectly fine for everyone else?
From a UI design perspective the user interface looks perfectly clean and organised. For power-editing at very high speed, it breaks down. This is the reason that the QWERTY keyboard was invented: the logical thing would have been to make ABCDEF keyboards, at high speed though they are less efficient.
Maybe it is me or is it that “the emperor has no clothes”? I got used to working in a certain way? I am in my mid-40s and my ability to learn new UIs slows down? I am not a typical Keynote user and it works perfectly fine for everyone else?
Promoting a client: SCiO
[Off topic] One of my clients is running a Kickstarter campaign to fund their project: SCiO reads the chemical make-up of materials. It is a non-intrusive, no-touch optical sensor that connects to your smartphone. You can analyse your food (what is in it?, is it fresh?), medicines, hand bags (is it real leather?), etc. With almost $1.5m in backing it is now one of the top 40 funded projects ever on Kickstarter. Check it out.
Polite VC feedback
A venture capitalist needs to turn down people all the time. Sometimes decisions are scientific, most of the times they are not. Sometimes they are made after extensive deliberations, most of the time in the first minutes of meeting you. It can be that they do not like the sector, do not believe in the idea, do not like you, have a bad day, do not believe that you can pull it of, anything.
When you ask them for feedback, most of them will not tell you the real story. But, VCs want to be helpful. So, some of them will give constructive feedback about your business or the presentation. Some feedback is helpful, some less so. When they do suggest that you include 5 more breakdowns in the year 5 revenue forecast, they were nice to you in giving you a suggestion, but I very much doubt that if you had included those numbers in your first presentation, she would have changed her mind.
Filter feedback and try to drill down to the real issue.
When you ask them for feedback, most of them will not tell you the real story. But, VCs want to be helpful. So, some of them will give constructive feedback about your business or the presentation. Some feedback is helpful, some less so. When they do suggest that you include 5 more breakdowns in the year 5 revenue forecast, they were nice to you in giving you a suggestion, but I very much doubt that if you had included those numbers in your first presentation, she would have changed her mind.
Filter feedback and try to drill down to the real issue.
Business plan outlines
The Internet is full of business plan/investor pitch outlines (here is a nice one from Sequoia). Use these guidelines as a check list to see whether you covered all the content that investors expect. But do not stick to them too literally. A rigid, generic, structure kills the spontaneity of your specific story. Do not simply copy the sections of the structure and use them as (boring) headlines for your slides, instead write headlines that mean something (The Solution is not very meaningful). The text book approach to TAM calculation might not exactly fit your specific market.
All advice (including the one you will find on this blog) is given to help you. In the end, it is you who makes the call what to use, and what not.
All advice (including the one you will find on this blog) is given to help you. In the end, it is you who makes the call what to use, and what not.
Consolidation chart
This is a nice way to show consolidation in an industry. You can digest the chart in 2 ways: on the podium you see the big picture of consolidating financial institutions, reading in close-up on the screen, you can see the details. The chart could have been better if the width of the arrows would represent the assets under management of the banks, some of these acquisitions were bigger than others.
[Off topic] There is a populist discussion going on in the comments of the original post. I did a lot of strategy work in banking mergers and there are different ways to look at the concentration in an industry. The top level player count is an easy statistic, but what is more relevant is the choice that customers (especially small businesses) have on the ground. How many different bank branches are within a 10km range at any point in the US? If there are 30 banks, but each concentrate on a specific state, then the market looks very competitive, but on the ground, customers face a monopoly. On the other, if all 4 banks are represented in most small villages, the market could be competitive.
[Off topic] There is a populist discussion going on in the comments of the original post. I did a lot of strategy work in banking mergers and there are different ways to look at the concentration in an industry. The top level player count is an easy statistic, but what is more relevant is the choice that customers (especially small businesses) have on the ground. How many different bank branches are within a 10km range at any point in the US? If there are 30 banks, but each concentrate on a specific state, then the market looks very competitive, but on the ground, customers face a monopoly. On the other, if all 4 banks are represented in most small villages, the market could be competitive.
The best briefing
The worst presentation briefing (and as a result most time-consuming presentation design project) is a long deck of slides full of bullet points that have been shortened (hey, we learned about being concise) to such an extend that they have turned into meaningless, generic prose.
The best presentation briefing (and start of a rapid presentation design project): the audio track of a 15 minute video of the actual presentation, the existing slides are not really needed.
The best presentation briefing (and start of a rapid presentation design project): the audio track of a 15 minute video of the actual presentation, the existing slides are not really needed.
Adobe Voice
Adobe launched a new iPad app, Adobe Voice, that enables you to create narrated story videos. There are many apps that help you build animated videos, but this is one of the best I have seen.
- It is incredibly simple to use (unlike most of Adobe software), with a beautiful user interface that breaks the conventional approach to video editing
- It comes with dozens of pre-set story lines: tell what happened, follow a hero’s journey, share a growth moment, promote an idea, etc. Once a story line has been selected, the app prompts the user on each slide with a question to answer (why did the hero set out on his journey?).
- After recording the audio, you can add images, icons, or text
- The app comes with a large library of background templates and sounds.
There is an 80/20 rule here, in 20% of the time, you get your video 80% right. Still if you want to get to 100% perfection (something that you are confident to share professionally), you need to get put in the other 80% of the effort. Prepare your visuals and images, and prepare your script.
It is cute that this app was developed for iPad, but for professional use Adobe should create a browser version as well for desktop. It can have the exact UI (except for resizing of images etc.). It is a bit tricky to extract your creation out of your iPad at the moment, and usually people do not have their image databanks stored on iPad.
But overall, a nice app.
7 time zones away
Yesterday was Independence Day in Israel, so I was not working. One of the costs of working with international suppliers; random holidays. Other drawbacks: time zone differences, and in the case of Israel, a weekend that does not overlap (Friday Saturday here). By the time a west coast client gets in her office by 09:00 on Monday morning, I clocked already two full working days, and will be heading into the weekend 08:00 AM PST Thursday (3 days later).
But the set up has its advantages:
But the set up has its advantages:
- Overnight turnarounds, send of input, and you will see it all done the next morning you come into the office
- A less stressful workflow, once time zones dictate that you need to organise yourself: I have focussed calls with US clients in my afternoon, and have the mornings to do productive work. There is no opportunity for disruptive, live, last minute changes
- Building on that, an end to time consuming meetings. Input gets collected much more efficiently than in calendar disrupting meetings (maker schedule versus manager schedule).
It turns out that there is virtually no difference in the way I interact with a Tel Aviv or a San Francisco client, apart maybe from that first get-to-know-you meeting.
But: clients self select, people that do not like to work remotely with their suppliers probably do not turn out to be my clients. But hey, the world is a big place.
But: clients self select, people that do not like to work remotely with their suppliers probably do not turn out to be my clients. But hey, the world is a big place.
No audience is the same
A company presentation will be used for many different audiences: investors, Board meetings, sales meetings, people who know the company, people who see the company for the first time. There is the temptation to start working on a different presentation for each different audience. Resist.
First of all, I hope your story is the same for all these audiences. I have seen companies that want to change the story depending on who they pitch to. I think it is very hard to build a successful with an inconsistent market positioning and purpose. So let us assume that there is one story.
Even though different audiences require different amounts of detail for specific parts of the story, each audience still needs to put everything in that overarching framework. Leaving things out will break the flow of the story. So, even for highly a knowledgeable scientist audience, I would still put in one (place holder) chart to remind us all of the very basics of a certain medical condition.
From a practical point of view, it is also very difficult to maintain multiple versions of the same presentation. A small correction on page 10, needs to be duplicated everywhere.
The bottom line, I create one overall master deck and sit down for before every presentation meeting to cut down the presentation to size.
First of all, I hope your story is the same for all these audiences. I have seen companies that want to change the story depending on who they pitch to. I think it is very hard to build a successful with an inconsistent market positioning and purpose. So let us assume that there is one story.
Even though different audiences require different amounts of detail for specific parts of the story, each audience still needs to put everything in that overarching framework. Leaving things out will break the flow of the story. So, even for highly a knowledgeable scientist audience, I would still put in one (place holder) chart to remind us all of the very basics of a certain medical condition.
From a practical point of view, it is also very difficult to maintain multiple versions of the same presentation. A small correction on page 10, needs to be duplicated everywhere.
The bottom line, I create one overall master deck and sit down for before every presentation meeting to cut down the presentation to size.
Cartoons need to be huge
Everyone loves reading cartoons, and they can make great content for presentation slides (watch the copy right). But for an audience to get the cartoon, they need to be able to read it. And given the scribbly nature of cartoon fonts, fonts sizes in the bubbles need to be bigger than what usually works on a regular slide (i.e, font 20 or up). If the bubble text has to be 20 points, that means that the overall image needs to be pretty large, often you do not have enough space for it.
When creating slides that are meant for emailing in advance and reading on a screen, font size is less of an issue.
To get the audience to focus on the cartoon, chop out all the usual slide clutter (titles, footers, logos), just a plain page with a cartoon graphic. Cartoons are usually busy graphics.
When creating slides that are meant for emailing in advance and reading on a screen, font size is less of an issue.
To get the audience to focus on the cartoon, chop out all the usual slide clutter (titles, footers, logos), just a plain page with a cartoon graphic. Cartoons are usually busy graphics.
Stories need fewer slides
Many clients come to me with fact-packed presentations full of dense bullet point slides, I recommend to break up each slide into multiple visuals that carry just one message. The result: slide count can go five fold, but the time to present them stays the same.
Some clients come to me with stories (much more effective than dry business content), but again, they are written out in bullet points. Here, I advise to do the opposite: cut the number of slides. Put up a picture of the person, situation, place, you are taking about, and give the story verbally. We can read a fiction book without a single illustration and build a rich visualisation of the story right in your head.
If you need to send this presentation full of stories without you having the ability to explain, you might consider adding a small point 12 text box at the bottom of your image with the slide narrative in full sentences.
Some clients come to me with stories (much more effective than dry business content), but again, they are written out in bullet points. Here, I advise to do the opposite: cut the number of slides. Put up a picture of the person, situation, place, you are taking about, and give the story verbally. We can read a fiction book without a single illustration and build a rich visualisation of the story right in your head.
If you need to send this presentation full of stories without you having the ability to explain, you might consider adding a small point 12 text box at the bottom of your image with the slide narrative in full sentences.
Boring frameworks
If your business has 15 sales channels, it makes sense to review their performance using the same framework: easy to compare, and you make sure that you are covering everything that needs to be covered.
If you work with management consultants, you will notice that they love this approach. You get presented with a framework, asked to fill it out and then - here is the mistake - the 15 analyses are put on the overhead projector for a nice morning-filling channel performance review session.
Analysis slides are not the same as presentation slides. Keep the boring, structured deck as reference material. But, when presenting: try to break the logical structure. Focus on what is different, remarkable, requires attention. And since each of the 15 channels are different, you will find that these stories do not fit into one framework.
If you work with management consultants, you will notice that they love this approach. You get presented with a framework, asked to fill it out and then - here is the mistake - the 15 analyses are put on the overhead projector for a nice morning-filling channel performance review session.
Analysis slides are not the same as presentation slides. Keep the boring, structured deck as reference material. But, when presenting: try to break the logical structure. Focus on what is different, remarkable, requires attention. And since each of the 15 channels are different, you will find that these stories do not fit into one framework.
How did she spot that?
When I just started out as a junior analyst at McKinsey I always wondered how my project manager was able to spot a mistake or inconsistency in my slides in a second. I had been working on this all night (sometimes literally), build all the spreadsheets, mastered all the detail, and in she comes and says after a few seconds: “that number looks wrong to me”, and yes, there was a bug in my analysis.
The secret is take some distance from your work. Look through the slides without connecting them to your Excel sheet. Sales numbers on page 3, should be the same as sales numbers on page 16. A soft drink can is unlikely to cost $50. Simple checks and a cool head.
If you do not check your slides, your manager, or your client will for sure.
The secret is take some distance from your work. Look through the slides without connecting them to your Excel sheet. Sales numbers on page 3, should be the same as sales numbers on page 16. A soft drink can is unlikely to cost $50. Simple checks and a cool head.
If you do not check your slides, your manager, or your client will for sure.
Monthly reports in PPT
Many technology providers need to write some sort of monthly report with statistics for their clients. The bare output from their applications is too rough and does not contain conclusions, insights, follow-up actions and quantified $$$ savings.
So writing this report is a manual process: data gets uploaded into Excel, analysed, put in graphs in then all of this is put into: Microsoft Word.
Microsoft Word (or any word processor) is not a good tool for creating data reports. It does not have the page layout capabilities of Adobe Illustrator (have you ever tried to move a picture or graph around and see the surrounding text move in unpredictable ways?), and it does not have the graph editing capabilities of Excel.
The solution: create you monthly reports in PowerPoint: managing images and data graphs is much easier. And now that you have left word processing territory, why not cut the amount of blah blah text and force yourself to get to the point with fewer words. If people do not feel like reading long, dense presentations, do you think they have the energy to digest dozens of monthly report prose?
First, the type writer left the enterprise world, and now it is the time to say goodbye to the word processor and leave it to authors of books.
So writing this report is a manual process: data gets uploaded into Excel, analysed, put in graphs in then all of this is put into: Microsoft Word.
Microsoft Word (or any word processor) is not a good tool for creating data reports. It does not have the page layout capabilities of Adobe Illustrator (have you ever tried to move a picture or graph around and see the surrounding text move in unpredictable ways?), and it does not have the graph editing capabilities of Excel.
The solution: create you monthly reports in PowerPoint: managing images and data graphs is much easier. And now that you have left word processing territory, why not cut the amount of blah blah text and force yourself to get to the point with fewer words. If people do not feel like reading long, dense presentations, do you think they have the energy to digest dozens of monthly report prose?
First, the type writer left the enterprise world, and now it is the time to say goodbye to the word processor and leave it to authors of books.
Movement in stills
Putting an image smack in the middle of your composition often kills the sense of action in your slide. Experiment with cropping to make things more interesting and dynamic.
Word repetition
Some busy charts can still be highly effective. See the one below about the declining relative income of wealth classes in the US. The repetitive “United States” could have been replaced with something visually calmer, but the current works actually pretty well.
See that this charts presents other information as well (which countries did well), but the viewer is unlikely to take notice (and she does not need to).
The original article in the New York Times can be found here.
See that this charts presents other information as well (which countries did well), but the viewer is unlikely to take notice (and she does not need to).
The original article in the New York Times can be found here.
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