The Professor's Notes

I have been a proponent of the “Presentation 2.0″ style as a generic term and concept since attending the PodCamp Pittsburgh 2 in 2007.  In that PodCamp we heard from Chris Brogan who reminded us that the power of the presentation slides was to emphasize what the speaker was saying, not to take your attention off the speaker.

We don’t like PowerPoint and we don’t like presentations.  But as much as we want to blame the tool we find we cannot leave this crutch behind.  Perhaps it is because we do not see it as a tool that assists in our delivering content but rather as a surrogate, a stand-in,  so that we aren’t the ones being observed, but rather it is our slides.  Too often we expect (or are required) to have our presentations “stand alone” or worse “speak for themselves” (I say worse, because when given this mission it rarely actually means including the voice of the presenter, but rather that the written words must contain all the thoughts.)  Yes, we cannot leave the world of wordy slides.

Chris Brogan at the time reminded us of the importance of “big pictures” (real images) that convey the emotion, or the sense of the topic discussed, but that we as the speaker should deliver the content.  He also shared that we should remember that presentations are about the audience and our connecting with the audience.  If we are to connect, we cannot have them getting lost in reading the words (the many, many, often forced to be tiny, words…) on the screen.

Here is another take on just that very thing:

So my question for you is this:  What sort of presentation do you prefer? Do you want all the information laid out before you in verbose slides, ensuring you have all the information at your fingertips for later, or are you instead a person who learns best by listening and asborbing?

Leave your comments, or tweet me @SCMProfessor

PowerPoint.  Yup.  We love to hate it.  Probably because we have to use it.  Sure, there’s Keynote, but that is limited to the MacOS and the iOS folks.  So what about those that want to work in a  more “open” or “cloud based” world?

Let me highlight a few tools that have been developed to (supposedly) make presentation development easier (or catchier, or “better” … ).  The first is “SlideRocket.’  SlideRocket is a presentation tool that lets you develop and share your presentations through a web based platform. I have given it a few run-throughs in the limited/free online version, as well as stepped through the tutorial, and I find that it generally helps develop solid, even “attractive” presentations.

The second tool is “Impress” that goes with the OpenOffice Suite.  While this tool is not “cloud based” it is provided as part of the open sourced suite and has a comprehensive feature set, including being able to import and export PowerPoint presentations.

The third and final tool is Google Docs Presentation.  This is a relatively light-weight presentation development package, but it has enough features to get your point across, and do it through the cloud using a  web-based interface.  Perhaps the best feature of this (and really any Google Docs tool) is the opportunity to collaborate on the development of the document. Being able to watch and interact with the document and my collaborators in near-real-time is quite an effective, and efficient, way of moving any idea forward.

These are just a few of the possible alternatives. I would love to hear what YOU think are possible PowerPoint stand-ins. Comment here, or tweet me. I am @SCMProfessor

I am once again about to talk at a conference about Twitter.  In this instance, I am asked to sit on a panel and discuss Twitter in the context of “Social Media an Exploration of its impact on Both the IMC ^{Context and Content” Please, read and share your feedback.}

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Twitter has proven itself to be an amazingly useful tool.  Remarkable considering it was only introduced at SXSW in 2007.  We have seen Twitter move from a discussion about “what I had for lunch”, into a tool used by people daily to find topics of interest to them usually because their friends view them to be interesting as well.  And recently-well, we have seen Twitter used as a tool for social and political change.

This is what’s most interesting about twitter.  Twitter is not one thing.  It’s not even a couple of things.  Twitter is an amorphic tool, that is shaped by the way each and every user will use that tool.  Individuals use twitter to share information or thoughts for the day.  Corporations use twitter to monitor what people are saying about their product and in the case of Comcast stepping in and fixing problems customers are having.  Some corporations are even using twitter as a marketing tool offering free products through drawings.  Many even blend twitter with face book to create a more socially aware, new media presence.

Herein lies the challenge: there is no quote user end quote of twitter.  There is no specific use case of twitter.  Where many predicted the death of twitter once britney spears and Ashton kutcher arrived we have seen twitter continue to thrive and grow.  What these doomsayers failed to understand is that while the arrival of these celebreties to Twitter may have removed them from the “most followed” ranks of Twitter, people were not forced to follow these people.

The magic of twitter is that we choose the people we follow.  We can even block the people we wish to have not follow us (sort of).  We create our own tribes as Seth Godin would say.  I personally have several tribes if you will that I view as my friends, or people I follow, on Twitter.

Here are my tribes:

1. Educators
2. Real people who use technology
3. Supply chain people
4. Family and friends
5. People who discuss politics (on all sides of an issue)

So what lessons can we take from this as marketing people looking at twitter?  I think you can walk away from twitter knowing that everyone there are seeks information that is of value to them.  Not everyone uses twitter in the same way, but everyone is there to gain value for themselves.  For some the value comes in being able to share information they have, while for others the value is simply seeing what people they respect are thinking on specific topics.  These range from political viewpoints, to the latest cool tech application, to experiences as a diabetic or even sharing a favorite restaurant.  We need to find the value that we provide to those who want to follow us.  What would make someone want to follow me on twitter, and how can I deliver that to them?

So as we step forward I suggest we keep in mind my following “main points of twitter”:

1. People follow you on twitter-so while it is transmit not everyone will receive
2. People follow you because you do or say something of interest.  Stay on topic!
3. Provide value in your tweets.  Give information, insights, links, or all of the above.
4. The twitter stream is just that-and it flows past people.  Don’t expect them to see everything you say
5. You can reach people that are not following you when engaging in popular topics.  Watch the hash tags.
6. Don’t hijack a hash tag!  Be relevant.

It’s TAX TIME again, and  now is the time we often think about making Charitable donations (to help with NEXT year.)  It’s funny how that works, right?

You might think about donating your computer to a school, or other charity. And when you do, you know the conventional advice, right? “Be sure to completely wipe your hard drive.”

(More after the break!) Read the rest of this entry »