The bulletless presentation

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Podcasting 101 title slide

I resolved for my recent podcasting presentation at the TIES Conference to avoid bullet points entirely in my Keynote slides. I was motivated in part by some reading I’ve been doing at Presentation Zen, a blog devoted “professional presentation design.” Two posts in particular, “Gates, Jobs, & the Zen aesthetic” and “The ‘Lessig Method’ of presentation,” were particularly inspirational. I didn’t take it to the “Lessig” extreme (although I admire it), but it did end up being more “visual” than a typical presentation.

I couldn’t have done made it work as easily without iStockPhoto and the Creative Commons search at Flickr. I purchased a couple photos from iStockPhoto for $2 each which is much less than typical stock photo prices. The real gold mine was Flickr, however. I found half a dozen great photos licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that illustrated my talk beautifully. I simply added a small photo credit to each one and used them in full confidence that I was not violating copyright in any way. (Have I mentioned how much I like Creative Commons in the last week or so? I guess I just did.) :-)

I’m going to continue in this presentation mode for a while. It’s quite a nice change from the ordinary.

ties2005, istockphoto, creative commons, flickr, lawrence lessig, presentation design

8 thoughts on “The bulletless presentation”

  2. They only captured the first 20 minutes or so. I think they’re planning to put it online somewhere, but I’m not sure where yet. I’ll let you know.

  3. So… Are you going to put the Keynote presentation online? I’d love to see what you did with it. (Yes, without the audio it’s not the same…)

  5. Tim, I thought this was pretty interesting stuff. I’ve been digging deep into the two Presentation Zen links you gave. As I watched Dick Hardt’s presentation on Identity 2.0 (http://www.identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/), I was struck by how planned and organized this presentation style has to be. There’s no room for deviation during the presentation, and the planning and slide timing behind this is awfully complex. It’s definitely slick – it just may be more work than most folks have time for. I’ll have to keep thinking about this, and perhaps give it a try (although the thought of having hundreds of PowerPoint slides, rather than 5 to 8, for a 15-minute presentation seems awfully daunting). I need to think also about the idea of handouts – what would you give folks to help them anchor what you’re speaking about? Since at least half of the presentation is visual (what’s on the screen), not oral (what the speaker is saying), anyone who looks down, even for a few seconds, to write or type notes / thoughts misses quite a bit. Provocative stuff – thanks for sharing.

  6. Scott, I agree about the extra complexity. I never been one to deliver a talk from a script, but with visuals like the ones in Lessig’s and Hardt’s talks you don’t have much choice. There’s certainly a middle ground (“Lessig-lite” perhaps?) with few slides, but emphasizing the visual elements more than a typical bullet-ridden PowerPoint presentation usually does.

    I would wholeheartedly recommend spending some time at Edward Tufte’s site. (I think you’re already aware of his work if I’m not mistaken, Scott.) I was probably going more for a Tufte-esque presentation at TIES than I was a fast-paced Lessig one.

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