Side panels in separator slides

The slide panel is a way to add the story of the slide in a few paragraphs, so people can understand things if you are not there to present. It is important to keep the text in this box as text, resist the temptation to create bullet points, or short messages which will compete with the slide design.

On a separator, the box might look odd at first sight. But it is a consistent look. In side panel mode, the separator is the 'illustration' of the text on the right. Include explanation text on separator slides to introduce the next section of your presentation, exactly as you would in a live situation.

See the example below:

If you switch to another view mode, the side panel will disappear, but the app keeps the text, so you can switch them back on at a later stage.

Placeholders for images with copy right in SlideMagic

All the images and icons that are available in SlideMagic are royalty free, without copy right. For some memes that I have been adding recently, there are copyright issues. To solve it, I added a giant water mark over the image so you can replace it with your own. This placeholder is useful thought to get the positioning of boxes right.

You can download the slide template for the distracted boyfriend meme online, but it is even simpler to search for “distracted” and get a number of layout suggestions directly in the app.

SlideMagic Pro users (free for students) can convert slides in the SlideMagic app to PowerPoint.

Agario-style

This amazing visualization shows the history of Europe and the coming and going of various empires in the style of the Agario video game, where bubbles collide and merge.

This video was made using Adobe After Effects. In theory you could do something like this in PowerPoint: a slide for every year with animations and then loop the whole thing. It is a lot of work though.

Nudging the center

The people you are most likely to convince to change their mind, are the ones who are in the center. It is virtually impossible to argue successfully with people who sit at the far end of the spectrum, basically telling them that everything they believe in is wrong.

Hardcore Democrats or Republicans never vote for the other side, so independent voters are the ones who actually decide who’s in charge!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 7, 2022

So this Tweet is a smart communication strategy. Whether he is right and/or you agree with him, I leave up to you.

Mismatch

I am working on a deck for 9xchange (my other venture) at the moment, and I will post some concepts that I am using here on the blog (and add them to the SlideMagic library as well). Today, a nice zipper image to show some kind of disconnect between 2 things.

Search for “zipper” in the SlideMagic app and you can use this chart in your own presentations.

First meme in a deck

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.

Memorizing things

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:

• Grouping individual notes into shapes on the fretboard of a bass guitar

• Inventing an unusual description for the sound of a song (‘the carnival song’)

• Quick reminders of where songs are unusual, i.e., a break in a completely different musical style

• Reminders that are critical for the performance and hard to cover up: i.e., the whole bands needs to stop exactly at the same time on bar 64, or your instrument is actually starting the song solo, without the musical reference of the band to help you along.

The basics

Leaving political viewpoints aside, Obama did a great speech yesterday. This short clip starts about 30 minutes into a 1 hour speech.

Democrats are going giddy over this clip. Why? This is good campaigning, but no more. It's basic stuff: Clarifying what's at stake, appealing to personal experience, the rhetorical power of repetition.

Democrats' astonishment at basic rhetorical competence is what's astonishing. https://t.co/YSJMInEb2V

— Haviv Rettig Gur (@havivrettiggur) October 30, 2022

Failing the 10 second test

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.

Car dashboards

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).

SlideMagic 2.6.41

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:

1. Narrow 4 x 3 aspect ratio

2. Wide 16 x9 aspect ratio

3. Title on the side

4. Explanation box view, which creates space for an extra text box where you can enter a few paragraphs to explain a slide in case you send the deck without being present yourself.

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).

Skipping the presenter mode

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.

• The slide in edit mode looks unfinished.

• Often the thumbnails on the left are so big that you could actually read them, distracting attention away from the main slide.

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.

Brain variables

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.

Dismissing the competition

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:

• Company A about B: ‘People who want something cheap, pick them” [In a second call I found out they are not cheaper]

• Company B about A: A pretty accurate description of pros and cons of each, a good prediction of how company A would pitch, and why in my situation, company B is the better choice.

Guess which company scored higher on credibility.

Chart template for a macro economic tree

A quick make over of a chart that flew by on Twitter, explaining differences in GDP / capital between France and the US.

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

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.

"Our industry speaks like that"

Each industry has its own jargon, the way people like us say things. If you are sitting in a meeting and trying to pitch your services as a senior management consultant or lawyer, lowering your voice and using the jargon will show that you are one of them.

But being one of them is only one part of the pitch. Being understood is the other one. And for this purpose, it is probably better to keep things human. Especially if you do not have a lot of time: the cover email of a pitch deck, the description paragraph of a conference panel.

Be understood first, then worry about blending in.

Back

There are many holidays in Tel Aviv in the autumn, and this year they lined up to form more or less one big break. (There are years where they fall exactly on weekends). I am back at work and hope to pick my posts soon.

Executive summary degradation

Hundred pages is a bit long, let’s add an executive summary

Hmm, this chart should go in here as well, and this, and this, and this one (that analysis took a long time)

The summary needs some structure, let’s add tracker pages

Wait, is this thing we are actually saying, let’s change the recommendations in the summary

Shouldn’t we change the full document as well?

Maybe the summary has become the document, but it is a bit long…

Let’s add a summary

Writing it down

Summary presentations of strategy projects are usually a ‘greatest hits’ of slides that were produced during the project. Copy, paste, shuffle, done.

Project working document slides are not the same as final results communication slides.

It can be good practice to write out the story behind your conclusions on 1 page. Don’t summarize the analytical work, but explain why the action your recommend is the smart one. Now go back to your slide pile. You might find that not all subjects need to be covered, not every subject needs a slide, and that the order in which you tell your story might be different from the contents page of the project working document.

Grounded in reality

Economic forecasting models can get very complicated and it is easy to lose touch with reality. Assumption on assumption gets added, new market segments come in, then your manager asks you to bump up that growth by 5% per year.

Your survival? Take the current year as a starting point, and break down your total market in actual physical drivers. Then check whether these same drivers still make sense 10 years later.

Let’s take the example of the coffee market. $ spend by customer segment that growth at a certain rate over time are abstract concepts. Cups, liters, people, price per cup are things you can touch and relate to. If you think there is a premium market segment that pays double the price per liter, then you need to back out the opposite segment that pays a lot less to get back to the average. Does that reverse engineered price make sense? If the coffee market doubles, but people pay the same price, and the population isn’t really growing, where do these liters come from?

1. Break down today’s total market into factors you can touch

2. Forecast these factors (not the total numbers)

3. Build up the total market from these factors

4. Sanity check and go back to 1

In most cases, you will discover that only a factors really make the difference. And if you keep yourself grounded to reality, you can pretty much include any breakdown, split, scenario, as long as the totals and averages stay the way they were.