Automated executive summaries

I am starting to think that in the not too distant future, pretty much everyone will toss any piece of business writing into some sort of ChatGPT bot with the question “what does he/she actually want?”, instead of reading the actual text. Too many bullet points, too many long-winded emails, too many lazy writers… Let’s use AI to cut to the chase.

With that, some new sort of SEO (search engine optimization) will emerge. The bots are available to anyone, so you can predict what the bots will say about your text, so people might actually start optimizing/writing text that will trigger the right kind of output by the ChatGPT bot.

But maybe that can be automated as well…

The little details

I was busy doing a chart makeover of the following chart:

global co2 emissions, broken down by income
no surprises here

ht @_hannahritchie pic.twitter.com/2OqPMmUUUp

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) January 20, 2023

To get to this result:

To found out that the columns don’t add up. In case of the left column, it is probably a small rounding error, but on the right, something got lost in translation.

About errors:

• Don’t blame the spreadsheet, you are presenting a chart, not your backup model. If there is a rounding issue, fix it manually (I usually adjust the biggest category, so 43.1 would become 43.0 in this case). I always argue to disconnect your chart from the spreadsheet for your final document.

• Even tiny mistakes can make people doubt all the numbers in your entire deck. Number charts should be simple, and it is a 5 minute investment to quickly check them on a calculator. Worth the investment!

In this case, the hidden calculation error shows the flaw in the type of chart chosen. The stacked column is more intuitive and shows how things are related. For the horizontal bar, I had to think for a second to understand what it means, and I did not instantly spot the error.

The wrong bucket

Last week’s conference is a gold mine for presentation pitch examples.

The receiver of a pitch of a new idea will almost always try to pigeon hole you in a product category they understand well, so it easy to compare the new thing you are offering to the familiar world they are living in.

We were pitching 9xchange that does not really fit very well in anything (yet). One of our audiences was someone in operations and IT. At the very basic level you can think of 9xchange as, well, an IT system. We have a web site, a server, etc. And this triggered all the red flags.

• We currently have already IT implementation projects running

• We already have a system that does […]

• What, we just switched all our employees to system x

• How do I get buy in from department x, y, and z for this, the previous project was a huge pain to get approved

• We are behind schedule in rolling out this system

We did not even get to pitch the core idea behind 9xchange and got stuck in the hassle of running major IT integration projects in very large companies.

This prospect was the wrong person to pitch to, we did not even try.

The last day of meetings

More reflections on last week’s conference. We stayed 6 days, with probably an average of 8 - 10 meetings a day, plus 3 - 5 cocktail receptions each evening. That boils down to hundreds of pitches to hundreds of people, in a time zone that is 10 hours before yours.

Everyone is in the same boat (people who pitch, people at the receiving end of pitches)), and the dynamic of the meetings changes over the course of the conference. Towards the end of the event, people get really tired, and have seen the dance many times. The result: meetings actually get better. The small talk is about the shared experience of the conference. The setting is more informal. People are more flexible to meet outside stuffy hotel rooms, just somewhere in the corner of a hotel lobby. The pitch is much more direct (“ok, what do you want”), feedback is more candid.

But I am not sure there is a way to get to these last days of meetings without having to go through the first ones.

Image by Jeffrey at https://www.flickr.com/photos/48889052497@N01/11342817773

Aligning logos in presentations

Getting logos to line up properly is one of the hardest things in slide design. I have not been able to come up with a set of rules to do it, every time I need to eye ball things to see whether things somehow look right. Below is an example from the 9xchange web site:

There are a number of (conflicting) inputs:

• The middle of the image file

• The typographical baseline of the text

• The middle of the non-text part of the logo

• Tag lines above or below the brand name

Always fine tune logo pages because any automated adjustment will for sure not get it right.

Connect, understand, agree

Thinking back at last week’s pitch meetings in San Francisco:

• Connect. In some meetings there was instant personal connection with the other side, in some meetings completely none of that. Usually, in the first minute of a meeting you know in which category you are.

• Understand. Most people got our idea, some actually did not. Because of different factors: language, the required background and context, and probably our presentation skills

• Agree. Even if people understood everything, some people did not actually agree with us. Fair enough.

You don’t always need a connection for people to understand and/or agree. Getting someone to agree without understanding is a challenge though…

Table makeover: car emissions

SlideMagic is back in 2023 after the holidays, and a very intense, exhausting and drenched JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco (I will share some insights about pitching from this event over the coming days).

The starting point is this table:

What I did:

• Use a stacked column chart instead of a table

• Simplified the data to boil it down to what matters

• Some fiddling to get the car images to a comparable scale (I hope I did it right)

The result is below:

I have added this slide to the SlideMagic template database so you can use it in your own presentations. Search for something like ‘BMW” in the app and it will pop up. Pro subscribers can convert slides like these to PowerPoint or PDF. SlideMagic has a free Pro plan available for students.

Happy 2023!

I am off the grid for a few days (finally had a chance to see the northern lights, see the image below). All the best for 2023!

Showing busy bios on a web site

My venture 9xchange is new in the world of healthcare, wo we need to establish credibility by showing that we have significant experience and are backed by significant people. Here is what I came up with (see the 2 screenshots below).

I put up a dense grid with the bios of the people involved. Below this table, are a few recognizable brands from the world of healthcare. When you hover (or click on a tablet) over a person’s bio, a relevant subset of the brands light up.

Alternatively, when you hover over, or click the brands at the bottom, relevant people get highlighted, including the relevant small print in their CV.

You can check out the progress of the work on the 9xchange website.

Showing screen shots in a pitch deck

In most cases, it is not worth the time and effort in a short presentation to take the audience through a demo or a series of screenshots of your application. At this stage in the pitch process, understanding the exact flow of your application is not critical.

What can matter though is the simple question of whether you have a decent product or prototype or not. The role of a screen shot here is not to show the exact detail of your app, but more a proof point.

One way to make this point is to use an office background with some screens, and paste a number of screens on the monitors. That’s what I did in a recent deck for my other venture 9xchange. I made the office background black and white, to make the screens pop a bit more.

(Look how I managed to Photoshop the screen shot behind the standing desk light)

What does this marketing agency do?

I find the world of marketing and branding agencies very confusing. You ask them what they do, and you get a description of a process that sounds and looks very similar to everyone else you ask the same question. But in practice, people are actually very specialized. Defining the personality of a brand, creating the competitive strategic positioning of a company, making the pitch deck, generating leads, designing ads, running online campaigns, designing logos, etc .etc.

The best strategy to find out what people do is to ask them to describe a project, and see where in this whole jungle they played a role, and most importantly, at what stage in this description see you light up the eyes of the person you are considering working with.

How do people glance over a corporate web site?

There is a lot of science and analytics available for eCommerce web sites. Changes in layout, design, and content immediately translate into changes in clicks and sales. The story is a bit different for a corporate web site that is not transactional, it does not sell anything, it does not have a big signup button, but plays the role of a digital business card for a company. Let’s say the first web site of a startup aimed at investors and the first enterprise customers.

Some things to look at:

• The most important aspect is probably the look and feel of the site, regardless of the content. Does it look professional and serious (as in of a serious company). If that funky or complex graphic somehow does not look quite right and you can’t put your finger on the spot why, take it out. A professional looking simple graphic is always better than a botched attempt at a complex one. Make sure that copyright year is the current one.

• This seems obvious, but is often lacking, the site should actually state what it is you do. Try it on people that have no background at all in the market you work in, try it on people that love to put you in well known boxes (i.e., venture capitalists)

• Different companies need to emphasize different things. For most companies, the founding team and its head shots will be buried in some ‘about’ section of the web site, for very early stage startups, it might need to feature prominently on the first page since it is basically the only asset it has.

• No one reads a web site top to bottom like a newspaper article. Instead, people glance. Read a headline, look a the small text below a photo, read a random paragraph. Don’t arrange content in order of importance solely, but think about the visual hierarchy. A small picture might grab more attention than the big cliche headline.

• It is tempting to lift stories from presentations and translate them to the web site. The founding story of how it all began to where you are now including that big pivot in 2020, the market gap analysis that is the start of your investor pitch deck. These stories need a place, but maybe not on the home page of your web page.

• Avoid jargon. “Ah, this site is filled with blah blah” and people will stop reading. But do include language that is common in the industry you are working in.

• Make sure that the site has the details that should be there: contact details, etc.

How to use ChatGPT creatively

Most people visit ChatGPT, create an account, type in something, are amazed by the results, and then move on. But how could you actually use it for real?

One obvious use case is “homework cheating”: copy-paste entire pieces of text to save time and effort. But the results will still be a bit impersonal. (I suspect that in future versions of the program, you could feed it your own writing style so that the bot adjusts to you personally, the back archive of my blog since 2008 would be great for that :-))

But there are a few others:

• The bot answer might be a great way to get a basic structure/setup for your text. You copy they layout of the argument to start, but then fill in the paragraphs with your own language.

• The algorithm can create a check list to see whether you covered everything that should be covered

• ChatGPT can be better than Google to get tutorials or “how to” articles. At the moment the pages that are best optimized for search engines float to the top. This might not always be the best articles. ChatGPT has read them all and will summarize them for you.

• The software can be a great source of examples or analogies that you would not have thought of.

“Google it” is now an essential part of writing pretty much anything. “ChatGPT it” will have to be added to the list.

CONFESSION: Yesterday’s post about the use of humor in presentations was a complete homework cheat…

Using humor in a presentation

Using humor in a presentation can be a great way to engage your audience and make your message more memorable. When done correctly, humor can help to break the ice, lighten the mood, and make complex concepts easier to understand. However, using humor in a presentation can also be risky and, if not done well, it can easily backfire and make you appear unprofessional or insensitive. Here are a few tips for using humor in a presentation:

1. Know your audience: Before incorporating humor into your presentation, it's important to understand your audience and what they find funny. Different people have different senses of humor, so what may be funny to one group may not be funny to another. Consider the demographics, cultural backgrounds, and experiences of your audience when choosing your jokes.

2. Be appropriate: It's important to remember that humor is subjective and what one person finds funny may be offensive to another. Avoid using humor that is based on stereotypes, is sexually explicit, or is overly political. Stick to jokes that are clean and relatable to a wide audience.

3. Use humor sparingly: You don't want to overdo it with the jokes in your presentation. A few well-placed jokes can add some levity to your presentation, but too many can become overwhelming and take away from the overall message. Use humor sparingly and strategically, and save the majority of your presentation for the information and insights that you want to share.

4. Practice: Before delivering your presentation, make sure to practice your jokes and delivery. This will help you to feel more comfortable and confident when presenting, and will also allow you to gauge how your audience reacts to your humor. If a joke falls flat during your practice, consider leaving it out of your final presentation.

Subway maps for cars

People accept that subway maps do not reflect the topographical reality of a city. They show how to travel from A to B, which lines you should take, and where you should switch stations.

The generation of my children has grown up with navigation apps and when they are behind the wheel of a car, they actually have very limited awareness of where things are, the only thing they know well is how much time it roughly takes to get to different places.

This map of Tel Aviv and its surroundings might be a useful too for them (credit: Yaron Shemesh)

This is actually how your brain likes to store information in general, not just maps

Three audiences for your company brand

A company brand has at least 3 audiences:

• Employees (including the founders), that need an inspiring and cool place to work

• Users that are looking for a brand that fits and appeals to the target market

• Investors who are looking at a fundable organization with fundable founders

Think about conflicting requirements when picking your name. Priorities might also change over time. Investors are very important early on, users a bit later. Your first collaterals (decks, a web site) are probably directed at investors.

This post was sparked by overhearing two conversations: one about whether picking a cartoon character as a company name would hurt appeal to investors, and one where a company named itself after an industry it explicitly claimed not be in.

Taking out a point in a line graph in PowerPoint

A PowerPoint post today, why not… Someone showed me a little trick to remove a point in a line graph. Useful when you have one year with missing data, and simply interpolating the value between the 2 neighbors would be bending the truth. Putting a zero leaves an odd line (see below).

If you select the data point, (not the data series), and go into format data point and the paint bucket, you can set the line to “no line” (see below).

Repeat the process for the neighbor to the right (see below).

As a result, some weird things are happening to the data series labels though. Also, this standard PowerPont/Excel chart is far from presentable in your slide deck. An alternative approach in SlideMagic? Put in a column chart with a zero column value.

ChatGPT

I have been playing around with ChatGPT, here is what it suggest to do to make a presentation more interesting:

---

Here are some tips for making your presentation more interesting:

1. Use visuals, such as images, graphs, and videos, to supplement your presentation and make it more engaging. Visuals can help to illustrate your points, provide examples, and make the presentation more memorable.

2. Tell stories or use examples to illustrate your points and make the presentation more relatable and engaging. Stories and examples can help to bring your ideas to life and make them more interesting and understandable.

3. Use humor or other emotional appeals to connect with your audience and make the presentation more engaging. Humor and emotional appeals can help to grab the audience's attention, break the ice, and create a more dynamic and engaging presentation.

4. Engage the audience by asking questions, inviting participation, and encouraging feedback. This can help to make the presentation more interactive and engaging, and can help to create a more dynamic and interactive experience for the audience.

5. Use a variety of presentation techniques, such as changing your tone, pace, and volume, to keep the presentation interesting and dynamic. This can help to keep the audience engaged and prevent them from becoming bored or distracted.

Overall, making your presentation more interesting requires using a variety of techniques and approaches to engage the audience and make the presentation more dynamic and engaging.

---

Here it is me writing again. Pretty good and useful, albeit a bit impersonal. OpenAI is creating APIs for which I have some interesting ideas how to use them in SlideMagic. Watch this space

Football charts in SlideMagic

If you need to plot the progress of your team in the FIFA World Cup, SlideMagic is there to help you. There are a number of football charts in the library, including a tree where you can add teams in the knock out race to the final (see below).

Simply search for football in the SlideMagic app and the charts will show up (see below).

SlideMagic Pro users can convert these slides to PowerPoint or PDF. Free student plan available

Can people multi-task? A slightly different view

Scientists seem to agree that humans are not really able to multi-task. Checking your phone messages while driving, or replying to every email the second they pop up is not very healthy.

This got me thinking. The stereo types are as follows: the extravert manager proudly claims that the above rule is incorrect, she can easily maintain dozens of email, phone, and live conversations in parallel. The introvert coder thinks the above is absolutely true, the buzzing of the microwave in the background kills her concentration.

I think the manager is actually not multi-tasking that much, and the coder might do a bit of it. If you are a manager, your task is to juggle lots of people and keep everything moving. I would consider this as one task.

If you are coding, you might find yourself rewriting 10 different modules, updating a database, fixing the front end, all in one, all components are open in the editor and the system won’t work unless you fixed all of them. That’s a bit more than one task.

So, I think it all depends on what you all a task.