Nancy Duarte's resonate and the Presentation Story Construct
I'm a big fan of series of 3's, but lately I've been far more interested in series of 2's. So much easier to remember, right...?
To that end, Nancy Duarte is out with her new book called resonate. Hopefully you have all read her first book slide:ology and my endless praise for it. Resonateis not a sequel, but as Nancy herself explains: a prequel.
Slide:ology focused on the visual design of a presentation, and it is probably the best book ever written on the subject. But presentation design is only one part of creating an effective presentation. And it's part 2. Part 1 is writing the story. Enter resonate and Nancy's codification and method for writing a clear and effective presentation story—a form which, she explains, lies somewhere in between a factual report and a dramatic piece of fiction.
In trying to identify a repeatable structure for effective presentation, Nancy reverse engineered and analyzed successful presentations by Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King and others. What she discovered is that persuasive presentation is about moving from where we are today to where we want to be tomorrow. From pain to gain. From what is to what could be. And a dynamic persuasive presentation constantly moves us back and forth (contrast = engagement) ultimately resting in the world of tomorrow where hopefully our audience picks up the gauntlet we have laid down for them: Hire our company, approve our ad campaign, restructure your business, fund my research, etc. A presentation should be about moving your audience to a new and better tomorrow.
While Nancy explores mythic structure and Joseph Campbell in the book (don't worry, it doesn't get too heady, and there are lots of Star Wars references), it is simply this elemental series of 2, Today/Tomorrow construct that is at the heart of resonate. Here it is.
Every word and piece of information from your presentation can now be categorized as either "today" or "tomorrow" in this simple series of 2. Of course, this is the basic construct upon which can be layered your various points and presentation techniques. And Nancy uses this basis to create sparklines that analyze presentation and ensure that enough contrast in content and form is used to maintain engagement. Here's a simple sparkline for an absolutely wonderful and entertaining TED talk by conductor Benjamin Zander.
The book is filled with much more than the construct itself including numerous case studies, sample presentation slides and various dramatic techniques for creating a memorable presentation. If anyone is interested in viewing a one hour webinar that Nancy gave on the material from the book, click here and enter the password "webinar". It's very good. And if you ever have the opportunity to see her speak live as I did a few weeks ago at the Presentation Summit 2010 in San Diego—take it. (Yeah, she's a pretty good speaker herself.)
The Summit was a well-produced conference, and I got to meet with many of the leading players in the world of presentation software and design. Microsoft was even generous enough to send their PowerPoint product development folks who allowed themselves to be grilled endlessly on missing, requested and frustrating features. (Yes, they know the page numbering in 2007/10 sucks, and they're working on it...)
Note: all above graphics are copyright 2010 by Nancy Duarte.
