The Importance of Passion

Randy Pausch is a 47-year old father of three small children and a professor at Carnegie-Mellon University. He is most widely know for his contributions in developing computer programming skills in children. His project Alice has helped hundreds of children learn how to program in the 3-D environment.

Carnegie-Mellon has a program where they often ask professors to give what is called a “last lecture.” This talk is usually a culmination of everything that matters most to the professor. Basically, what would you tell people if this was the last opportunity you had? Randy had agreed to give one of these “last lectures” and just weeks later was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, given only three to six months to live.

Randy used the opportunity of this “last lecture” to leave his kids with an ever lasting look at what means most to him. Not only did he succeed in a big way, but he bottled up more passion in this 90 minute lecture than I’ve ever seen. He does an amazing job of involving the audience, making them feel as though they’ve known him forever. I highly recommend you check out his lecture. Also, I’m happy to report that eight months later Randy is still beating this disease. For more info on randy or to keep up to date on his progress, visit his site.

Long Overdue

A few weeks back I wrote a post on all the good things I’d been hearing about the book Made to Stick. I’d made a promise to give you all an update when I’d completed the book. And, since writing that, I have been traveling and working like crazy. So, as the title says, I’m very overdue for this review, my apologies.

Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath

On a scale of one to five, I give this book a solid four. The Heath brothers did a great job of getting to the meat of what they were trying to communicate. As I’d written before, they have developed an acronym for their strategy: SUCCESs. Meaning Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credentialed, Emotional Stories.  They gave many examples and provided explanations to help achieve each of these goals.  I think the most compelling aspect of the book was that they stuck (no pun intended) to exactly what they were advising. The book was intriguing, concise, easy to follow and most importantly, easy to implement.

They got me thinking quite a bit about how presentations are generally developed.  This is what I ussually see from clients:

Step 1: Make an outline of all the data

Step 2: Organize the data so it’s easy to follow

Step 3: Create presentation based on outline

Step 4: Fill in presentation with graphs and charts to help “sell the story

After reading this book and reviewing hundreds of presentations, this is how I think we should develop them:

Step 1: Determine our three most important points you want to make

Step 2: Order those points from most to least important

Step 3: Create a story or a tangible explanation around each point

Step 4: Develop the visual presentation to enhance the stories/tangible explanations

Step 5: Give people the option of an appendix for all the nitty gritty details

I realize this new format doesn’t lend itself to each type of presentation.  However, the concepts do.  Providing your audience with information that’s easy to swallow and easy to retell can always help your cause.