Presentations; what to do, and what not.

Here’’s an interesting comparison. Two very different approaches to what is essentially the same task… “Give a presentation, unveiling a major new operating system”.

Bill gets bogged down and side-tracked in detail and minutia, focussing on technicalities and abstract ideas, with very little in the way of visual hooks to help people follow along. Steve keeps it much simpler, with strong visual support even for abstract ideas, keeps to the headlines and makes his points relevant to the things people really care about; “how does this affect me, now”.

There’’s a major lesson there in how to organize presentations. Steve is of course widely recognized as a master, but watching him solo often makes it hard to work out what makes him so good…. putting him up against Bill really makes it more obvious.