How I made my "PowerPoint" presentation from West Coast Green

Ever since my talk last week at West Coast Green, I have received dozens and dozens of emails from people asking, "How did you get PowerPoint to do that?!"

Well, in reality, I didn't.

First, use the right tools. Like most Microsoft products, PowerPoint lacks good design sensibilities. After years of trying to push it to do what I wanted to do with colors, fonts and video, I gave up.

The real reason I am able to make these presentations so visually rich is using Apple's Keynote. Keynote handles these elements far better than PowerPoint. C'mon, you should ditch that PC and have a Mac anyway.

Secondly, my speaking style is much more ancedotal. My job is to take this technical information and distill it into stories. As a presenter, my goal is to remove as much text as possible from the slides. You'll notice there are no bullet points on the slides, and the text is made obnoxiously large to reiterate the point.

At several points along the presentation, I have no slides at all, just an image or movie running in the background as I tell a story. For more on this technique, check out Merlin Mann's wonderful blog 43 Folders and especially his story on his own presentations.

Lastly, I am no expert on public speaking. Between teaching and traveling to conferences, I just get to to it a whole lot and the practice helps me. I also get to watch hundreds of other speakers each year and see how boring many talks can be.

To prevent boredom, I am experimenting with several techniques, including the Takahashi Method and the Guy Kawasaki Method for storytelling with visuals. The more I know about these ways to convey information, the more I realize how much great orators, such as Bill Clinton, are able to give a speech with such power using only words.

For more on using Keynote in a positive (double entrendre) way read on here and here.

DOWNLOAD MY FULL WEST COAST GREEN KEYNOTE (not PowerPoint) here (26 MB PDF)