When looking at new presentation tools, one requirements rises to the top: make it easier to create and tell a story so that the audience will remember it.
“Great stories happen to those who can tell them” - Ira Glass
In my search for better tools, I have been focusing on a few items:
- During the creation process, allow me to keep the story line easily visible. I don’t want to be distracted by the slide design.
- Make it easy to add images, videos, tables and graphs.
- Fast editing, updating, and collaborating
- Affordable - especially during the initial 6 months, during which you truly will be testing the new application.
There are a number of applications I started to look at.
In the past, I looked at Prezi and Beautiful.ai. More recently, I kicked the tires of Slides.com and Tome. Both are recent entries vying to dethrone PowerPoint and Google Slides.
These applications are generally great. Some do keep the focus on the storyline - no more death by PowerPoint bullets. Yet, the presentation creation process all happens in a UI-heavy web application. The interface doesn’t lend you to write and develop the story. They are all about designing slides, and assume you have the story clear.
Then, I discovered a set of tools under the umbrella Presentation as Code. These tools focus on creating the story line first, often in a basic text file or Markdown file. You can then add stylistic elements that the tool uses to visualize the slide. One tool even doesn’t allow you to muck much with the visuals so you keep the focus on the story. It is a more minimalistic view on presentation. The tool wants to make sure that regardless of the device you use, the best visual is presented.
The two applications I have been experimenting with are:
- Obsidian Advanced Slides Plugin. I use Obsidian as my digital notebook and second brain. The plugin takes a text file, part of the Obsidian Vault, and renders it into a presentation.
- iA Presenter. Presenter allow you to import an existing text file or start from scratch. You then continue developing the story, before it gets rendered into slides.
In both applications, you write your story in a Markdown format. You write the headlines, as well as the speaker notes in the same file. Reading this text file, it is easier to understand the plot and main points. It is also very easy to make changes to the content.
Obsidian Advanced Slides plugin allows for much visual customization. For example, it was easy to add stylist elements to build the slide, or to highlight some text on the slide, or to add a background image.
iA Presenter provides less control to the user on how the slide will be rendered. Yet, the visuals are beautiful and the tool has several great templates built in. Information Architects (iA) are known to care about the visual design quite a bit. Their other application, iA Writer, remains an amazingly looking Markdown editor. “Export to PDF” seemed to work better as well with iA Presenter.
It is hard to compare both, since one is an open source project of few volunteers, and the other is developed by a software company. I intend to continue use both (even though I need to make a few tweaks in the Markdown to interchange between them - I will likely pick one for each presentation).
Presentation as Code is gaining momentum. There are more applications and open source projects adopting it. I am a fan. It is fast, simple, and still gives you a great set of visuals to tell the story.
October 30, 2022
The Real Winner Will Be … Reddit
In the world of social apps, there are two kinds. The first kind is all about sharing media: Youtube, Snapchat, TikTok, BeReal. It is popular among the youngsters. It is all about being popular.
The second kind of social apps is about sharing opinion. This group includes Twitter, Facebook, Parler, Gettr, Gab, and Truth Social. This group will look a lot different in the coming months.
When Elon Musk will take the helm at Twitter, expect a lot of changes. A large number of employees will have to seek new employment. Expect drastic updates to the Twitter rules and moderation guidelines. Twitter may come out of it much different, financially healthier, or it could evolve to the fringes.
Kanye West buying Parler is merely a distraction. It is also a cash infusion for a patient on life support. I doubt it will become a mainstream platform.
Also Truth Social is in financial turmoil. Don’t expect any real money from Trump. It will probably hang around until the next presidential election.
I consider Gettr or Gab too much on the fringe.
That leaves a great opportunity for Reddit. Reddit is not a traditional social application, with its endless stream of posts. Scrolling through the stream is referred to as doomscrolling. Reddit is a curated and organized set of areas of interest. It will take a bit to get used to. Yet, it will see an influx from the other social applications and become more widely used.
October 23, 2022
New Lingo: Steelmanning
Steelmanning is the opposite of strawmanning, in which you misrepresent the other person’s position or argument so you can easily defeat it. Donald Trump or Tucker Carlson are masters of the straw man argument. Steelmanning is the practice of addressing the strongest form of “the other person’s argument [(the steel man argument)], even if it’s not the one they presented”.
Creating the strongest form of the opponent’s argument may involve removing flawed assumptions that could be easily refuted or developing the strongest points which counter one’s own position, as “we know our belief’s real weak points”.
Developing counters to these strongest arguments an opponent might bring results in producing an even stronger argument for one’s own position.
Through Steelmanning people are more convinced, as you put forward arguments which address their real motivation, rather than a set of minor points.
But it isn’t about winning. It is about intellectually searching for the best solution. This is not about a zero sum game.
Chana Messinger on her blog points out how it makes you a better person:
“steelmanning makes you a better person. It makes you more charitable, forcing you to assume, at least for a moment, that the people you’re arguing with, much as you ferociously disagree with them or even dislike them, are people who might have something to teach you. It makes you more compassionate, learning to treat those you argue with as true opponents, not merely obstacles. It broadens your mind, preventing us from making easy dismissals or declaring preemptive victory, pushing us to imagine all the things that could and might be true in this beautiful, strange world of ours. And it keeps us rational, reminding us that we’re arguing against ideas, not people, and that our goal is to take down these bad ideas, not to revel in the defeat of incorrect people.”
There are also counter arguments to using a steel man argument. Some1 will argue it will inevitably lead to straw manning.
October 15, 2022
Three Effective Communication Tips
- Narratives over slides, with simple and clear topic sentences. (See https://writingcooperative.com/the-anatomy-of-an-amazon-6-pager-fc79f31a41c9)
- Superior and singularly-focused charts that don’t require much explanation. (See https://www.storytellingwithdata.com/)
- Presentation as code, content over form (See https://mszturc.github.io/obsidian-advanced-slides/getting-start/)
October 10, 2022
It Does Matter
A bit over a year ago, I discovered Matter (getmatter.app). At the time, the application was still in Beta and had a few Beta quirks. They either got updated or I just got used them.
A lot has happened in a year. The application is now my to go to application to read articles and highlight sections. These highlights are automatically saved to Obsidian, so I can find them easily later on.
A killer feature is the ability to redirect most of the newsletters to Matter. It is a much better interface to read them, both in a browser, or on my iPad using the Matter application.
October 9, 2022
Huelga
Andalusian taxi drivers are on strike this weekend. They are up in arms about Uber and other rideshare companies.
Yet, this strike, or huelga in Spanish, is about much more. Two taxis drivers I talked to skipped over the Uber conversation, straight to big American tech companies: Amazon and Google are the real evil to them. Politicians are in bed with them. It is time to protect Spain from these companies, who ruin it for the small business owner, the taxi driver, the corner restaurant. And above all, they are benefit from Spain, without paying any taxes here (supposedly).
Google has fallen a long way from the Do No Evil mantra and hot tech company everybody wanted to be associated with. Now, it exemplifies all that is wrong with American culture and greedy companies.
September 24, 2022
LinkedIn Has Become the Robocall of the Internet. Yet, It Could Be so Much More.
Adobe announced it will be buying Figma for a whopping $20B. It made a desktop-centric creative tools company in one swoop a whole lot cooler and more relevant with the addition of a cloud-centric collaborative tool creators and designers love.
LinkedIn is in need for a similar infusion of fresh blood. After the purchase by Microsoft, the company focused on serving companies with products for recruiters and corporate learning. In the process, LinkedIn forgot about the users who put their data freely on their site.
My experience has degraded rapidly over the years. Rather than connecting with kindred spirits, the connections are now dominated by sales calls.
“Hi, your profile looks interesting to me. I like to meet and connect” is quickly followed up by “I have this thing to sell you” or “I have these engineers to offer you”. LinkedIn has become the RoboCall from the Internet. ”No Thank you.” Click.
With Slideshare, LinkedIn had a great community product, where users could profile themselves, and where you could learn freely on all kinds of topics. It since sold of this product and now promotes Linked Learning. At $27/month, LinkedIn Learning is still a good deal. However, that product misses the larger networking effect: discovery of interesting people and content, and sharing knowledge and profiling oneself.
It may be hard to change LinkedIn from within. After all, those enterprise-focused products surely must be bringing in a pretty penny. Similar to Adobe, with its cash generating desktop products, LinkedIn may need to look outside for a new spark that will please its “users”.
- Acquire LunchClub. This Tinder-for-professionals networking application pairs you with folks you may be interested in for a 30 minute video call. Many of my calls have gone much longer. I’ve kept in touch with several of the folks since. It would bring LinkedIn back to its roots, and offer something useful to its users.
- Reset LinkedIn Groups with a Reddit-for-Professionals. Hire community shepherds who manage the LinkedIn Groups.
- Provide better options to control the newsfeed. Start with providing the ability to turn off the marketing machine of your own company. Working at a small company, I am connected to almost everybody in the company. Every company post and employee repost shows up in my timeline. This is in addition to the internal marketing feed on the same subjects. I want to learn something new when I come to LinkedIn.
- Invest in building a mentorship product, partner with Enrich or Plato.
- Partner on mental health to provide online coaching sessions.
The big bucks may be in the B2B products. It is important not to forget that this is possible because all of us sharing freely our information. We want something useful in return.
September 18, 2022
Lazy Lingo
Great writing is simple and clear. It is sufficiently precise that the meaning of a word is obvious to the reader.
It caught my attention how some words, commonly used in a professional setting, are the opposite. Their meaning shifts regularly. There is much more behind these words. It may not even be clear which of several meanings the user wants to convey. They tend to be lazy words and beg you to ask for more information.
Here’s my top 5:
- Agility
- Efficiency
- Contextualization
- Roadmap
- Plan
September 18, 2022
Delayed Action
I recently read a quick summary of Lex Fridman’s interview with Magnus Carlsen, considered the Greatest Chess Player of All Time. The comment about inaction as a strategy is interesting.
Inaction as Action: Strategy often goes beyond finding a way for you to win. Sometimes, it’s about letting the opponent find a way to lose. In these instances, inaction can be the optimal course of action.
It reminded me also about the quote I thought was attributed to Steve Jobs
When you don’t know what the next step is, it is ok to wait.
Most quotes on inaction are about avoiding analysis paralysis, or how imperfect action is better than perfect action. That’s true.
Yet, rushed action can be equally bad.
It is indeed ok to wait before taking an action. It is an often used strategy on the soccer pitch or in the peloton. Waiting for the right moment is delayed action, not inaction.
Delayed Action Door Closer
September 5, 2022
Cha-Cha-Changes
We are officially empty nesters. Our oldest graduated university earlier in the year and started his first job in Los Angeles this month. We dropped by today and jumpstarted his place. His desk is set up, ready to work in hybrid mode. Godspeed!
Los Angeles was only a short stop on the way back from dropping of our young one at university in San Diego. It was a weekend filled with events, and most of all unpacking and setting up her dorm. Her place looks amazing. An exciting new chapter is starting at USD. Go Torreros!
On our way back, aptly, we played David Bowie’s *Changes”, as we drove back over the Grapevine.
August 28, 2022