Great Talk, awful slides

Here is another example where slides just ruin the talk. It's a great talk of a computer scientist who recreates great performances of artists, especially pianists. He talks about art, about fine art, about what makes music sound so good, and how we are now able to recreate the performance of the geniuses of the past. It is emotional, it has to be. And the speaker is great ! But just give a look at his slides, below the video... He would have just speak, it would have been better !





There are just headlines, that is almost true. But face it, it is just ugly. Then he changes fonts and colors... and somehow, it is even worse.

Stanford's Entrepreneurship Corner: Guy Kawasaki, Garage Technology Ventures - Make a Great Pitch

Stanford's Entrepreneurship Corner: Guy Kawasaki, Garage Technology Ventures - Make a Great Pitch:

"Making pitches is a way of life for an entrepreneur. Kawasaki provides his tips for ensuring each pitch is better than the last. His 10/20/30 rule for PowerPoint slides is essential."

We didn't have time to look at this today.... I think you'll enjoy the site. It has lots of interesting video!

what do you think?

all the best

james

Folklore.org: Macintosh Stories

Folklore.org: Macintosh Stories:

I spoke of this in class....

"The Original Macintosh
Anecdotes about the development of Apple's original Macintosh computer, and the people who created it."

"Folklore.org is a web site devoted to collective historical storytelling. It captures and presents sets of related stories that describe interesting events from multiple perspectives, allowing groups of people to recount their shared history in the form of interlinked anecdotes.

The site is structured as a series of projects containing related, interlinked stories. The stories are indexed by their characters and the topics they cover, and may be sorted by various criteria. Readers can rate the stories, and add comments, or other stories."

Happy birthday Macintosh!

Inaugural Words - 1789 to the Present - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com

Inaugural Words - 1789 to the Present - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com

who said what and when and how many times???

YouTube - Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

YouTube - Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address:

"Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address"

This is a rather special sort of professional communication....

Steve Jobs is not being a showman here, but he's telling a story, his own story. You might enjoy it. And you can activate the subtitles if you'd like the text as you watch it.

See you RSN

james

Cvs Please ;D

Hello everyone,

I fear I am in a shortage of Cvs,
so I would really appreciate if you could send me yours today !

Thanks,

Clément

Amazon Mechanical Turk - Welcome

Amazon Mechanical Turk - Welcome

HITs - Human Intelligence Tasks - are individual tasks that you work on. Find HITs now.

As a Mechanical Turk Worker you:

• Can work from home
• Choose your own work hours
• Get paid for doing good work

Crowdsourcing.... for the rest of us!

Video Library

Video Library

here's a demo about watching out for media spin...

one of the 10 demo gods of the fall demo.com conference....

Ugobe - TechCrunch Elevator Pitches

Ugobe - TechCrunch Elevator Pitches

here's an interesting elevator pitch

An optimistic TED talk about bringing laptop computers to every Colombian child

I notticed the repetition of simple sentences like "Yes to the world , Yes ..."
Also I think the talk affects your feelings using simple metaphores like the "opened window" or the "vaccine". Another strong aspect of its effectiveness seems related to the enthusiasm Nicholas Negroponte gives to its ideas that makes it so lively.
I hope you'll enjoy this talk, it's really optimistic if some of you are depressed about the week of school to come.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/nicholas_negroponte_takes_olpc_to_colombia.html

Elevator pitch MPTrax

http://pitches.techcrunch.com/pitch/46-mptrax

This is a quite convenient speech about a website which will link music artists and people organizing every kind of parties. I think the way he introduces himself makes him look a bit too self-confident, but if it's true, it gives him so much credit. He speaks quite fast and is really enthusiastic.

Another pitch related to credit thanks to fame is this one about showmethegolf.tv. I think you should check it too.
http://pitches.techcrunch.com/pitch/173-showmethegolf-tv

Anyways, I think it's a bit dangerous to first talk a lot about yourself instead of the qualities and strengths of your product. Moreover, in such a quick speech, would the investor believe the experiment? It might sound a bit pretentious.

PANEL - Roundtable - Web 3.O

http://www.demo.com/watchlisten/videolibrary.html (direct link to the video)

This is an really interesting round table, with very brilliant guests.
The questions asked, related to the future of the Web, are often pertinent : Is a global brain emerging ? What will be the search engines of tomorrow ? Are social networks and search engines converging? What does the notion of Artificial Intelligence mean, speaking about the Web ?

How you can make your next presentations magnicifent

While PowerPoint has more and more functionalities, it seems that the overall quality of presentation is decreasing nowadays. While I was reading The Non-designer's Design Book ( great book, by the way :D ) I realized that design rules for presentation and slides, are kind of mathematical rules. They are actually quite precise. Like harmony rules in music.

You cannot produce good music only from those harmonic rules ( some nerds already tried and I can tell you : it does not work nor seduce girls if it was the original purpose ). But you cannot produce good music without abiding by those rules.

Most of you will not read an entire book just to get their presentation right. I get it. But what about a automatic tool that can tell you instantly, how far you are from professionnal slides, and what is the most critical point to improve ?

Would not it be an interesting feature ?

And until then, on Monday, I will demonstrate how you can make now professionnal slides and make your next presentations magnicifent !

Most of my materials come from PresentationZen so do not hesitate to go there, if you want a quick preview.

an interesting demo.com demo!

http://www.demo.com/watchlisten/videolibrary.html

I really enjoyed the video Mix Match Music because I think it is a cool and efficient way to find musicians if you want to start a band and it's just an awesome tool for people who like music !

(And here is the direct link!)

demo.com

Video Library of the Demo conferences

can you choose one you like?

WrapMail - TechCrunch Elevator Pitches

WrapMail - TechCrunch Elevator Pitches

can you prepare a 30 second elevator pitch for your gadget???

good idea!

Videos - Free video downloads and streaming video - CNET TV

Videos - Free video downloads and streaming video - CNET TV

Wazzup? Vaporware or the nitty-gritty! CES and MacWorld... coming soon to a venue near you!