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Showing posts from 2014

Review, Edit, Repeat

When preparing a talk, how many times do you review or edit it? How many times does a director watch a movie she is making? How many drafts does a writer have of his latest novel? You know where am I getting at.  But I'll say "Juan, I'm not a professional speaker! This is not my real job, I have more thing more important to do!" Well, I have bad news for you. If you are reading these lines, it might be that communication is fundamental to your job. In fact, your might be complaining right now, this month, or the coming one about your company's management bad communication skill and know that's affecting you. But seriously, how good are you at communicating if you don't review your material or you don't edit it enough? Let that sink in.

How to crop images with circles in Keynote

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Here is a way to deal with images that come in different sizes and/or orientations: mask them with circles.  Here is what I mean You have probably already seen this with Google and Apple productions. Circles are fun, dynamic, harmonious, and they are also points. Now, there is a whole visual grammar behind points, but that's not the topic of this post. Let's do the before-after thing. Consider this fake slide By the way, also Featured pictures from Wiki Commons. The images are very good, but we can take them to the next level.  Their sizes are around 700px, so I'll mask them with circles with a diameter of 300px. This is the result Certainly better, but how did I do it? Most Slideware packages allow you to crop an image with a shape .  Google it and you'll get the technical know-how. I'll demo with Keynote 6.   Select a Circle: Insert > Shape > Cicle. Make it the size that you want.  We'll rescale all images at the end, so don&

Storyboarding and the collective progress

Garr Reynolds posted today on Storyboarding, and as usual it was a great post. After reading this post I strongly recommend you check Garr's out! Watching the videos in Garr's post brought me to two important thoughts. Not all presentations are equal(lly good) . Our effort producing a presentation is based on a priori estimate of the possible benefit or risk. This mindset leads to self fulfilling prophecies. Most scientific talks are looked at as been low-stake, low Return Of (academic) Investment (ROI) , and therefore the amount of time and resources we spend are little. That explains why some people slideware their presentation the day or night before they present it. And as a result we have "Death by Powerpoint". The value of a scientific talks and posters are seen as inferior as the value of an scientific paper, so way to invest on producing a  high quality talk?  Now if you were to present for a grant, you would obviously spend more time on pre-producing, pr

Full bleed and full of beer. OK, Beamer might be not so bad!

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3 things are wondering on my mind: The spread use of full bleed images on websites, drinking beer before and during a talk, and using LaTeX/Beamer to show computer code on slides. I was watching this Java 8 talk last night and  I was astonished  that the presenter was drinking beer, before and during the presentation. What The Fuck? I get it,  the talk was scheduled at night, clearly this brogrammer thought that might get him some street creed points… or maybe he thought he was James Hetfield. Please don't drink before going on stage. Speaking of Metallica, the Guns 'N Roses website features full bleed images and backgrounds.  Full bleed images are more and more common these days, and that's cool. Heck, even the Germany's   Tagesschau  changed it studios to show full bleed images on the background. Sadly, people still heavily rely on Bullet Points. Here is one example of using full bleed images: A learning connection that relies on emotions (partly driven by i

Presentation Gurus: Podium

Here is great free source of public speaking! YouTube's Thnkr, let's call it meta-channel, is a source of valuable entertainment. In its own words   THNKR gives you extraordinary access to the people, stories, ideas that will change your mind. Among these extraordinary people and ideas,  public speaking through their Podium section.  The basic techniques and best practices of public speaking shown here extend to scientific presentations. This video on basic tips is a good place to get started. Enjoy!

Visual Examples: White Space and Repetition from SOTU 2014

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It is February, time from the State Of The Union (SOTU) and again Obama's team nailed it on the slide design. The design is very similar to last year's . This year I want to focus on only two things: repetition and white space . Although there is no theme or template, the slides Obama used make such a rigorous use of repetition and consistency, that it in itself creates a theme, an identity.  Obama's team take repetition even further with this slide source:slideshare.net / wh.gov  The icons on the bottom were highlighted as the speech progressed, as in this case mentioned infrastructure source:slideshare.net / wh.gov  This is an excellent example of how photographs and icons can be combined. Also note how the slides makes use of white space on the bottom. This was repeated across the presentation stack source:slideshare.net / wh.gov The slide of the right is simple, with only one element in the image plus the text. With only one element in the foreground,

A word on visuals: Transitions

Transitions are problematic. Most presentation software come with more transitions than wanted. The people at Duarte already covered with in a series of videos called The Trouble with Transitions . The best transitions are the simple ones and are best used when used scarcely. Here is a small collection. I chose these because they are similar to small set simple cuts editors used when putting a film together. Dissolve Note that a slide can dissolve to black or white. The technical term is fade-out. Fading out to black is also known as black-out, and similarly fading out to white is known as white-out. Using a combination of fading out and in, might help the speak force a well deserved pause: This "white pause" is appropriate when the speaker ant to signal that the next topic is weakly coupled to the previous one. Move-in This might also be known as cover. Read below to see why… Push If the whote pause signaled weakly coupling, the push transi