Great book on assembling a presentation and delivering it to an audience. If you want to keep making presentations focused on bullet lists or rehashed blog-post-as-presentation then this book won't help you. If you want to do something more meaningful for your audience then it will.Examination of narrative structure, the use of slides, and storytelling all are useful.Lost a star mainly because the author seriously misappropriates Tufte's sparkline and then runs it as a main theme throughout the book. The thing she's talking about is useful and real--but it isn't really a sparkline. That's just the sand in the oyster though.This book was given to all the speakers of a conference at which I presented (RETSO) and the author sent along a personalized video clip for us. Very very classy on the part of the author and the conference. I have since purchased this book several times for clients and friends. This is a fantastic book. I heard Nancy interviewed on Social Triggers Podcast, and her ideas on presentation were fresh and inspiring. I read bits of Slideology on Kindle, and realised I had to get this book. Only available soft cover print version, not Kindle. My reason for wanting to read; I have to make a presentation in about a months time, that could be critical to my career. Main learning points; it takes vastly more preparation that you imagine. Mainly because without a framework like this, the preparation is aimless, and struggles to fill a couple of hours; shovel the factoids into a death by powerpoint presentation, and read it over a few times, and you're done, right? Wrong, very, very wrong. Nancy gives structures and methods to design a presentation that incorporates story, passion, change, plot points, contrast, creativity, calls to action, calls to adventure, motivation, logic, emotion, imagination, energy, transparency, messages, mentoring, audience participation, big ideas, planning, spark and resonance, and lots of different angles to critically evaluate it from. I've now put in about 20 hours planning my presentation, and I haven't yet written one slide, but I have a good idea of how I will put my ideas across. If you make presentations, get this book. Use it as a workbook and manual, and you will enjoy crafting your presentation, because it doubles as self development.
What do You think about Resonancia (resonate) (2012)?
A must read for anyone who has a message to convey or makes presentations. Love her TED talks!
—Bryn
Best book on presentations I've ever read. Looking forward to Slide:ology
—murphy
good one - storytelling applied and explained !
—nick
