Jeff, this is why people make fun of corporate presentations. Please, read some Edward Tufte or something remotely critical. And don’t mistake your audience with children.
So, Jeff, the important part - what letters and number was today’s blog post brought to us by?
In the meantime, I completely agree. Death by Powerpoint (etc.) bullets is tragically common.
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Has anyone read Neil Postman’s “Amusing ourselves to Death”?
I find it highly relevant to the main argument of the current post (“Entertain your audience”), and the specific example used to support that argument (Sesame street).
One of Postman’s arguments is that ‘edutainment’ should not be considered a modern, improved form of education; rather, it excludes education. The main effect (as opposed to purpose) of programs such as Sesame street is not to teach the children addition or subtraction; it is to teach them that education and entertainment are the same, and that this ought to be so, and in fact that it cannot be otherwise.
Unfortunately, critical thinking is something which is almost possible to practice, or teach, on television. Real analysis is never done on TV - even when you have five talking heads around the table, they merely spout sound-bites, and recite talking points, rather than make a real anaylsis or counter-argument of someone else’s point.
And now I read a post by an intelligent and rational person seriously asserting that the proper means for the conveying of complex and abstract ideas can be found in a TV program designed to grab the attention of five-year-olds.
Perhaps the tree of edutainment is already bearing fruit?
But more directly addressing the main points of the argument, I would say:
“They must be doing something right” - the main purpose of Sesame Street is to maintain the attention of small children, while giving their parents a moral rationalization for leaving them in front of the TV screen for hours on end. If you share their purpose, by all means, borrow their means.
As for the sleepy slides syndrome, I would say that slides are a second-rate prop for an oral presentation, more useful as a reminder after the fact. The problems begin when people use slides instead of an oral presentation.
As for giving a good presentation, it’s not easy to pin down the exact ingredients which make a good speaker. It is true that a good speaker is entertaining; but a bad speaker plus a few good jokes does not a Cicero make. I think it’s more important for a speaker to focus on making a clear, precise, and relevant point, than to tastefully choose between bert and the cookie monster on slide 26.
Just my 2 cents.
I think ‘entertaining’ isn’t the right word. If a person P is presenting something about topic T to audience A it means that P knows things about T which are unknown to A and A wants to know about it.
The sole purpose of the presentation of P is to educate A about T, so after the presentation, what P wanted to explain to A about T is then also known by A.
Because make no mistake: if A wants to learn about T, it’s A’s job to learn about T, not P’s job. P already knows the stuff about T. If A needs to be ENTERTAINED to get off their lazy lardy asses to learn about T, I’d say: Darwin. If A doesn’t want to learn about T without entertaining stuff, so be it, it’s their loss, not P’s.
That’s not to say P can be lazy. P’s presentation has to be of such a quality that it explains T. That’s it.
Let me be blunt: how many people here take notes during a presentation? Not many. Why not? If a presentation is held to teach you something, why not take notes so you can re-read them later on and use them together with the slides to get T imprinted in your brain?
If the TOPIC is interesting, the presentation is interesting, no matter how dull P is, because you’re eager to learn more about T. However if you’re slightly interested in T, T won’t matter to you anyway, no matter how great the presentation is.
Last year I held a long talk about abstract entity models, o/r mapping, relational model design and how things relate to eachother at the dutch code-camp. No code, no slides, just a whiteboard. Entertaining? Well, no, not in the sense like Letterman is entertaining. But the topic is deep, it requires a lot of explanation for people who don’t have read Nijssens/Halpin’s books etc… It was more like teaching. However, if the audience doesn’t want to learn, so be it.
Perhaps it’s me, but I find any presentation which doesn’t teach anything is a waste of time: presentations aren’t entertainment, they’re held to teach an audience about a topic, however it’s up to the audience to learn about it, THEY thought they needed to learn something. It’s not P’s job to poke them in the ribs and say “Hey, you need to learn this and that!”, why should s/he?
Ahh Sesame Street brings back great memories of getting stoned at university then watching TV. Oh yeah childhood memories or whatever too.
Tiny typo : portmanteu instead of portmanteau
About the core subject, I’d like to give an example: “A taste of Haskell”, presented by Simon Peyton-Jones.
The slides are quite good: colored in a consistent way, pretty big fonts, and well balanced layout. They are crystal clear. They also are desperately static and boring: the more entertaining items are just a few exclamation marks!
The speech, on the other hand, is a totally different story. I found it extremely entertaining. At each slide. How was that? Well, because the subject itself was entertaining, at least to Peyton-Jones’ eyes.
When we want to make an entertaining speech, one can pick between two paths (i think):
- The desperate one: “I have a message to pass or something to teach. I have to find an entertaining way to do so.”
- The passionate one: “I have an entertaining message to pass or an entertaining thing to teach. I must find a way to transmit that entertainment”
I prefer the later over the former by far. If the entertainment is separated from the subject itself, It will show up in the long term, and possibly became counter-productive.
Say you rule a company. Do you prefer your employees to enjoy at work, or to enjoy working?
I would not be caught dead giving a presentation but today I saw some videos on YouTube entitled “You Suck At Photoshop” and they were hysterically funny tutorials!
People can whine as much as they like about “entertainment” being unnecessary because people are morally obliged to work hard to learn for themselves, but I’m confused about something: why are these people going to presentations when they could easily find some dry and badly written textbook to read?
And also, shouldn’t these people read the entire unabridge dictionary so they can learn the subtle difference between “entertain” and “amuse”?
Two people can present the same material in the same amount of time, but the one who is entertaining is going to be more productive (i.e. more effective at the goal of disseminating the information) than the guy with a monotone voice reading out the material and scowling at people who don’t take notes. But even that guy will be better than the one making a presentation to an empty room because his habit of trying to please everyone made the guy reading slides seem more interesting.
Uhm. I would classify this post as “stating the obvious” but reading the comment reactions I conclude that I’d be wrong. Still, I have never - ever - seen a good presentation that didn’t follow these basic rules. Unfortunately, Sturgeon’s Law holds for presentations.
The rules don’t apply to presentation slides only though. The “Head First” books did an exceptionally good job there.
Incidentally, someone asked how this was related to “programming and stuff.” Easy: presenting an idea, a concept, a design, a software, … is a crucial part a successful software developer’s daily life. Most suck at it. Go figure.
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“Dont forget to add the muppets!” – Haha, I liked that one.
I think you are confusing ‘entertaining’ with ‘engaging’. Effective communication always engages. I think it would be quite a stretch to say that it must always entertain. Moreover, unless the goal really is to entertain, you don’t want to lose your content in muppet soup. (I don’t think Seasame St. would have had its track record of success and accolades if they adandoned the education mission and focused on a primary goal of entertainment.)
Certainly most things that are entertaining are engaging, at least so far as they have somewhat amused us, but there is a great deal that is engaging without being entertaining. ‘Entertaining’, while not bad, is quite often not much of a compliment either.
Hey, if making the presentation entertaining is appropriate and useful, great! Finding creative ways to engage the audience when presenting difficult (or really all) subjects is a great idea, but if craft your presentation on the idea that the primary goal is to entertain you’re inverting the whole purpose. Entertainment is a means, not an end.
Jeff, you’re absolutely right! I’ve noticed exactly the same positive effect of “edutaining” your audience. Every presentation is “eligible” for edutainment, but the ones we should focus more are those which our audience will naturally find it more boring (e.g., being too much technical or abstract). If we do that, people will become more amused (hopefully never too much), and they will become more focused and even surprised that they liked something they found boring at first. Many people don’t like subjects like maths and physics, but that’s probably because of the education system we have: so boring. In some schools, teachers do some untraditional things like playing interactive games with students. By doing that, they will increase their students’ attention and engagement levels. Doing too much, will cause too much noise, so the best will be balancing a little bit of “entertainment” and “education” alternately.
I agree, but expected more substance. Which muppets did for example you bring to your own recent presentation? 
Anyway, I think Hans Rosling’s talk at the 2006 (and 2007) TED conference is a great example of how even boring statistics can be presented in an entertaining way:
As a high school teacher I agree 100%. Learning by accident is essentially what happens when students engage with a presentation or activity that they see as being fun.
Not everyone is a born entertainer; cheesy jokes badly delivered will turn off even the most attentive of learners, so there is perhaps some distinction between engaging and entertaining. This is essentially about ‘knowing your audience’ and using tools that will engage them. With high school children this is age-specific and things that work include music, sarcasm and sweeties, although not all at once!
Small correction, CTW is Children’s Telivision Workshop. In 2000, CTW changed its name to Sesame Workshop. I can see that you’ve watched the shows, but a few years back. I know this because I worked for Sesame Workshop in 2000 and Big Bird kept calling the Help Desk all the time. Lesson learned, don’t give muppets a laptop if at all possible.
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Jeff,
I think this rule applies to books, too. On your (and others’) suggestion, I picked up the Code Complete 2 book and it’s mind-numbingly boring and I must force myself to turn each page (it seems to be picking up and getting better, I hope this trend continues).
I started trying to figure out why it was so boring and I realized that he repeats himself and restates/rephrases things frequently. He’ll make a point and then re-make it 3 different ways in the following few paragraphs.
And I think a lot of presentations are like this too. People will restate themselves and rephrase similar concepts instead of moving quickly to a range of subjects.
I think it’s less about entertainment, and more about keeping things moving. Sesame Street works not necessarily because of the muppets (those are required for the 3 year olds), but because they can make a quick point and inform you in less than 30 seconds.
Keep the pace quick and don’t get bogged in details during the presentation. The best slides are those with no words or less than 10 words.
Well, I’d listen with more gusto if the speaker makes it a point to make the topic relevant to the me, and not in some abstract manner.
Jonathan Levy’s comment is spot on to reference Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death”. Written twenty years ago and still amazing. “Edutainment” is a one-word oxymoron. Effective education isn’t entertaining - it’s challenging and requires a lot more than just listening passively and being amused. Your presentation should be relevant, thought-provoking and drive discussion. If your content doesn’t stand on it’s own - don’t present it. Now I’m reminded of the movie “Idiocracy”. I’ll stop. Love this blog just the same… 
Edward Tufte has a short tract on why PowerPoint shows dull the mind. He’s required reading for anyone who has to present information of any level of detail to audiences of mixed skills.
His books on visual data presentation are fabulous and it’s worth seeing him in person.
I had a teacher that loved to use cartoon characters to do complex math. And honestly when I was younger I didn’t understand why he had such great success with the class. Now that you have pointed it out, he was applying his own form of edutainment.