Fanboy Planet started our third year of San Jose film festival Cinequest’s 25th year with our traditional podcast. It’s still available here for your listening pleasure. Cinequest is a wonderful two weeks of films that you otherwise might not be exposed to, smaller production houses, new ideas that aren’t “saleable in Hollywood.” You know, the stuff we all claim to want to see more of, claim to love, brag about discovering before it made it big.
Last year I went nearly every day, seeing a couple of films each trip downtown, and basically had a blast.
Typically the Fanboy Planet staff coverage of Cinequest is a few articles and recorded interviews with the Cinequest guests and filmmakers. We do a lot of that, and it’s great stuff. I made a lot of friends, got into some really interesting conversations, and we produced a lot of coverage of the festival.
But this year I decided I wanted to do a bit more, to challenge myself to journal every film I see this year.
Normally this would be something that would go right to the main Fanboy Planet website. But unfortunately it’s still a bit of work to get something written, uploaded, fit in images, proof, and generally make it worthy of being up and live on the site. And I needed to be able to do the writing and production quickly to stay true to my goal. I want to try to cover films that, if you live in the Bay Area, you’ll have a chance to see as well at the festival. Click on the poster for more information and how to buy tickets.
So I decided that this would be a two-phase production. Quick postings to my WordPress blog, where I can get things written and readable. Then later pushing the same text and images, perhaps after Editor in Chief Derek McCaw has had time to proof, to the Fanboy Planet site.
So you’ll be seeing this logo around because that’s the branding I’ve made for the Fanboy Planet series of articles. And it couldn’t hurt the site for you to go and check out the other great stuff we do there. I expect there’s something for everyone.
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy reading It’s an experiment, but it’s a hopeful one and doubly so in that I hope you enjoy the ride.
Fair Warning: Tomorrow, Tuesday February 24th at 7pm, the festival opens with the feel-good documentary of the year: Batkid Begins. We’ve been covering this on Fanboy Planet since early last year, and it gets our highest recommendation. Click here to read Derek McCaw’s review from July of last year.
One of my favorite things to do is to show the developer of a function or piece of software something it does that they just weren’t expecting. I know, you’re thinking bugs, and bugs are fun too. But what I’m really talking about is broken down into two areas:
Things you can do with it that they weren’t expecting
The Blur Trick
This is typically a surprise bonus to the feature. In PowerPoint 2010 there were two features that were moderately cool on their own: Remove Background and Artistic Effects. Both were useful on their own. Though Remove Background didn’t actually do as good a job at Photoshop when it came to edge definitions and recognizing what was and wasn’t background. Artistic Effects was a set filters, like Photoshop filters, that worked on the whole graphic image. I found a cool way to combine them, but that’s another blog entry: The PowerPoint Blur Trick. Anyway, I’m not talking about that.
Things they never said it could do, but you find a way anyhow
SmartArt is this cool feature that helps users show their ideas graphically. It may be the single biggest in-product feature for fighting bullet-hell in PowerPoint. Aside from being able to insert various SmartArt graphics onto your slide, you can also select an existing set of bullet points and directly convert that into a SmartArt graphic.
One click conversion to SmartArt
I’d go on with more, but it’s a pretty easy to understand feature, and I encourage you to explore it yourself.
Smarter than SmartArt
Two interesting things about SmartArt. First, you can easily convert it back to text via a command in the SmartArt ribbon Convert menu. The graphic goes away and you’re back to bullet points.
The second is that SmartArt is created from the same shapes that you draw from the Shapes menu; rectangles, circles, triangles, etc. And you can Ungroup a SmartArt and modify or delete or add to the shapes. Without ungrouping, the SmartArt has to stay in the same level, part of it can’t be brought forward or sent behind. Freely recoloring and resizing parts of the ungrouped SmartArt is a great technique for getting just the right graphic.
However, once ungrouped, a SmartArt no longer retains it’s “Smartness.” You can no longer apply a different SmartArt design to it, and you can’t get back to the original bulleted text.
Not available after you ungroup a SmartArt
Or so I thought.
Last week at The Presentation Summit, I watched Nuts and Bolts Speed Training’sTaylor Croonquist show off a quick tip that I simply would never have thought of myself. I doubt anyone on the PowerPoint team has ever considered this possibility. It’s crazy, but you’ll want to add it to your “Things I Might Eventually Need In PowerPoint” toolkit.
And while you’re there check out some of their other tips too. I particularly liked their very easy to understand explanation of how to use PowerPoint’s Animation Triggers. Enjoy.
Ric Bretschneider October 25, 2014, 7:45 PM Giants and Kansas City are tied 4-4.
I found myself rereading parts of Richard Saul Wurman’s Information Anxiety this afternoon.
Last week at Presentation Summit I gave a talk on the Pecha Kucha format. Pecha Kucha is a form of presentation using exactly 20 slides, with each slide advancing automatically after 20 seconds. It’s a kind of Iron Chef for accomplished presenters, but in running the local Pecha Kucha event I coach a lot of very successful novices as well. Building a Pecha Kucha is an exercise in information design, painstakingly removing unnecessary bits of info until you get to the heart of your message, the sharpest argument for moving your audience. In my summation I referenced Wurman’s book as a good reference to learning how to do exactly that.
If you don’t know Wurman, he’s an architect, graphic designer, and cartographer. He reinvented guide books with his ACCESS line, co founded and chaired the TED conference, coined the phrase information architect, and he’s a really readable author.
Guide to Florence & Venice
Guide to New York City
Information Anxiety is 15 years old. That means it was written when Apple was floundering in it’s own design (a 16 lb Mac portable premiered that year), and that it predates the generic popularization of the Internet and World Wide Web.
But ancient as it may be, it is just as viable today as when I first bought it on a whim. It remains one of my favorite books. I can land on practically any random page and be enthralled, entertained and educated. The design is clear and orienting, an example of what the text preaches; making information accessible, removing the unnecessary, and most importantly fitting it to the perspective of the consumer.
ACCESS guide to Twin Peaks (I have a copy of this around here somewhere…)
Which lead me to visit and reflect on two things:
1) I’m struck by how design and fashion are so unnecessarily blurred by modern usage, typically by followers of fashion who can’t be bothered to understand how to design for their audience. They refer to fashion as design, and amazingly aren’t challenged for this ludicrous assertion.
It really seems simple though: Design is easy to recognize by its timeless nature, its attempt to make things better, easier, smarter, more accessible. It is the data architecture, the positioning, spacing, and ordering. It is the practice of winnowing down to essentials and focusing that information arrow on the forehead of the consumer.
Fashion doesn’t intrinsically contribute to clarity, accessibility, or base usefulness, and it has the annoying habit of becoming tired and needing to change to reinvigorate interest (and promote otherwise unnecessary spending). It vascilates between appearances, each iteration assuring that this is a breakthrough, when in fact it’s just a cycle of introduction, exhaustion, and reinvention. In dark times I tend to look at fashion and design as mortal enemies.
The design of this book is timeless because of its thoughtful planning and consistent execution. The fashion of this book is sedate, does not overshadow the design, in fact it is rather hard to isolate. In short, this balance results in a timeless book.
But this is starting to sound preachy. Let’s move on to…
2) I think I just invented the bookie. A book-focused selfie.
One of my favorite books.
Yes that ended silly, but I didn’t want you to think I was burning on this issue so much as to lose my perspective or sense of humor. Keep your own perspective and design well. And, if you must flavor your design with fashion, make sure it deftly avoids becoming information camouflage.
I hope to see more bookies in the future. Send me a link to your own bookie!
I recently launched Book Judgement, a companion site all about the beauty of books.
We do judge books by the covers, as well as their typography, binding, paper, and other material arts and we want to recognize the artists that craft them.
Just published is a new article about an amazing book, the Codex Seraphinianus, that is worth finding out about.
NOTE: The following image is a prank, that was constructed to make you destroy your own iPhone. Do NOT put your iPhone in the Microwave.
So, this is showing up today. People who bought the new iPhones with inductive chargers are being, I kid you not, convinced to put their new iPhone 6’s and 6+’s in their microwaves and turn the oven on to charge their phones.
As you may already know from prior posts, that as well as producing the weekly podcast, I often write for a website called Fanboy Planet. Fanboy Planet reports on all the silly and serious aspects of being a fan in this modern day. Being involved in fannish media is a joy which keeps my sense of wonder alive, and gets me into a lot of cool places.
This week I concluded the first trilogy of episodes in my new column, Digital Fanboy. This iswhere I examine the digital realm of media with an eye to how it affects the fannish folks and the movies, books, comics and other stuff they love.
This third episode will be up soon, maybe already! Here’s a tease and a link…
Digital Fanboy: Episode 3
Dystopian Utopia
or
Dude, Where’s My Stuff?
Digital Fanboy is our exploration into digital media. How we use it, how it uses us, and how to get a better handle on everything. I hope that by breaking this down into small tastes I can help you understand what the present and future hold for us, just as I exorcise my own demons in this area. Come, take the red pill…
In Episode 1 we talked about the benefits and additional features we get from electronic media. The terms we hear and what they mean. In Episode 2 I reviewed how media made it’s way into the digital world, and what happened to it along the way. This concluding episode we’ll be looking at a couple of real-world examples of what you can come to expect from the future of digital media, and how to best prepare for it.
Of course like all modern trilogies, there’s the potential for sequels. If you have questions or if there are new developments in this area, Digital Fanboy is the friend who will either explain it or tell you you’re better off not knowing.
You Live in the Future
Digital media changed everything.
I don’t need CD cases, they’re cheaper
and “just as good” on iTunes!
Why clutter up your house with DVD cases when
you can stream those movies on Netflix?
Book cases? Just read those books from the cloud!
Sure, and there’s stuff you can do with digital that you could never do with physical media. I travel with hundreds of books in my backpack. I can choose what movie I want to watch on the plane. Mix tape from 100’s of albums when and where I want? Sure, I’m future boy!
It’s all upside, right? What could be wrong? But about this time in any SyFy movie, you know the foreboding music is about to rise and everything you’ve been enjoying is about to turn on you.
The Current Future Is Broken
Only it’s not happening in the future. It’s already here. Digital media is busted, it isn’t the warm, fuzzy friend you thought you knew. It’s been fed after midnight and then pushed into the pool.
What happens if we feed them after midnight? Read more here!
Looking at the otherwise seductive Moto 360, I’m struck by the beauty of the watch and the confusion it represents.
Its charger is labeled “wireless” which is mismanaged marketing of what is more correctly known as inductive charging. Inductive charging means that the device doesn’t actually plug-in to the charger, it sits on a surface and the proximity of the device to that surface causes the device to charge.
These new “wireless” chargers sound like electricity will be broadcast to the device, through the air, which is technology that isn’t practical given today’s research and prototyping. I recently bought a Lumo Lift (which I’m very unhappy with, but that’s a column for another day) which also has a proprietary and ridiculous wireless charger.
In fact, these inductive chargers are wired, and worse they’re not consistently created. With few exceptions devices require a proprietary and unique-to-the-device dock or other housing for the inductive charging to be made.
So what’s the problem with that? Well, there’s starting to be a very crowded amount of space on my physical desktop for these devices to sit and glow as they recharge, and most of these inductive devices require daily charging so hello docklands. It’s really kind of absurd looking when the docks are sitting there empty. The idea of setting them up when you need them puts the whole “wireless” thing to an absurd test of practicality.
This is to say nothing about packing these docks up and finding plugs for them in hotel rooms when you travel. Forget about it. And want to keep a charger at your work? These are never bargains to buy a 2nd one, even when they offer spares for purchase.
A few years back all phones and most devices in the US had different plugs, requiring you to have multiple chargers with different, typically company-specific, tips on them. There are laws in Europe that require standardization. Of late there’s been progress towards standardization on mini-USB as a charging type and USB power levels eliminating the need for even a standard-plug charger. You can travel with a few USB cords and many hotels are even providing USB power plugs on desks or lamps for the traveler.
But if this horribly misnamed “wireless” fad catches on it will be a big step backwards for us all. Not wanting to sound too “you kids get off my lawn” on this, but setting standards for and requiring manufacturers stick with them is always in the best interest of consumers. When it gets abused, the customer suffers.
And that’s why, while I love the looks and function of the Moto 36o, I won’t be getting one for my birthday or Christmas.
If you’re missing lists, they are safe. Please sign out and back in again. So sorry for the trouble!
I have not tried this, will check and report back. In the meantime, I believe Step One below is still a safe first tactic.
UPDATE ENDS
UPDATE 2
It apparently works. My lists are restored. My morning is wasted, and I’m still incredibly angry with Wunderlist.
I’m leaving the article up because I’d already sent out notices so this stands as both a data recovery tactic, as well as a reminder that some developers are sloppy and lazy when it comes to scaring the sh*t out of their customers.
All may not be well with Wunderlist even given the support note. Read the comments thread below, particularly the one just added by Nino.
Regardless, it does seem reasonable that if you use Wunderlist a lot, creating a local archive as described in Step 2 on a regular basis is just a sane thing to do given the history here.
UPDATE 4 ENDS
OK, the version of Wunderlist pushed out this week is deleting list items. It’s all over Twitter. Additionally, if you have multiple devices sync’d to Wunderlist, when you will open Wunderlist you get a glimpse of your list data, and then watch in horror as Wunderlist deletes it forever.
Or almost.
Here are some things you should do now.
First and foremost: DISCONNECT
Do NOT run Wunderlist! If you don’t run it, your local data is safe.
Disconnect your devices from the internet before running Wunderlist. Different on wireless Macs and PCs, but for desktops this typically means just yanking the Ethernet cable out of the back of your computer. There, now Wunderlist won’t try to sync your data into nothingness. Once you’ve disconnected, you can run the app.
Second: Preserve your data.
For each list in Wunderlist, you can right click (at least on the Mac) the list title and choose “Email List.” This will compose an email with that lists contents, all the task names, their status (even completed tasks) and all the contents including notes you’ve added in the details view. You don’t actually need to send the list, copy it from e-mail to a Word or Text document and save that new document and you won’t lose your notes.
Third: Try to Restore
If you’ve already lost your data, the’res a chance you can restore it.
On the Mac, this is easy if you’re using Time Machine. Use the Finder “Go” menu command “Go to folder…” and enter
Run Time machine and restore that folder. If you’ve never used your Time Machine restore, now is a great time to go to Apple.Com for instructions.
You may have Time Machine save the old folder if you want, but it’s likely pretty useless.
Windows users will need to see if their backups include this path:c:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Roaming\6Wunderkinder\Wunderlist\Wunderlist.dat Sorry, but I’ve only done this on a Mac, so you’re on your on on restore specifics.
Same basic situation, restore that file if you can.
BUT WAIT!
Now, you’re not really safe after restoring. If you reconnect to the internet, Wunderlist is looking for time stamps on records, will see that records have been previously deleted, and then delete the task you just restored. This is just a step that you might do and then follow-up with that Second: Preserve Your Data step. You might also preserve a copy of this folder to your desktop or another folder just in cast Wunderlist comes up with a fix.
OK, Now What?
Yes, now you have your lists preserved at least. Getting them back into Wunderlist is another thing. Likely you’ll need to copy/paste. But first, know that they have a bug and haven’t commented on it, so you may want to use something else, like a paper list for a while. Me, I pasted these lists into Evernote, which is a world-class application that has never lost my data.
Maybe Wunderlist will fix this soon, and maybe they’ll never have a bug like this again.
As you may already know from prior posts, as well as producing the weekly podcast, I often write for a website called Fanboy Planet. Fanboy Planet reports on all the silly and serious aspects of being a fan in this modern day. Being involved in fannish media is a joy which keeps my sense of wonder alive, and gets me into a lot of cool places.
This week I continued new column, Digital Fanboy, where I examine the digital realm of media with an eye to how it affects the fannish folks and the movies, books, comics and other stuff they love.
The Second episode will be up soon, maybe already! Here’s a tease and a link…
Digital Fanboy: Episode 2 Locking the Barn Door or Everything is Software, Coppertop
When we last met, I closed with the following ominous paragraph:
Your relationship with your cloud library is your personal login to the various digital comics stores. This should give you access to your purchases on an on-demand basis. But the comics downloaded to your device are basically locked-in there, you’re dependent on that specific device to read them. And the ugly truth is that without a connection to the cloud, at least every few days, your digital comics can turn into something dead. Not really yours to read no matter how much you’ve paid for them.
It wouldn’t be fair to ignore that, so let’s get to explaining how easily the rights to what you’ve paid for can evaporate.
Eating Digital Media
The most obvious commercial media you consume is music. Back in the 90’s when everyone was waking up to the power of the Internet, file sharing proved just how much we loved to carry around music. Typically this meant that individuals would use programs rip music from CDs into computer files that could be played, and of course duplicated an infinite number of times. Of course giving commercial music away to your friends was 99.9% illegal, but music companies really had no way to prevent it. Very frustrating for them, watching all those uncollected profits scamper about the Internet. So they tried to make examples of the few the caught to scare everyone out of pirating music. But that just made people hate music companies more than they did before. What to do?
As well as producing the weekly podcast, I often write for a web site called Fanboy Planet. Fanboy Planet reports on all the silly and serious aspects of being a fan in this modern day. Being involved in fannish media is a joy which keeps my sense of wonder alive, and gets me into a lot of cool places.
This week I decided to start a new column, Digital Fanboy, where I’ll examine the digital realm of media with an eye to how it affects the fannish folks and the movies, books, comics and other stuff they love.
The first episode is up now, here’s a tease and a link…
Digital Fanboy: Episode 1 Your Digital Destiny or Where the Heck Are We?
Digital Fanboy is our exploration into digital media. How we use it, how it uses us, and how to get a better handle on everything. I hope that by breaking this down into small tastes I can help you understand what the present and future hold for us, just as I exorcise my own demons in this area. Come, take the red pill…
This is a subject that I love and fear in equal parts. I expect you have some excitement about digital media in your life, and you may have a bit of confusion as well. In these introductory episodes, I’m going to try to break down the basics of digital media, more bite sized than an overwhelming feast. Currently, this is a trilogy:
Episode 1 – Your Digital Destiny – Benefits and additional features we get from electronic media. The terms we hear and what they mean. That’s this episode!
Episode 2 – Locking the Barn Door – How digital media works, and how it fails. What DRM means and how it creates opportunity and complicates “ownership” of digital works. There’s a little Rebels V. Empire here that you can try at home.
Episode 3 – Dystopian Utopia – How digital media “ownership” breaks, the fragility of your digital library, and what still needs to be done to fix that. We’ll talk about the problems happening today, what’s likely to happen tomorrow, and what you and media providers can do to protect your new digital library.
Just a quick note that I’m so pleased to welcome Christopher J. Garcia back for his second submission to Book Judgement: A Book That Must Be Called Luscious.
It is a love letter to the binding and typography of yet another well designed book. And that’s what Book Judgement is all about.
As technologists and tool-users we tend to focus on the tools in play in creating and playing our “presentation.” It’s easy to lose track of the fact that you are the presentation and everything else is just support.
Soft skills, the ones not involved with creating and animating graphics, are so important and often neglected – the expectation being “we already know how to talk.”
My buddy Garr Reynolds writes up and extends this list of “Seven” things you should not do when presenting. Great reading and something you can implement today, or in your next presentation with just a little awareness, thought and planning.
In this simple but informative TED Talk, Julian Treasure offers up seven things that effective communicators must exclude from speech. This list of seven is a kind of “bad habits to avoid” list. They are not the only elements that can derail effective communication, but it is a good list from which to start. “I call them seven sins somewhat tongue in cheek,” Julian says in the comments section on the TED Website. “I am not saying these things are bad or wrong, simply that they tend to make it harder for people to listen, especially when they become habits.” Yes, suggesting that one avoid these behaviors always and forever can become a sort of dogma as well. However, he is right that these behaviors are for the most part injurious to our reputations, credibility, and over all effectiveness.
It’s a project I’ve wanted to do for years, but never figured out exactly what it was and how I would do it. Together those are pretty inhibiting factors.
Simply put, I love books. Not just reading books, I’m a big fan of their construction. The art of book binding. The materials used. The covers, slipcovers, dust jackets, and even that library plastic the gets put over dust jackets to protect them (it’s commercially known as Brodart.
Sometimes this stuff gets mentioned in passing in book reviews, but mostly it’s ignored and that’s a real shame.
Book Judgement is about judging books by their covers. That’s a labor of love for me, and I hope you’ll check it out. And if you have a similar passion for a book or two, I welcome submissions to the blog. Really, would love to have you write something about a book treatment you enjoy.
Hey, that’s me! Ric Bretschneider, also known as RicBret.
Hey! You either followed the breadcrumbs or somehow just got lucky and stumbled into the new blog location. Congratulations either way. I’m really happy you made it here.
For years I’ve used the free WordPress-hosted blogging, and I was happy. But I’ve always felt that my web-based work was uncoordinated and hard to follow. So I recently started redoing everything!
This blog is one of the most important of the new “arms” of my web work. This is my main blog, where I write about PowerPoint, presenting, writing, design, technology, and so much more. It’s coming along quickly, faster than I thought it would, and I’m so pleased you’ve found your way here.
Main blog? Yes, there are several others that are a bit more specific in their coverage. I’ll let you know here when they come online.
OK, that may sound like gibberish, so if that doesn’t make sense here’s all you have to know.
All the old posts have been copied here, so you can leave the old site behind.
The old site won’t go away, it’s just not going to be updated. I’m only keeping the old site available for people who linked to it from their own sites so those links will continue to work.
If you want to renew your free subscription to my posts you really should use the subscription button on https://blog.ricbret.com.
I watched you get messed up by Samsung’s presentation support staff at CES yesterday. You’re probably aware that it’s all over the net now, likely a skit on SNL this weekend and maybe you’ll make The Daily Show. You’re a pretty easy target to begin with (*boom*) but add all the things that went wrong in the space of a couple of minutes to your already fiery personality and wham instant Internet meme.
It’s tough. It’s unfair. How many of the people having fun at your expense have themselves spoken live in front of an audience of 200 people? 500? The pressure of standing in front of thousands at CES and hundreds of thousands more virtually would make most of today’s detractors wet themselves on the spot. But the Internet is not big on walking a mile in anyone else’s shoes if they can feel schadenfreude or get a laugh instead.
But you could have done better.
No jokes here, just a couple of things to remember the next time you get in front of an audience.
Fight or Flight
One of the basic human reactions to pressure is fight or flight, especially when it’s a surprise. We civilized folk tend towards flight, because it’s more socially acceptable. And obviously that’s what happened yesterday. But maybe fight doesn’t have to always mean throwing a punch. Fight can just mean fighting yourself to stay on that stage and keeping your audience involved.
Expect the unexpected
Murphy is my traveling companion. He always makes something go wrong. Always. Because of his tenacity, I believe in multiple levels of redundancy in anything that matters to my performance in front of an audience. And you should too when you can.
Of course, much of it is out of your control, no amount of planning can cover everything.
So just go into it expecting something to go wrong. It’s not frightening, it’s just realizing that you need to remain flexible in all situations involving pressure and performance. If you’re expecting someone to fail to hit their cue, step on your line, the wrong slide to be showing, anything unexpected can be dealt with.
And most important here, you must keep your sense of humor about it. Taking yourself too seriously will lock you into a situation where you can’t think and have no alternative other than flight.
Accept the situation
When something goes wrong, accept it. It can’t be undone now. You now have choices as to how to proceed.
Grace
It is somewhat paradoxically important not to apologize too much, and not to find others to blame. Both may be your immediate urge, but you must suppress it. Your team may have let you down, but they probably feel worse about it than you do (and it’s likely going to be a topic for discussion with their own management!) Focus on getting back on track, not on how you got off track – your audience doesn’t really care.
Humor
Humor is a powerful ally when you can do it off the cuff. You don’t have to have the audience rolling in the aisles, just keep them on your side. “Ever have one of those days?” or “Pardon me while I burst into flame here.” will let them know you’re off-script and the personal aside will keep them in your corner. Resist the urge to be the butt of your own joke, that’s an easy way out, but like too much apologizing it undercuts your relevance and credibility. It’s important to remember that very few people in the audience really want you to fail. They’re basically on your side.
Improv
One of the greatest exercises a speaker can do is improvisational speaking. Develop some level of familiarity with improvisational tactics. Lots of forward-thinking organizations bring in formal improv training for team building and management seminars. You can approach this in many ways, but once you do you’ll find it’s value surprisingly useful.
For example, at our Pecha Kucha events, we warm up with a form of presentation called PowerPoint Karaoke. Here presenters must string together a presentation based on slides they have never seen before. And we do this for fun! Of course presenters are expecting the situation, developing their ability to expect the unexpected, and again the audience is on their side. And it’s damn funny. But it’s a terrific exercise for any presenter wanting to develop their list of public speaking calisthenics.
While you’re in the moment, look around. Quickly appraise the situation and prepare to deal with it. Look for inspiration, allies, audience reactions… these are all fodder for your response to bridge back to the topic at hand.
Continue the Dialogue
Now that things are composed, and assuming you’ve done your homework, you can probably wing your presentation for a short bit. Hopefully the support staff is working frantically to correct things. And hopefully the well-managed disturbance takes on no more significance than an interrupting sneeze.
But if it goes longer, nothing changes in the advice. Remain graceful and move to transition out of the confusion. Lots of alternatives here. Consider:
Engage other speakers already on stage or invite other participants onto the stage. This is what you really should have tried with Joe Stinziano, senior vice president of Samsung Electronics yesterday. He’s probably conversant enough to answer an off the cuff question or give you a clue as to what you want to move onto next. A conversation is a lifesaving improvisational step that can take the pressure off while keeping the audience’s attention. (Improv Hint: Read up on “Yes, and…” technique!)
Backtrack and start over. Often the easiest thing to do. It doesn’t have to be a complete recreation, but a summary of what you’ve covered so far can also help the audience shake the confusion of that moment off themselves.
If all else fails, moving on to another part of the agenda and returning to your message once the situation is corrected is the graceful way out of a presentation that has burst into flame. Inform the audience, and move gracefully to the side until recalled.
Always Prep
Yeah, good advice in hindsight. Easy, right?
I can see it right now. Someone asked you to get on the stage and get some promotional value for the next Transformers film while pushing some technology you actually liked. Your protests of I haven’t got time to prepare for a presentation! were met with assurances that all you have to do is read the teleprompter. Well, we see how well that worked out.
Even if you can’t take the time to memorize the speech, break what you have to talk about into one or two salient points that you can fall back on should the unexpected happen. Winging it still means you stay on topic, and you need the facts to do so.
Of course preparation is the activity that pays off in gold. It makes everything above that much easier. If you can’t take 10 times the amount of time you’re planning on being in front of an audience in preparation, you really should bow out.
And That’s About It
Hope this somehow gets to you Michael. While I’m not the biggest fan of your movies, my heart went out to you at CES. It wasn’t your fault, and the Internet is having a lot of fun at your expense today.
I know you already addressed the situation in your own blog with the self-deprecating comment I guess live shows aren’t my thing. I know it’s tough right now, but with just a little prep I think you could turn that impression right around.
This morning Nancy Duarte announced that “the multimedia version of Resonate is now available on HTML5 and iTunes for FREE! You can read, learn, and share on any platform or device.”
So stop reading this and go get it. Even if you already own the book, this is the multimedia enhanced version so you’ve got brand new levels of coolness to explore.
Postman bought my new Leap Motion controller this week. Minutes after installing it (and figuring out I’d placed it on the desktop upside down!) it was up and working. This video is my first few impressions of the orientation application and the OSX integration application.
Video is in high resolution so click the zoom button to view full screen.
So, will this be a permanent and well-used addition to my physical desktop? Hard to say. Right now it’s a real cool demo, and it’s got some potential, but the fine tuning will the real test here. Even games require an exacting “touch” that will hard to match. And the reality here is that if you really want to replace my mouse this new method to exceed my current input devices.
Some people think that because I worked for Microsoft for so many years that I’m an Apple hater. Well, that’s not actually true. Fact is, I’ve had a Macintosh on my desks, at work and home, pretty much constantly since their release in 1984, two of my family members have iPhones, and we have iPads, iPods, and Apple TVs scattered throughout the house. This is being written on a 27″ iMac, the one use for about 90% of my day.
OK, part of that 90% is in Parallels running various versions of Windows and Windows Office.
Unfortunately this post won’t help my argument that I’m an open supporter of both leading operating systems. Partially because these days I’m finding Apple so caught up in their image, their products exclusively, that they’re impressing me as a bunch of pompous jerks. Doesn’t make me automatically hate the products, but I’m no cool-aid drinking fanboy. Apple is doing plenty of crappy stuff to their customers, turning them more into consumers than unlocking their potential as creators is the big one. However, I’m getting off the point. Which is a case in point of how douchy and inept they can be.
Earlier this month I wanted to watch the Apple WWDC Opening that was streaming from Apple.Com. However, if you weren’t using Safari as your browser, you were blocked. My default browser is Google Chrome. Yeah, if you weren’t going to wear their colors to the party, they shut you down at the door.
OK, I don’t like Safari myself. Apple claims it’s the #1 installed mobile browser, but they don’t tell you that you aren’t allowed to remove it from their mobile devices, and you can’t set a different browser as preferred on their mobile devices. How’s that for anti-trust? (Remember the US Justice Department vs Microsoft for “bundling” Internet Explorer with Windows?) I think Safari is way behind Chrome in so many ways, and Chrome’s cross-platform support is superb. So I don’t use Safari. I keep it around when I have to access some non-standard Apple site, like the one in question.
So I manually fired up Safari and started watching.
I may find time soon to comment on how sad the state of design has gotten at Apple, this Ives guy really isn’t impressing me as anything more than someone trying to create a new fashion, not as a real product designer, but I’m getting off track again.
So I watched the list of features borrowed from other OS’s that Apple was rolling out as Innovations. And at some point I decided to see if there was a way to pop-out the video window, so it would take less room on my screen and I could continue to work on things that actually mattered. No button on the video, so I started hunting…
This is what I saw when I right-clicked the Safari-embedded video.
The disabled PowerPC version of Internet Explorer, that apparently still works it’s mojo.
Yeah, it was like some amazing wormhole to an alternate reality had opened up on my screen. There was Safari suggesting that if I want to open this streaming QuickTime, I should use the Ten Year Old, PowerPC-only, Macintosh version of Internet Explorer.
Wow.
Granted, the old app is still on my machine. But even Finder recognizes it won’t run in the current OS. If you double-click it, you get the message “You can’t open the application “Internet Explorer.app” because PowerPC applications are no longer supported.
I’ve kept the old app, and a couple of others, around because I’ve considered creating a virtual machine running the old PPC supporting OS X, just thinking I might write about some history there and it would be an easy way to pose the screen shots I’d need.
But this was strange, and kind of pathetic Safari. I’d almost feel sorry for you. If you weren’t such a douche.
Word from comiXology now after many hand-wringing updates overnight is that Apple didn’t prevent comiXology from pushing to iOS apps, but comiXology made the call. In a letter on their blog page, comiXology CEO David Steinberger noted:
It would be very interesting to know which policies, their actual nomenclature, comiXology was concerned about violating. Expect they were spot-on in their interpretation. This smells of Apple making an exception after the fact to avoid bad press, and a small company falling on its own sword to keep in the fruit monopoly’s good graces.
Apple is a blatant censor, they just don’t want to be known as one. Their role as a publisher who censors other publishers is a net-negative, regardless of the details.
20130410:12:45PM PST
Ric’ Originally Wrote on April 9th:
Apple Computer’s been pretty absurd about trying to prevent mature individuals from enjoying mature content on their mobile devices.
What’s so special about mobile devices? Nothing, except that Apple has implemented a file system and application system that they can control, they can prevent the user from using for any content. There is only content Apple approves of, on apps Apple approves of. And they’ve been your nanny since day one.
But now they’ve gone a little nuts.
Tomorrow, one of the finest comics available, Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, will not be available in digital form on iOS devices. This is due to two “postage stamp sized gay sex scenes” that appear in the magazine. They’re kind of background images, literally like someone left a TV on in a scene, context is ambiguous and not flamboyant.
Still Apple takes umbrage, and is shutting down all iOS apps that might try to down the comic. No iPad, no iPhone, no. Because they’re trying to protect you from an image you can walk into any comic store tomorrow and buy without showing your driver’s license. And it’s not the first nudity or sexuality in the magazine. It’s undoubtedly because of the gay context that they get out their big censor stick.
Normally this would be something that would go right to the main Fanboy Planet website. But unfortunately it’s still a bit of work to get something written, uploaded, fit in images, proof, and generally make it worthy of being up and live on the site. And I needed to be able to do the writing and production quickly to stay true to my goal. I want to try to cover films that, if you live in the Bay Area, you’ll have a chance to see as well at the festival. Click on the poster for more information and how to buy tickets.
So you’ll be seeing this logo around because that’s the branding I’ve made for the Fanboy Planet series of articles. And it couldn’t hurt the site for you to go and check out the other great stuff we do there. I expect there’s something for everyone.
Fair Warning: Tomorrow, Tuesday February 24th at 7pm, the festival opens with the feel-good documentary of the year: Batkid Begins. We’ve been covering this on Fanboy Planet since early last year, and it gets our highest recommendation. Click here to read Derek McCaw’s review from July of last year.
