Life After PowerPoint!

Nancy Duarte, author of Slide:ology, has published a new book that is well worth your consideration.

Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences (Wiley, 2010) is a visually-appealing, thought-provoking book, and richly satisfying book.

I haven’t read it from cover to cover. Its design has always prompted me to open it at random and read a couple of pages, reflect on what I’ve read, and dive in again at some other point. Each open-read-reflect experiment either confirmed my own experience (“that’s so true”) or gave me a new insight (“I hadn’t thought of it that way before”).

I’ve long believed that every speech — or at least any speech that hopes to change the way an audience thinks and feels and acts — tells a story. Resonate shows you what kind of story to tell and how to tell it. Nancy’s insights, gleaned from Joseph Campbell’s work on myths and from modern-day masters of screenwriting, is both insightful and practical. You would do well to buy the book for those insights alone. And then you’ll find so much more to savor. (Her analysis of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is a marvel; it gives a new way of appreciating a well-known masterpiece.)

Here’s just one example of what Duarte offers: “Create a moment where you dramatically drive the big idea home by intentionally placing Something They’ll Always Remember — a S.T.A.R. moment — in each presentation… The S.T.A.R. moment should be a significant, sincere, and enlightening moment during the presentation that helps magnify your big idea — not distract from it.”

She then lists, explains and gives examples of the five types of S.T.A.R. moments: 1) memorable dramatization, 2) repeatable sound bites, 3) evocative visuals, 4) emotive storytelling, and 5) shocking statistics.

I highly recommend Resonate. Let me know what you think of it.