This seems like pretty good advice for all presentations – along with use lots of pictures, no more than 4 bullet points and don’t read out the words on the slides…
“If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers.”
A great article on level design, the Temptress and Storyteller.
http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=dg3w5bqn_5995dwkxf9&ncl=true
“People prize what they don’t understand at least as much as what they do” Randall Sullivan on the creators of the Georgia Guidestones, in a Wired article
Wyatt Martin “if you want to keep people interested, you can let them know only so much“ – the only remaining contact with R.C. Christian creator of the Guidestones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones
JJ Abrams also in Wired
”We’re smack in the middle of the age of immediacy.”…
”Perhaps that’s why mystery now more than ever, has a special meaning. Because it’s the anomaly, the glaring affirmation that the age of immediacy has a meaningful downside. Mystery demands that you stop and consider – or at the very least, slow down and discover. It’s a challenge to get there yourself, on its terms, not yours.”
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/j_j_abrams_mystery_box.html
Movies/TV are a series of mystery boxes, revealing their meta stories over time, withholding information to maximize the mystery and stimulate the imagination – jaws/aliens etc
“One of the reasons we like crosswords is that they let us have an intellectual triumph on a small scale”
Amy Reynaldo, Wired
“compression is the tendency of rewards to become less effective with repetition”
Seth Godin, Permission Marketing
In the same way that we adapt to familiar fragrances and start to no longer notice them, you can become immune to the thrill of rewards with excessive repetition.
Add some mystery to the rewards;
http://genecloud.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/223/
Think about them as treats, that you use more sparingly;
http://genecloud.wordpress.com/2008/01/09/are-the-rewards-like-good-treats/
The Paradox of Choice at work in decision making
“More time does not create better decisions. In fact, it usually decreases the quality of the decision. More information may help. More time without more information just creates anxiety, not insight…”
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/04/i-need-more-time.html
“If people realise I am thirty-five,” he said, “they won’t allow their imaginations to run wild. They’ll see me as an adult acting, rather than a kid playing. Most people in the audience want to forget the rules, but they need a little help. I have to create an imaginary world for them: if I do it well, they will walk in to it with me.” Philippe a Cirque clown
Cirque Du Soleil : The Spark, Igniting The Creative Fire That Lives Within Us All by Lyn Heward and John U. Bacon
Players want to suspend disbelief, give them no cause to step outside of the world you have created for them.
“Blank Page Syndrome: when presented with infinite choice, it’s sometimes hard to get started”
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000407.html
Without a boundary it is too easy to drift inefficiently, to strike off in different directions, to take your first idea, to freeze and stare at the blank page or to spend way too much time or money on something.
Cirque Du Soleil : The Spark, Igniting The Creative Fire That Lives Within Us All by Lyn Heward and John U. Bacon
“Oh, we’ve got budgets and deadline, all right,” she said. “Without them, I don’t think we’d be half as creative as we are. They force us to come up with solutions we’d never think of otherwise. Constraints on time, money, and resources can be incredible motivators!. Some of our most inspired ideas have arisen from the most Spartan situations.”
“So how do you turn these random ideas in to an act?” – “Deadlines!” He laughed. “Of course, they always come too fast, but without them, your mind is not focused. With them, on the other hand, your panicked mind starts coming up with crazy ideas it would never otherwise. If you have two days to design a transition from a trapeze act to a trampoline, you will think of something!”
