How Steve Jobs beats presentation panic

http://www.macworld.com/article/151903/2010/06/stevejobs_presentations.html?lsrc=rss_main

by fogus • 16 years ago

59 19 16 years ago

jtbigwoo• 16 years ago

A friend of mine has a great line for whenever something unexpected happens in a demo: "I'm glad this happened and I'll tell you why..."

bwana998• 16 years ago

Good one! :)

djcapelis• 16 years ago

I actually hate this line.

I've heard it a few times and it provides the impression that you weren't going to explore something important in your planned presentation which is a bit of a slap to the audience. I prefer "This gives us an opportunity to talk about..."

Your presentation shouldn't be an accident, you shouldn't be glad you would have failed to tell us something important had things gone right, you should be glad to react to changing circumstances and explain something off the cuff.

smwhreyebelong2• 16 years ago

Humor is a great strategy. Once you have people laughing, you can get away with a few minor hiccups.

It reminds me of a rafting trip I took. The buses being used to transport us from the office to the rafting location were really old and almost falling apart. The guides had a brilliant story about how the buses went from high schools->some backwater in mexico->some other really random places and were finally bought by the rafting company. The funny story had people laughing all the way there than crib about how crappy the buses were.

eitally• 16 years ago

This is all well and good -- and a similar post a few months ago relating how Malcolm Gladwell practices his lectures had much of the same information -- but to be completely honest, with the amount of multitasking most people do these days, almost none of the presentations we give are much more than information sharing via PowerPoint/Impress/Pages. The extra time spent rehearsing and preparing backup plans would be a complete waste.

It would be smarter for most people to practice their public speaking more generally so that when they're giving these innocuous, boring presentations they at least don't come off as buffoons (whether the demos work or not).

smwhreyebelong2• 16 years ago

I have realized that having an overview of what's on the agenda aka the bullet points is the most helpful thing. Just talking about those bullet points instead of reading from a script makes the presentation more of an engaging/interactive conversation with the audience rather than a prepared speech/lecture.

tjmaxal• 16 years ago

this reminds me of the old interview tip "turn weaknesses into strengths" Being able to flip a hiccup into a fluid teaching point is good for any kind of teaching not just power point presentations.

ams6110• 16 years ago

I saw Jobs give a presentation of NeXT's Enterprise Objects Framework (an early, even pioneering ORM) at a trade show in Chicago... during the presentation one of his NeXT machines crashed, and the audience got to see the system reboot on the big projection screen. I don't recall any real wisecracking... he just said "oops!" and maybe a little banter but did remain very calm and continued the presentation without really missing a beat.

dkarl3• 16 years ago

He wasn't ad-libbing. A network or remote service being unavailable is a common occurrence in presentations. I can't say I have a scripted response for every common contingency, but I'm not Steve Jobs. If he's a rehearsal freak, I'm sure he rehearsed the common problems and didn't just repeat the ideal case over and over again.

albemuth• 16 years ago

This made me remember how awkward the Froyo/google tv hiccups at google I/O felt in comparison, completely different story.

kmfrk4• 16 years ago

I also believe that one of Steve's biggest advantages is that he loves the products and features he is presenting; the videogame demonstrations in particular seem to summon his inner child.

There are many dubious claims such as the "factual" remarks about the superlative qualities of the products (thinnest, cheapest, greenest), but I am sure he believes it when he starts the talk by saying that "we have some great things to show you".

ergo982• 16 years ago

>I also believe that one of Steve's biggest advantages is that he loves the products and features he is presenting

He's a very good salesman. He clearly sold you on his pitch. I'm a little more cynical, and hardly expect the head salesman of the company to be anything but over the moon with the revolutionary new watchamacallit that changes the rules and introduces a whole new aspect to living that no competitor could ever hope to achieve, setting new benchmarks of stuff that wasn't important when we didn't have it but have become a mandatory element that will change you world now that we do.

dkarl3• 16 years ago

Spot on. He's clearly too smart and too critical to love all his products as much as he pretends. He can probably tell you thirty things he would fix about the 4G iPhone. (Or you can just wait until he releases the next version.) The mark of an innovator is perpetual dissatisfaction.

kmfrk4• 16 years ago

I find that he exudes glee with some parts of his presentations. I use a ThinkPad running Windows, but I do like my iPhone 3G (which, granted, I got as a present and didn't plan to buy) and want to get an iPhone 4 at some point, but I wouldn't say that he's "sold me". I don't buy into a lot of the things he talks about in his keynotes (I found the Windows 7 mockery a while ago downright juvenile). I like iOS and some of the Stevenotes about it, but not Mac---and don't get me started on Safari and iTunes. FaceTime is a bit of a joke, too, considering that classmates used 3G cellphone videochat in my high-school in 2003. J

When you study his lecture techniques and take five seconds to consider his numbers and superlatives, a lot of the sales pitch falls apart. I would not feel out of line to say that some of the claims are blatant lies. Even so, there still remains some indescribable magic in it reminiscent of a child-like fascination that Nintendo and Shigeru Miyamoto also (used to) focus on.

However, it is not impossible that I have been soundly duped by his superb acting skills as "happy Steve".

This is probably me back-pedalling and rephrasing my comment to say that he often exudes pure glee, particularly when using the videogames. It's more of a particular than a holistic observation, but I find these instances infectious.

How Steve Jobs beats presentation panic

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