Dynamic (Non Powerpoint based) Presentation

Something I came across when going through one of regular blogs (Tom Kyte's). This was his entry, in case you're interested.

Pretty interesting presentation - something very dynamic and different compared to other typical keynote session slides out there. It's taken from an OSCON 2005 Keynote on Identity 2.0, presented by Dick Hardt, CEO and Founder of Sxip. Its pretty amazing because of the fact that it delivers the message across to its audience, even without any previous knowledge on the concept of Identity 2.0 and what its all about. It also has a big potential to impact the audience and keep its audience tuning in, compared to keynote sessions that keep on dragging on and on.


Take a look at it from this page first, then you can read about my comments further down this entry, and tell me what you think.



If you're like most of the people who's seen this presentation, you'd probably like it a lot. Its very fast paced, it doesnt drag on, and the stuff just keeps coming at you. Compared to most keynote presentations, which stay on a particular slide for at least 30 seconds, this one will be a refreshing change.

It actually reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, particularly when the presentation flashed "The Tipping Point", also from the same author. Blink talks about the concept of being able to get the important information at the mere second (or two) blink exposure of an experience or viewing. Contrary to some beliefs, extended viewing, investigation or study usually will "muddle" the brain into wrong conclusions, but a short time should be just enough to gather enough information to make a sound judgement (of course, there are a lot of factors to this, one of them being the level of expertise of the viewer, to make the correct "sound" judgement.) And this presentation seems like a perfect example of the "blink" theory in its implementation.

You will probably retain a lot more from that presentation than if it was created in the usual standard powerpoint presentation. Its actually ingenious, when you think about it. I wonder if the same "blink" concept was applied during the creation of the presentation. I'm sure marketing and advertising professionals will say a thing or two about it. The whole presentation is actually almost like in a commercial-type format- fast, loaded with information, getting the point across.

This type of presentation would be useful for conceptual, high level based presentation of course. There were thoughts by Tom Kyte to apply this type of presentation to his talks, but I believe he scrapped the idea when applying it to talks that were of hard, technical content, but agreed that it would be more applicable during his higher-level keynote sessions. (Read it yourself from the horse's mouth. Follow the first link in this entry relating to Tom Kyte)

Despite that, the presentation is still enjoyable, when sided along with usual powerpoint presentations from other keynote talks from other speakers. It would be really bad though if each and every keynote session would be like this. Will probably leave you panting and alert your brain to go dead after information overload.