Duarte Design: Creative InspirationsThe power of presentations| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:06 | Nancy Duarte: There's an enormous amount of
power in a presentation and especially when it's
| | 00:09 | delivered really well.
| | 00:11 | Presentations are the only communication
medium where it's in-person and we have
| | 00:15 | the opportunity to connect in a very
personal way, because we're face-to-face.
| | 00:19 | Diandra Macias: Presentations have always been
looked down as something that was any admin can do,
| | 00:25 | but it takes a lot of thought and
skill because it's not about the tool,
| | 00:30 | it's about the story.
| | 00:31 | Michael Moon: It's a really simple question
and I ask this to people all the time, how many
| | 00:35 | presentations have you
sat through in the last month?
| | 00:39 | People would say 4, 10, 30.
| | 00:42 | I'll say how many of them of sucked?
| | 00:43 | And the look on their faces tells you
that it was pretty much all of them.
| | 00:47 | Dan Post: It's been oft cited that there
are somewhere between 30 and 50 million
| | 00:51 | PowerPoint presentations given each day.
| | 00:54 | Some are between 500 million and 750 million
Flash animations that are viewed on the web.
| | 01:00 | So if you look at the ubiquity of what
we're doing, it's absolutely immense.
| | 01:05 | The challenge is to rise above the
noise level and to really stand out.
| | 01:09 | Jo Broussard: I can't even be in a room anymore
with a bad presentation because it just drives
| | 01:13 | me crazy and I know about all the missed
potential and the missed opportunity of
| | 01:17 | how someone really could be engaging
with their audience or really make more of
| | 01:22 | an impact with what they're saying.
| | 01:24 | Michael Moon: We've taken it for granted at
this point in business communications that we are
| | 01:28 | going to go, get hauled off to a room
and non-voluntarily have to spend 45
| | 01:32 | minutes there, listening to somebody else
tell us what he thinks is important in his life.
| | 01:36 | We really need to change that paradigm.
| | 01:39 | It's about what's
important in the audiences' life.
| | 01:41 | Ryan Orcutt: We need just the strongest
visual thinkers, conceptual thinkers to be able to
| | 01:45 | design these presentations that they're
just as impactful as a billboard is or
| | 01:49 | that a great package is.
| | 01:50 | Nancy Duarte: Presentations are the most
powerful way to rally a workforce or to close a
| | 01:55 | big sale, whatever it is that you
have as an objective, but right now we
| | 02:00 | build presentations so often that are
so putrid and so poorly put together
| | 02:04 | that they don't resonate.
| | 02:06 | If you take that extra bit of time to
really pull together your content and your
| | 02:10 | structure and your story well,
you can actually change your world.
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| Workspace| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:11 | Nancy Duarte: Hi! I'm Nancy Duarte and
we're here in Mountain View at our shop.
| | 00:15 | We've been in this building for a
couple of years and right after we moved in,
| | 00:18 | my husband walked me out
here and said, oh my gosh!
| | 00:20 | You need to look across the
street. What's over there?
| | 00:23 | And we actually started the business in one
of the apartments right across the street.
| | 00:27 | So, we've officially moved to the other side
of the tracks and this is where we work now.
| | 00:32 | So, it's kind of fun to see kind of
some historical context every single time
| | 00:35 | we leave the building.
| | 00:36 | So, I'll walk you guys through.
| | 00:42 | When I walked in, I knew
that this was the space I wanted.
| | 00:45 | It feels like oxygen, so we always
try to describe our brand as oxygen.
| | 00:49 | We want it to be like a
big open space or a meadow.
| | 00:55 | Where you can find little fun details
like a butterfly or whatever, where you can
| | 00:59 | zoom in on some kind of quirky and fun,
but yet the feeling you get is that it
| | 01:03 | feels kind of like oxygen.
| | 01:04 | So, our website is like that too where
you can actually kind of have a sense of
| | 01:09 | breathing easy because you've come here,
yet there's little bits of creative
| | 01:13 | environment in places.
| | 01:14 | Each of our teams are organized by client.
| | 01:19 | So, we have clusters of teams.
| | 01:22 | So, we're organized a little bit
differently and that we have-- each team has
| | 01:25 | its own account manager and the
account manager manages the artists, which is
| | 01:29 | very different, so they are also
located next to each other in proximity and
| | 01:34 | then they have a designated account base.
| | 01:36 | So, they would work consistently with
the same clients and each team handles a
| | 01:40 | different type of client base.
| | 01:42 | So, we have an office in Chico which
has about ten people in the office up
| | 01:46 | there, so you can see my Art Director
from Chico is actually in this meeting
| | 01:50 | via teleconferencing.
| | 01:51 | This theme up there is super valuable.
| | 01:54 | So, that's how we do a meeting
when someone from Chico is involved.
| | 01:56 | This area is where we kind of play a bit
and usually in the evenings we play ping-pong.
| | 02:01 | We also always try to have a
brainstorm going on all the time.
| | 02:05 | So, we use these boards, somebody will
put something in the middle, usually on a
| | 02:08 | Monday and then we
brainstorm all around what it is
| | 02:11 | we want to do a brainstorm around.
| | 02:12 | This week it's a concert,
your most recent concert memories.
| | 02:15 | This room is multi-purpose room.
| | 02:17 | We host our workshops here.
| | 02:19 | So, we fill it up with tables and
chairs. It's a really interactive workshop
| | 02:23 | with lots of sticky notes, pens, glue.
| | 02:25 | They draw, they use rulers and
pens and it's really pretty cool.
| | 02:29 | Here's the basketball court.
| | 02:32 | This is where they play. We could
actually run around a lot in this area,
| | 02:35 | you can just run, which is kind of cool and
not in very many places you could do that.
| | 02:40 | The girls' bathroom is decorated like
Lucille Ball, which is kind of cute.
| | 02:44 | All of our private offices and all of
our conference rooms have floor-to-ceiling
| | 02:47 | whiteboard, which is
awesome and we use it like crazy.
| | 02:50 | So, we'll collaboratively work on a
storyboard in here, we'll do word storms,
| | 02:54 | brainstorms, do kind of out-of-the-box.
| | 02:57 | Sometimes our clients come up and--
this one is the client meeting they had yesterday.
| | 03:02 | So, we just write on them all the
time to the point where we have to have
| | 03:06 | special Expo eraser cleaning wipes.
| | 03:08 | Everything we do here is really visual,
really interactive and requires visual
| | 03:12 | thinking, which is really
important and not everybody can do it.
| | 03:15 | So, I think that's why people call
us to communicate their business needs
| | 03:19 | that they have visually.
| | 03:21 | So when you look around the shop,
you'll be able to see all kinds of different
| | 03:25 | things placed in weird places,
little surprises that we put up here.
| | 03:28 | We have some birds that fly through,
it's subtle, but you can actually notice it.
| | 03:32 | I'm excited to be in the
space and watch it grow.
| | 03:35 | We're starting to fill it up now, which
is kind of fun because it was kind of--
| | 03:38 | I mean it's really tall
and the space is really big.
| | 03:41 | So everybody was dissipated for a while
and now that it's filling in, it has a
| | 03:45 | lot higher creative energy,
which has really been nice.
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| Building the business| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:09 | Mark Duarte: Before we even moved down to
the Bay Area, we lived in Chico and after the
| | 00:16 | birth of our daughter, Nancy stayed
home and did some odd jobs working from
| | 00:21 | home and one of them was working
doing bookkeeping for a small business
| | 00:27 | who-- he was recycling?
| | 00:30 | Nancy Duarte: A recycling company.
Mark Duarte: He did recycling.
| | 00:33 | Mark Duarte: Anyhow, he had a little Mac.
Nancy Duarte: 512.
| | 00:35 | Mark Duarte: 512K computer, one of the first
ones that came out that Apple produced, and
| | 00:41 | he just gave it to her and said, take
it home, figure out how to use it.
| | 00:46 | Nancy is not very technology savvy.
| | 00:48 | Nancy Duarte: Or bookkeeping savvy.
Mark Duarte: Or bookkeeping savvy, for that matter.
| | 00:52 | But at that time we would do anything of course.
| | 00:54 | We were just trying to eke out a living.
| | 00:57 | But I just sat down at it, started
playing with it, just clicking everything,
| | 01:02 | trying to figure out how to make it work,
and why it did what it did, and just
| | 01:07 | fell in love with the technology.
| | 01:08 | So the first time summer I was down here,
went to a temp agency, worked all summer
| | 01:14 | long moving furniture from five large
buildings into one building for a company.
| | 01:21 | I earned enough money to buy my first
Macintosh Plus computer and a little
| | 01:26 | ImageWriter Dot Matrix printer.
| | 01:28 | Nancy is really sort of driven, she has
got this sort of like ambitious spirit
| | 01:34 | and she is a go-getter.
| | 01:36 | So she couldn't just stay home and raise
an infant and a four-year-old daughter,
| | 01:41 | she wanted to jump in and
help me. She is fantastic.
| | 01:45 | She is excellent at sales, at marketing.
| | 01:47 | She did. She picked up the phone,
made some calls and it just--
| | 01:51 | Nancy Duarte: Destroyed our personal life.
| | 01:53 | Mark Duarte: Just happened to be at the right time
and the right place, because this was such a new thing.
| | 01:59 | It was like we were able to
ride the desktop publishing wave.
| | 02:03 | A lot of companies were wanting to
transition from traditional methods to digital
| | 02:10 | methods and so we just
caught it at the right time.
| | 02:13 | Nancy Duarte: The epiphany to have focus on
presentations came from a couple of places,
| | 02:18 | a couple of things happened at the same time.
| | 02:20 | One was the dot-com crash.
| | 02:22 | We did about 75% presentations, 25% was
print web, and print web went away and
| | 02:27 | the phone kept ringing
for our presentation work.
| | 02:29 | So we knew we must have been pretty good at it.
| | 02:32 | Then Jim Collins' 'Good to Great'
came out at the same time too, where he
| | 02:36 | said, if there is one thing you can be best
in the world, do that one thing passionately.
| | 02:41 | That's when we decided, you know what?
This is what we do, and this is what
| | 02:44 | we're really great at, and this is what we love.
| | 02:45 | It doesn't matter that other people
don't love this, we do, and we're going to
| | 02:48 | do it with all our heart.
| | 02:50 | It really just kind of focused our
organization and improved our work too, which
| | 02:56 | was really interesting.
| | 02:57 | So Mark applied to a little two-line ad
in the San Jose Mercury News, where they
| | 03:02 | were looking for desktop publishers,
and that's the first year he worked on
| | 03:05 | Apple's Developers Conference.
| | 03:07 | So the gal who had hired him through
this ad didn't want to do it anymore.
| | 03:10 | She wanted to go off and do aromatherapy.
| | 03:13 | So she had Mark Apple as a client,
which is kind of cool, and then we
| | 03:18 | just grew from there.
| | 03:19 | We just grew every year and picked up NASA
and Tandem and some really significant clients.
| | 03:24 | Mark Duarte: Supermac at the time.
Nancy Duarte: We did their IPO.
| | 03:26 | Nancy Duarte: Yeah, it was kind of fun.
| | 03:27 | So we arrived at the forefront of the
technology as it was being developed,
| | 03:30 | which was very cool.
| | 03:31 | Mark Duarte: We decided to move out of our
house in 1993 and it was because it was a long day,
| | 03:40 | we were tired, and we
thought, well, let's go home now.
| | 03:45 | It dawned on us that we never were
able to say that, "let's go home from work,"
| | 03:50 | because we were always home, always working.
| | 03:53 | The idea of having an office was
about as exciting to us as it is for most
| | 03:59 | people to work out of their home.
| | 04:01 | So we began a search looking for an
office space, and we found one, and it was a
| | 04:06 | huge leap of faith for us to commit to
a lease and to inhabit that space and
| | 04:15 | then to consider hiring
more employees. But we did it.
| | 04:21 | We thought we could either kind of live
in fear, or we can just take this leap
| | 04:24 | of faith and go for it, and we did.
| | 04:27 | Every time we've done that,
the business just grew.
| | 04:30 | Nancy Duarte: Kind of fills the space.
| | 04:31 | Mark Duarte: Yeah, it's kind of like you get
an empty barn and it gets filled and that has
| | 04:38 | just happened that way for us.
| | 04:39 | We've been fortunate.
| | 04:40 | We've been very blessed.
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| Nancy's story| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:09 | Nancy Duarte: I think I have always loved
presenting. I took a lot of speech classes in high
| | 00:14 | school and in college and I didn't
do real well. I always got a A+ on the
| | 00:18 | visual-aid side and I would make about
a C in how well I get attached to the
| | 00:23 | audience, like I didn't pick
really audience relevant information.
| | 00:25 | So I have grown and developed in that
area. I have never really been afraid to
| | 00:30 | get up in front of a crowd.
| | 00:32 | So, to build a really good presentation
I think it takes some analytical skills
| | 00:38 | and some creative skills.
| | 00:40 | So I was very confused when I was going
to get to college. I went to high school
| | 00:45 | and a year of college in Mississippi
and I don't know if it's because of where I
| | 00:48 | was located or just because high
school kids didn't get a lot of exposure to
| | 00:52 | career opportunities.
| | 00:53 | So I had won a lot of awards for math
and so I decided to declare a math major
| | 00:57 | in college, but yet I always won a lot
of awards in art, so there was just like
| | 01:01 | analytical side and this artistic side.
| | 01:04 | So, kind of a visual thinking side
and there really is nothing like that.
| | 01:08 | So in business today we communicate visually.
| | 01:11 | PowerPoint is the number two tool,
second to email and it's a visual
| | 01:15 | communication tool yet we are not
taught how to communicate visually in school.
| | 01:19 | So I just took this kind of conflicted
part of myself where I was-- I felt like
| | 01:25 | I was a visual thinker and applied
that, studied just studied veraciously the
| | 01:30 | design industry every single thing
that it was ever put out, all the famous
| | 01:34 | designers, all the design books and everything.
| | 01:36 | So that part, the graphic design part
was self taught, but being able to see a
| | 01:40 | strategy came over time.
| | 01:43 | I actually had the privilege of when I
was very young, a guy came through my line
| | 01:48 | at Longs Drugs, which was my very
first official job, and he said well,
| | 01:52 | you seem really smart. I have a small business
and I would love to interview for an opening.
| | 01:56 | So I did, I went and interviewed and
he let me run his whole shop and like
| | 02:01 | quintupled his business in two years.
| | 02:03 | So I did everything, purchasing, payroll
taxes, the vacuuming, the cold calling,
| | 02:09 | I did everything and it really gave me
the entrepreneurial bug and then I left
| | 02:14 | him to go to a high tech.
| | 02:16 | My only high tech client in Chico,
California and I went actually to work for them
| | 02:21 | and then so the transition down
here to the Bay area for me was really easy
| | 02:24 | because I was already in a high tech job.
| | 02:27 | I love being a business owner. I love
the autonomy of getting to wake up and
| | 02:31 | decide where I want to be in five years,
where I want the company to be, where I
| | 02:34 | want the industry to be in five years.
| | 02:36 | It's very powerful and fun.
| | 02:38 | So, I just promoted Dan Post to
President here and so he has taken the load
| | 02:43 | of all the creative execution and I have
got in to step in the modern ambassador role.
| | 02:48 | So I am out and about more, not promoting
Duarte, but promoting the cause of
| | 02:54 | presentations right now where, like
I said, I do think its very powerful
| | 02:58 | communication medium.
| | 03:00 | So getting out there and teaching
people how to do it really well, has been
| | 03:03 | very fun for me and it's also help me
out spawned another business unit at
| | 03:08 | Duarte for training.
| | 03:09 | So we are growing right now, a lot of
training businesses are contracting but
| | 03:13 | there is a real hunger for not knowing
how to do pulldown menus in PowerPoint
| | 03:18 | or Keynote, but really understanding how to
see, how to do a presentation right and well.
| | 03:23 | If we teach them to see how to arrange
things and how to think like a designer,
| | 03:27 | how they assemble their next presentation
will be very different, so that's really
| | 03:31 | spawned this whole new business
unit for us which has been very fun.
| | 03:35 | Now, I have to manage kind of two
different business units and trying to write a
| | 03:39 | new book too, which has just been fun.
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| Slide:ology| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:09 | Nancy Duarte: The commitment to write a book
was huge, but I didn't know how huge it was.
| | 00:15 | I was starting to see little quips of
young people say things like, we are going
| | 00:20 | to start a presentation revolution.
We are not going to do slides the way my mom
| | 00:25 | does slides, and stuff like that.
| | 00:26 | I am like, time out.
| | 00:27 | I don't do slides the way your mom does slides.
| | 00:29 | So it kind of stirred up this kind of
competitive, wait a minute, no, no, no,
| | 00:33 | if somebody is going to stand up and say,
we are the leader in this, it needed
| | 00:37 | to be me and my firm.
| | 00:39 | I think Edward Tufte would tell us
that PowerPoint is evil, and it's not.
| | 00:43 | It's not evil in itself.
| | 00:45 | It's the users that have misused it.
| | 00:48 | So back when 35-millimeter slides used
to imaged, and that's what businesses
| | 00:52 | used was 35-millimeter slides, graphic
designers were involved in the creative
| | 00:56 | process. There were professional
slide people that designed them.
| | 00:59 | Then when PowerPoint and Keynote and
these other desktop tools came out,
| | 01:03 | everybody suddenly could make their
own visual aids, yet nobody stopped and
| | 01:07 | said, wait, there is a right way and
a wrong way to make a visual aid and
| | 01:11 | that's kind of what my book does.
| | 01:13 | Ideas are like viruses.
| | 01:15 | I think Seth Godin wrote the book,
'Ideavirus', and you have to give your ideas
| | 01:19 | away and then it comes back to you.
| | 01:21 | So I think there were people internally
here that were a little worried about,
| | 01:24 | shouldn't we hold some of this close
to our chest, and really the design part
| | 01:28 | isn't really the clever part. It's the
concepts and the words and the big ideas
| | 01:32 | that are getting expressed through
the design thinking principles that are
| | 01:36 | really what makes us different.
| | 01:38 | So there were a lot of considerations
about what should be included and what
| | 01:41 | shouldn't, but I did love writing the book.
| | 01:45 | It was something I was passionate about.
| | 01:47 | It all came out of my head.
| | 01:48 | I didn't have to do any research in that
| | 01:50 | I would sit at my desk in my office and
tape it up all over the wall and study it,
| | 01:54 | and then I would go home on Saturdays.
| | 01:56 | I only wrote it on Saturdays in the
evenings and it was still 3,000 hours
| | 02:00 | of work. It was crazy.
| | 02:01 | So I was working 16 hour days, both
days on the weekend, 10-12 hours a day.
| | 02:07 | I would have these breakthroughs,
because it was all in my head, and I knew
| | 02:10 | we had done what we had done, but to
codify it and turn it into an actual
| | 02:13 | methodology that's captured was
very fun, because it was just common.
| | 02:17 | It was just the way we did things, but
nobody had ever said why or how or the
| | 02:22 | thought process behind it.
| | 02:23 | So I would come home and be like, oh
Mark, I had this great breakthrough on
| | 02:26 | this one section, where I have kind of
framed it like that and it was very, very fun.
| | 02:31 | I think the funniest thing about
writing a book is the feedback that you get.
| | 02:35 | My life has changed.
| | 02:36 | I will never be the same.
| | 02:37 | We closed the deal.
| | 02:39 | I felt really comfortable and I felt good.
| | 02:41 | So it's weird. Projection is weird,
because it's a size of a building behind you,
| | 02:46 | and it's bigger than you are.
| | 02:48 | If it's attractive, you feel attractive.
| | 02:50 | If it's really poorly put together,
you don't feel completely put together.
| | 02:54 | So to see people deliver their messages
in a really clear way, really close the deals,
| | 02:59 | really do a keynote well, it has been
really fun to get some of those reports back.
| | 03:04 | That's what we are trying to do is get
people to fall back in love with this
| | 03:09 | medium that's been kind of reviled
and misused and abused and rudiment and
| | 03:14 | that's been very fun.
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| Understanding the audience| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:09 | Brooke Embry: So this project was for
the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation.
| | 00:12 | Really what they were trying to do is
show the connectivity of the Gulf of Mexico
| | 00:17 | in terms of all
these different constituents.
| | 00:19 | What they were trying to do again is
establish the Gulf of Mexico as a marine sanctuary.
| | 00:24 | So protect the area, set rules around
what people could and couldn't do, again,
| | 00:28 | from recreation to oil industry.
| | 00:31 | So it's really setting those boundaries,
preserving this area and what they
| | 00:35 | want to do is present this to White
House and really have this be kind of the
| | 00:40 | next big environmental stance
for the White House to take.
| | 00:43 | So that was really their plug and
their pull for what they were trying to do
| | 00:47 | with this presentation.
| | 00:48 | So what we would like to do is kind
of walk through it a little bit, show
| | 00:52 | some of the real interesting pieces, and why
we took the direction that we did for this.
| | 00:56 | So they have this entire library of
assets, which we were really excited about.
| | 01:00 | We are like, great, we are going to be
able to handpick these beautiful, kind of
| | 01:04 | National Geographic type
images is what we thought.
| | 01:08 | It turned out that they did have a
lot of great images, but the resolution
| | 01:13 | wasn't always great.
| | 01:15 | Sometimes the tone of the color of the
picture was either kind of on the yellow side,
| | 01:21 | so we didn't really want to use it.
| | 01:22 | So it did pose a little bit of a challenge.
| | 01:25 | It gave us great ideas in what we wanted
to do with the photos, but then we kind
| | 01:29 | of had to go out on our own and
source the photos to have this continuity
| | 01:32 | between the look and feel
of the whole presentation.
| | 01:33 | So again, great for generating ideas,
but unfortunately we weren't able to use a
| | 01:39 | lot of the assets that they provided us.
| | 01:41 | Michael Moon: Yeah. The funny thing about that is,
is once we figured out what the story was,
| | 01:44 | we realized that we didn't have a lot
of the assets that we needed to tell it.
| | 01:47 | They had, despite their mountains and
mountains of stuff, nothing that was going
| | 01:52 | to really connect them back to their audience.
| | 01:54 | Of course, they had these great
pictures of sea turtles and coral reefs and all
| | 01:58 | of this other stuff, but you can only
put so much of that stuff up on screen
| | 02:01 | before it gets old, and it's kind of
like, well, tell me what this means to me.
| | 02:06 | That's really where we
started out with the process.
| | 02:09 | What was interesting to us was, in
their formulation of this, they almost
| | 02:16 | completely neglected their audience.
| | 02:18 | They didn't think about, okay, if I
have to go to the White House or
| | 02:21 | the administration and talk to these sorts
of people, who am I really talking to, right?
| | 02:25 | If my audience is politicians, what do the
politicians really care about? Constituents.
| | 02:31 | I mean their goal is to get reelected.
| | 02:33 | So just by talking about sea turtles
isn't going to do that, because
| | 02:36 | sea turtles don't vote.
| | 02:38 | You have got to think about all the
people that this marine sanctuary could
| | 02:41 | possibly affect and there's a
lot of interest down in the Gulf.
| | 02:44 | So pulling those interests out and
identifying those things and saying, if you
| | 02:48 | are going to go out and you are going
to talk to oil and gas folks, if you are
| | 02:52 | going to go talk to the scientists,
or if you are going to go talk to the
| | 02:54 | environmentalists, if you are going to go
talk to the people who make a living on
| | 02:56 | the shrimp boats down in the Gulf,
those are the stories that you need to tell.
| | 03:00 | You have got to give them a reason to
believe that what you are doing is going
| | 03:03 | to ultimately benefit them in the future.
| | 03:05 | At the end of the day, it all comes
together to say, hey, can't we all just get along?
| | 03:10 | We are a lot of different people, a lot of
different constituents, we have our own
| | 03:13 | interests, but can we find the
happy medium that benefits all of us?
| | 03:18 | That was really what I would call the thesis
statement of this presentation at the end.
| | 03:23 | How do we tell a story that says, you
know what, everyone is going to support
| | 03:26 | this move, and that's why it's a
politically safe thing for you to go do.
| | 03:30 | It helps bring that call to action home,
when you can't really object to it,
| | 03:34 | because you kind of scratch your
head and you go, yeah, I guess that does
| | 03:37 | make sense to everybody.
| | 03:38 | Everyone will get behind this.
| | 03:40 | So what we ended up doing was talking
to all these constituencies out here.
| | 03:43 | So we have got everyone from the
scientists and the environmentalists, who are
| | 03:48 | out there trying to preserve nature, to
the merchant marines who are going out
| | 03:54 | and capturing shrimp.
| | 03:55 | Then of course you have got tourists,
and you have got people who just like to
| | 03:58 | go out and enjoy the Gulf for the
sport fishing and snorkeling and everything
| | 04:01 | else that goes along with it.
| | 04:02 | So we thought that if we could tell the
stories from their perspectives, that it
| | 04:05 | would be a little bit more resident
for the people who are finally going to
| | 04:08 | listen to this thing and go, you know
what, everyone has got interests here in
| | 04:12 | the Gulf, in preserving and making
sure that it's going to return the oil and gas,
| | 04:16 | it's going to return the fishery
sources, it's going to just provide for a
| | 04:20 | decent Saturday afternoon.
| | 04:21 | It makes the story a little bit more real.
| | 04:23 | Brooke Embry: Well, again, the one thing about
this is that these are actually the real people.
| | 04:27 | These aren't stock photos.
| | 04:28 | So that kind of brings the power and
brings the authenticity of the presentation
| | 04:34 | of what they are trying to do.
| | 04:35 | What was really effective too is,
Michael kind of alluded to it, but he really
| | 04:39 | presented this back to the client.
| | 04:41 | So we didn't just kick over a file
and say, here you go, what do you think?
| | 04:45 | It was let's get either on a phone
call or meet face-to-face, we will present
| | 04:50 | your presentation to you, and
treat you like you are the audience.
| | 04:54 | So you feel the full experience of
it and then go through any feedback or
| | 04:58 | discussions, what worked, what didn't
work, what really resonated, so it's
| | 05:03 | treating it like the
client is the live audience.
| | 05:08 | It was just really, really effective.
| | 05:09 | Upfront we even offered training.
| | 05:11 | We are like hey, if you guys want us to
come in, meet with the five people that
| | 05:14 | will probably use this presentation the
most, we can give them a little coaching
| | 05:18 | on how to present this file.
| | 05:21 | They didn't go with that, but you know what,
they were super thankful that we offered.
| | 05:25 | Michael Moon: Honestly, it's a fun process,
because we do this stuff so naturally, because we
| | 05:30 | do it on a day-to-day basis, but most
people who get up there with your standard
| | 05:33 | PowerPoint or other presentation
software or something, don't really think about
| | 05:36 | the presentation that way.
| | 05:38 | So if you can present to them what
your vision for it should be and have the
| | 05:44 | cadence and have the presence on stage
and let people really experience that,
| | 05:47 | a very interesting point happens in the
process, where they make it their own.
| | 05:51 | They take it and they go, okay, you can
take the training wheels off now, I am
| | 05:54 | ready for this, and now I am going to go do it.
| | 05:57 | They become much better
presenters because of that process.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with the presenter| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:09 | Jo Broussard: Scripps Networks owns a
conglomeration of TV networks, Food Network,
| | 00:14 | Great American Country, Home and Garden TV,
Fine Living, and Do It Yourself, DIY.
| | 00:20 | They have a wonderful opportunity
every year to go and present to potential
| | 00:23 | advertisers many big brands that
you would recognize, to showcase their
| | 00:29 | advertising opportunities across
all of these different networks.
| | 00:33 | To show how their viewership has
gone up or how the demographics of their
| | 00:37 | viewers have changed over the years and
just really let them know about all the
| | 00:41 | opportunities that are out there.
| | 00:43 | Not even necessarily just associated
with the show, but also online, just to
| | 00:47 | really get them excited about
partnering with Scripps as an advertiser.
| | 00:52 | So it's a pretty high stakes
opportunity, a pretty high stakes platform for them
| | 00:57 | to really, really sign on some big
advertisers for the upcoming year, the upcoming seasons.
| | 01:03 | They have five brands that they are
presenting on and our task, what they come
| | 01:08 | to us for is basically to create
really compelling, really visual
| | 01:12 | presentations, not your typical PowerPoint.
| | 01:15 | They want their presentations to be
as visual and as interesting as the
| | 01:19 | networks themselves.
| | 01:20 | They are used to the TV industry, they
are used to a lot of motion, they are
| | 01:25 | used to a lot of eye candy.
| | 01:27 | They really want their presentations to
speak kind of in that same vein and be
| | 01:31 | as exciting as it would be
watching the actual networks.
| | 01:35 | So our task is to create this for them.
| | 01:38 | They usually come to us with just
an assortment of scripts, not Scripps
| | 01:44 | Networks, but actually the word outline
scripts, that just basically say what the
| | 01:49 | speaker is going to say,
and nothing more than that.
| | 01:52 | We go through a process, full-blown
process of storyboarding every presentation,
| | 01:57 | sketching out what every slide should
look like, and then building them from the
| | 02:01 | ground-up, adding animations.
| | 02:04 | Then we even go on -ite and help them
make edits and make refinements as they
| | 02:08 | are rehearsing and really
getting ready for this event.
| | 02:09 | Diandra Macias: Scripps actually
presents all of them back to back.
| | 02:13 | So they will go on a tour of this
presentation and every brand is basically,
| | 02:20 | let's talk about DIY, now let's talk
about HGTV, and they just are really
| | 02:24 | quick, really engaging, and all strung
together in I believe probably a half-hour segment.
| | 02:31 | Jo Broussard: You can kind of see how every
slide, like Diandra said, we don't use a lot of text,
| | 02:37 | we don't do bullets. Every slide
is a picture and it's meant to complement
| | 02:42 | whatever the speaker is saying.
| | 02:43 | It doesn't work completely on its own.
| | 02:46 | I mean, it's almost like what's being
said to that slide while its up there,
| | 02:50 | because you need the presenter there to
really fill in the gaps and really make
| | 02:55 | it a complete story, and the slides
are just there kind of as the complement.
| | 02:58 | They really just key in on the key points,
the key visuals, the way to help them
| | 03:03 | kind of really get the brand
personality across and all the key opportunities
| | 03:07 | across to advertisers.
| | 03:09 | Diandra Macias: So part of these presentations
too is they really, really rely on that speaker
| | 03:16 | to engage the audience.
| | 03:18 | Because these slides are really that
background. They are just highlighting key
| | 03:22 | points of what he is saying.
| | 03:23 | So they choose speakers who are very
dynamic, who are very outspoken, who have
| | 03:29 | fun and sort of interact with the
audience to keep their attention, because it
| | 03:33 | is a short time period, and all of these
audience members are going from tent to
| | 03:38 | tent to tent hearing other
networks pitch their products to them.
| | 03:43 | So they have to be able to kind of
grab them right there, with visuals and
| | 03:48 | with a dynamic speaker.
| | 03:51 | There's multiple speakers for each
brand, so we will also develop tailored
| | 03:55 | presentations to their particular style.
| | 03:59 | We do get to work with the speakers
when we move on site, usually in New York,.
| | 04:03 | We get to sit down maybe with a couple.
| | 04:07 | I have gotten to sit down with the
VP of HGTV and really work out her
| | 04:11 | visuals with her script.
| | 04:13 | They are the ones who are inputting
into their script and so we make sure that
| | 04:17 | they are really happy with what
we have ended up with for a visual.
| | 04:21 | So even a slide like this, where we
just have two logos on the slide, it really
| | 04:25 | gives the opportunity to the speaker to
actually just kind of spin off and talk
| | 04:30 | about the unsellables and talk about
what real estate intervention is all about.
| | 04:34 | Instead of really getting down to the
nitty-gritty and putting extra points on
| | 04:37 | the slide, we leave it really high level,
so it allows the flexibility on their end.
| | 04:42 | So then from that side, moving on to,
let's bring the host actually on there and
| | 04:47 | give a face to what that
show is going to be all about.
| | 04:49 | Jo Broussard: Yeah, I mean, most of these
presentations are just about showcasing the shows
| | 04:54 | they already have, and the hosts that
they have, and not letting PowerPoint be a
| | 04:59 | distraction, but just support the
wonderful visuals that they have already
| | 05:03 | created, the awesome logos and
assets that they already have, introducing
| | 05:08 | advertisers to these various shows
without getting in the way of that.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Designing for impact| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:09 | Michael Moon: A couple of years ago a fellow
by the name of Mike Magee, he is a doctor at
| | 00:13 | Pfizer Pharmaceuticals came to us
looking to us for a presentation on the
| | 00:18 | coming water crisis.
| | 00:19 | Ryan Orcutt: And this process was a little bit
different for us this time, because he came to
| | 00:23 | us with a book instead of a script
or a current slide deck that he had.
| | 00:28 | Michael Moon: He had about two
books and three websites or something?
| | 00:31 | Ryan Orcutt: Right. So there was a lot of information
to go through and we started by everybody that
| | 00:36 | was on the team, read the book.
| | 00:39 | That's no easy task for designers
to sit down there and spend that much
| | 00:42 | time reading a book.
| | 00:44 | But we felt like that was the only way
that we are going to be really able to
| | 00:46 | grasp the really massive amounts
of data that he had in his books.
| | 00:50 | So we spent the time.
We all read it cover to cover.
| | 00:52 | Michael Moon: Because he had no
presentation to start with either.
| | 00:56 | I mean he was not the kind of guy who
was going to come in and give you the 30
| | 00:59 | minutes synopsis of everything that
he had been doing that he had been
| | 01:02 | encapsulated in all the
work that he had done before.
| | 01:04 | So this was really a new media
style for him and he had no basis or
| | 01:09 | background in doing that.
| | 01:11 | So there was no place for us to start.
| | 01:12 | We couldn't put him in front of a
room and say, well, tell us what you know
| | 01:15 | already because that didn't exist.
| | 01:17 | We had to create all that from scratch.
| | 01:18 | Ryan Orcutt: So that's what
really he wanted us to do.
| | 01:21 | It's like somehow make this an
immersive compelling presentation from this
| | 01:26 | really statistical data-heavy book that I have.
| | 01:30 | That's kind of where we started, where
we needed to come up with what was going
| | 01:33 | to be the story, because we certainly
weren't going to able to read the whole
| | 01:36 | book to an audience, right, and that
wouldn't be very compelling anyways.
| | 01:40 | So we had to come up with three
different ways or we wanted to give him three
| | 01:43 | different options on how he could tell
us the story in front of the audience.
| | 01:46 | Michael Moon: Our client picked the first option.
If you want solve the problems of the world, go to the source.
| | 01:51 | So that was the main construct that we
used to develop the slide maps, which are the--
| | 01:58 | let's call them presentation storyboards.
| | 02:00 | Their iconic views of what might go on
a slide along with a loose script around
| | 02:06 | what those things are.
| | 02:07 | The purpose of this document is not to
create the end all be all format for a
| | 02:12 | presenter, but it's to provide
guidance to the designers to say, here as I
| | 02:17 | write this thing, what I am thinking
about as going to go on individual slides,
| | 02:21 | and for the presenter here are the
main messages that you have to get across.
| | 02:25 | So it shouldn't be
regarded as a word for word script.
| | 02:27 | It shouldn't be regarded as cut in
stone design direction, but it's the at
| | 02:32 | least first pass of let's contain all
this information and possible ways of
| | 02:37 | displaying it in one place.
| | 02:38 | Ryan Orcutt: So after we had developed that
that story structure and we know that we have to
| | 02:44 | develop the visual language and this
is where I am able to break out my color
| | 02:50 | pencils and be able to think really visual.
| | 02:53 | I can start exploring color palettes.
| | 02:55 | I can start exploring
different graphical styles.
| | 02:57 | These were mostly internal.
| | 02:59 | This was for an internal crit.
| | 03:01 | I was able to show the team.
| | 03:03 | The creative director that was working
on it and we all decide on a couple of
| | 03:07 | directions that we want to execute digitally.
| | 03:09 | So once we picked these sketches that we
want to take to the next level, then we
| | 03:16 | developed a few different digital
options for the clients to take a look at.
| | 03:20 | In this case we delivered
three different looks for Dr. Magee to choose from.
| | 03:26 | One was a little bit more organic.
| | 03:28 | Stayed in the brown tones.
| | 03:30 | The next one was really immersive and blue.
| | 03:32 | It really brought the whole water theme
to the forefront and we are going to take
| | 03:35 | all the stats and put them
right into this blue context.
| | 03:39 | Then the last one was
pulling heavily on the book cover.
| | 03:43 | Ultimately, he asked us to choose.
| | 03:45 | He was like, these all look great.
| | 03:47 | You guys are the experts, what do you think
will be the most impactful for the audience.
| | 03:49 | We all kind of looked at each
other and we are like, the blue one.
| | 03:53 | Michael Moon: That one.
Ryan Orcutt: Yeah.
| | 03:55 | So we developed a template for him
that had his logo lock up, that healthy
| | 03:59 | waters or something that he came to us with
and put it on this really nice blue background.
| | 04:04 | We knew from prior experience on lots
of presentations that having a nice dark
| | 04:08 | background will provide for a lot of contrast.
| | 04:11 | It will let all your graphics pop off
of it really nice and things just look
| | 04:16 | really nice on that color of background.
| | 04:18 | Michael Moon: It's a much more cinematic experience.
| | 04:20 | We have a lot of clients who like to
have their presentations done on a white
| | 04:23 | background, but that so they can hand them out.
| | 04:26 | We always get into a discussion with
them at that point and say, well, if you
| | 04:28 | are handing the thing out, why
is it a presentation? Right.
| | 04:31 | We are here to create the cinematic
experience for you and put you on stage and
| | 04:35 | make you look good and if you
want to do good that, this is
| | 04:38 | the approach that you really need to take.
| | 04:40 | Ryan Orcutt: Then we just give him a few
slides to kind of turn into a template.
| | 04:43 | If you are going to have a quote
slide, it should look like this.
| | 04:46 | Your title slide should look like that.
| | 04:48 | We developed the color palette
so that you can stay consistent.
| | 04:51 | If you are building new slides or if
another designer other than myself is going
| | 04:54 | to be working on this, they
can pull from it really quickly.
| | 04:57 | Some of this stuff is really to build the efficiency
and this is really where we start to get into--
| | 05:02 | Michael Moon: This is the custom mark.
| | 05:03 | Ryan Orcutt: This is when we are
going to start developing a presentation.
| | 05:05 | So I guess when we began his
presentation, we wanted to start off with a little
| | 05:10 | bit of a science lesson.
| | 05:11 | Water is made of two
hydrogen atoms and one oxygen.
| | 05:16 | What you might know though is that
it's the only element that exists in
| | 05:20 | three unique states: a solid form
a liquid form, and a gas form.
| | 05:24 | Then in the juxtaposition of what
you might know, what you may not know.
| | 05:28 | And that was sort of the theme that we
carried throughout this presentation.
| | 05:31 | This is a really good example of how
we are taking something that was really
| | 05:35 | statistical, really number-heavy and
we tried to make it a little bit more
| | 05:40 | understandable, a little bit
more digestible for the audience.
| | 05:43 | What we did is we took all the water
in the world and we represented it with
| | 05:46 | 100 drops on the slide.
| | 05:48 | Then we grayed out 97 of them to
represent that 97% of is ocean water and
| | 05:54 | it's not drinkable.
| | 05:55 | So that's not acceptable. We can't use that.
| | 05:57 | 2% of that water is locked up in ice,
snow, and glaciers. We can't use that.
| | 06:03 | So really we are left with just 1% of
all the world, all the planet's water,
| | 06:09 | that surface and ground water
that's safe for people to share.
| | 06:13 | So when you are really thinking about it,
out of all these hundred drops,
| | 06:16 | you really only have a fraction of this
one drop that all of humanity has to share.
| | 06:20 | Michael Moon: Now you can represent this
data through bullet points or you could do it
| | 06:24 | through pie charts.
| | 06:26 | You can do the 97%, a pie chart thing going on.
| | 06:31 | But people have become inured to
looking at numbers that way that they
| | 06:35 | start to lack meaning.
| | 06:37 | So what we always try and do is
visualize the data in a way that people will
| | 06:40 | take with them and remember. It's like
those books in science, or pages in a
| | 06:44 | science book that you recalled from a
kid where you always remembered that
| | 06:46 | cutaway picture of the volcano,
right because it just made so much sense.
| | 06:50 | You could read about all that
stuff until the end of the week.
| | 06:54 | But if you just saw that
picture, you got it, you understood.
| | 06:58 | That's what we try and do with statistics.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Story club| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:10 | Doug Neff: Sometimes when we get wrapped up
in presentations and things with charts and
| | 00:15 | graphs, and a presentation is
something with the slide behind you and
| | 00:19 | you're holding a clicker and a
microphone and things like that.
| | 00:22 | But really presentations go way back,
to olden times, when there would be a fire
| | 00:27 | and the storyteller would have the best
spot by the fire and that was a presentation.
| | 00:32 | And the fire gave everyone in the room
something to focus on, like they'd just
| | 00:36 | stare into the fire and their
imagination would play out the scenes in their head,
| | 00:40 | while the storyteller was telling them things.
| | 00:43 | And what we do today is we sort
of make a campfire for people.
| | 00:46 | We give things to put behind and so
people's imagination can go off on
| | 00:50 | what they're saying.
| | 00:51 | But it's important for us as people
who do that to also learn how to tell
| | 00:55 | stories and practice that.
| | 00:57 | So, that we're not just painting slides,
and we're not just forming charts and
| | 01:01 | graphs in the background.
| | 01:02 | We also have to be people
who are in the trenches too.
| | 01:05 | So we do a story club to
practice that and hopefully have fun.
| | 01:09 | So, we have six stories today.
| | 01:12 | They'll make you laugh, some may make
you cry, they will touch you and we're
| | 01:16 | going to end with a children's story.
| | 01:18 | Male Speaker1: Augh!!! What the?
| | 01:22 | What's going on?
| | 01:23 | What's going on? And I am like
freaking out. I am like, Are you okay?
| | 01:25 | What's happening, what's happening?
| | 01:26 | All of them are gone. Gone?
| | 01:28 | And she goes, The dogs have chewed them all up.
| | 01:32 | Female Speaker: Pick up like this fast,
and I am like this could be kind of cute.
| | 01:36 | It's like I am putting in on and it's
weird because like the size, they are like
| | 01:40 | one size only and I'm like whatever.
Maybe I'll be that one size whatever.
| | 01:44 | Male Speaker2: As I was in this bank and I had
been about six weeks on this job, I noticed that wow!
| | 01:51 | Everybody in this bank is a woman.
| | 01:55 | All the employees, all of the
patrons, every one of them were women.
| | 02:02 | And not only were they women but
they were really flirtatious toward me.
| | 02:06 | Male Speaker1: And at this point I knew the day
was just-- that was it. Nothing at this point mattered.
| | 02:12 | It was like, okay, it just got weird.
Children at Wal-Mart, 1:30 in the morning,
| | 02:16 | and I need to find black leather shoes.
| | 02:17 | Doug Neff: We're in the
business of telling stories.
| | 02:20 | So, before we bring in the visual
aspect of the story, we need to figure out
| | 02:25 | what that story is.
| | 02:26 | There is nothing that goes on in the
world of entertainment or instruction or
| | 02:33 | education or sales, or anything like
that, that you wouldn't consider a story.
| | 02:38 | At some level, it's a story that
you're imparting from one person to another.
| | 02:43 | And if you're selling something,
you're telling the story of where this thing
| | 02:45 | came from and what it can do for the
customer. If you're trying to explain to
| | 02:51 | the world why global warming is a
crisis, you're putting that inside a story.
| | 02:56 | So, all of those things already are
stories and human beings have been telling
| | 03:01 | those for thousands of years and
we've been listening to stories for
| | 03:03 | thousands of years.
| | 03:04 | So, the better we get at that
fundamental skill, the better we get at doing that,
| | 03:09 | the better we'll get at
standing up in front of a thousand people and
| | 03:13 | selling our product or convincing them
our idea is important, or getting the
| | 03:18 | students to pay attention to
what we're trying to teach.
| | 03:23 | By practicing that fundamental skill,
we get better at those other things too.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Family business| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:09 | Mark Duarte: I don't think it is an
easy task for a couple to work together.
| | 00:15 | It's a lot of work.
| | 00:16 | It's a lot of work and
it does try the relationship.
| | 00:19 | I think Nancy and I have a really strong
relationship and I wouldn't recommended it for every body.
| | 00:24 | Nancy Duarte: What's funny though we enjoy
spending a lot of time with each other like we just
| | 00:28 | finished going on a long vacation and
now that the weekends have come up, we are
| | 00:33 | like I just miss you.
| | 00:33 | I want to spend an enormous amount of time.
| | 00:35 | So ever since we started the company, our
office is more attached with a door or open window.
| | 00:40 | Mark Duarte: Yeah!
| | 00:40 | We just have window between our offices
that it was sliding glass and we could open it
| | 00:45 | and we would just
listen that what was going on.
| | 00:47 | It kept us informed of what
was going on in the business.
| | 00:49 | Nancy Duarte: We loved spending time together
and I don't think very many couples can do it.
| | 00:54 | We completely delineated our roles, so we are
not really handing things off to each other.
| | 00:59 | I am not putting all kinds of deadlines on him.
| | 01:01 | He is not putting deadlines on me.
| | 01:03 | So when we get home at night, we have to
say "how was your day" or "how was your day."
| | 01:07 | It's like not really kind of working
at the same place, but I don't know.
| | 01:13 | I wouldn't say it's
hurt the relationship at all.
| | 01:15 | Mark Duarte: Well, I think we've learned how
to manage the relationship at work and separate
| | 01:22 | that from our relationship
at home or outside of work.
| | 01:27 | We do have a different functions, so that helps.
| | 01:30 | We are not both doing the creative or
are not both doing the finances or we are
| | 01:35 | not both doing the technology,
but we bounce ideas of each other.
| | 01:39 | I will jump in on a creative brainstorm
and assist when I can and I'll bounce it--
| | 01:46 | Nancy Duarte: I will jump into IT.
| | 01:48 | Mark Duarte: And we'll fix it, right after that.
| | 01:53 | But I think our roles are separate.
| | 01:55 | Our personalities are night and day.
| | 01:58 | We are opposites in likes and tastes and
interests and every which way we are like opposite.
| | 02:07 | We look at each other sometimes
and we go, how would we do it?
| | 02:12 | Because it's just seems like there is
not like there is a lot of compatibility.
| | 02:16 | There is a lot of complement.
| | 02:19 | I think that's the thing we have
realized as I have come to understand her
| | 02:22 | strengths and she has come to
understand mine and even though we are very
| | 02:27 | different, we understand that those
strengths have an important role in making
| | 02:31 | our business successful and what it is today.
| | 02:33 | Nancy Duarte: Our kids always really enjoyed
| | 02:35 | we would come home and talk about work.
| | 02:37 | I think we modeled really good
communication to them as they were watch us and
| | 02:41 | listen to us work through issues,
because we had to stay professional and
| | 02:46 | work through issues.
| | 02:47 | I think both our kids are really good
communicators, because of us kind of
| | 02:50 | working together and then
watching us work through it.
| | 02:53 | We don't really fight and we
don't pick like some couples do.
| | 02:57 | So there is no real awkward--
| | 02:59 | We get that question mark when
people come here to interview.
| | 03:01 | They are like, what's it
like to work for you guys?
| | 03:02 | Do you fight right in front of everyone?
| | 03:04 | We are like, no, we don't do that.
| | 03:06 | We actually ride our bikes into
work together and it's kind of fun.
| | 03:10 | Mark Duarte: I can see where it
would fall apart for some couples.
| | 03:13 | I mean you can't be so proud or arrogant
that you wouldn't allow your wife to be
| | 03:20 | successful and get all the
attention and be the face of the company.
| | 03:27 | I had to realize that if we wanted to be
successful, I need to let her strengths shine.
| | 03:34 | Let her be the face, let her be in front of
clients, let her be the CEO. I'm fine with it.
| | 03:42 | I don't have any problem with it.
| | 03:43 | Because I like to golf and like to pull
myself away more and more. I want to go golf.
| | 03:48 | Nancy Duarte: He lets me do
whatever I want and I let him golf.
| | 03:50 | Mark Duarte: I will just give her a long
enough leash that I'll let it go for a ways and then
| | 03:54 | I have to yank it back a little bit
every now and then and then we're fine.
| | 03:57 | Nancy Duarte: Then we are fine.
Mark Duarte: Yeah, we are fine.
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| Interview with Lynda| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:09 | Lynda Weinman: Hello! I'm Lynda Weinman.
| | 00:11 | Welcome to this episode of Creative
Inspirations and today I am here with Nancy Duarte
| | 00:17 | and it's such a pleasure.
| | 00:19 | Nancy Duarte: Thank you, it's good to see you.
| | 00:20 | Lynda Weinman: It's really good to see you.
| | 00:22 | I don't feel this way about most people,
but I really feel like we have some things
| | 00:27 | in common that I have to comment
on it, because you work with your husband
| | 00:31 | and I work with my husband, and
you started off as a takent and kind
| | 00:35 | of leveraged that talent into a business
and then you wrote a book and now you
| | 00:41 | are starting to do training and it's
just so interesting to me that we have
| | 00:44 | those parallel lines.
| | 00:45 | Nancy Duarte: Yes.
Lynda Weinman: Exactly!
| | 00:46 | Nancy Duarte: We have been in business about the
same time, the length of time. And we have kids.
| | 00:51 | Lynda Weinman: And we have kids, so those are
a lot of things to juggle, and I am curious for you
| | 00:57 | how the evolution happened of
transitioning from an individual talent into
| | 01:01 | a business and a company?
| | 01:03 | Nancy Duarte: As an entrepreneur, the cool thing
is you get to do everything. You get to do it.
| | 01:06 | You're kind of a generalist and you are good at
a lot of things, but you are not really great.
| | 01:09 | You maybe great at one, and it was a
lot of work to peel off the things that
| | 01:15 | I could hire someone better than me at
and so when I did that, I hired actually
| | 01:20 | my best friend to come in and recruit.
| | 01:22 | I had him assess kind of where I was,
what my strengths were and then he just
| | 01:26 | started to hire roles off of me and
I think if I didn't have someone who
| | 01:29 | really cared for me and loved me do that,
it would have been more painful than it was.
| | 01:33 | But then I had to mourn the loss of this role.
| | 01:35 | I would actually, like when the person
was hired, I would actually go home and cry,
| | 01:38 | get over it, and then I would
never really revisit it, because I knew
| | 01:42 | I would meddle or "we will do it
my way" or whatever, and I didn't.
| | 01:46 | So because I like I let it go completely,
emotionally, and then they could start
| | 01:50 | in this role and express it their own way.
| | 01:54 | So that I think was moving from an
entrepreneurship to like a professionally
| | 01:59 | managed firm has been a big journey
and it's been a fun journey, but
| | 02:05 | it's all about letting go.
| | 02:06 | Lynda Weinman: It really is and I even see
the process of teaching and sharing as being a
| | 02:12 | process of letting go because it's
information that's all in your head and
| | 02:15 | it's you talent that you are
marketing and suddenly you are telling other
| | 02:19 | people how to do it.
| | 02:20 | So I am curious when you made the
decision to write the book and to start to
| | 02:26 | share some of your techniques and methodologies?
| | 02:28 | Nancy Duarte: Well we have been around for a
long time and we have already been through a few
| | 02:32 | economic seasons and I really feel
like I could see this season coming.
| | 02:36 | So I was here just working
hard. Books take forever.
| | 02:40 | I don't think people really understand
how much time it takes to write a book,
| | 02:45 | and I just hunkered down.
| | 02:46 | People here thought I was crazy,
because right in the middle of the upswing
| | 02:49 | and times are good.
| | 02:50 | I am running around like the place is on fire.
| | 02:53 | I mean I wasn't that dramatic about it
but I knew that I knew that I knew
| | 02:57 | I was fighting a battle.
| | 02:58 | I knew that if I fought it right and
timed it right, we would win in this down
| | 03:03 | economy and that's kind of what happened.
| | 03:05 | So I started to see other people start
to get high visibility for their work and
| | 03:11 | presentations and that competitive
nature in me was like wait a minute,
| | 03:15 | I've been doing this 20 years. There is
really nobody more qualified to kind of put a
| | 03:18 | stake in the ground for
best practices other than me.
| | 03:21 | So I think you have to have
a kind of competitive drive.
| | 03:22 | You have to really want it, put it out
there really bad and spread it like a virus.
| | 03:27 | So really, I think presentations are the
most compelling communication medium around.
| | 03:32 | I really, really do and if they are
done well and they are compelling and
| | 03:36 | they are emotional and they are human,
it really changes things and so I think
| | 03:40 | getting the word out because it's such a
reviled medium and getting it out there--
| | 03:45 | Lynda Weinman: The medium gets blamed
instead of the way it's handled at the time.
| | 03:49 | Nancy Duarte: No, no, no. Yeah so changing the
way people think, changing how they construct them
| | 03:53 | was very important to me.
| | 03:54 | Lynda Weinman: Well, tell everybody a little
bit about where you are going with training and
| | 03:58 | what you are doing in that arm of your business?
| | 04:00 | Nancy Duarte: So we took principles
of the book and turned them into really
| | 04:04 | interactive tactile exercises.
| | 04:05 | There is no computers in the room at
all because if you can get it in their head,
| | 04:09 | it will be expressed through the
computer when they get back and we don't
| | 04:13 | want to mess with different revs of
operating systems and all of that.
| | 04:16 | So we made all of the exercises,
you have to glue and paste and cut, and
| | 04:21 | it's really fun, and use lots of sticky notes,
and it's also been a good opportunity
| | 04:26 | to experiment with some of
the concepts in the next book.
| | 04:28 | So by the time that comes out,
it will be like a proven methodology,
| | 04:32 | we'll have case studies,
so that's been very helpful.
| | 04:35 | Lynda Weinman: What is the next book?
| | 04:37 | Nancy Duarte: It's actually right now it's
just a kind of a thesis that I have or that we are
| | 04:40 | going to be researching it this summer.
| | 04:42 | So I have some research students that
are coming in, but I am taking and really
| | 04:47 | digging into the different schools of
screen writing, because a screenwriter not
| | 04:51 | only writes the words but also
describes what's going on in the screen.
| | 04:55 | So there is a lot of different schools
around storytelling there, and then
| | 04:57 | we are also studying other forms of
storytelling, American Indian, all the
| | 05:01 | cultures that were really
good at passing stories on.
| | 05:04 | So we are looking at that and then
we are also looking at great speeches,
| | 05:08 | the greatest speeches in the world,
the greatest orators in the world, that
| | 05:11 | didn't have visual aids.
| | 05:12 | How they broke down their sentence
structure, what are the patterns that they used,
| | 05:16 | how was their voice done and where
those two worlds, great screen writing
| | 05:20 | and great speech making, intersect.
| | 05:21 | I think that's going to be like the
heart of a world class presentation.
| | 05:25 | So we already incorporated a lot of
screen writing methodologies into our
| | 05:29 | presentation development in the
training and it works which is cool.
| | 05:33 | Lynda Weinman: So I noticed in your
fabulous space here that you have a training room.
| | 05:38 | You have actual auditorium
where you must give classes.
| | 05:42 | Can you talk a little bit about
how people can get involved with your
| | 05:46 | physical classes here?
| | 05:47 | How do people sign up for them?
| | 05:50 | How often are you offering them? What are they?
| | 05:52 | Nancy Duarte: Yeah! So we offer them anywhere
from one to three times a month and then they are
| | 05:56 | held here and like you said, it's as we
call it the garage and we set it up with
| | 06:00 | tables and training.
| | 06:01 | We restrict the attendance to about 32
people because we really want people to
| | 06:05 | kind of get to know each other and they
actually work collaboratively on their
| | 06:08 | presentations, which is fun.
| | 06:10 | In the downturn, we actually cut
back how many times a month we do it.
| | 06:13 | Though they do sell out, and we have
waiting lists on all of them which is kind
| | 06:16 | of nice but we're also retrofitting the
training to Webinar format and trying to
| | 06:20 | make it really interactive, using chat
rooms and people still have to scan and
| | 06:24 | post things, and all of that stuff.
| | 06:26 | Nancy Duarte: So that's kind of fun.
Lynda Weinman: That's going to be fantastic.
| | 06:29 | Nancy Duarte: The way people
express things is very different.
| | 06:31 | The person next to you is going
to express the same assignment very
| | 06:34 | different than you do.
| | 06:35 | Lynda Weinman: Oh! I love that.
| | 06:35 | Nancy Duarte: Yeah, and so the fact that they
get to share it and set up a little community
| | 06:39 | space for them to see what
other people did, it's kind of fun.
| | 06:42 | Yeah, it's very fun.
| | 06:43 | The comments we get back
are what make it worth it.
| | 06:46 | My favorite comment is when they say,
oh, now I am really scared to go open up
| | 06:50 | my deck I just did because I am going
to be able to see for the first time
| | 06:54 | everything broken, and that's what
we're trying to do is get in their head and
| | 06:57 | have them think like a designer
because they are not taught that in business
| | 07:00 | class at all, and yet we communicate
visually in business all day long and there
| | 07:05 | is no rules that or constraints
they have been taught around it. So it's fun.
| | 07:08 | Lynda Weinman: Well you have an important
mission and we are so happy that you allowed us
| | 07:13 | into your world, it's fascinating and very relevant,
and really going to help a lot of people. So thank you.
| | 07:19 | Nancy Duarte: Thank you.
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