Comments about oreilly slide:ology:

Such a wonderful book and perfect for students and agencies.

Comments about oreilly slide:ology:

I received this book as a door prize four days ago.

I have not done any PowerPoint presentations in about the past ten years, but I have been creating websites for the past six. Two days ago, I was crafting a new internal facing website, and I looked at the display of data I was creating from a different perspective because of this book. I looked at a web page that I just created and said (to myself) "What should catch the user's attention and what should not be a distraction?" So I changed the colors on the layout to bring to attention what was important. And muted what is necessary on the page, but should not be distracting.

I can only imagine what better websites I will be creating, after finish reading this book.

Comments about oreilly slide:ology:

If you have been building slide after slide after slide, you need to take a look at this book. To achieve the look and feel of many of the slides would require much more than just powerpoint, but you can still succeed at communicating and telling the story but maybe with less polish.

This books strikes a good balance between practical how to, big ideas, and real world stories from people in the high-tech industry. Well worth the time.

Comments about oreilly slide:ology:

Slide:ology, The art and science of creating great presentations

Nancy Durante

O'Reilly Media Inc, Publisher, 2008

$34.99

Slide:ology is a 250+ page soft back book that puts wisdom and experience of computer slide presentations together in a single volume. It is a beautifully designed practical guide to make presentations interesting, informative and engaging. While encyclopedic and didactic in scope it is fun and easy to read. It is a visual masterpiece. Chapters and sections can be read separately skipping through the book or read entirely from cover to cover. Each section is typically one to two pages long. Pick it up. Read a page. Learn. Practice. Come back to the book again.

Slide:ology is a desk reference, a book of humor, a history, and primer. It is (as expected from someone instructing in how to make a presentation fantastic) illustrated to make the points simply and clearly. If your PowerPoint or Keynote has lots of words and you and your audience read the slides (clearly "no-no's"), this is for you. As stated in Slide:ology's introduction "This book covers how to create ideas, transfer them into pictures, display them well, and then deliver them in your own natural way. It is not a PowerPoint manual."

There is a supporting beautifully constructed website and places in the book with "www" in the book's text to indicate more information is on the web site. For purchasers of the book, there is a free 45-day online edition. (I don't know what happens after 45 days.)

A few creative chapters are "Creating a new slide ideology", "Don't commit career suislide", "Defining your audience", "Creating diagrams", "Case study: Al Gore, A brand makeover", "Dissecting a font".

This book is a must read, must have, must master reference for anyone giving any presentation who hopes to connect to their audience, spread ideas to move people, and display information in the best possible way.

Reviewed August 2009 by

Howard Levine MD

Director, Cleveland Nasal Sinus & Sleep Center

Cleveland Ohio

Lecturer and PowerPoint and Keynote user

www.ClevelandNasalSinus.com

Comments about oreilly slide:ology:

Bookreview: Slide:ology, The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations

Author: Nancy Duarte

Publisher: O'Reilly

Review Done by: Igno van Niekerk, Manager Adobe User Group, Bloemfontein, South Africa

If ever I was asked to do a short, very short review of a book, it would be this one, and my review would read as follows: Buy it, Read it, Live it, Share it _ That's it.

Slide:ology is a perfect answer to boring boardroom presentations. The book lives up to its message by having a timeline, a cartoon, a short quote on a double-spread, and a feel of "here is something different," even before the reader comes to the first chapter.

I have been dipping into it several times, as this is the kind of book which you'll need to keep close to wherever you are when creating presentations. (Make sure its hidden from colleagues, because it's the kind of book people will borrow and never return). If I seem to be raving about the book, it's because anyone who has been "battered and bruised" by boring presentations will know that there needs to be a better way, and Duarte shares the high road of presenting page by page.

The first part of the book is a dip into the preparation for the presentation, but unlike other books, Slide:ology, does not fall into the trap of merely telling the presenter what to do. The beautiful, colorful and well placed pages show how you can avoid committing career sui-slide as well as how the whole ecosystem of presentations work.

The part about creating ideas and not slides guides the reader into the magic place where great presentations have their roots: _ The untapped idea-factory of the playful human mind. Just in case you feel it gets a bit too loose for you (you might want to do corporate boardroom presentations to serious people, after all - ;-0), the next part shows you how to turn ideas into diagrams. It goes even further by showing you what kind of diagrams are used for different kinds of concepts. Yes, it does matter!

The 5 data slide rules are straightforward, simple, effective _ and often NOT USED in poor presentations _ stick them on a post it note somewhere close to your workstation and adhere to them rigidly. You'll be contributing to making the world of presentations a better place.

When reading the part about design, visual elements and the arrangement of elements in your slideshow, one is reminded of the fact that Daniel Pink has said that DESIGN is a crucial requirement for future success. Duarte gently guides the presenter, who has to become more of a designer, into the intricate world of color, fonts, illustrations and animation. Although some concepts may seem strange at first, they make so much sense that one will keep coming back to read them.

Once the slides have been created, Duarte does another brilliant job of showing how to improve on what she calls "Interacting with slides". This part covers more than merely the simplification of the slideshow and the message, it also touches on the media that are used.

In the end the book assists the reader to live the five theses of the Power of the Presentation as indicated in the final manifesto, which is to:

Treat your audience as king.

Spread ideas and move people.

Help them see what you are saying.

Practice design, not decoration.

Cultivate happy relationships.

Well, if you more than a book to assist you in improving your presentations. This is more than a book. It's a companion. Read it, Live it, Share it _ and the world of presentations will become much better place.

Igno van Niekerk

Manager: Adobe User Group, Bloemfontein, South Africa

Comments about oreilly slide:ology:

this is the book that should come with Keynote, Powerpoint and should be read by anyone preparing for a visual presentation. It's not a software manual but you could consider it to be a top notch visual presentation manual.

Invaluable tips that will make you appear like a true pro if you follow thru on them.

Comments about oreilly slide:ology:

Don't be fooled, you won't finish the book with a degree in visual arts. You won't really get a lot of the theory either, unless you already have a degree in visual arts. However, Nancy has given an overview of the best ways to use slides to visually communicate with passion.

To present well you must build on the triad; a great idea communicated through well chosen words and memorable graphics. Nancy provides the much needed introduction to the graphical portion in a way that lets most of us improve our presentations. If you don't think you can spend a few hours over the next weeks discussing fonts, logo ideas, and color schemes with your team you might want to revisit your priorities. Don't we already waste hours on slides that are forgettable in minutes?

Read the book, discuss it with your team. Generate ideas, implement the best ones. Change the world.

Comments about oreilly slide:ology:

... and that's just the start.

I've read the book twice and given copies to two friends and to my son (who is a designer). There are several longer reviews that I support entirely; let me say simply that this book completely changed how I think of presentations and my role in them. Powerful, on-point and transformative.

Comments about oreilly slide:ology:

A Book Review _ by Gregory West, SCUG Editor (www.scug.ca)

There is nothing worse than a bad presentation. We have all, at one time or another, have been forced to sit and watch a slide show presentation, praying it will improve with time. Unfortunately, the odds are against us.

Sadly, these are professionals giving these presentations; so it must get better, right? Unfortunately, all-too-often these professional presentations go sour and chase instead of attract potential interests. What goes wrong? The answers are on each of the 274 pages of this book..

The introduction clearly points out that this book is not a manual for PowerPoint; it is a book is a "reference book" and it teaches the "why". The format is a coffee-table design, laying flat for easy reference, with large vivid colour pictures and designs throughout. The book begins giving you a brief history of presentations and why presentations are an important part of companies who "spend millions of dollars on advertising, marketing, and PR to attract and retain customers" and they have a need to create effect presentations to get their message out to prospective clients.

You will find several interesting Case Studies that Durate has created to show how some companies create "World Class Presentations" in simply terms, and quite frankly very easy to create. For example, one Case Study shows how Mark Templeton used communication and story telling "and his innate ability to think visually" in order to make it pay off.

There is a lot of behind-the-scenes psychology in creating presentations and Durate is ubiquitous in providing ongoing information. From the concept of "Creating Ideas, Not Slides", to "Thinking Like a Designer", Durate shows how simple it really is to create professional presentations that promote interest using "Visual Elements" and "Creating Movement". There is are amazing sections on colour psychology and text typesetting styles that go well beyond slide presentations that you may ever read twice as I did. I love the "Dissecting a Font" section where you learn the "personality" of various fonts and why they are used in various forms of presentations to make a point or grab your attention without you realizing it.

As you travel through this book you will look at a presentation with a new sense of vision. And if you have to do a presentation you will not make the mistakes that all-too-many professionals do each and every day throughout the world.

This book is a good read from cover to cover. It can be opened at any chapter where I guarantee you won't be able to put it back down. It is a great reference book to give you the insight and boost you may need to make your presentation work for you and your audience. I highly recommend this book to not only presenters but also viewers who just may become the best critics out there.

Gregory West is the Editor and Executive Member of the Sarnia Computer Users' Group. He can be reached at prospector16(at)gmail.com (www.scug.ca).

This review is also published with APCUG and at http://gregorywest.wordpress.com/2008/11/07/slideology-by-nancy-duarte/

Comments about oreilly slide:ology:

I've sat through my share of presentations, and what goes through my mind all to often is "If these smart dudes can foul it up this badly, what hope do I have when presenting is unavoidable?" At those moments I pray for something to inspire and help me.

This book seems to be it. slide:ology lays it out in black and white:

"Making bad slides is easy, and it will negatively impact your career. Invest in your slides, but invest in your own visual skills as well. The alternative is to inadvertently commit career suislide."

If you want a set of startegies and tactics to help you produce a better presentation, this is a really great book. It gives you tools to think about what an audience is looking for, and how you can effectively tell an engaging story to them. One of the core pieces of advice is:

"Treat Your Audience as King"

Aesthetically the book is big enough to promise lots of goodies, yet it is not intimidating. The book is visually light, airy, colourful, lavishly illustrated, and thoughtfully laid out. There are bold red pages between the chapters so it is very easy to flip through and find the right place. The pages containing content are laid out informally and effectively with considered use of colour and whitespace. As you read through the book you see that this is no accident, the book effectively uses some of the visual design principles it is describing.

If you choose to read the book from cover to cover then content unfolds logically. Should you later use the book as a reference then the sections stand by themselves. This could be the result of the author thinking carefully about the ways readers might approach the book, and how to make slide:ology useful to them.

Although the book was light and airy to look at, it is not light on ideas. slide:ology effectively uses and explains many of Edward Tufte and Stephen Few's ideas when it comes to displaying quantitative data and diagrams.

Thinking Like a Designer and the chapters which followed have helped me start thinking more like a designer:

"Every decision a designer makes is intentional. Reason and logic underpin the placement of visual elements. Meaning underscores the order and hierarchy of ideas"

The chapters which address various aspects of design are full of useful principles, specific examples of "before" and "after" slides, and things as mundane as the RGB triples for some of the palettes used as illustrations. This "help in depth" eases me into trying things out. The specific examples are presented in the context of more general principles, and there is plenty of variety in the examples.

slide:ology breaks things down into small enough chunks so that I can make progress on them. The individual elements are manageable and I have no excuse to avoid raising my quality bar.

I found it refreshing that someone was prepared to give a rough estimate of how long it can take to produce a presentation, and break it down into activities. Despite my hopes that Keynote would just do it for me, it seems that good presentations are the end result of planning, hard work, reworks, and rehearsal. The presentation tool has to be used the right way. It is no substitute for good ideas and hard work.

At a more visceral level I liked the book because I have been having fun slyly practicing drawing stick figures at the office, re-awakening a sense of fun in visual expression. One last goody: I always enjoy digging through the bibliography or further reading sections of books I find useful. There are plenty of interesting books mentioned throughout the text and in the reference section of slide:ology.

Conclusion:

I found slide:ology an engaging and interesting book. It has shown me ways I can prepare and produce better presentations. These tools also give me a way to critically appreciate presentations I see.

There's something deeply satisfying in knowing that I can improve my presentations, and many of the techniques and principles can be used in the commission of web pages and user interfaces.

In contrast to the usual cloud of resignation and despair which usually settles I think I can be optimistic and energised when preparing my next presentation.

Review originally posted at: http://www.stok.ca/blog/2008/11/06/3/