My presentation at the Nordic Media Festival

Bergen, Norway - in May
Photo: Bergen, Norway – in May. Shot outside just before my presentation.

I just did a terrible thing. I promised hundreds of people that I would post my presentation here at eirikso.com

Making a promise in front of hundreds of people while everything is documented on tape is a serious obligation. But hey, a little preassure is good for productivity.

The presentation is obviously finished, so what’s the problem? Can’t you just upload the powerpoint to your website? That will take you a couple of seconds…

About my presentation style

I often get questions from people that wasn’t able to attend my presentations if I could mail them my powerpoint. The obvious problem of the fact that powerpoint is a horrible tool that grows your presentation to hundreds of megabytes if you decide to include some pictures makes things difficult, but that can be solved by making a PDF. Still that is not the real problem.

The real problem is that if I make a set of slides that can be read through and give a person that did not attend the same that the people in the audience got, I have made a really bad set of slides. Why on earth would I bother travelling all the way to the venue and spend my time talking if I could solve this by simply mailing my persentation to the people interested?

I try my best to follow the rules from Seth Godin’s excellent little eBook called Really Bad Powerpoint and from what I learn through the fantastic blog called Presentation Zen.

The rule that makes my presentations completely useless as documentation is: No more than six words on each slide

Yes, you will find more than six words on some of my slides. But setting ambitious goals forces you to think through things that extra time and helps you making things as simple as possible.

The obligation

Yes, I will post my presentation here. During the next days and weeks I will divide it into smaller chapters and make one article on each chapter. Posting the slides as illustrations and writing my thoughts on the issues. To make a document that makes sense both as notes for the people that attended and as interesting information for the readers of my blog.

You can read more about my thoughts on doing presentations here: how to avoid making boring presentations

The content

What can you expect? Articles on the challenges of the television inustry, about home entertainment, business models that change, how media centers change the way we use our TV, about how we should change the way we work with television programs and about the fact that the internet is a huge possibility for the media industry, not a threat.

Until then, please feel free to comment here or send me an email if you attended the presentation and have questions or feedback on how it worked out. Did I talk too fast? Are my slides stupid? Do you miss the bulletpoints?

(A note for my regular readers. How was the competition from Matt Stone and Trey Parker? Well, our hall was completely full. People sitting by the wall in the back of the room. I don’t think the South Park guys had any problems filling their hall either, but I am honoured by the fact that so many people chose our session.)

Update:
I have started to post the presentation. You will find the posts here.

My presentation at the Nordic Media Festival

5 thoughts on “My presentation at the Nordic Media Festival

  1. I’m looking forward to reading you thoughts on the MCE today.

    My thoughts on your behalf is that it must have been a good feeling talking to so many people while “Kill Kenny” and “Cartman” had their audience in the next room.

    Great picture by the way!!!

  2. Pearse says:

    Great presentation Eirik, the room was packed – SRO! Not bad when Kenny was getting killed in the room upstairs.

    You didn’t talk too fast, even I got the whole lot.

    I have two comments, don’t check your watch so often, it breaks your flow. But more importantly – when can we see an updated version of Bob the millionaire? Eirik the Norsk Nerd, how he created his own content that reached a huge audience online. Hope you start sketching, it works really well.

    Yours in football,
    Pearse

  3. I appreciate the compliments on both the presentation and the picture 🙂

    Pearse:
    About checking the watch. I accept every bit of criticism on that one. I buy this fantastic presentation remote with the most ingenious vibrating timer built in. Then I start my presentation forgetting to set the timer and have to check my regular watch to keep track of time. Embarrassing. And thank you for the feedback!

    And the request for another comic strip. Good idea! The example will work in several occation and deserves its own little story.

    Eyvind:
    I am sorry for the fact that the slides are not here yet, but they will be. 🙂 If you don’t want to check back manually again and again I can recommend my email subscription. It will not overload you with information. You will simply get a note when I post something new. Including the articles from my presentation.

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