Episode 67: TED Talkin’ - How to avoid death by PowerPoint

David JP Phillips 00:00

Welcome to How to avoid death by PowerPoint

Michael Mioduski 00:24

I'm dead your PowerPoint killed me. Welcome back to presentation thinking a podcast a study club, if you will a storyteller Study Club. Molly, what's going on? Hello. Coming to you live from my basement office. And?

Molly Geoghegan 00:40

And yeah, we we have used this phrase colloquially death by PowerPoint for many years Mikey because we're trying to avoid death by PowerPoint. And I don't know if David JP Phillips was the creator of this phrase, right? He certainly capitalized on it. Yeah, his 2014 TED Talk, which we are going to be talking about today, Ted Talk and Ted Talk in TED talking. Thank you, Theodore, and company with your exes. And this one given Stockholm, TEDx April 14 to 2014 4.5 million views on the YouTube. Yeah, one of the most watched TED Talks. Yeah. All Time. Yeah. David, JP Phillips, first of all, my Do you do you? What do you think the JP stands for? Just processed. Just just PowerPoint? Juicy, juicy, juicy, juicy PowerPoint.

Michael Mioduski 01:40

Stay in front of a bright room. Dark Room, but he had a bright personality. And yeah, I mean, you know, he went over to is like, 20 minutes long. I think. I think the reason people talk a lot by death by bullet death by PowerPoint, he opens up, he's got a really good hook. So let's get into it. Molly, let's talk about what we heard. And any good takeaways that we think, again, if you're just tuning into the presentation, thinking podcast, Molly and I are on a quest to become better presenters and storytellers. And as we are learning along the way, we're sharing our findings. So there's a whole lot of content online and through books and media that we're digesting and aggregating and talking about. So we're here to like, just kind of share that our findings. And if you are on a quest to become a better presenter, hopefully you can take something away from this one too.

Molly Geoghegan 02:33

And as part of that journey, just to say Mikey Mioduski, CEO and founder of ghostriders communications is on his own journey to the TED Talk stage. So we really hold these TED Talks is such a, such a cool bar of both presentations and storytelling and capturing an audience. And so we love to just take a well viewed one or a popular one and really dig into how it's become popular. And what's it got to do with us. And today how to avoid death by PowerPoint is very on the nose. So,

Michael Mioduski 03:01

David, juicy PowerPoint, he opens up with, I'm looking at your notes. Smalley. You love the hook. So like, were you hooked when he first opened up?

Molly Geoghegan 03:11

Yes, I liked the hook on this. I it was very simple. And he kind of just starts with a question, which is we know is a great hook to ask the audience, right? And he's like, how is it that our PowerPoints, people? This is the year of 2014. So this is about the almost 10 years ago, and they still haven't changed that much. But how is it that our PowerPoints look the way they look? And furthermore, he's asks, how can we accept that our PowerPoints look, the way we look? And everyone's kind of laughing because we, if this is a roomful of people that work in communications, and maybe some tech and are at a Swedish TED talk, they know what PowerPoint is they've worked within it. And they know what he's talking about. He doesn't say explicitly, but you're like, Yeah, PowerPoints are freaking boring. No one likes the software. It's hard to work with. Like, everyone's, like, got this own stigma against PowerPoint. Right? So it's, like pointing to this, you're immediately drawn into the inside joke, because you're like, I also don't like car. I know what you're talking about. He doesn't say it explicitly. I also have been bored.

Michael Mioduski 04:10

I liked it, too. Yeah. And he's like, Well, why does this continue to happen? Because like, minutes after you get out of a really bad PowerPoint, you're like, Oh, now I have to go make a PowerPoint. And then he's like, he kind of makes a joke about like, so why do you do the exact same thing? And you know, is it vengeance Are you like, they did to me, so I'm gonna make a really crappy boring PowerPoint for them. And, but no, like, I felt that like, it's so funny when because we are presentation designers and, you know, specialists. And yet, I'll admit, like, a lot of the presentations I give to my internal team are thrown together. And there's bullets there. You know, I like it is definitely sort of, you know, the the shoe cobblers kid or whatever, right? It's, it's like as much as we preach. It really does take more effort to make a more standout Presentation.

Molly Geoghegan 05:00

Yeah, definitely. And it's like, the bar is low, too. Yeah. And this was nine years ago. And so then he goes through showing us some pretty bad, bad examples of slides from then he's like, these are from like, talk to your businesses. He doesn't really name but first universities. Some of them are trying to teach people how to use PowerPoint. And he's like, What? Yeah, this is not helpful. And he immediately relates it back to himself. He's like, why am I talking to you about this, I have two passions in this life, learning about the human brain, and presentation skills, and I love combining these two. So it's like, you're I am on the stage, telling you about why I'm here talking about this. And so I liked that kind of just, again, pretty simple setup for like, yeah, let me ask you this question, pull you inside for some common knowledge that already like on this inside joke, and together, and then I'm gonna be like, Okay, I'm passionate about this. And I've gotten down the rabbit hole. So here I am on the stage.

Michael Mioduski 05:52

I think that's there's some other crossover with a few other presentation thinkers, we've studied Vanessa Van Edwards, who talks about the contagion of emotion. And so telling someone jeez, I'm really passionate and excited to talk about this stuff. I think that's important, because then they're like, sweet, yeah, he's not. If he was sleepy about this stuff, or indifferent, you know, like, why should we listen? And so I think that's also noted by Carmine Gallo, in the presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. That book he talks about? Steve Jobs would actually get up there and say, like, I am so excited to talk to you today. About this new phone or whatever, right? Like, if you're excited, they're

Molly Geoghegan 06:30

excited. Okay. else in the world? I'd rather be Yeah,

Michael Mioduski 06:33

yeah. So it's cool. Like, it's cool to share. If you are passionate about something you're about to talk about, like say it, you know, I think that's a huge tip.

Molly Geoghegan 06:40

Yeah, because he's not just like another stop on the speaker tour or something like something like they're they're amped to be there. And I think that helps people in a room, or they're likely having have sat through several keynotes before he or something. So yeah, get your passion up there. I think that's a good note to take from David juicy PowerPoint, fill it up. So if we ever meet him, I hope he likes that nickname, because it really is. Hopefully, he legally changed in Sweden. And then, so he goes through these bad examples, which are very bad Mikey, we should share some of the pod page, but like, just full of text, graphs that like make no sense to just like a quick look, you know, as someone going through presentations, lots of text, etc. So it's a good laugh again, right? People are like, Oh, I've seen slides like this, these are laughably bad. And then he says that, you know, he quote, some sciences stat that like what people remember from seeing slides like this is gone in 30 seconds. And I love this example he used where he's like, you're traveling, you're getting on the train. And I just had this I was like, oh, yeah, I do this on the plane all the time. You're like I'm in. It's a 32. And I'm C 23. B or something, you know, so you're like, there's these weird letters and numbers where suddenly you're like, you lose it immediately. You have to check multiple times to see where you're sitting, you get on the plane, I'm like, I you know, have you ever gotten on a plane and sat in the wrong seat? Or something? We're like, Oh, I'm actually, I'm actually 13 Instead of like, you know, three or something. And I just, I thought that was a perfect example of like, we can't remember things that are just like, given to us really quickly. There's no mechanism to remember it to keep it in our brains. Unless, yeah, I find myself being like, see cat toy, you know, three to remember where I'm supposed to go in those instances. So again, an example to tie in the fact that like, we are human, we don't have a lot of capacity for Yeah, memory. We're human. Yeah.

Michael Mioduski 08:44

And so he's why he takes about five, six minutes. So about 25% of his intro is setup. He's setting up the problem. He's getting heads nodding with things we can, we've experienced ourselves. And then what does he do? Like? Yeah, 540. He introduces the five ways the five design principles to help avoid death by

Molly Geoghegan 09:07

PowerPoint at 540. Yeah, that's a perfect chapter. And this was like his inciting this was a setup. The whole setup was up until minute five. And he goes, I now welcome you to how to avoid death by PowerPoint. He's like, welcome to my presentation. I've explained to you why I'm here. We've bonded over these bad examples and that you relate to them. And we and I've told you that like humans don't really remember that much. And I've proven you with it some with some neurology quotes and some statistics. So here I am. And there will be five design principles you will walk away with. So you're like, Okay, great. And what's the first one he goes through?

Michael Mioduski 09:41

Yeah, well, this one, one message per slide. Not a ton to say around this. I, you know, like Molly speaks for itself. Yeah, like, it's funny. Like I studied advertising in grad school. And this was the same thing they say in advertising, which got more and more difficult to break through over the years right. And the most award winning just advertisements, whether print or like commercials that we see on TV that again, it's like, just say one thing and say it really well. So, same deal. We've all seen when we've someone tried to cram too many different ideas onto one slide. It's really hard to latch on to something and in Made to Stick that Chip and Dan Heath book, same deal. There's some quotes on like, from a famous defense attorney like if you say 10 things you say nothing. You know, if you say three things you say nothing like, you have to say just the one thing if you if you want someone to remember that one thing,

Molly Geoghegan 10:32

yeah, I love that. And that goes for like so many I see just like the there's often so many features people want to show off and things that their product or service can do. And that's great. You can list all those, but people might not remember them. When he gets down to you have to like zoom out a little bit and be like, what it's actually this is helping you level up your presentation skills, like this car is helping you get there faster, or safer or something keeping your family's like something bottom line, a little bit more conceptual. And that has to be the one message. So breaking those down per slide is easier said than done. Because people think they're like, Okay, well, I gotta put all the features on one thing, when in reality, you just need to be focusing on one thing at a time. And folk

Michael Mioduski 11:12

focus is the key word, right? It's like simplify some distill. But like, if you can focus your slide, you can help them focus. Yeah, totally. And that leads into his second, you know, second design principle or idea to help you avoid death by PowerPoint,

Molly Geoghegan 11:28

which is working memory, he says, And he gets into something called, we have what the what the human brain has a capacity to remember. And he talks about how people have a tendency to put full sentences on slides. And as you're talking, I forget what book we read Mikey, but like, the human brain's capacity to take in information from someone's taught speaking, and then some text coming from different sides of the brain. So when someone's in front of sentences or a paragraph in front of a slide, it makes sense that those are clashing and you cannot take in both at the same time, right? You can be skimming one thing, but you might, you're gonna be shooting at the speaker, or you could be listening to the speaker and you're absolutely not going to be reading the sentences because you cannot physically do both at the same time. And what he emphasizes is, of course, that like he, he's the presentation, the slides of the visual aid, so he wants the attention on him. And you just need a few words to like highlight what you're talking about. Is it the car exterior? He's like, at some luxury car example? Is it just like the one Yeah, one concept with a photo and a caption? And so he says 90% of what those are those really busy slides, what people remember will be gone in 30 seconds, he reiterates that again, so yeah, just again, getting less words. And if it's one message per slide, then no full sentences just like really simple a few words, what are you trying to say distill, distill, still.

Michael Mioduski 12:51

And if you do have a sentence or a quote or something on a slide, I really liked his, his slide around here was like, he had this one plus one equals and then so he's saying, like, if you have a sentence on the slide, and they your audience is reading it, and the other one is you are also reading, like speaking it, they'll get neither of those. So like his one plus one equals zero, slide kind of pays off, which is pretty funny. But true. It's like, yeah, either let them read it or you just say it for them. So kind of decide, but trying to do both, it's it's gonna be almost impossible for them to take in like one or the other.

Molly Geoghegan 13:28

And I noticed Well, the one sentence he does have earlier on his in his setup is that is a John Medina quote from a famous neurologist, and he doesn't read it he actually silent I read that to be like, he's like silent, cuz he's like, I want you to read the whole. Yeah. So he Yeah, he I thought he brought that in whatever that was, even though it's a simple concept, obviously less. Okay, so what's number three for his design principles?

Michael Mioduski 13:53

So he's talking about helping to guide an audience through things. So is this about like, size? And like, I guess, hierarchy?

Molly Geoghegan 14:00

Yeah. He says just the word size. I liked his like, even though I think it covers a lot. Each of his design principles covers a lot. He just gets it down to like one or two words, couple words. So this one, number three was size. And by that he means your eye will pay attention to obviously, what's bigger, if your headline is big, and your sub content is small, yet, you're obviously gonna read the headline first. And he shows this exactly what he means but putting the he like goes flips back and forth. Besides my headline smaller every time you open your eyes you're gonna pay attention to and now you're reading the headlines. And so stuff people seeing in red to yellow, that kind of stuff to find stuff. Contrast rich objects and big objects. So those are things that are like entering your periphery, and you are they're either like abnormal that you need to pay attention to them, or it's just how the brain normally works. I think a lot of art theory plays into this sometimes when artists draw stuff right in the Z form to kind of like yeah, they guide your eye starting on, upper left, move over To the right, come down and across. And so there's always this kind of natural flow that human eyes follow. So he's like, yeah, why not use that to benefit your design? Right? You want them to look at the headline first, make it bigger. If you want them to look at the content first make that bigger. If you want them to look, see an image or a graph, like that should be the only thing they're looking at. Another really basic principle, this is 2014. So it's kind of seems like a little one on one. But still, it's like you can, you'd be surprised to how, like, quickly you can see those changes when he's transitioning from big headline to smaller headline.

Michael Mioduski 15:34

Yeah, I think it's, it's become sounds almost basic now, because like he said, things that a lot of people were probably thinking or had never heard spoken before. But yeah, I mean, like, still to this day, hierarchy, or a lack of hierarchy on a slide, visually, is the number one low hanging fruit that we see when a client sends us a slide deck to clean up or, you know, bring new life to it's, everything is competing, everything's the same size, there's a wall of text. And so the first question we ask is, like, what's the most important thing and, you know, I would say nine times out of 10, unless there's some clever design trick that we're playing, you know, we will make the most important thing, the headline or like, you know, the largest element on the page. So that's basically why it's important to make it the biggest thing.

Molly Geoghegan 16:23

And then very related to this, I think, and it can be used absolutely in tandem is the fourth design principle he brings up is contrast. And again, he'd says, Yeah, again, you open your eyes, you're looking at things that are different than the background and things that might not have been there. So this is again, strategic guiding in your design on slides of what you want the audience to look at. And he really shows off PowerPoints, I don't really know the name for this Mikey. But you have a list of things, and you want to go through them one at a time. So he Gray's out the things he's not focusing on. And then and then keeps in bold, like the thing he is focusing on and goes down the list. And that simple, simple PowerPoint animation, and you can do ng slides to what is it called? Just build out? Yeah, just to click, click Build, right? Yeah. So like, as you're clicking, you're going through each bullet point or Pete or point you want to cover and I just think that's such a simple and easy way to just guide the audience. You don't want them to look at everything at once you want them to be with you, as you're talking, you know, 123 And yeah, simple transitions,

Michael Mioduski 17:28

by the way, like, if we didn't already say this, why don't you pause, go Google, David, juicy PowerPoint Phillips, or how to avoid death by PowerPoint, YouTube, watch it now around like minute 11 That's where you'll get to see what Molly was just talking about is David's use of it's really just a click Build. So imagine a blank slide with a headline. And then basically, like 12 bullets, or 12 words on the slide, two columns, six on each left, and right now, like he shows that all up at once, which is very common, like most people just go that way. And then someone would talk through each one. But the problem with that is like, as a viewer, we have to like take on a lot all at once in our minds have to All right, like digested all it's this wall and then we have to try to just like key in on what that person saying and then map it, you know, with our own sheer willpower, but you could separate that out into you could build them on click, or if you get real lazy like I do, I just like duplicate the slides and build them as like 12 separate slides to be honest but like but so as you're going through each one, it's really cool he has a bright white color you could even bold that you could do different things but the such that the topic you're talking about is the one that's highlighted and the other ones that you've already talked about are like grayed out you can hardly see them but you can you can see him enough to know that they've already been covered right so it's it's just a cool effect. This is one of my favorite parts of the presentation like from a show and tell standpoint.

Molly Geoghegan 19:00

Yeah, definitely. And I don't know if you have an opinion on this Mikey but I liked his he had a strong opinion on the backgrounds normally used for PowerPoint presentations and like our defaults are often white and then the text is like black or another color obviously. But he he kind of emphasizes in showing a super blank white slide after his presentation has been mostly with black backgrounds and help blinding that is and so he's like if you really want to bring your focus to like the content on the slide. He's like there should be a darker background. So bring it you can bring the focus to the text and actually what you want people to look at and again he emphasizes the person is the presentation like the slide the visual aid so I don't know if you have an opinion on that because I think it can go both ways for sure. And obviously depending on branding and that kind of thing, but like a good principle to keep in mind if like yeah, the background is wide. There is a lot you could look at and you can kind of like hone it in spotlight style vignette style. I'm thinking I've yeah your background.

Michael Mioduski 19:57

Yeah, I'm with I tend to love a Good, like a darker background. But I think the huge caveat here is whether you're in person or virtual. And so I think that's a good point. You know, he, he didn't have the foresight to imagine the whole world closing down six years after this, you know, presentation. But yeah, I think like for live events, definitely, if you've been in a dark room where there's a bright white slide, it is like, it will blind the audience. So he just makes the text hard to read on top of it. So yeah, I like what he's saying. Like, you are the presenter. You're the you're the presentation, and the slides are there to support Yeah. Yeah. So don't let them like dominate. With like, too much.

Molly Geoghegan 20:34

The star? Yeah, you'd be the spotlight. Yeah. Do you see PowerPoint? Phillips?

Michael Mioduski 20:41

on that? No. Like, did you notice like, what was his first slide? Even? I think he went a good two minutes before bringing anything up. I know. That's true. Yeah. Irrelevant. But I think I think it was a good like two and a half minutes. And before he actually press click and had something on the screen,

Molly Geoghegan 20:55

but didn't something. Yeah, again, with his hook. He was just kind of bonding with the audience, like, yeah, how are PowerPoints this bad? Look at me, and he's like, we all know what I'm talking about, and then starts going to take samples. Yeah. Okay. So this brings us to the, yeah, the fifth and final design principle that He wants everyone to walk away with. Yeah, and this is objects, again, playing into like what he says that people see visually and perceive moving objects and, and how many they can perceive at once. This is particularly about quantity, that people tend to put things on the slide. So he shows a set different sets of circles on slides, different sizes of the circles and ask the audience to count them. And there's like seven or eight, you know, so it takes audience like a second. And he goes back to insights, this is probably some experiment, he's like this took you 1.2 seconds to count approximately, if you're the average, if you're the average Joe. And then he throws up, I think five circles. And that takes people point two seconds, right. So he's like, that count difference is a 500%. Like energy difference, right? Even though it's a short amount of time, he's like, seven is taking you a sec, like a true second to count. Or as five you can perceive and just be like, that's five, and you know it, you can see the three, the two. And so he goes on to say that six is the magic number, anything over that people have to count, people can perceive three and three very easily, or two to two, or one and five, whatever it is. And, you know, he goes on to say everyone is not Rain Man can't count the toothpicks on the on the floor. And he says the amount of slides in your PowerPoint has never been the problem. It's the amount of objects per slide. Because of course, with all of these design principles, presentation nation, it means that you have to create more slides, because you shouldn't put as many as much stuff in each slide, as you maybe have been doing. Yeah, yeah. I like what do you think of that? Mikey, as far as like, illustrating the quantity on slides, that was

Michael Mioduski 22:48

cool. It was a fun little exercise to, you know, show and let people count. And I was shocked that it's actually six. I was thinking like three was gonna be the magic number. I still argue like, Yeah, any more than three objects on the slide, I would say but you know, I think he's right. And the way you phrase it is like, after six is when your mind actually starts having to go have fun. Yeah, like 123. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I mean, like, look, shame on corporate America, shame on venture capitalists who were just like, they put this hard number on, like no more than 15 slides. And that doesn't mean people have less to say, it means they're going to add more shit to the slide. And the best presentation minds we know, could trick you with how many slides they've actually got, it doesn't look like a lot of slides. But it could be like 200 slides you just the way that they breeze through it. And simplify each slide makes it just a lot, a whole lot more easy to follow,

Molly Geoghegan 23:44

especially with those transitions we were just talking about on focusing on different content at one at a time and graying out or putting in the background, other stuff. And Mikey, you just gave a talk. And I remember asking you how many slides it was like, oh, like 100 or something, right? It was like it was like, maybe it was a lie. But yeah, anyone watching that I can guarantee their guests would be lower than that, because you had so many transitions, so many natural just like funny photos to share as you go through like a certain making a certain point. And it didn't feel like I'm beating you to death with slides. It was natural content that you're delivering in a fluid, human human way without being like, here's all the points I was going to make if you move to this, like I'm zooming into this, like, you know, size nine font or something, you know, so just to you know, Mikey, Mikey knows, like, he knows how to do it. Well,

Michael Mioduski 24:35

it all goes back to, you know, St. Nancy, who's you know, like a priest, the difference between a presentation and a document, right? The presentation is the thing you give up when you're up on a stage or you know, virtually, and the thing that you send afterward or send ahead is is a document and so, yeah, the people who can separate those two and approach them in the way that they like the best way to optimize for each format are better off because they don't have to stuff so much stuff onto a presentation.

Molly Geoghegan 25:05

Yeah. And then I really liked after he wrapped up his five principles, yeah, he a did a little audience participation, but he's like, Okay, well, I just told you that usually people only remember their stuff for 30 seconds walking away from a presentation. So I'd love if you live, that didn't happen for me. And, and he has a crossword he's like, but I'm gonna help you, right? And so here's a crossword with his five very simple words of design principles, with starting to fill in the blank, right? He's got a few letters pulled into it. And he guides the audience being like, Okay, what's this number one, that, you know, you want to be able to do? How many messages per slide one and then you know, memory, and then we're talking about size, and they fill it in. And it's clear that the audience has like, remembered what he's talked about. They'll walk away with like the super even if they just remember two of the five design principles or something, it was so simple to grasp. And so well illustrated that, I think you're gonna remember it, you know, so, and what I mean, this talk went on to like, start kind of like jumpstart his career as we kind of make a PDF jayven You fill up so he wrote a book after this. And this was like the seminar that really put him on the map. So it was impactful, for sure. And yeah, I think that's indicative of the, you know, him following the five principles. Yeah, yeah. What do you think? What do you think of the closing? Oh, I loved it. I love a good some summary. And the way that he approached it was far more clever and therefore impactful. He even put up the word summary before he started. He was like, Yeah, summary. Like, this is really like goalposts, like we're almost done. And I want you to remember some things

Michael Mioduski 26:42

like, let's cross examine you actually, yeah, with a cross word. Yeah. So I mean, it was cry again, like one message per slide contrast to see your focus sighs to steer focus, avoid sentences, implement dark backgrounds, in his, you know, as he sees it, I'd say, especially for in person, you might want to think more about that. And then, yes, see six objects per slide. No more than that. Yes. It's funny that I wasn't sure if he was going to come full all the way around. Because I guess he had the five reasons, five design principles. I didn't know if he was going to come like do you know, like, it's funny that six was the magic number. And he did five design principles. But he's talking more about six things on a slide, not like

Molly Geoghegan 27:22

on a slide. Yeah. I think he's talking about the like the human brain limit. Yeah, I

Michael Mioduski 27:28

think you're right. Yeah, I

Molly Geoghegan 27:28

think you could have like, tweaked and connected them.

Michael Mioduski 27:31

I'm stoked to look at his neck stuff. And he 2016 He talked about the magical science of storytelling. And then in 2019, he gave another TEDx called the 110 techniques of communication and public speaking, which, like us, he spent this as he spent seven years studying 5000 speakers, both amateur and professional. So to like, yeah, so we have to dive into that self Nash, Molly. Yeah, that's, it's kind of what we're doing here.

Molly Geoghegan 27:58

Talk about a PhD thesis. Oh, yeah. We're doing totally or we're gonna spend.

Michael Mioduski 28:04

Yeah, we're digging in. All right, Molly. Let's go spice cab on this. We're opening up. Yeah, the spice cabinet. Which newest. Thanks for being here. This is where we just talked about last minute, rapid fire kind of random stuff that might or might not be related to what we just

Molly Geoghegan 28:22

talked about. Cue the Chili's. Fajita? Sizzle sound, I think is actually what I want to associate with this. Yeah, first of all, we'll Linka David JP Phillips, this amazing talk. He's got a couple other pretty viral ones after this, that I think we should dive into. He's got a book, which we will link as well. And something I want to throw out. One of our previous podcast guests reign minute has an amazing interview with him on his podcast called The storytelling lab. Really cool, just like kind of human human talk very much not about just design principles. And so if you want to tune in to see more about like what Damon is about, and as a person, I think it's a really interesting guy. And that was a great interview. So

Michael Mioduski 29:04

David, is impressive. I guess, like, now that I think about it. Like, he was very funny, and very confident. But like, Molly, could you imagine giving a TED talk a TEDx, that's gonna go on to get like 4 million views in another language. Now, you know, that you must just be so brilliant. So yeah, I mean, to have like, the soft skills to be able to deliver you know, again laughs in another language. That's not maybe your first born I think he's Swedish. Is that right?

Molly Geoghegan 29:35

All Swedes learn English like as they grew up they're so smart. Yeah, it's it's another amazing world over there. Yeah, yeah. He's book is by the same name, how to avoid death by PowerPoint published in 2011. And I think he's got a few other little things published since then, like seminars and stuff. So I think that's the big that's the big book that book cool. Yeah. And then what do you think David? Juicy PowerPoint Phillips would walk out to i Yeah. it just strikes me as a funny guy. Yeah, yeah. And a super big nerd. Even studying for really, really, you know, diving down a rabbit hole and studying that many speakers. That is a huge commitment. I don't know. Yeah.

Michael Mioduski 30:15

Well, Notorious BIG juicy. Read word up magazine, salt and pepper and Heavy D up in the last race. Yeah, totally see that? Otherwise, for some reason, the safety dance was was good me.

30:29

Well, we can dance if we want to. We can leave you behind. Because of friendzone they don't. I could see him give me like.

Molly Geoghegan 30:38

Yeah. Totally. And kinda like pointing at stuff and like popping the bubbles like to to crowd Yeah, sure. Yeah, exactly. Something people know. And is a little silly. But then, like, a year or two sticks? Yeah. Figure PM. Yeah, totally. All right. I like that. I agree. I think something like that was would really bring in I was gonna say I was like, maybe, maybe there's an ABA that fits just with this. I don't want to play too much off of his Swedish Ness. But um, I think that I think actually,

Michael Mioduski 31:11

there's more than one single story of Swedish music. Okay. Yeah, that's

Molly Geoghegan 31:15

true. And yeah, it's exactly the danger of a single story. Yeah. But I do think APA. Like, is such something you love about Abba? Is that you? I love to sing along. And it's like, I love musicals. My kids, you know, and I just feel like the lyrics of any Abba song are so obvious. You don't have to like Wonder what they are. Yeah. And so I wonder like, actually, if that just fits really well with this, this vibe of just like clear communication. And I'm thinking of like, don't go wasting your emotion. Lay all your love on me. PowerPoint skills and design principles. I don't know.

Michael Mioduski 31:55

Well, that's enough. Molly, this has been really fun.

Molly Geoghegan 31:59

I know that was so fun. We love Ted talking. If you have a TED talk that you love, or that you were really inspired by, we would love to break it down and talk about speaker and make weird assumptions of what they listen to music wise. So please, yes, and this is a DM, comment. And don't forget to leave us a review. One more thing I want to throw in the spice cabinet, Mikey next Tuesday. What's happening? Well, yeah,

Michael Mioduski 32:26

we're, we're giving April 25. Yeah. And you know what we are kicking off our webinar series, which is called the series is called the storyteller study club. It's a Lunch and Learn series. And Molly, I think we think it's the world's first 28 minute Lunch and Learn series. So we're thanks. Again. The Oh, and the TED team. We were borrowing the format. We think the 18 minute presentation has something right. And so our webinars are going to be the best form of flattery. 18 minutes of presentation, two minutes of opening. That's 18 minutes of actual meat presentation. And then some chit chat. Some q&a. Yeah, some q&a. So yeah, we think it could be done in 28 minutes.

Molly Geoghegan 33:11

Yeah, exactly. Easy for you to jump into just $5. We were just want to share the expertise that we have, and the things we've really started to like, feel that we know well, the concepts. And this first one is really cool, because Mikey has presented on it on a NYC Product Marketing summit stage. So he knows it very well. He's ready to help you if you're a product marketer or any kind of marketer that deals with demos, and like has to deal with those day in day out, put the good like, adopt them for different audiences, share them with different teams, we have some serious storytelling skills that can help so it's really it's a fun presentation.

Michael Mioduski 33:46

Molly, who's giving our May lunch and learn. And I

Molly Geoghegan 33:51

might do one. Yeah. Yeah. If you've, if this if you've listened to the podcast, we've talked about Christopher burgers, seven basic plots, which are seven story shapes, story structures that follow a predictable format. And they're really useful for you, when you're making a presentation or starting a new project. I wasn't going to challenge myself to get through the seven basic plots in 18 minutes, and how they might be adapted for presentation use. So that'll be fun. On May 8 of May, we will release what the date is. And

Michael Mioduski 34:23

yeah, Where can someone sign up for our our events?

Molly Geoghegan 34:27

If you go to ghost ranch.com There is a full tab that says workshops and you'll be able to Yep, go straight to.com/workshops You will see all of those pop up. Oh fun. Yeah. So don't miss don't sleep on it. That being said, we're going to be having more and more often. So join us 28 minutes of your life. It's gonna be fun.

Michael Mioduski 34:46

Yeah, it's gonna be great. Okay, Molly, thanks for that plug. And hey, if you're if you're listening, if you got this far, thanks for being here. Again, like Molly said, we'd like to talk about slides and storytelling and presentation stuff. So get out So let's nerd out thanks for listening and keep on pitching