Separating presentation from presenter.
Regular readers will know that I have a weakness for watching presentations. They are, for me, a convergence of so many different things: content, story, performance, design, structure, personality, drama, emotion, etc. that come together in magical ways. At their best they combine brilliant insight and discovery with theatre.
The analogy that I draw most often is to the world of music. In music, you have the song and the performance. Each part is important – perhaps equally important – indeed they often carry separate copyrights as the Prince v Radiohead controversy highlights. Each can shine independently of the other, although a brilliant song can be killed by a bad performance in the same way that brilliant insights can often be masked by an inability to communicate. Each can reveal aspects of the other that had not been seen before. And, each delivers revenue in different ways.
For example, while songwriters in bands may do alright, most of the money comes from live performances. There’s not really that much money in selling CDs which is why lots of artists are quite happy to encourage free downloads because they consider songs marketing for performances. Because songs are also marketing for albums, giving away songs can often also lead to greater sales. Likewise, many artists make a great living never writing anything original. They are simply masters of performing.
You see the same thing happening in the business world. IP or thinking is becoming separated from the performance. Thinkers are giving away their works for free like Seth Godin recently or are releasing their work as they write to solicit feedback like John Grant did. While both are hoping for increased sales through these tactics, it’s also highly likely that they will and have seen increased demand for their speaking as a result. In the same way that songs can be remixed and recombined, a lot of new thinking in business builds upon and steals thinking from others (just realised that Faris may think I think he steals which is not what I’m saying, but as I write this I also realised that Faris might be quite pleased to think that I think he steals). Musicians are using CCmixter and Rifflet to encourage this, business thinkers blog and stick their stuff up on places like slideshare under creative commons to achieve the same ends.
The biggest difference for me is that there are far more thinkers in business than there are performers. The really magical presenters are quite rare and often, they mask sub par thinking and content with amazing performances. But, if we’re to carry the analogy further, is it possible that a new class of profession could arise – the business performer? The business performer would know how to construct a presentation and how to deliver a presentation, but would not necessarily create the thinking or ideas. As the availability of business thinking grows, the business performer might, as in music, eclipse the business thinker in fame and fortune.
Of course this is already happening to some extent. It is unlikely that Steve Jobs or Barack Obama actually wrote or created most of their own presentations, but their delivery ability (among other things) has ensured their places at the top of their respective organisations. However, I wonder if this could be taken even further with specialised presenters who have no other skill than that of being able to deliver amazing presentations.
Gavin posted recently a sign of this coming future that still continues to amaze me. Anil Dash delivering slides he’s never seen in a Powerpoint Karaoke competition. If he ever decides to divorce his performing from his thinking, I’m calling…
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Tags: performance, powerpoint, presentation
