Also from my notes on Chip and Dan Heath’s article:
- Before the audience will value the info you’re giving, they have to want it. Demand has to come before supply.
- Therefore tease, don’t simply tell, by opening knowledge gaps and filling them.
- “Great presentations are mysteries, not encyclopedic entries.”
- “Curiosity must come before content.”
- Don’t structure your presentation by asking “what’s the next point I should make” but “what’s the next question I want them to wrestle with.”
And, here are a few great points on using data well:
- Don’t lead with the data — that leaves it abstract, and doesn’t move people emotionally. Tell a story about an individual first, and then say “our research suggests that there are 900,000 stories like this, in Mumbai alone.”
- “Data are just summaries of thousands of stories — tell a few of those stories to help make the data meaningful.”