Very few things would have me wake up at 7 on Veteran's day after a clubbing night, attending the 1-day workshop of Edward Tufte, guru of information design and presentation, is one of those.
I've read Tufte's books few years ago (Beatiful Evidence and Visual Explanations) and since then I was curious to attend one of his classes. When I found out it was coming in Boston I immediately signed up: the 200$ student fee included also all his four books, good deal.
I arrived there one hour in advance but several people where already there. Notably Tufte was walking up and down the auditorium, signing participants' books and chatting with them. While he was signing my book he asked me "So, what do you do?", I replied "I was a management consultant but now I'm doing an MBA in Boston"; he gave me a kind of skeptical look as if I was the very opposite of the typical attendant.
The class started with a beautiful video about the visual representation of music (see Music Animation Machine - Stephen Malinowski). I said class because it was really structured as a lecture; for every new topic Tufte would say the book and pages related (eventually asking the audience to read the section before starting) and then started his lecture. Unlike the classes I'm used now, questions are postponed to the following break.
During the day long class, Tufte presented several presentation's principles. Here's some:
Whatever it takes - You should first decide the content of your message and then which media to use, never the opposite. In this way you will pick the best medium for every presentation, being it video, pictures, slides, handouts, ...
Too clarify add detail - Clutter is not a characteristic of information, is a failure of its design. You should remove everything that doesn't add information (boxes, graphic frills, unnecessary legends, ...) and let the information form the structure. Dedicate as much space as possible to the actual content rather than to overhead. This concept was also used in when Tufte analyzed computer interfaces and also IPhone's.
Respect your audience - A sport page contains much more numbers and statistics than what's used in corporate presentations, a typical news website can contain up to 300 links in its frontpage. People can deal with complexity and the presenter shouldn't deny information to his/her audience.
Also Tufte gave his guidelines on how to do presentations:
Don't use slides - You may show the projector for pictures or video but don't use bullets.
Better content leads to better presentation - This is where you should start if you want to improve, presentations don't have to be "pitchy".
Give handouts - Handouts can contain the information equivalent to 50+ slides, also the audience can read 2.5 faster than the presenter can speak. Furthermore every person will be able to use his/her cognitive style and focus on what matter most to him/her.
Arrive on time (or early) and finish early - The audience loves that.
Before the end of the class Tufte also hinted that he's preparing his 5th book, regarding representing information in the 3 dimensions and time. Good to hear that!
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