Busy…Busy…Busy

November 9th, 2008 by zen

Working hard on a modest writing assignment for a national security anthology type book.  I’m not sure about the rest of you but I find that the kind of shorthand thinking involved in blogging “conversations”, while very stimulating at it’s best, can interfere with the reflection needed to craft more polished and professional prose – a struggle for me in any event. A certain amount of gestation and revision, more focus on developing the concept, is required for that level of writing instead of trying to casually brainstorm ideas, observations, criticisms and questions ( not to mention better sentence structure than you will normally see here).

As a result, I stepped back from blogging the past few days until I have finished the rough. I’ll put up a recommended reading post on Sunday but blogging may be light until I finish.  Not sure when.

As an aside, I will strongly recommend ( again) Garr Reynold’s  Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter) for anyone involved in intellectually oriented creativity, not simply those who’d like to have slick looking powerpoint presentations.  Since I’ve started incorporating his suggested design principles into my planning process I can honestly say that I’ve risen to an entirely new level.

A case in point, for those who are not longtime readers, I teach history and periodically give presentations on  teaching methodology and curriculum to adults. Normally, I’m a fair public speaker and receive favorable feedback but I’ve done two new presentations recently, both using Reynold’s methods and Sliderocket to deliver the content, once to students and once to an audience of professionals. No comparison. The effect was stunning in each instance. It was akin to having five year’s progress crammed into a month.

Zenpundit has a large number of .gov, .mil and .edu readers for whom slideware is de riguer.  Sliderocket, a web application ( you can download a copy though to your laptop for a back-up)  deserves generous kudos in it’s own right; my only criticism is that the Sliderocket folks need to have an embed code function for those of us who need to, from time to time, put the slideshows up in a blog or wiki.

If you are still on powerpoint instead of Sliderocket, then you are driving a Model T.

Posted in blogging, book, creativity, powerpoint, presentation zen, Sliderocket, Writing | 5 comments

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  1. Younghusband:

    November 9th, 2008 at 7:28 am

    Zen, I have been in a blogging coma myself these past few weeks chasing that elusive goal of more rigorous writing and analysis. Related to your comment about .mils and PPT, I blogged about this exact topic a few months back: Present ARMS! The military and Powerpoint. I didn’t talk so much about the tools (FYI: I am a Keynote user and revile PPT) but your recommendation of SlideRocket is a good one. Also check out SlideShare for sharing your presentations and 280Slides for superior presentation-making akin to Keynote.

  2. Nat:

    November 9th, 2008 at 4:50 pm

    Hi Zenpundit,

    We do have an embed code you can copy and past into a web page, blog or wiki from the Publishing dialogue box. Just select the presentation you want to embed in your library then select Publish. In the dialogue box that comes up you’ll see two options to Copy to clipboard. The first one is a link to your presentation, the second one is the embed code. You’ll also need to check the box at the top of the screen to "Make this presentation public." so that people can see it.

    Thanks for the feedback and kudos, we’re glad you’re enjoying presenting with SlideRocket. We’re working hard to help you make great presentations every day.

  3. Lexington Green:

    November 9th, 2008 at 8:31 pm

    "…interfere with the reflection needed to craft more polished and professional prose …"
    .
    Yes.  Absolutely so.

  4. zen:

    November 10th, 2008 at 5:49 am

    Hi Nat – much thanks!!
    .
    Hi YH,
    .
    I recall that post of yours – it was a good one and on the money. I’m struck by how the bureaucratic structure common to the military and educational institutions create similar bad habits. I sat through six Ed. presentations last week ( one local, five area-regional level) and one was god-awful, four were mediocre and one was slightly above average but in comparison, it glowed. I use slideshare a lot for my student’s benefit and convenience but I’ve very rarely used it here at ZP.
    .
    Checked out 280 – looks good. I’ll have to fiddle around with their media drag-drop sometime soon. I’ts a useful wrinkle.
    .
    Hi Lex,
    .
    How’s the brief progressing ?

  5. Lexington Green:

    November 10th, 2008 at 3:40 pm

    The cold and silence of the office on Sunday proved to be productive stimuli.