I got word today that Beyond Bullet Points is now being translated into German, and will be released in Germany in October 2005.
Here's the mockup of the book cover, titled Erzählen statt Aufzählen: Neue Wege zur Erfolgreichen PowerPoint-Präsentation.
As they say in Germany, that's wunderbar!
Have you ever been so confused by the complexity of a map, chart or diagram, that you didn't know where to begin to make sense of it?
If so, you may be a victim of "map shock" or "visual shock", according to Donald F. Dansereau, Ph.D., of Texas Christian University. Don is Professor of Psychology and Senior Research Scientist in the Institute of Behavioral Research at TCU, and teaches graduate statistics and cognitive psychology.
I've been intrigued by the concept of "map shock" ever since I first heard the term, so I thought I would find out more about it from Don.
It turns out that during his research on cognitive approaches for improving education, drug abuse prevention, and treatment, Don found that students often became "lost" upon first seeing a type of complex map. The results were a sense of "not knowing where to start or where to go next," he said. "This makes processing less efficient and may even bring it to a halt."
Hmmm - sounds like a familiar symptom of many PowerPoint slides I've seen, not to mention a good number of printed materials.
Read more about Don's findings on "map shock" and "visual shock" in my recent interview with him here.
What would a PowerPoint presentation look like in a courtroom, if it used an approach Beyond Bullet Points?
According to the Fortune magazine article,
"Stark Choices at the First Vioxx Trial", two lawyers used PowerPoint in "starkly" different ways in a heavily-publicized trial that began Thursday in Texas. In the first of many trials involving the prescription drug Vioxx, plaintiff Carol Ernst is suing Merck and Co. over the death of her husband Bob Ernst in 2001.
Based on the following passages from the article, guess which one used the Beyond Bullet Points approach:
"Speaking in state court in Angleton, Texas, without notes and in gloriously plain English, and accompanying nearly every point with imaginative, easily understood (if often hokey) slides and overhead projections, (the plaintiff's lawyer Mark) Lanier, a part-time Baptist preacher, took on Merck and its former CEO Ray Gilmartin with merciless, spellbinding savagery...
"But in contrast to Lanier... (defendant Merck's lawyer David Kiernan) seemed to read much of his presentation and illustrated it only with stodgy, corporate headshots of Merck officials or hard-to-read excerpts from documents whose meaning was shrouded in medical jargon...
"The trial offers jurors a stark choice between accepting Lanier's invitation to believe simple, alluring and emotionally cathartic stories versus Merck's appeals to colorless, heavy-going, soporific Reason."
If you guessed that it was Mark Lanier's PowerPoint that was completely bullet-free, you're right. It turns out that Mark loves to use PowerPoint, and when he started working on his presentation he ordered all the books on the topic he could find, including Beyond Bullet Points. He liked it so much that he invited me out to Houston to give him a hand with his presentation.
We used the 3-step approach in the book, then Mark's flawless delivery took the experience beyond what I imagined was possible. He masterfully framed his argument with an even flow of projected images, and blended it with personal stories, physical props, a flip chart, a tablet PC, a document projector and a deeply personal connection with his audience.
It was my first time to put the Beyond Bullet Points approach on trial in a courtroom, but based on the feedback, the verdict of the day was clearly in favor of the plaintiff's PowerPoint approach.
(For more coverage of the opening presentations of the trial, see the New York Times article, "Contrary Tales of Vioxx Role in Texan's Death" and the Associated Press article, "Nation's First Vioxx Trial Begins" at Forbes.com.)
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