What about to be a pirate in your demo presentation with ideas and images found on google ?

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

The Art of Presentation

View more presentations from Jesus Ramon. (tags: presentation ppt)

Yes indeed it is a good presentation (even though in spanish) BUT BUT BUT I am doubtful because every idea and all references from this powerpoint seems to have been taken from the work and the Garr Raynold's blog ( including the jazz references that definitely could not be a coincidence)

To be honest I have already used myself for my demo presentation some images I found on GOOGLE without asking permission to the author ( because it is difficult and quite impossible sometimes as the author is not known or it sound a little bit embarrassing to contact him ) but I think we should be more cautious about that and we should respect more the intellectual property of images and ideas we could discover on the net.

PS : Sorry Garr, I won't use anymore parts your slide and drawings in my presentation ( although they were targeted to a small demo audience) as the authors did in this good but a little right violated presentation !

Please read getting real ! and modify your ideas about your work

Please read ASAP or even read its contents online (for free) the book GETTING REAL ! It is one of the most interesting book I have ever read, it seems to deal with software and it does actually but not only. Behind software ideas there is a wonderfull business and marketing book that will help you to work better in your daily life. Keep it simple and have fun creating value for your customers and your company. Let's me share with you some quotes and comments I found on the web :

"Lori Baker-Smithson: Anyone working on a web application including entrepreneurs, designers, programmers, executives, or marketers — will find value and inspiration in this book. Over 500,000 people around the world use these applications to get things done. Now you can find out how they did it and how you can do it too. It's not as hard as you think if you Get Real. I think this was well worth the price of the book and I used the principles in the book to build my site that is devoted to website design and moneymaking ideas.

Massimo Sgrelli: This book is really great. If you have a small company to run day by day, it is the perfect choice to share a mantra and a method with your people. It works. I'm so enthusiastic about it, that I'm contributing a lot in translating it for free.

Chris Burbridge: This book was very helpful to me. I have found that you can readily apply it to any kind of project you might like to create. It is funny, fun, and embodies the spirit it espouses. Keep it simple. Get to the point. Have fun. It is about a way of creating things that keeps work fun, and gets products out fast, where they can be responded to by the actual users, and modified based on their feedback as required. Of all the business and marketing books I have read in the last year, this is one of the top ones. The only thing is: Don't assume it just applies to software! It doesn't.

5 reasons why our software demonstrations fail

To be be honest, our demonstrations are not often outstanding and let's face it : a lot of demos we do are pretty horrible ! It is not surprising because presentations are always tricky exercises and software demonstration are generally even more difficult than any usual slide presentation : we have not only to handle technically our software but we need also more importantly to convince our audience that our software will help them to reach their own goals. So we failed demo when :

1. We assume audience will get it : we are so familiar with our software or our industry that we miss to explain to our customer what we seems so obvious (and that is not for our customer)
2. We don't focus enough on value : we demonstrate successfully some features that don't relate with any customer's benefits or that don't solve customer's pain point and business issues.
3. We missed to ask ourselves the "So what" question during the demo preparation : why this feature would bring value to my customer, what will happen if we don't show this slide or if we don't show this feature and if the answer is "it won't happen nothing" we should have to delete this slide or this feature from our demonstration agenda.
4. We make it too complicated : presentations usually suck because there are too many complicated slides in it and too many complicated features that lost,bore and confuse the audience. (Even it is asked by the demo script, make it a little simpler that it should do).
5. We speak a foreign language to our customer with meaningless computer jargon and acronyms "We are now going to discuss about our distributed and composed platform GECOSYSTIS that will allows you, thanks to the WEB SERVICES, to deploy the BPM and BRM processes".

What do you think about that ? from your side, could you find some others reasons why demo usually fail ?

Don't bother me about process complexity !

All the time, every day, I hear my customer saying about how their own business processes are complex. OK ! Each customer thinks that, when it comes to his own work, there is something special about his job. It is the rule : we have to understand these processes and then we have to show to our customer how our software meets its main requirements in a simple way.
But what struck me a few weeks ago, was to hear the same sentence from a top software manager " Our software are complex because our customer processes are complex" oh I do not agree with that at all ! To my mind we do not have to create complex software but we have to make softwares that allow our customer to transform their so called complicated processes into simple flows. Otherwise, it doesn't worth it.

What do you thingk about this ?

10 rules for Being in the zone and for outstanding demos !

The use of the term "being in the zone" is most often in reference to a sporting event. An athlete is in the zone when he can feel and see nothing but the goal he seeks. The time that he remains in this zone allows him to become unflappable in his quest. Being in the zone can be a valuable business tool on your road to success and outstanding demo. Below you will find the 10 main requirements needed in order to achieve it for both you and your organisation :

1) Creative spatial arrangements: Chairs, pin walls, charts, but no tables; thus work primarily standing and moving.
2) Playground design: Charts for information inputs, flow graphs, project summary, craziness (here also craziness has a place), safe place (here all may say what is otherwise only thought), result wall, open topics

3) Parallel, organized working

4) Target group focus

5) Advancement and a prototype approach

6) Increase in efficiency through visualization (vision trumps all others senses)

7) Existence of differences among colleagues represents an opportunity, rather than an obstacle.

8) Set up a rule at work : make half the day alone time

9) During this alone time, give up outlook messaging, call phone and meetings (that are toxic)

10) Avoid any email thread that's going to require an immediate response

You are in the zone when you are fully concentrated on your work and fully tuned out of your environment. we lose track of time and produce great stuff through absolute concentration.... and the work we are doing is a reward in itself. However, it is very easy to get knocked out of the zone : Noise phone call, going out for lunch, having a look to the outlook mail,having a coffee break, meeting, interruption by coworkers... All knocks you out of the zone. When you have a long stretch and when you aren't bothered you can get in the zone, the zone is when you are most productive. It's when you don't have to hesitate between various tasks, it's when you are not interrupted to answer a question or look up something or send email. Getting in the zone takes time.And that's why interruption is your enemy when you prepare your demo . The alone time zone is where the real outstanding demo can be built and may happens.

And last, remember the advice from the "Getting Real" by 37 signals from which this post is inspired by :

"Meetings are toxic", Don't have them !

The Pillars of the Earth : What does it take to build a cathedral ?

I just finished this book's happening in the Middle Ages "The Pillar of the Earth" from Ken Follet. In this novel , one of the main major character, Jack Jackson is a clever young architect who want to dedicate his lifetime in building a cathedral and I am wondering about what did it take to build a cathedral at that time :

• The fist thing he did was dreaming about it since his early ages and youthfulness
• He worked very hard to learn the job and he was specially inspired by his father in law and stonemason Tom Builder and by his unconventional mother who was unusual in knowing English, French and Latin, in being literate and living in the woods
• He traveled a lot and opened his mind to new building techniques during his Compostela pilgrimage where he met Moorish scholars and mathematicians in Toledo and helped build Saint Denis Basilica in Paris, thus learning how to build rib vaulting and pointed arches.
• He refused a secure and wealthy position ( and a good marriage as well) as stonemason in Spain because this job would have ruined his own dream.
• He came up creative ideas to raise funds for the Kindsbridge monastery and therefore for the building of the cathedral
• He protected the town and his environment by setting up a makeshift stone wall in order to discourage the attacks from the enemy
• He never gave up, remained always confident and the most important : he remained patient -It took at least thirty years to build a cathedral and most took longer because they would run out of money, or be attacked or invaded-
• He always saw the big picture but solved the problems step by step.

And then, I figured out 10 rules learning from this story in order to be inspired for outstanding demo !

Using Viral Demo on YouTube to make a Buzz

Please have a look to this demo video that my company released on YouTube in order to promote its CRM solution. This video is both the opportunity to know more about Devorah Sperber's thread work ( she is obviously a great artist) and about our CRM soution that is also a kind of masterpiece without any concession on quality. Each of us in our company will have to send and to communicate this viral video to at least one customer he is in touch with, creating discussion, fostering branding and unleashing enthusiasm about it.

So, let's me share with you some rules for becoming viral and sought in a positive way by the others :

1) Deliver the buzz with Enthusiasm. It can’t be faked. You can’t expect your team to create buzz about your new project, product or service simply because you held a staff meeting and told them that it is something that matters to you or the business.

2) Design does matter .You can't expect create a big buzz without nice design. If you want your product to be shared and owned by a lot of people you need to create fun, visual and memorable design. ( thinking in order to make the daily life of the others easier and smarter is thinking like a designer)

3) Create real Value. You can’t fake value neither. There are measuring sticks available to everyone. A service that truly makes someone’s life easier, or a software solution (like our SAP CRM actually) that saves user's time and allows other companies to reach their business goals while reducing pains and training cost, leveraging the ease of use emotional needs.

4) Create Meaning. You need to respond to the emotional needs of the others, features is not enough and value neither, Providing meaningful material and message buzz will trump everything.

Reducing Text On Slide with Nancy Duarte

Reading the great book of Nancy Duarte "Slide:ology, p 222" , I learnt some tricks in order to create slide with less text and i tried to apply ( because it is "easier said than done" ) them on this following slide that has too many words and bullet point :

Then, I highlight the key words per bullet and I try to summarize the main messages of the content with them :Afterwards, i remove all other text on the slide, leaving just the keywords and key messages with an additional image: Is that not better than the first try ! I really would recommend the Nancy's book slide:ology

A Business Process Management (BPM) approach with our customer Business Orange Service

On last Wednesday, we met our customer Business Orange Service in order to see whether we could fit with their current network lifecycle project. We expected to meet them in a well known world that is business integration, end to end processes from the make to order, the network building with workflow tasks until the final customer billing. We expected them to explain us how their business works and which are the main features and processes they really need to achieve their goals. In short, we were expecting from them an ERP approach.

Unfortunately we landed on an unknown land ("Terra Incognita" ) and our host mainly discussed about process concept (BPM) as :

Managing endlessly all the processes along the chain

Synchronizing between processes ,sub processes and linking chain ( a set of processes that are reusable)

Defining the rules between process and sub processes

Assigning the resources needed for processes and managing by Workflow the task assignment

Optimizing the link between processes and task in order to produce the service at the right date wished bey the customer

Maintaining the actual predictability ( What + Who + When ) when the process is instanced and each time it’s possible.

Decomposing existing process modelling into process and sub process to enhance re usability at several levels

Creating the appropriate range of synchronized task in order to produce a service (addition, change, modification, cessation, migration, move)

Supporting lean and six sigma business strategies

All this point above are not inconsistent with the ERP approach (although their own approach was more focused on the flexibility requirements than the ability to organize and structure processes as ERP use to do) but what struck us, I and my colleague is that we didn't discuss really about their business but only about abstract processes and sub processes concept without touching the field reality. May be it is a part of the new reality i mentioned in this blog a few weeks ago and therefore we have to adapt ourselves to this new kind of approach( interesting anyway ! )

But at the end of this meeting they really killed us by powerpoint !!!