The other day I noticed a couple of posts about Advanced Presentations by Design on a blog I hadn't seen before. The two posts together provide an interesting case study of someone new to the Extreme Presentation method and the impact he achieved with it.
… dismissed it initially as a pretty
insignificant volume [ouch!] but dragged myself through it [double ouch!] this week as I have a
presentation to make … on Monday.
So far I have a lot of pieces of paper with scribbles on
them, some cards which vaguely resemble a Best Man speech I gave at a wedding
about 10 years ago, and not a PowerPoint or bullet in sight!
I’ll let you know how I go but so far I think it might just
be crazy enough to work… (Rob's Higher Ed BI Blog)
The results of his presentation, however, make it all worthwhile:
Informal feedback gathered at the end of the session was
really positive and I certainly felt the approach was both different and much
more engaging. I noticed that I pretty much held the attention of all those in
the room for 30 minutes, there were a flurry of questions at the end and
conversation continued over coffee. None of these latter points is typical for
me and I put the change down to the method.
Abela’s book is very practical and allowed me to develop the
presentation step by step on and off over the course of about 4 days without
going near a computer screen. If I have to constructively criticise it, I found
the approach a little hard going and quite time-consuming to start with
although I recognise that will improve with time and that if the end result is
successful this justifies the up-front time investment. (Rob's Higher Ed BI Blog)
There is some good feedback on the SCoRE method for creating a story:
On a personal note, I found the exercise of creating a
compelling story cycling through ‘SCoRE’ (situation, complication, resolution,
example) was both challenging and helpful in settling my mind on what had and
had not been achieved, why this was so and what we had done to move on from
that point.
The book is heavily referenced and researched and where I
found myself mentally challenging some of the assertions I found (in each case)
a thoughtfully provided reference to supporting material.