Well, I gave everyone plenty of chance, but it seems things are very slow this week, so anyone wanting to do Steve Jobs just lost the opportunity. The value of reading – newspapers, magazines, blogs, and sometimes books – is that it provides information and that provides ideas.
BusinessWeek just posted a review of a new book called “Uncovering Steve Jobs’ Presentation Secrets. According to the book, and the video of an interview with the author, provide the following factors:
A headline
A villan (I’m not convinced of this at all)
A simple slide
A demo
A ‘holy smokes’ moment (stupid way of putting it, but…)
and then the ‘One more thing…’ catch phrase.
For a recent example of Jobs in action, see the Apple Special Event for September 2009.
Jobs is a great presenter because he does it naturally. It’s always revealing to compare him to other people who share the stage with him, such as Apple Senior VP of Marketing, Phil Schiller.
Schiller is a relatively good presenter too, but he always, always sounds like he’s reading his lines and his jokes, consequently, often fall flat. Jobs speaks as if he has no script, but, of course, its a script made on the moment based on an intimately thought out outline.
Equally important, Jobs loves his subject matter. His genuine enthusiasm shines through every presentation it makes. This is difficult to fake, but it should be the ultimate goal for any presentation. A presentation is a performance. It also sets aside a really convincing pitch and a simple sales speech. It also means he smiles a lot and genuinely, whereas, Schiller and others often seem to be smiling on cue. For the worst example of ‘on cue smiling’ check out the preposterous attempts of Gordon Brown to ‘harness the power of the internet’.
On the down side, some people might argue Jobs is too casual. He always wears jeans and a dark, turtle neck shirt. But, again, he wouldn’t be able to pull this off unless he was supremely confident and had complete enthusiasm for and belief in his subject.
For others, his confidence is read as arrogance, but is I suspect this is just the same thing described from the positive and negative side and probably essential for a good presenter regardless.
Perhaps the ultimate proof that Jobs is genuinely a good, natural presenter comes from examples of speeches he’s made unrelated to Apple products. The famous one was given at the Stanford University Commencement ceremony in 2005.
The transcript is one that is profound and valuable enough for anyone, particularly students about to look for careers, to read and think about.
