Virtualizing your Reality

Mark Egan, whose company VMware is synonymous with trailblazing and dominating the area of virtualization, recently talked with me about his perspectives on the future of real technology in a virtualized world.

"...if you think of social-media apps, for example, how do we take some of these systems with a Soviet-era interface and make them look like Facebook and be as easy as Twitter? I believe the user interface trumps functionality."

Another insight from Mark was on his top recommendation for making a more remarkable business presentation.

"I always like to see a speaker who keeps the focus on the question, 'What is the business problem we're trying to solve?' and ultimately answers it. In my humble opinion, as a CIO I should always be focusing on three areas for the company: growing revenue, reducing costs and improving customer satisfaction. Everything I do should track back to those three. Sometimes in our presentations I think we lose the translation to those areas. Those are the things I think we need to see made relevant, and in some cases I've seen my peer presenters get sidetracked to other things."

You can find the entire discussion with Mark in the article out today at CBS Interactive.

25 bullets will kill you - Cloud expert Jimmy Harris on making better presentations

Accenture's Director of Cloud Services Jimmy Harris talked with me recently for an article in TechRepublic about his ideas on cloud technology. Part of our discussion also covered his best recommendations for making more effective presentations. His first thought: cut down on the bullets.

"This is my first rule of presentations: the density of the data presented is inversely proportional to understanding. If I put up a slide with 25 bullet points on it, I'm just distracting people. No one can remember 25 things anyway.

Another mistake I hear presenters make is saying, 'I know you probably can't see this, but...'

One variation on this I've seen is the presenter who put up a detailed, hyper-convoluted chart, pointed to an indistinguishable spot, and said, 'There it is!' Not a single person had any idea what he was talking about.

To the expert making a presentation, that kind of data represents a command of information and demonstrates their credibility. To the audience, the fact that your the epidemiologist, or whatever other kind of expert you may be, already demonstrates that you know more about it than I do.

Another thing I can tell you about my own presentation approach is that it's about extending understanding through storytelling and symbols. We're brought up to remember things that way. For example, in describing the cloud, I imagine I'm trying to tell people in Asia about banking. There are two billion people there with no experience in personal banking. The question is how to create an environment in which you can economically deliver banking services to these people who have none of the infrastructure, who have never even seen a bank. So in my presentation I talk about the components of the cloud in terms of deploying bank services across multiple devices at a lower cost."

For the rest of the conversation with Jimmy on the way cloud computing changes things, see the article published this week by CBS Interactive.

i.c. stars and the proverbial leg-up

The job market has taken a toll on new graduates, with greater numbers either staying in school or coming back home for the time being, and the information technology field is no exception.

i.c. stars founder Sandee Kastrul says economics and competition have increased the need for a "longer runway" for the program's inner-city technology graduates after their four months of concentrated business, leadership and technology training.

Among other business leaders, Bob Kress at Accenture has been at the end of that runway with a good fit for the skills being developed at i.c. stars, hiring almost a dozen graduates over the past few years.

The Chicago Tribune has done a nice write-up of what i.c. stars is doing in their article this past weekend.

Some people should not vote

Everyone should vote? I don't think so. Paraphrasing one of Neal Postman's principles of new technologies: just because you can doesn't mean you should.

So who should not vote?

- The apathetic.
- Those who don't know what apathetic means, and don't want to.
- People for whom emotion always trumps reason.
- Those who think all politicians are equal.
- People just voting for any change at all.
- Those who believe the only motivation for change is fear.
- Those who believe the only motivation for keeping things the same is fear.
- People who are willfully uninformed in an information age.

America is not great because we were born here. It is great because of the ideas and the system of government we have a chance to go out and be a part of today.

Do-not-call - sometimes

Did you sign up for the national do-not-call list when it came out a couple years ago? I can't say whether it really made a huge difference or not. My wife has always seemed to get most of the sales calls for some reason. Are you on any do-not-call lists you didn't even know about? Say, for example with prospective employers?

As much as the big tech companies are known to compete for and lure over competitors' top executives (i.e. Mark Hurd and Leo Apotheker), it's hard to believe that there is a need for the Department of Justice to eliminate gentlemen's agreements between them when it comes to poaching other companies' employees in general. But six of the biggest names in tech, including Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Adobe and Pixar, recently agreed, with a little encouragement from the DOJ, not to continue their no-cold-call-recruiting arrangements.

In times of record unemployment, this sort of collusion may sound like an urban myth (like Congressman Phil Hare considers the national debt). No, big companies really have been playing by these rules in their hiring. Contrary to the free market they esteem for their products and services, this defensive agreement has been considered a mutual advantage among the big players. It's an even bigger advantage to sit on boards of more than one of these companies, or have your CEO sitting on another firm's board, but that habit has come under scrutiny recently as well.

Along with the new corporate hiring glasnost, according to a new SIM survey in eWeek, most executives plan to increase IT salaries in 2011, with a specific focus on business intelligence.

Why IT is not a department anymore

My ten-question interview with longtime technologist and top Fortune 100 executive, Julius Tomei, is out in today's TechRepublic. His job covers 50,000 end users in 45 countries, and his experience runs the gamut of technology-related positions. Among other topics like outsourcing, mobility and consolidation, Julius talks about his perception that IT should no longer be thought of as a department.

I also asked Julius for his insights on delivering remarkable presentations, both the ones he gives and the ones he has attended:

"Two things stand out to me when it comes to Powerpoint: getting the right number of slides, and using good graphics and illustrations. What I see most often is either more slides than necessary or not enough. Then there are people who are good at developing very elaborate slides that actually end up losing the audience's attention. Using relevant pictures and graphics is the way to keep people focused. I try to put together slides I can talk to and not read from, and discuss the background behind the slides.

In 2007 I was invited to speak at the annual itSMF conference in Atlanta on the topic of how I got ITIL to work. I took them through the process by illustrating in terms of golf. You don't win by hitting holes in one every time. You do it by making a series of putts. So I was able to keep the discussion at a high level for a larger audience. I can get technical when I need to, but in this case I needed to make it very accessible. When I do include technical information in a presentation, I like to keep it to one or two slides. What people really want to know is, 'How did you come to think of that? What was your thought process?' In this case it was to run a lights-out data center very efficiently and at the lowest practical cost. I needed people to speak the same language and operate from the same framework, and that was ITIL. Explaining in those terms really resonated with the audience."

You can also find this and other technology leadership interviews at 10QatAtime.com.

Funnel, Filter, Guru.

Not only has the availability of information has moved the needle from the haystack out into the field; it's also a smaller needle.

The streams of information are flowing past us on all sides rather than neatly unfolding on the table beside a cup of coffee, and the key-points summary is taking center stage. There's not so much discussion of "sound-bites" anymore because it's the status quo. Other things equal, a three-minute youtube video gets more hits than a ten-minute one.

What about the whole truth and nothing but the truth? No time. Tell me the main points. And remember, the more concise the summary, the greater the need to trust the summarizer. Your trusted-advisor status is on the line, every time.

Blago's whole truth is more than 500 hours long. You're going to have to leave something out when you tell that story. The jury decides what's relevant.

John Wooden's truth was a seven-point creed from his father, which he carried around with him in his wallet. The New York Times thought seven points was a bit wordy, and made it even more concise. (They later retracted their redactions.)

There's an art to boiling things down to the relevant facts, not the ones that are important to you but the ones that are important to your listeners. Nothing less. Or more.

Whether you're talking to your kids or presenting to the board of directors, remember you're the funnel, filter and guru.

Getting to the truth of the matter - snopes

If you've ever looked something up on snopes.com, you'll appreciate this interview by David Pogue in the NY Times this week with the creator, David Mikkelson.

Looking from the outside in

Southern California tech veteran Ian Clayton talked with me recently about his three decades of work in IT as well as his secrets to making a great personal presentation.

After starting at Ross Perot's EDS International not long after the On Wings of Eagles rescue mission in Iran, Ian went on to do consulting work with clients around the world like Caterpillar, American Express and Australia Telecomm. In the 1990's, he helped to bring the ITIL framework over from the UK as one of the cofounders of itSMF-USA.

More recently, he has been among the first to anticipate information systems as a service, even before the term cloud technology came into vogue. Ian's presentations are most often around a table of technology executives interested in a new way of looking at things. Which is what he provides them.

Here's Ian's recommendation for applying new perspective to delivering a remarkable presentation:

"Instinctively my idea of a best habit in making a presentation is being able to take an outside-in, you-based position. Speak to the problem or challenge and needs of your audience using their language. Start by making the leap of translating your own views into theirs, and connect with them right from the get-go. A habit I've seen that needs breaking is leading off with a description of the 'what' and the 'how' before explaining the 'why.'" Those are the presentations that seem to take longer, get less stakeholder buy-in and don't help the audience."

Read the full ten-question discussion on "Viewing IT service management from the outside in" in today's TechRepublic. Also watch for Ian's second book, Outside In Service Management, to be coming out this summer.

Going from podium to Web

You've put together a stellar presentation for the big conference and are counting down the days. With a week to go, a tsunami/tornado/oil spill interrupts the plan and the conference is cancelled.

After hearing your practice run, your boss says, "We're going with this! Get Webex on the phone!" No problem, right?

Turning a classroom presentation into an online meeting requires some planning and rethinking. It's more than just making your delivery on a conference call.

A bicycle and a unicycle are two ways to get from here to there that seem similar, but the difference can add some new challenges. What you've done behind the podium may not translate seamlessly over to a web meeting.

Winning priority is the first major difference to consider:

Unlike a physical event, attendance on a web presentation is entirely up to you and your team. You don't have the luxury of being an alternative in a handful of speaker sessions. Your message is competing with all the normal (and ever-increasing) priorities of everyone's workday. Clicking on an invitation is a routine commitment for most people. Each reminder of the value you've promised to deliver is more important than the last, up to the final "one hour from now!" e-mail.

Read the rest of the article in today's TechRepublic.

What blindspots?

Without credibility, arguments vaporize. One of the most undervalued components in credibility is objectivity - being above any hidden agenda or influence. As clear-as-a-bell as it is when we hear someone else speaking, it's still incredibly tempting to overestimate our own objectivity.

Do media spokesmen have more or less objectivity after they've been hob-nobbing (or squirt-gun fighting) over the weekend with politicians at a beach party with the Biden's?

Does a new study that shows Ford is now "the no. 1 automaker in customer satisfaction with vehicle quality" have as much clout when you learn the study was commissioned by... Ford? (It disagrees with the most recent Consumer Reports.)

As an expert in your field, you have a claim to trusted advisor sentiments, but it's dangerous to let your bias speak when you need to remain aloof. When you put together your next presentation, make a point to cite objective, third-party sources that your audience trusts, both in the slides and the dialog. And lob the first salvo at "experts agree," and "research has shown," which are even more lame than no citation at all.

(Batteries not included)

Are you leaving the right things out?

Florida Governor Charlie Crist recently left out the pro-life section he had previously included on his web site.

(He's expected to veto a controversial ultrasound bill.)

Hyundai left out the price on advertisements for its 2011 Sonata.

(You can request an e-mail, but you have to include your phone number and yes, they will be calling you.)

A friend of mine in sales left off his resume the position he held for more than a year as the National Sales Director for a growing technology provider.

(It went bankrupt and he returned to his previous employer.)

Steve Jobs left out the part of his talk about how easily the iPhone 4 connects to the internet.

(Too many bloggers in the audience were eating up the bandwidth of the local wi-fi.)

The main thing to keep in mind about what to leave out in your presentation, resume, business plan or other communication is not what you want to leave out, but what your audience expects you to leave out (or in). That will be noticeable in its absence.

Revolution in Words

The way we use words was revolutionized by Johannes Gutenberg. Replication and distribution of ideas took on a whole new meaning. But the process actually wasn't Gutenberg's idea. It was the Chinese who first had the idea of duplicating a pattern with a press, but limited its use to copying silks and not books.

Is the iPad a revolution, or is it just duplicating a pattern?

Interestingly, Gutenberg died a financial failure, the object of numerous lawsuits for the rights to use the press. But he was successful by all counts in changing the world. His first printed work, the Bible, is the number one bestseller of 2010 (and every year).

~ Game Changers in Presentation History

Johannes Gutenberg, movable type printing press - 1394-1468

The best (top-rated) personal security software

"The best things in life are free."

Sure, it's a cliche ...it's also true.

Every year, some of the best new software applications out there won't cost you a penny. Outlook is the de facto business e-mail standard and it's just plain clunky compared to G-mail.

In the security arena, this month's Consumer Reports again rates two of the best anti-malware apps at 54 (Microsoft) and 65 (Germany's Avira) out of 100. For reference, the top score for any security app is 67 (Symantec).

For the added benefit of a firewall, you can also choose Comodo's free app, just released in April, although CR scores the Comodo suite 30 points lower than the paid competition, and it's not compatible with Avira.

Anti-malware:

- Avira AntiVir Personal 9 (42MB)

- Microsoft Security Essentials (7.2MB)

Security Suite:

- Comodo Internet Security Free 2010 (61MB)

If the spam filter in your e-mail program isn't working well enough for you, CR also points to spamfighter.com as a good free alternative in that area.

Spend the money you save on a few good books.

Ten Breakable Habits (slides from my live presentation)

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Ten Breakable Habits

View more presentations from Prospero Marketing Group.

What's a twitter/Facebook post worth to your sales pipeline?

Are you investing the right amounts of time and resources in new media marketing? What's your measuring stick for getting the right mix? Here's a short survey with several insightful questions from my friends at ic stars for small business owners (and anyone else who is interested in learning more about web marketing trends).

Some of the questions address preferences on the frequency of dialog (i.e. pages or videos per week), or with summary vs. detailed reporting, and how much a qualified lead is worth. You can choose to participate with or without disclosing your company, and your input contributes to making this grassroots research more complete, as well as letting you know how the rest of the participants responded.

Whether you are just curious about the crowdsourced response or would like to find out more about what ic stars is planning to do with the final results, take a look at the survey and think about the significance of asking yourself these timely questions.

ic stars is an outstanding technology training program in the city of Chicago. Take a look at the kinds of things they are doing here.

Are you talking to me?

When you're giving a presentation, do you start by doing your homework on who is going to be in your audience? It may not be who you think it is if you're not sure when your microphone is on (especially when you're the British Prime Minister).

I asked Accenture's Business Operations Director Bob Kress for his top suggestion on how presenters can make their speaking more effective. His first recommendation: be familiar with your audience.

"When I'm presenting to any group, one of the most important things to understand is who the audience is and focus on their primary interests. If I'm talking to more senior people, I tend to use fewer slides and focus on business issues vs. technology. Matching the appropriate level of detail and relating it to the audience is a key piece of giving a great presentation. Using the right examples and stories is the way to make any presentation more memorable."

See the full interview in today's TechRepublic on how Bob has adapted the technology strategy at Accenture to a struggling economic climate.

Job Seeking Advice from Ivanka Trump

Heiress Ivanka Trump (now Kushner) has some refreshingly down-to-earth ideas in this interview that aired on FOX earlier this week. Of course, it's not easy to talk convincingly about hard work when you grow up in a life of privilege, but she certainly comes across as more credible than say, Paris Hilton.

The Economics degree from Wharton doesn't hurt the street cred either. Is she more eloquent than the Donald? You decide. My favorite is her job-hunting advice: "Are you counting on the interviewer to ask all the questions?" Kind of reminiscent of The Art of The Deal.

What we repeatedly do

One of my favorite quotes (in fact, it's the first one in my new book) is from Aristotle, who said, "We are what we repeatedly do."

This makes a couple good points at once. First, it's not the exceptions and anomalies that are you. It's not that one piece of chocolate cake, or the one day you don't get your treadmill time in, or even the one time you are late to the office. It is what you do as a habitude.

Secondly, what you repeatedly do is usually up to you; which is both a freedom and a responsibility. As the apostle Paul famously points out, "That which I would do, I do not... wretched man that I am."

Some of the greatest things are very simple in the end (in fact, a lot of them are). I came across this stunningly practical site ("Habitforge" above) recently and hope you'll think it is too. The only caveat I would make is that when you break a habit, it needs a good replacement in order to make a lasting change. And since this is a free site, that doesn't cost anything extra.

* - A giant note of thanks to all of you who have downloaded the free PDF of the book summary from the TechRepublic site. It just went over 5,000 downloads last week.

When Your Job Depends on Your Presentation - my interview with Bill Keyworth

As research director at Gartner, Bill Keyworth was consistently rated as one of the top presenters. Which is a good thing, because his job depended on it.

I talked with Bill recently about cloud computing and technology marketing for an article in TechRepublic magazine. He also described some of the underlying beliefs about why his largely technical presentations have always been so well received across a variety of audiences:

"One primary thing is keeping the visuals a support mechanism and not letting them become the presentation. People are going to remember a very small percentage of what you say even two or three hours later. So what is it you want them to remember? You want them to do something differently. Everything you do should be driven by that, including your visuals.

When I was at Gartner, every presentation got a feedback score that was posted, and not being in the top twenty percent was not good. If you weren't in the top half, you should start looking for another job. At first I had no idea why I scored so well, and then someone told me my strength was my credibility. I believed in management technology and processes, and I believed it would make a difference.

Some presenters can tell a great story but can't answer the basic question of how things are run, managed or controlled. They'll explain that those details are 'coming out in the next version.' For me, non-managed is an unacceptable answer. So even when people don't remember everything I said, my belief in the importance and necessity of those management answers comes through in the credibility of my presentations. It has to come from the heart."

You can read the full interview with Bill Keyworth in today's TechRepublic article here.

Bill's newest venture, the BSM Review, features a complete panel of experts from across the IT spectrum blogging on business service management.

REthinking the WORKplace - My Interview with 37signals' Jason Fried on Better Work and Remarkable Presentations

One of the things I point out in Ten Breakable Habits is that the slides are not the presentation, and if adding visuals doesn't improve your presentation, don't use them. 37signals founder (Basecamp, Campfire, Ruby on Rails, etc.) Jason Fried talked to me recently about his web applications business and about what he's learned about presentation delivery over the course of his career as an international speaker.

Here's how Jason describes his speaking style:

"Something I've started doing more recently is speaking without slides, or if I use slides, they are just pictures with few or no words. There's certainly nothing where I'm reading or anyone is reading off the screen. I have a set of ideas I like to use for topics and I just run with them and see where it goes. I much prefer the question and answer part of things anyway. I want to be prepared, but I don't want to over-prepare or think too hard about it. I avoid getting to a place where I'm thinking about what I wanted to say."

You can see the whole interview with Jason in today's TechRepublic article here.

Jason's third book REWORK is due out next month.

Ten Breakable Habits comes out today

If you've been looking for a good book on making better presentations, Ten Breakable Habits to creating a remarkable presentation comes out today.

This is not a book about how to speak more clearly. It's about how to communicate more effectively. It will change the way you think about presenting, and make your next presentation remarkable.

Here are some early reviews:

"In Ten Breakable Habits, Jeff analyzes the traps we fall into when creating presentations but more than that, helps us identify why we fall into them."

- Jason McClay, Senior Consultant, G2G3 Group

"I recommend it to anyone who wants to make their message more memorable, from the classroom to the boardroom."

- Michael Nicoletti, Senior Manager, IBM

"Anyone who wants to discover a better way to communicate effectively can benefit from reading Ten Breakable Habits."

- Joe Ryan, Partner, Open Systems Technologies

Is there someone you'd like to send a copy of Ten Breakable Habits? More people will be giving presentations in 2010 than ever before and this is the extra edge they need. If you're one of the first 100 people to order, you can take advantage of the Buy one-Give one offer and have a second copy sent to one of your customers, your boss, friend or colleague for half-price. There are also quantity discounts available if you're distributing to your sales team.

You can find the order link at www.tenbreakablehabits.com. There's also a free PDF of the summary article that came out in TechRepublic magazine in December (over 4300 downloads so far).

Opportunity Knocks

Two of my friends at ic stars, Bea Elizalde and Sandee Kastrul, were featured in this Sun-Times story over the weekend. What a great program with a true pay-it-forward mentality.

Your Two Cents

Remember "letters to the editor?"

It used to be you would type up a letter in response to an article, put a 15 or 20 cent stamp on it, send it in, and watch the next couple issues to see if it was published. It was a kick to see one of your comments get picked up, and ensured your continuing interest in getting the paper. Better yet if something you wrote actually made it to the "mainstream media."

Today letters to the editor are coursing toward the same fate as the daily newspapers they still appear in. With an internet story, you don't have to hope your response is printed. It just appears in the list at the bottom of the story within a few minutes. Along with all the other ways to participate on the web, this is huge.

Sellers like eBay and amazon know dialog is part of their business. They invite you to rate the product and evaluate the transaction and the seller. We've gotten used to this idea. If you wanted to, you could make voting, commenting and providing feedback into an avocation.

What does this mean for the way we communicate in a presentation? Some people are still inclined to give a presentation like a newspaper, ignoring the fact that their listeners are more interested in, and accustomed to, a dialog than being presented with information. Because there's no shortage of information. There's your opinion, and theirs. Remember it's a microphone and not a bullhorn, and your last slide is not the conclusion; it's the beginning of the dialog.

Why a green datacenter? I ask Tech VP Anthony Abbattista of Allstate Insurance

Here's a new article out this week in TechRepublic where I talk with the VP of technology solutions at Allstate Insurance about the new green datacenter in Rochelle, IL. This new project makes use of several innovative technologies on a large scale ($50 million), and is up for a national award with the Green Building Council.

What's that noise?

The company without the vast array of resources to fix your problem may be the best choice.

Having HD/Blu-ray doesn't make the sappy banter any more worthwhile to watch.

The TSA should not be diplomatically ignoring everyone named Umar.

Congress should not be making decisions about the Fiesta Bowl.

Fifteen minutes at 2 a.m. may be more productive than an hour at 2 p.m.

The kid without the Nintendo is often the most interesting to talk to.

What's distracting you?