Presentation-Secrets-Of-Steve-Jobs

N E 17
SCENE 17
SCE
Toss the Script
Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used
to an environment where excellence is expected.
—STEVE JOBS
Steve Jobs is the consummate presenter for twenty-firstcentury
audiences who want to engage in conversations,
not lectures. Jobs has a casual speaking style, an informality
that, as discussed in the preceding chapter, comes from
hours of practice. Practice allows him to work largely without a
script. During demonstrations, Jobs conceals notes discreetly from
the audience but never reads them word for word. The notes serve
only as cue cards for the next step in the demonstration. Jobs performs
largely without notes for the majority of his presentation.
As suggested in Scene 8, most presenters create “slideuments”:
documents masking as slides. Slideuments act as a crutch for mediocre
presenters who read every word on the slide, often turning
their backs to the audience to do so. Jobs does have a script—largely
in his head. His slides, which are highly visual, act as a prompter.
Each slide has one key idea and one idea only.
After Jobs pulled the new MacBook Air from a manila envelope
in the “holy shit” moment at Macworld 2008, he explored
the new computer in more detail. As you can see in Table 17.1, his
slides contained very few words but contained just enough information
to act as a prompter for one idea—one theme per slide. 1
Jobs went on to explain that MacBook Air had the same
processor used in all of Apple’s other notebooks and iMacs. He
marveled at the fact that Intel could step up to the challenge,
199