I mentioned yesterday in touting Nancy Duarte’s session as part of The Reinvention Summit: A Virtual Summit on the Future of Storytelling that she recently put on a free webinar of which a video is available. I speculated that since the webinar had the same title as the Reinvention session (“That Resonates with Me! How to Change the World One Presentation at a Time”), the content was probably similar.

I’ve now watched the webinar video and learned that the content is indeed similar — but the webinar offers even more than yesterday’s session — a slightly abbreviated version of the the webinar’s content — did. And the webinar is wonderful. Terrific production values and graphics, and you get to see Nancy’s excellent presentation style onscreen.

So, is there any point in summarizing what Nancy said yesterday when you can watch it for yourself and get even more content than attendees did yesterday?

Yes. For one thing, you might like to know that Nancy’s talk yesterday was exceedingly well received. Several attendees immediately felt that they needed to completely revamp upcoming presentations based on Nancy’s ideas. Some sample comments from attendees included:

• My mind has officially just been blown open.
• You have me glued to the screen … love this.
• This is simply awesome!
• WOW WOW WOW!
• Seriously, the hairs on the back of my neck just stood up.
• Wild applause!!!!!
• I wish we could call in now so you could hear us clap and ROAR, Nancy! ovation!
• Amazing!!!!!!!!!!!
• Just what I needed to hear! Amazing how I put myself in Nancy’s story.

Since you can essentially see what we saw yesterday — and then some — I won’t summarize in as much depth as I have for some of the other Reinvention sessions, but will hit on what were highlights for me and direct you to some additional resources Nancy generously provides.

In explaining her thesis that we can change the world one presentation at a time, Nancy Duarte said:

• You have the power to change the world.
• The most powerful thing is an idea, but the idea is powerless if you don’t put it out there.
• We form communications to put out ideas.

• The two extremes of writing are the report on one end of the continuum and story on the other end — the presentation is right in the middle (above).
• PowerPoint gives us a template to create a report, but since a presentation should not be a report, it’s better to start with blank sheet, a not template.

• The ideal is to communicate from the area of your audience’s shared experience (above). But, the bigger the audience, the harder it is to find shared experiences. You must know your audience. (Here, Nancy talked about some of the ways she drills down to get to know her audiences before giving a presentation, and she covers these in the webinar video as well).

• Most presentations from companies/organizations contain an obnoxious “About us” slide that is a lot like the self-absorbed party guest who thinks he’s a chick magnet (above).
• It’s much better to focus on the audience, not you as the presenter or presenting organization.
• The audience is the hero, not you. If your presentation is a Hero’s Journey, the audience should be the hero, and you should take them on an Audience Journey.
• The stakes in presentations are higher than ever because the audience has a voice. Where before, an audience member might think or turn to a neighbor and say ‘This guy’s an idiot’ when listening to a weak presentation, today’s audience member will tweet that sentiment.
• Take a stance of humility and honor your audience
• The Audience Journey starts with the Big Idea, which in turn consists of a unique point of view, plus a description of what’s at stake.
• If there’s nothing at stake, there’s no need to persuade.

• The presenter should determine where he or she is trying to move the audience from and to (above).
• In screenwriting, it’s important to know who the character is when we first meet him/her and who is he/she at the end. The presentation must have a transformation, and the presenter must define audience transformation.
• Having taking taken two years off to study story, Nancy looked at Aristotle, Freytag’s structure, and other story structures. (At this point, both Gregg Morris and I speculated that Robert McKee’s story seminar was probably part of Nancy’s studies; I know McKee’s book, Story was.)

• Then Nancy developed her own story structure (above, and you can see a more detailed version of it among the free supplements to Nancy’s book Resonate), which she tested out for presentations by overlaying it on two speeches that she considers to be the best ever: Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and Steve Jobs’ 2007 presentation to introduce the iPhone, which she considers to be the best corporate speech ever. She was elated when both speeches conformed to the structure she developed.
• Nancy’s structure begins with a call to adventure, a section that transitions back and forth between “what is” and “what could be.” The norm (“what is”) is boring vs. “what could be.” (Here, audience member Mark Weaver noted in the chat box: “The back and forth of the ‘what is’ against the potential of ‘What can be” is the continual counterpoint that drives evolution.”)
• The structure should contain a STAR moment, STAR being an acronym for Something They’ll Always Remember.
• You can find STAR moments in TED Talks, and Nancy cited a few TED talks with especially striking STAR moments: statistician Hans Rosling, “Silicon Valley’s legendary moneyman” John Doerr, and Jill Bolte Taylor.
• The call to the action at the end of the presentation should describe the “new bliss” that audience members can experience if they heed the call to action.

• Using her structure as analysis tool, Nancy noted these high points of Jobs’ 90-minute presentation:

Its components consisted of Jobs speaking, a video, a demo of the iPhone, and a guest speaker.

Jobs elicits physical reactions in his audience, such as laughing and clapping.

Jobs behaves as though he’s seeing the iPhone for the first time.

The “What could be” is this revolutionary product that changes everything.

The STAR moment is when the audience sees the iPhone in action for the first time.

Jobs tells a personal story when his equipment malfunctions.

• In analyzing Martin Luther King’s speech (which is only 16 minutes!), Nancy noted:

Repetition of key points.

Metaphors and visual words.

References to familiar songs, scripture, and literature.

Political references.


• Nancy’s final call to action for the audience: “Do something. Change the world.” Her visual here suggested we put ourselves in the same world-changing position as Martin Luther King.

So, here’s my call to action to you:

• Get a hold of Nancy’s books, especially her latest, Resonate.
• Check out the generously offered free book supplements and resources on her site.
• Watch the webinar.
• See Sacha Chua’s sketch notes on Nancy’s Reinvention session.
• Change the world.

Oh, and one more thing: I want to look into how well Nancy’s story structure works for job-interview responses.