Presentation Technology in the Digital Age

Presentation technology has changed the way our culture communicates. From the corporate boardroom to external communications with customers, presentations have impacted every aspect of the business community. This penetration has been largely achieved through two key advances. The first and perhaps most significant advance is the open accessibility to digital media. We suddenly live in a digital democracy, where everyone has access to and expects to consume vast volumes of digital media. The second advance is interactive presentation technology. Interactive presentations support active discussion, as opposed to the passive approach, where a presenter is talking to an audience who is listening at 50% capacity.

Digital Democracy forces strides in presentation technologies.

The advances in media technology have empowered the masses to create, consume and distribute terabytes of media each day. And because the Internet is universal, everyone has access. Video, once limited to the domain of skilled craftsmen, is now being shot on mainstream digital cameras and cell phones. The easy creation of digital images, combined with the viral nature of the Web has given the masses access to countless images. And, the popularity of digital cameras and photo sharing sites let one’s access to pictures grow exponentially. The same principal applies to digital music files. Billions of audio files are downloaded everyday.

The ready access of media into everyday lives has naturally spread into the medium of presentations. People are exposed to sight, sound and motion in every minute of their lives, and thus expect a multimedia experience when they watch a presentation. Presentations must leverage multimedia to stir audiences. As such, presentation technologies, like PowerPoint, Keynote and Ontra, that make it easy for users to include a variety of media, have become a standard of communication throughout our culture.

On a corporate level, you can see the digital democracy in action. Long gone are the days when only the highest level executives, with their personal support staff, or the digerati, with their knack for technology, made the best presentations. The best presentations were slick, professional and included a wealth of video, audio and high quality graphics that wow’d the audience and helped reinforce the key messages. Now, because of expanded access to digital media, everyone in the company can present like the CEO.

Unfortunately, greater access to professional materials, including video, audio and graphics does not guarantee that the information is being used and shared in the most efficient way throughout the organization. There are still coworkers and colleagues that are not up to speed when it comes to building presentations. Thus, smart corporations are taking a broader approach to presentation communication – practicing presentation management.

Presentation management treats the presentation as another piece of collateral in the marketing mix, like a brochure or a website. Presentation management is the creation, automation and distribution of presentation materials throughout an enterprise. Here’s how it works. A designated group or person in the company is responsible for building a comprehensive presentation library that includes all of the necessary information that users need to present, such as: company overview, product and service information, pricing, market information, research, case studies, bio’s, etc. The presentation is designed around the company’s brand identity and utilizes relevant media, like video, animation and imagery to reinforce the message and engage the audience. It is then distributed though a server or shared location. The presenters, typically sales staff, can search, select and choose slides according to their particular business meeting need. With a managed library of slides, anyone can build a slick, multimedia presentation in minutes. This saves time, and money.

Presentation Management benefits presenters on two critical levels. First, it provides easy access to information, giving them the ability to talk intelligently about any aspect of the company, whether or not it falls in their area of expertise. Second, it puts everyone on an equal playing filed, letting even novices present a professionally crafted presentation, to reinforce the company’s message. The combination of presenting relevant, hard-hitting information combined with high-quality graphics provides added credibility and professionalism to the presenter.

Interactive presentation technologies are changing the way business presentations are conducted.

Incorporating multimedia in a presentation is only one aspect of using presentation technology to conduct more effective, productive meetings. Productive meetings are those in which everyone participates, where questions are raised and ideas are shared. A client who is actively participating in a meeting is a client that is listening, engaged and above all, interested. The linear slide-show format, although very comfortable for many presenters, does not foster interaction. Presentation technologies that offer an interactive mode of presenting, or the ability to call up any slide, on any given subject, right in front of the client, can reduce the sales cycle by ensuring the client gets all the information he needs to make a decision. It makes the meeting more productive.

Essentially, through the combination of multimedia files, democratic distribution of presentation content, and quick access to relevant content, presentation management can upgrade the average presenter’s (sales person) presentation skills to that of a CEO. This technological leveling of the playing field is allowing companies of all sizes, and people of all skill levels, to compete.
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Gingrich is probably the smartest man in US politics and political activism – at least as far as real policies based on real world demands are concerned. His latest book, ‘Real Change’ is a synthesis of what his new organisation American Solutions [www.americansolutions.org] has been working on, to give policy makers some ideas to fix key problems in US society and politics. For anyone interested in fixing parts of America which do not work, this book is a good overview of what ails America and what can be done to fix it. As one may expect, it is government, the bureaucracy and the fantastical naive and bloody-minded faith in government, which is in need of real change. Gingrich outlines why that is.

Keynesians, the eco-cult fanatics, the race reductionists, the protectionists and the appeasement minded would of course, never read such a book. For these happy little Marxist minds, the warm blue blanket of the nanny state and creating clients out of citizens, is the main objective. Security, risk reduction, guaranteed incomes and jobs, and total safety are the primary concerns of these chattering trolls. These ideals are the root of the issues facing America and every other industrialised state for that matter. In order to break the current vicious and immature cycle of broken behavior and bankrupted systems, some real change as Gingrich outlines, is urgently needed.

Gingrich summarizes quite well and transparently, why government fails and what can be done to correct these failures. He discusses the key subject areas facing the US and then proposes some common-sensical and relevant options to change the system. Importantly he focuses on results – applying simple models and patterns to solve questions and then monitoring the outcomes. Metrics, and implementing concepts which actually work, are anathema to government and bureaucracies.

Some topics Gingrich discusses:

1. Iraq and Afghanistan

These ten pages on what went wrong in Iraq and also in Afghanistan [pp 107-118] are perhaps the most interesting in the book. Gingrich has over 30 years affiliation as a trainer and confidante of the military. From 2003 until the 2007 surge, Iraq as a policy was failing, and it was the fault not of the military personnel on the ground, but of the civilian and military bureaucracy outside the war zones.

As Gingrich relates:

-In 2003 after a stunningly successful 3 week invasion, the Bush administration reduced Iraqi intelligence resources [which were vital to secure the country].

-Instead of using the Iraqi army to help police the country, the military bureaucracy disbanded the Iraqi armed forces.

-The Iraqi adminstration under Paul Bremer did not learn from Afghanistan where you had to liberate and not occupy the country. Instead of using Iraqi’s and an Iraqi bureaucracy to help stabilise and rebuild the country, the American administration acted as an occupier not a liberator. This directly gave rise to the insurgency and general malcontent in Iraq.

-No civilian support in infrastructure, economics, health or energy was forthcoming. The State Department and the military bureaucracy had no plans nor any ideas about how to stabilise a failed state like Iraq.

-Billions of dollars were spent in Iraq with no results and no metrics. The US bureaucracies totally failed in their objectives to help the military rebuild Iraq and to take active and productive roles in stabilising a failed state.

As Gingrich rightly points out, basically the US military was asked to perform 2 impossible tasks – win the war and act as a functioning bureaucracy. The second task is not something a military can credibly do.

Even in Afghanistan, the bureaucracy was the problem. As Gingrich states, ‘In 2002, I learned that the United States had been unable to pave a single mile of road in Afghanistan during the summer season.’ This was due to bureaucratic incompetence not a lack of money. Like Iraq, billions were spent in Afghanistan with no results, no metrics and no rush to implement something which would work. Thousands of swarming bureaucrats covered both countries like locusts, bunkered down, meeting, meeting again, meeting some more, with no view on being effective and without a coordinated and intelligent plan about meeting key metrics in energy, transportation, infrastructure build, policing or public safety. The burden was placed solely on the military.

2. Immigration

Gingrich voted for the Reagan amnesty bill of 1986 because it promised to be a one time deal. The deal was simple: illegal amnesty would be granted once; border security and control would be effected immediately; and there would be a verification of all foreign workers now and going forward. Only the amnesty occurred. The US now has most likely over 30 million illegals. It is a cultural, social and economic burden that is unsustainable. Contrary to myth uneducated illegals are a net drain on the US economy – by at least $50 billion per annum.

According to Gingrich and American Solutions over 75% of Americans want the border secured and do not want amnesty given to illegals; and they want more skilled workers on work visas. Yet they will most likely receive the opposite of that from their politicians. The border remains – even with the building of the southern fence – open with all the risks regarding terrorism and fascist Islam that entails; and most politicians eying the Hispanic and minority vote want to appear sympathetic to the idea of amnesty. The idea of extending skilled workers visas does not sit well with protectionists, unions and those who prefer illegal immigration to legal, documented visa based immigration.

3. Tax and spending cuts

Only a few politicians really believe that government is fundamentally too large, and that taxes are ridiculously high. For most politicians the tax payer is a faceless robot, who should pay more into the system to establish more programs and more welfare services. Gingrich outlines why historically, regimes with high taxes and big government have failed. Dynamic and productive societies have a true belief in entrepreneurship, capital formation, science and technological innovation. Static and regressive states do not.

Gingrich and his organisation are calling for some needed and dramatic fiscal reforms including: tort and legal liability reform; a national flat tax on consumption with a change in the constitution to prevent income from being taxed in the future; abolishing all other taxes on income and capital gains and reducing non-essential spending by over half. If even a small part of this plan was adopted the US economy would add millions of jobs literally over night and be running huge federal budget surpluses.

These are just some of the issues Gingrich discusses. He goes into market based reforms of Social Security, Health Care, Education, Crime, Energy and the need for overhauling the Judicial system. Neither major US party believes that fundamental change is needed.

The Democrats are witless and clueless and would return America back to the days of Herbert Hoover, FDR or Peanut boy Jimmy Carter. The Republicans are big spending conservative statists, who believe in tax cuts, but also in ramping up the size of government in every possible sphere even as they subsidise huge corporations in auto manufacturing, ethanol development, agricultural production or sundry other industrial segments. As Gingrich observes it is only the American people who will effectively force change by demanding results across a broad range of important issues, accountability, fairness and wealth creation, not destruction.

For those interested in thoughtful intelligent policy, this book is a great primer. For people interesetd in real change which would effectively help cure what ails parts of America, this book is indispensable.


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