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7 Steps To Making A Great Presentation

Chapter 11. iPad only

iPad on a plane
One Month Roadtrip
A few years ago I went on the longest roadshow I’ve ever been on. 1 month, 3 continents, 24 flights, 80 presentations. It was one of the most exciting experiences of my life & I couldn’t have done it without my trusty iPad. The only problem was I lost my iPad right at the beginning of the trip.

Late Night Flight
The first continent was Asia & after a couple of days in Jakarta, I went to KL for 2 days then back to Jakarta. I always catch the last flight to fit in as many meetings as possible. I was tired & put my iPad in the seat pocket while I fell asleep. I woke up when the plane landed & had to rush off, leaving my iPad behind.

iPad Was Gone
My iPad with my presentation & all the supporting material on it was gone. I never carried any paper copies to travel light. I was so tired I only realized it was gone when in the car & had to turn around to go back. I went to the airline office but most of the team had gone home & no one found my iPad. Devastating.

On to London
The next day, I flew on to my next continent & my hometown London wondering what I would do when I got there with a full schedule of meetings starting the day after. When I arrived & settled in, I went straight to the Regents Street Apple store & bought a new one. Just like the previous one.

A full recovery
The great thing about iPads is you can log into your account in iCloud where everything is backed up. Using a decent WiFi in the London Apple store in just 20 minutes I was able to restore my iPad from the cloud exactly as it had been before. Presentation & all supporting data were there & I was ready to go back on the road again.

The greatest presenter
Steve Jobs
It’s no surprise that the iPad which is the greatest presentation tool was brought to us by the greatest presenter himself, Steve Jobs. From the very beginning of Apple, Steve always presented & over the years developed a unique, entertaining & very effective style to sell Apple products. Proof that presenting is a big part of selling.

Several Jobs Techniques
Steve brought magic to presenting & several of the techniques in this booklet are his. He made presentations & slides simple & easy to follow. He used the rule of 3; the new iPhone was a phone a browser & an iPod, he built a script & he practiced a lot. He also always used video, photos & live demos.

My Dream Device
After years of presenting using laptops I remember building a dream device in my mind. It was a flat screen with no keyboard, it was a touch screen I could show presentations on, I could hold it up to show people, I could draw on it. When Apple launched the iPad, I watched the presentation & saw my dream device. By the end of the year I was using it & have ever since.

I watch Live
Since the launch of the iPad, I have watched every Apple presentation live even in the middle of the night. I take notes & use whatever they do in my own presentations. The best way you can get great at something is by watching someone else who already does a great job & learn from them.

Apple’s The Benchmark
If you look at other companies, Apple set the standard & became the benchmark for presentations. Now every US company uses a big screen, simple slides, a script learnt off by heart & stands out front of their presentation which is on their right, audience left & uses a remote control just like Steve Jobs. You should too.

App Called Keynote
Most Use PowerPoint
I grew up like most people on PowerPoint. As most computers were PCs, Windows was the most used software & PowerPoint was the most used presentation tool. A great idea & designed like all Windows apps to work with a mouse. From me using it at work, to my children learning
to use it at school, PowerPoint presentations were everywhere.

Keynote
It was only when I started using an iPad to present on that I realized there was another software to make presentations, Apple’s own Keynote. Surely a better name, although it gets confused with the actual action itself. Apple developed a version of the app specially for the iPad & the iPhone.

Keynote is Simplicity
What you will like about Keynote is its simplicity. The version for Mac is simple, the version for iPad is even more so. This is the advantage of working with Apple products to make your presentation compared to using Windows. Everything is more simple which helps to make your presentation more simple.

Using Your Fingers
Helping to make it even more simple when you are using keynote on your iPad is that you use fingers to make it. Isn’t it amazing that we have, after decades of keyboards & mouses, gone back to using the most dexterous invention ever, our fingers. Somehow this also helps make your presentation better, simpler & more creative.

No Going Back
Recently, I tried to help a friend make a presentation on their laptop using keyboard & mouse. It was an awful experience. So slow & cumbersome. On an iPad, everything is in one place. On a laptop you have to switch between keyboard & mouse. I was desperate to just use my fingers. I’ll never go back.

Working iOn IPad
Start Wirh Numbers
When I got my first iPad I still used a laptop, but soon I was iPad only & I’ve not had a computer since. Making presentations on the iPad starts with spreadsheets & Apple’s numbers. There you can brainstorm by collecting data, in neat spreadsheets & play with it to find a theme. Then once you have your theme, make a calendar.

Write In Evernote
Then you can turn to Evernote which is an incredibly versatile library, note taking & sharing app. Here you can make a new note with the presentation theme as its title. Once that’s done you add your topic titles, an odd number 3 or more depending on the length of the presentation. Then the 3 subtopics.

Compose Your Tweets
Once the outline of the presentation is ready, it’s time to turn to social media & Twitter. It’s great having all social media apps on the iPad too to show in your presentation if needed. I often switch to Instagram in mid presentation, to show the audience another photo. You next open Twitter & turn the subtopics into individual short & catchy tweets.

Make An IMovie
Now you have a script. It’s time to make some video in iMovie. Wherever I go, I always try to take as much video & photos as possible so that i always have plenty of content for a video. We even run competitions to get more content from others. You can put these together into a short movie to add in to the presentation.

Create Yoir Slides
You already started the data & charts at the beginning in Numbers. Now it’s time to refine them, check the labeling & then transfer everything into keynote & turn it into slides. Inside Keynote, charts can be brought even more to life by using builds & 3D. Beautiful text added, practice, practice, practice & then it’s time to perform your great presentation.
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