Airshow

Airshow New York was our best Airshow ever. We sold out to an audience who engaged and challenged us to our best performance. We are learning more each time and after three shows we have honed the show to a fine performance.

Due to the demand met in New York we decided to return there in December 5th but to also present in my home town of Boston on December 3rd. We are also presenting in my second home town of Helsinki in November.

You can sign up for any of these events at Airshow.asymco.com.

The purpose of Airshow is:

• To explain how to present rich data in a compelling and emotionally engaging way.
• To explain the principles of visual persuasion.
• To offer hands-on training with the tools of persuasion: iPad and  Perspective.

The method we devised borrows heavily from the techniques of Cinematography and screenwriting to impart meaning to the audience beyond the literal words spoken or images shown on screen.

This includes:

• Framing
• Light and Color
• Depth
• Motion
• The Reveal
• Texture
• Establishment
• Characterization
• Point of View

These techniques are demonstrated with "feature presentations" and then deconstructed in interactive lectures. Throughout we also weave Aristotelian rhetorical tips and present from the Asymco repertoire of stories.

The day ends with a hands-on exercise. iPads are required.

At the end of the seminar you should be able to:

• Understand how data can be used to persuade through an appeal to logic as well as through empathy.
• Understand the basics of "data cinematicism" including the techniques analogous to cinematography and direction.
• Understand story development techniques including how to facilitate the audience's entry into the story.
• Build a cinematic presentation.

We are looking forward to seeing you at the next Airshow.

 

I'm delighted to once again have the sponsorship of IBM for the presentation of Airshow. This time it's in New York City on Wednesday, 25 September at the IBM Building, 590 Madison Ave. My thanks again to Paul Brody for being so gracious and earnest in his support.

Seating is limited but there are still 25 20 3 available.

This will be the third Airshow, having started in June in San Francisco and rolling into Chicago in July. The event keeps getting better with a plan to introduce a hands-on module allowing participants to build cinematic data-driven presentation during the afternoon.

Airshow is intended as both an exhibition of technique and as an explication of   the methods for creating persuasive presentation enabled by new technologies.

Without revealing too much, the gist of the theory espoused is that presentations can benefit from:

• The use of directly manipulated visuals
• Cinematic effects honed by cinematographers over a century
• Aristotelian presentation principles

Together, these techniques solve the "job to be done" of persuasion—a job universally in demand but deeply underserved by current tools and techniques.

The participant should come away from the event with the ability to:

• Use the iPad as their primary presentation tool, with or without a projector to large and small audiences
• Use a cinematic technique of presentation where a layer of implicit yet easily sensed meaning is overlaid upon the words spoken and images viewed
• Appeal with empathy, logic and credibility to all audiences.

You can register for Airshow New York here.

See also: The end of the projector.

 

After having "taken the show on the road" and spending an inordinate amount of time giving presentations during the last year I came to the conclusion that what remains less than good enough for presentations is the variable quality of projectors.

The problem is not just quality of image but also the unpredictable size of screen, how far it is from the audience, how poor the contrast or color reproduction might be and to what degree there is support for wireless connections.

When presenting detailed, information dense graphs, these quality issues become presentation killers and not only do they result in poor retention for the audience but decrease the confidence of the presenter, leading to a vicious cycle.

The answer is not to lug around your own projector because many times the venue will not accept it, other times the image "throw" is not matched to the screen and it's a pain to set up and transport.

What I think needs to happen is that the projector needs to be disrupted.

This is where the iPad and Perspective come into play. When presenting using Perspective we have the ability to "airshow" or present directly to the (iOS) devices that the audience has with them.

This way not only the presenter's screen is "mirrored locally" but also the direct manipulation and choreography of the data reveal is instantly visible. You can see a fragment of how it works in this test:

This is the technique we use at the Airshow event and it has proven to work well even with large audiences. To see it in action (and to learn how to develop presentations into cinematic experiences) join us at the next Airshow in Chicago.

We're excited to bring the second Airshow to Chicago in July. Thanks to Ryan Singer and Jason Fried of 37signals.com for offering to host us this summer.  Their venue is ideal for our particular pedagogy.

Speaking of which, I should explain what it is.

Our first Airshow (San Francisco, June 9th) had several objectives:

• To explain a theory of narration with data, especially big data
• To narrate this explanation with a tool called Perspective
• To reveal and test a new feature within Perspective called airshow

Now that we have revealed the feature (mirror your presentation including your direct manipulation of the visuals to any member of the audience—wherever they may be—on their own device, available in version 3.0) we can talk more freely about the structure of the show.

It's in three parts:

1. Performance
2. Cooking Show
3. Theory

The Performance is the "keynote story" whose recipe we show in the Cooking Show and whose motivation and foundations we deconstruct in the Theory. You can think of the sections as as answering "{What, How and Why} make a great story."

The show is self-referential in that we use the process we teach to do the teaching. In other words, we use a great storytelling tool to tell great stories about storytelling. Furthermore, Airshow, as a show, uses a tool whose feature  is itself called airshow.

It's not that complicated; at least not if you understand recursion.

Register here: airshow.asymco.com (Limited to 37, bring an iPad).