Storytelling

Garr Reynolds is one of the masters of effective presentation design (in my opinion Nancy Duarte is the only other name but I might be missing someone). I can attribute many of the profound changes in my teaching style early on in my career to his works on building effective presentations. I get strange looks from teachers at workshops that I give when I recommend a marketer/presentation guru's books, but what Reynolds and Duarte are trying to teach is much much than just slide design...it's the art of telling a story.

If we get the students hooked in the lesson and the suspense reels them in, then aren't we taking on the role of a storyteller? Here's a gem from Garr's latest blog post (quoting film editor Zach Staenberg:

...all this stuff [filmmaking process/editing] has to work to tell a story. If you're not telling a story, it doesn't matter how much razzle dazzle there is. It's not about the tools, it's about the story.

I'm guilty of focusing too much on the tools. It's time to tell the story.