Reflecting on 22 years of Presentation Summit with Rick Altman, Dr. Carmen Simon and Mike Parkinson

Mikey Mioduski: [00:00:00] Welcome to Presentation Thinking, a. k. a. the Storyteller Study Club. Molly Gagen straight out of Inglewood, Colorado. How's it going? We have quite the lineup today because we're going to talk about Presentation Summit.

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah. A friend of the pod, Rick Altman, the creator of Presentation Summit and Presentation Specialist has invited a couple of special guests.

Rick, thank you so much for extending the invite.

Rick Altman: Pleasure to be here with all my buddies.

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah, this is awesome. Let me go ahead and introduce, we've got Dr. Carmen Simon of Corporate Visions, amazing cognitive neuroscience, author, speaker, presentation specialist. We've quoted your stuff for, for years, Farman.[00:01:00]

Very excited you're here. Thank you so much

Dr. Carmen Simon: for inviting me.

Molly Geoghegan: It was like a family

Dr. Carmen Simon: reunion.

Molly Geoghegan: Yes. Yes. This is of the presentation summit party and, uh, Mike Parkinson of billion dollar graphics, self proclaimed graphic geek, keynote speaker. I also love following you on LinkedIn. So Mike, thank you so much for joining.

Mike Parkinson: Thank you very much for having me. I'm stoked.

Molly Geoghegan: And this, I mean, Rick, we had you, if you're just tuning in presentation nation. Rick, we had you join for episode 71 to talk about how amazing your project, Presentation Summit, the conference is and how amazing it's been for the presentation community. It's how we got to know each other and There's something kind of like bittersweet happening this year with Presentation Summit.

What's, what's going on?

Rick Altman: Well, well, wait a minute. Are you saying that it took you 70 episodes that you invited me on? Is that what I'm hearing? You know,

Molly Geoghegan: that I think when we had you on, you were, you had been booked for months. You know, we had been trying to get you.

Rick Altman: It was, I was just so busy. Yes, that's what it was.

Yes. Too many tennis [00:02:00] obligations.

Molly Geoghegan: No, we're big fans of your, of your work and have learned so much from Presentation Summit. Mikey, that's like, I mean, as Ghost Ranch began, this is one of the first places where presentation designers met other presentation designers and other presentation specialists.

Mikey Mioduski: Yeah. I'd love to hear how Mike and Carmen sort of stumbled into it as well, but for, yeah, from our perspective, it was one of those things where. You know, you, we meandered from a generalist graphic designer, you know, kind of background into this thing where people kept asking me for PowerPoint. And then I was like, this isn't so bad, you know, and kind of like this.

And then turns out there's this whole community of people I had no idea existed and they would attend, you know, annually get together. And just like go deep, you know, at this place called Presentation Summit hosted by this highly energetic man named Rick Altman. And when we went, we were just like, we, we always have to go to this thing because the people are cool.[00:03:00]

Well, they're going deeper than we ever have, and we're learning tons, but also the energy is just very collegial, enthusiastic, and, and awesome, so.

Rick Altman: It's a, it's a mutual admiration society, and I tell the story a lot. Uh, the, the year that I first met all of you was 2017. It was at Clearwater Beach. Yeah. And.

What I love telling is the story about how it was the first time that you all were meeting each other because you are, you're a virtual organization long before COVID. And I remember I, at the Sunday welcome reception, I just wandered up to this table of a few of you getting to know one another, and I just sort of horned in, and it turns out that you've all been working with one another for years, and you were meeting for the first time at the conference.

It was the

Mikey Mioduski: coolest. Absolutely. And what stood out too, Molly, is the speakers. And so, distinctly remember Dr. Carmen Simon. Talking about the 10 percent message, Mike [00:04:00] Parkinson is a whirlwind at this thing. He, I don't know how many times we've seen you speak, Mike. Like, so I do want to cover like some of your favorite keynotes and breakouts you've given there, but Carmen, do you want to go first?

Can you tell us about how you got rolled into this presentation summit thing?

Dr. Carmen Simon: I remember receiving the invitation from Rick and joining and immediately feeling like I'm part of a special group. And through the years, there are some memories that are highly vivid. And I enjoy talking about memories because from a cognitive neuroscience perspective, memory really is associated with what we do.

It's not a presentation. I'll let people remember it. Rick, do you remember us switching, playing a little bit of tennis right before one of the, one of the sessions?

Rick Altman: I sure do.

Dr. Carmen Simon: I was wearing my high heels. Yeah. High heel, high heel tennis is a special kind of tennis. Oh yeah. Made it, made it happen. And then Mike, do you remember wearing a boa in one of the exercises that we did?

Because one of the presentations I was talking about was [00:05:00] related to, um, the art of seduction. Because everything that we do is actually seduction, politics is seduction. Yes. Religion is seduction. Presentations are pure seduction. So Rick and Mike, thank you for the memories. It

Rick Altman: was 2012 in Scottsdale, and Carmen and I reenacted how we came upon the topic because about a year prior, we were on the tennis court.

We were just up at the net, just hitting softly, warming up. And we're talking about ideas and she says, well, I think we should talk about seduction and I think I whiffed at the, at that point. I mean, I thought, well, of all the creative ideas to give a keynote at our conference, seduction. And so, uh, yes, I made Carmen come on stage in her high heels and we were.

Just sort of rallying back and forth, talking about this, and I think I then hit the ball into the crowd when you mentioned Sipoption. [00:06:00] And then Mike was one of the, uh, what, seducees or seducers? Something like that.

Molly Geoghegan: Talk about a good book you guys. That's memorable for sure.

Mikey Mioduski: Mike, did you get in around that same time, 2012?

What was your first presentation summit?

Mike Parkinson: I'm very bad with kind. Okay. It all blends together for me, but like Carmen says, it's memories. There used to be, Rick, you might know this, there used to be a giant, a rather large presentation conference. It was like it was put on by a magazine. Yeah. It was like, and, and, and I, I remember going to that, dipping my toe into the world of present.

As a designer, I kind of look down on the presentation and I'm guessing Mikey and Molly as a graphic designer, it's not like, Oh, I'm so proud to be a presentation designer. No, no, no, no, no. It was like. Sorry, I'm a reason to, so I remember going to these conferences and I had a really good time and I thought there was a lot of there there and it had some maturing to do and I had a lot of maturing to do flash [00:07:00] forward.

My wife said, Oh, by the way, I stumbled upon this thing called presentation summit. Is that something you'd like you'd be interested in going to? And I said, yes, because I missed that old conference and we went completely different vibe. Much different. I mean, it would, it felt like, it felt like you instantly got into a warm bath with all of your friends.

That's wrong. Yeah. I'm going to change that metaphor, but it sounds, it feels like you got into, it just felt comfortable as soon as you got there. Wow, talk about going right from seduction to that. I'm sure that played a role in my choice of metaphor. So the experience was, uh, it, it, it felt right immediately.

And then every year after that, my wife and I have been looking forward to going, which kind of makes this year a little bittersweet.

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah, and I don't think we've said officially this is the, Presentation Summit closing year. It's had an amazing run. How many years, Rick?

Rick Altman: Twenty two years. We're [00:08:00] not completely closing down.

Molly Geoghegan: Of course not. No, no, no. There's lots to, there's other ways in which you can, like, cultivate this presentation community for sure. But just to say that if you're listening and this is sounds like something that's interesting to you, you have a chance, so we will be linking where to sign up, repeating it a couple of times.

Repetition, right? Carmen in the show notes.

Rick Altman: This'll be our, our last year hosting the in person conference in its present form. I'm choosing my words carefully.

Molly Geoghegan: I like that. I like that. No, it's definitely a see you later into the next form. And, uh, it's an evolution, a gross. I'm curious, what was some of the, I mean, yeah, Mike, you spoke to it a little bit, like, yeah, learning, getting into the presentation world, being a presentation designer isn't like the sexiest of things, which is why it's interesting you guys chose seduction as a theme at one point, because that's, it is persuasion, truly, but yeah, what were some expectations versus reality going in, going into the first pre [00:09:00] sum, like, expecting kind of, Maybe the same corporate drab situation and versus what you got and what you got out of that for that first summit, especially.

Mike Parkinson: Herman, you want to go first or you want me to go quiet. All right. So, uh, having come from the other conference, my expectations for the quality of what I might learn or the applicability of what I might learn was very low because I remember going to the old conference and they'd say, look, I made something move across the screen.

And I was like, okay, valuable. I'm looking for high end design, pushing the envelope, and I went to Presentation Summit and I had a spectrum of options from which to choose, and I learned quite a bit, and every year I learned what I didn't know I didn't know, which made it even more enlightening. So I'm guessing, Molly, Mikey, this has happened for you.

I devalued the tools. I was like, Oh, they're not, they don't have the same [00:10:00] fidelity that the Adobe suite has. You know, I'm an Adobe guy living in a Microsoft world kind of vibe. And now I realize, no, the Microsoft ecosystem is actually pretty powerful. And it's just a tool. Just like saying, Oh, I'm an expert designer because I use Photoshop.

Well, that doesn't work that way. So independent of the tool, it's understanding how best to use the tool to achieve the goal. And I think someone said, I think it's someone at Microsoft said, just remember PowerPoint, for example, it could be Google slides could be keynote. Um, PowerPoint is not a graphics app.

It's a presentation application. That has become the go to graphics app because of its ubiquity and relative ease of upscaling in it compared to the Adobe Suite, for example. So, bottom line is, I walked away with my head blown every time, and every year I go, I learn something new from people who are just brilliant, amazing, and really good at helping me understand, recall, [00:11:00] and adopt these best practices.

Yeah, and, and, and Mike

Rick Altman: just fits into the community so perfectly with, with his energy and his passion. And, uh, so he, the, the conference that he was referencing that he came from was a conference of 2, 000 people. And we were a conference then of 200 people. Uh, in fact, that year that you first came was one of our, one of our bigger years.

We were 215 people. I don't remember anything that I did yesterday, but my memory of conferences is total. Mike, your first year was 2010. Carmen, your first year was 2009.

Molly Geoghegan: Got the receipts.

Rick Altman: Nice. He does. I'm pathetic that way. But yeah, no, I remember when, when. Might felt the energy and brought the energy.

Dr. Carmen Simon: And I agree that you would come for the learning and you stay for the friendships.

So that would make what Mike said and what, uh, what Drake said and, uh, my [00:12:00] expectation too, given the fact that this is a conference about content and messaging and presentations in general, is that people would be more open minded to various, um, techniques and they are. I remember one of the years getting there ahead of time and before the keynote, I stuck some, uh, postcards underneath.

Some chairs, and I asked participants to write on the postcard their address and one main message that they had learned, and I mailed those cards about three years later. Oh, cool.

Molly Geoghegan: No way. You held on to them for three years. I held on to them for three years. That is such a fun presentation trick.

Rick Altman: I don't think I knew that.

That's fantastic. Yes. Cool.

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah. And I, did you get any

Dr. Carmen Simon: feedback or response from that? I did. A few people stayed in touch and they were surprised to, uh, to receive it. A few people had moved from that address. They didn't receive it. But this is what I'm saying. The community is so tight and there are so many strong friendships that [00:13:00] should you ask somebody for their physical address.

In order to do a gesture, they would trust you enough to know that that information is placed on good hands, and it's all for a good purpose. And then the follow up time

Molly Geoghegan: capsule of remembering the takeaway from your presentation a few years ago, that's a, that's a cool flex, definitely. And were you, did you both go officially, uh, at first as, as speakers first, and then attendees, or have you done both?

Each time.

Mike Parkinson: Hank, Kermit, were we both speakers, Rick, the first time?

Rick Altman: Mike, you were a, you were a charter, actually. You ex, you took out exhibit space. Nice. Hey. For the first couple years.

Mike Parkinson: Cool beans.

Rick Altman: Yeah. And, and, and Kermit came as, as the keynote speaker that year. Uh, what was also remarkable about that year was that it was our first year being exposed to Twitter.

We were like learning how to tweet the first time. We actually did a Cliff Atkinson like showed us all how to do that. And, uh, Carmen, I don't recall, I think you [00:14:00] already were exposed to the, to that social media service, but most of us were learning about it for the first time. And we were tweeting out, you know, all the things that you were saying in your keynote.

Oh yeah.

Molly Geoghegan: Talk about an evolution, learning to work with the tools at hand.

Mikey Mioduski: Right. You mentioned Cliff Atkinson. I know Nancy Duarte has been a speaker. you discussed. Yeah. I mean, you were. Early on, Dr. Carmen Simon, who had, since her first keynote there has published two phenomenal books, right? Rick, can you talk about like, that was my other like, expectation reality was, holy cow, there's a ton of content.

You program the heck out of the event, like, wake up at eight, you know, there's, there's stuff going on until like midnight in some cases. And there's multiple tracks, so many speakers, brilliant speakers, out there speakers. What's your, how do you go about finding really good content for this, for the event every year?

Rick Altman: Well, it helps that I only do one of these a year. So I can, all right, so let's continue the [00:15:00] theme here. I can make love to this conference all year long. So like, I'm not cranking these out every month or every quarter. So I begin building the program in March, actually even earlier for the fall event. The other thing I do is I just shamelessly cast people to come speak at my conference, even though I can't possibly afford them.

Now, the people that are in the community, they'd probably come even if I didn't pay them. Yeah. But then I, I find keynote speakers who, you know, are in the 35, a day range and I somehow convinced them that they want to come be part of this community. And every so often they say, yes, like this year, Guy Kawasaki, who's at 95, 000 a day has said, yes, he's going to come.

And the big hook here, well, the small hook was that we were going to buy a copy of his book for [00:16:00] everybody who would attend. The big hook for him is that we're a right oceanside and he has become an avid surfer. He's going to bring his surfboard to our conference. That was enough to get him.

Molly Geoghegan: And do you think.

Like the keeping the community and the scale smaller has has helped build that kind of like fostered that truly nicety and friendship, you know, along that where someone can say yes to a sweet little presentation community by the by the coast instead of like a huge corporate event.

Rick Altman: Yes and no, Molly.

Yes, for sure, the intimacy of the conference is its appeal to the community. It makes it more difficult, though, to attract big fish, because big fish want to swim in big ponds. We are decidedly not one, and I have to be honest about that up front. But generally speaking, yes, I believe this conference has thrived because small [00:17:00] is beautiful, and it has stayed small.

It sort of requires somebody like me, who's not very ambitious, to run this thing.

Molly Geoghegan: But it's part of its branding in your story, too. It's true. It's authentic to what you want from this event.

Mikey Mioduski: So who do you think should come to something like presentation, something like this? What do you expect them to get out of it?

Rick Altman: Well, it can be anybody really who owes their livelihood to better communication in its most general sense, because we, we all, we all need to communicate in public and almost doesn't matter how you define public. If you have a meeting with, with five of your colleagues, you know, you need to prepare for that.

And that's, that qualifies as, as speaking in public and the deck is really stacked against the people who have to do that. Because you, you don't learn about storytelling in school. You can't take Storytelling 1A. We, we all have to design our [00:18:00] presentations. And very few of us have any formal background in design.

We, we're all under trained PowerPoint. And we're scared to death to speak in public. So, I mean, this is like the four pole whammy for people. And, and so we create a tremendous amount of comfort in, A, acknowledging that this, these things are hard. And B, that we're going to support you in all the tenets that make up presentation.

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah. It's more than just PowerPoint tips and tricks. Although there's that too, I know, like the truly tactical piece, but storytelling and just creating good communication, memorable communication is so important and shows up in any industry or place in life in general. So it's more than just PowerPoint or a Google slide nerdery, but exactly that,

Mikey Mioduski: yes.

And yet it is so specific. I think. Mike and Carmen, I'm curious, how did you get into like presentations specifically as, as one of these focal [00:19:00] interests of your professional careers?

Dr. Carmen Simon: Yes. Take us back. And my entry point has been, um, in two ways. One, I was listening to a lot of presentations and when you are the recipient of many, you recognize how often they dissipate from memory.

Confident amnesia from slides that I was in very fast. And, um, I was specializing in memory at the time. So I made that observation. And then the more I was undergoing through this, uh, completion of neuroscience research, I recognized that when you perform any kind of neuroscience experiment, those experiments are very expensive.

And it's a shame to give people who come to those experiments, um, artifacts to view that are subpar already. You want to show up with a high bar, not show people something that is, um, sub optimal and see how the brain reacts. You already, we have so much research already that tells us what happens to the brain on, on that power plane.

So the intersection of those two observations [00:20:00] has been given me this boost of speaking to understand what really creates the brain. Not just any kind of slide, but a memorable slide. It hasn't, uh, it has been fun, but not easy.

Molly Geoghegan: What a cool entry point. Yeah. Truly coming in from like, why do we remember certain things and forget others?

Mike, what about you? How did you find yourself in this presentation space?

Mike Parkinson: Clients would ask me to design orals, they call them in my world, orals, presentations, things like that. And I realized that, uh, the modality is different than the written document. And because of that, there's more nuance to it in my experience and like Carmen, but not anywhere near Carmen's level, behavioral psychology, neuroscience, and how we process this stuff and make decisions was a huge, not driver, but definitely something I was very interested in because.

In my world as a designer, there's a lot [00:21:00] of bias and subjectivity. And as I learned from people smarter than me, I realized that we can. Find more of an objective, agreeable place that avoids, I'll know it when I see it situations or I know it when I hear it. And I went to people like Carmen and, and learn from her, like what makes that, how can we come to an objective agreement that this is where we want to go and these are the pragmatic process based steps that we can test along the way to get there.

In Orals and Presentations, it's a cornucopia of options and the science behind it, it, it's, it's spectacular. It really is, I mean, reading Carmen's books is just mind blowingly enlightening. It's, it changed my life. There are certain books that I read. Another book, Carmen's latest book, which is, uh, Made You Look.

That is a fantastic book. [00:22:00] And, uh, another book that changed my life was, um, a book called Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. And these books became, Carmen's books and other, uh, books became the foundation that I've been building upon. To learn more about how to do this in a way that you can't guarantee, but gets us closer to a guarantee of success.

And these best practices are woven into everything that we're learning at Presentation Summit. We're getting these amazing, brilliant people sharing their real world experience and expertise. And it, and it just keeps doing this every year.

Molly Geoghegan: Like, going that deeper level, would you say that, like, that's made you or changed the way that you design as well?

Kind of the holistic story and science. Yeah. Two thumbs up and the zoo fireworks.

Mike Parkinson: Absolutely.

Molly Geoghegan: That cliff. Now

Mikey Mioduski: that's great. Can we, okay. So [00:23:00] everyone here has helped clients with their own presentations, make them better day after day after day. Now we know how meta the, the meta pressure of going to a presentation conference to present about better presentations.

Now you're up on the stage yourself. What is that? Like, can you talk to us about the mentality and like how that might be different and potentially a different weight or a different approach?

Rick Altman: Okay, but before we do, I think that you guys have to ask me the same question. Yes. Oh, we want it all. Because it is, it will be absolutely hysterical for me to answer the question how I got into presentation after Mike.

Yeah. His colloquy.

Dr. Carmen Simon: Oh, let's hear it. Let's narrate it.

Rick Altman: Let's do it, right? Because I wasn't good enough to play tennis for a living. You've said

Molly Geoghegan: that, I love that line.

Rick Altman: Yeah. Yeah. I, if I could have, if I could have played on the professional tour, then that would have been my plan A. [00:24:00] And from deficient tennis player to tennis journalist.

To technology reporter to desktop publishing early adopter, because yes, I am that old to digital graphics and then to presentation. It was long and winding road that hadn't really nothing to do with anything.

Molly Geoghegan: But, you know, we would have, we wouldn't have met each other any other way and, you know, improve the lives of presenters and storytellers.

Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski: Yeah. And then Rick, you wrote a book as well, right? I think that's why, I think that's one of your. Sort of recurring presentations at presentation summit is, is it death by PowerPoint?

Rick Altman: Well, it's, it's, it's even more jocular than that. Why PowerPoint presentations suck. Yeah, that's right. So, I mean, again, you know, it's about as anti intellectual as you can get.

Mikey Mioduski: Got to punch them in the face. It's what everyone wants to say.

Molly Geoghegan: And I know we got more into this when we last talked to it, but like your journey from, yeah, [00:25:00] like Coral world and seeing the development of these tools and these platforms, With Microsoft become what they are now, which are like incredibly capable of, yeah, create like graphics, animations,

Music: and,

Molly Geoghegan: and of course, adding all of that into the presentation format has been really cool to, to witness.

And you have so much to share with that. It's not so hysterical, you know, next to these two as well as you think

Rick Altman: you're right. I mean, it's it's fun to make fun of it But yeah, you know those tools Those tools are hard. Hmm. I mean I I did Corel world for many years because learning about digital graphics Like, like, you know, like, like Photoshop and Illustrator, those, those programs are really hard to learn.

You really need a lot of help with that. I don't think that's the case with PowerPoint, where the skill set is, is really quite a mediocre commodity, as I like to say. And [00:26:00] yet we struggle so much with the entire discipline that, that, that's what makes it unique. I think, I think is that, is that it's not just a tool.

You know, you can go buy a hammer from a store, you can go pick whatever, uh, slide making program you want, in many cases that, that, there's really not a lot of difference between them. I've seen my, my daughter use Google Slides now for years and she's quite competent with it. They're, they're just hammers.

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah. And

Rick Altman: that's a good distinction. That's what makes this so fascinating, is the world of presentation, is that its challenges run so much deeper than, than just, oh, I'm going to learn a piece of software.

Molly Geoghegan: Mm hmm. Mike, what do you think of, yeah, Mikey's question there of, you know, what's it like to sit on all sides of the present, presenting coin, if you will?

Mike Parkinson: It's terrifying. So when, when someone asks me to present, I speak at a few conferences, uh, frequently. One was L& D, so [00:27:00] learning and development. So I'm training the trainer. So you've got someone that teaches other people how to do something. So in Rick's conference, for example, and it is now Rick's conference, it is now officially yours.

And in presentation summit, I'm going up in front of people that are way more knowledgeable about certain things. In the world of presentation design to oversimplify what the conference is about, way more knowledgeable about things than I probably ever will be. How dare I get up there and say, well, I know, and I, I realized that's not what we're doing when we're speaking.

We're saying, look, I know this tiny little sliver of information and I think it's going to help you and I'm going to share it in a way that I hope You will recall, thanks to Carmen's excellent techniques. So then we do that and that, and, and, and that gets me over the fear. And then of course you go to the conference.

[00:28:00] Everybody is, so they want to see you succeed and we just, everybody helps each other. Mikey or Molly, have you given a presentation at Presentation Summit yet?

Mikey Mioduski: I

Mike Parkinson: have not. Steve Sheets and our team

Mikey Mioduski: has, and you know, we're there encouraging him. Our technical director.

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski: And however,

Rick Altman: however, Mikey was a judge in the trivia contest.

Yeah, thank you, Rick. Oh,

Molly Geoghegan: yeah. Important role there. Yeah, I appreciate that. Just 15

Mikey Mioduski: minutes of fame. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Absolutely. But Mike, I do recall your, I don't know the title of it, but it was, you talked about graphics, iconography on the keynote stage. More recently, and I just remember you had a really compelling, like a video montage where you were walking through an airport, international airport, maybe?

I remember that. And you, like, you pointed out, after just maybe a minute or two of footage, you're like, it was very interactive, it was cool. You're like, can anyone tell me, like, how many icons or graphics you saw, like, [00:29:00] just in that 60 minute, 60 second clip? And it was some crazy number, I want to say like 116 it was hundreds.

Yeah, right? And, uh, I think it blew everybody's mind. It did. And certainly mine, but just sort of that, you know, kind of flipped it into that we're at the age of at a glance. And, you know, it can transcend language, all this. And it was, you bring the energy, I loved it, and, uh, I think it really stuck with me.

And Mikey, you nailed

Mike Parkinson: it. It was called At A Glance. Okay, boom. There you go, boom. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan: Thank God for that little airplane symbol on highways, you know, just in case you're going on the wrong exit. That's, that's an important icon. Absolutely. And Carmen, what do you think of like, how has your perspective shifted?

Both being the presenter, creating presentations, helping people create presentations. And then, you know, sitting in front of presentations as well.

Dr. Carmen Simon: Since I focus on memory and I advocate that people will forget about 90%, sometimes even more unfortunately, after 48 hours. Then we better have a strong 10 percent message.

And then I [00:30:00] have to practice what I preach and congratulations to Mike, because it sounds like it'd been many years and Mike, he still remembers some of your, your main messages. That's the best compliment that you can get after putting effort into, into a presentation. In fact, for those who only design presentations, I would say, take on the challenge to deliver one, because quite often.

The quality, not as high when somebody does a design and somebody else does a delivery because people are not humbled enough by what it takes to be up there in front of an audience. And now I have a strong hook and now I have a strong low, have some sort of a persuasive and deductive sequence. Um, now I have a hot ending that leaves people remembering what they're supposed to be remembering years later.

That takes a lot of humility in the moment that you put yourself in that position, you'll never design a presentation the same way again.

Mikey Mioduski: Carmen, do you design your own slides? Cause yours are always highly [00:31:00] gorgeous as well.

Dr. Carmen Simon: Thank you. Thank you. I am lucky that I have a talented team of designers, but what the hardship is, Now that I've noticed in my experiences, it's not the final design is first having something good to say, and that sometimes takes months, sometimes take years to come up to, to something that is now worthy of a slight design.

Not everything that crosses our mind is worthy of visualization, but every so often you might be blessed. With that, uh, that big idea. And then if you have a skill designer, they will bring it to life. But I'm noticing more and more, especially recently, since we have access to so much stimulation and obviously AI is upon us that media rich doesn't mean content rich.

So as you would attend an event like the presentation summit, you will constantly be reminded that, [00:32:00] uh, the message. It is important. And, uh, the people that you're presenting the message to are important. So quite often it's present people for his presentation. Second, I

Mikey Mioduski: do remember your second year that we saw you distinctly.

Remember, and Molly, you'll love this. Cause you and I talked so much about the hook. And a strong ending and Carmen, one of her main points was about like rescuing the middle. I think that was something along those lines where it's like, don't, don't sleep on that. And you got to hammer the repetition and there's got to be a, like a big idea coming

Rick Altman: through.

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah. It's the marrow.

Rick Altman: Carmen's Carmen's work demands amplification here. Uh, her keynotes are the highest production value that we ever see. I don't think I have ever seen her repeat a slide, you know, and I'm like a one trick pony. You know, I just, I just brought out the same thing over and over again, which is sort of my job.

I mean, I do the meat and potatoes [00:33:00] of our curriculum. I do this stuff that needs to be done every year because we get a lot of first timers and we do need, and we need to make sure that we're, that we're doing four principles. So that's sort of my job so that then people like Carmen and my case shine and you just never seen slides that are the hot, the quality of Carmen's and even ones that are, that are designed to be simple.

Are just brilliant. And there's one in particular and Carmen, I'm going to need your help in recalling exactly this, but you were talking about about life cycles and you, you wanted to sort of say, you know, this is how people live their lives. And there were three images, one of, of birth, one of death, and then something in the middle that was just this crazy collection of lines and [00:34:00] circles and stuff with a big WTF written on it.

That was life. You're born, WTF, and you die. And I just thought it was one of the most brilliant things I'd ever seen. That is funny. What is that?

Dr. Carmen Simon: I love the fact that you still remember that, uh, that years, years later. It's, uh, it's giving me great hope for anyone who is creating presentations, delivering presentations, ideally attending your event.

Because you see, that's the income that you can have. If you put some thought into something and then you get some help visualizing it, And then you're standing there sharing it with people. What the, what a beautiful way to, uh, to spend some time. There's potential where you can be at point A and something is happening in your mind, and then you can be later on assured that at point B, somebody else has taken whatever you have feeded and it's still on now on their mind.

Of course, that comes with that humility, that the brain that creates [00:35:00] presentations is not the same brain that receives a presentation. So sometimes the more humble we are about that distance and what we can do to make that distance a little bit shorter. Then that perhaps is one of the things that you could learn at the summit as well.

Rick Altman: Carmen might be the most thoughtful person who has ever spoken at the conference. She is also one of the most articulate people, even though, and I, I always forget if it's third or fourth. English is her third, fourth language. Which one is it?

Dr. Carmen Simon: Well, there are, there are a few in there and I'm spoiled because I am originally from Romania and, uh, Romanian is one of the five romance languages.

And once you have the foundation of one of those, then you can speak a few others and dabbling them. So yeah, you speak Romanian,

Rick Altman: French, and Italian, all more fluently than English. So English is fourth. And she is always the most articulate person in that language in our ballrooms. [00:36:00]

Dr. Carmen Simon: Aw, you're a sweetheart.

I think one of the reasons why we get so close to language, and that too you'll notice in the summit as well, is that words are part of that seduction that you're talking about. And when you recognize that English, unlike any other language on the planet has such a large vocabulary, million words is what we have to play with.

Of course, many of those words come from the world of technology, but there are so many layers and so many nuances to words in the English language that should you choose to get close to them and, uh, be more inquisitive about linguistics in Excel already, that gives you an extra weapon. And in addition to graphics in order to become persuasive.

Mike Parkinson: See, I raised my case.

Molly Geoghegan: Yeah. Linguistics is not so far from holistic storytelling and memory and yeah, delivery. Certainly. Carmen, I just wanted to say I loved your verbiage of uh, someone being humbled enough to dabble with, you know, a few design presentations.

Music: Yeah,

Molly Geoghegan: [00:37:00] right. Dare, dare to be humbled enough to try it out and to toot Mikey and Ghost Ranch's horn.

We recently had our internal story camp. Where everyone goes and, you know, spend some in person time together, right? A lot of the presentation designers stepped up and created a quick lightning talk, like just a few minutes about anything, really. And it was really fun to see how the designers shifted into presenter mode with like their, you know, pizzazz and personality.

And Rick, that example of like, birth, WTF to death, like, I think one of the most common mistakes I've seen and then be debunked having, you know, been in this position for a couple of years is it can be so much simpler, like icons communicate so much. Images communicate so much, like, and it also can be funny, where it's like, this is, we all are thinking this, you know, it's like the middle of life WTF, and that's gonna resonate quicker than you being like, we all forget about the middle of our life, like, you know, writing that sentence out, right, so it's like how to visually, it can often be so simple where, you know, I'm a narrative strategist, I'm not a designer, [00:38:00] but I could put together those images of, you know, scribbles in the middle or something, right, so.

Right. Just want to encourage people to think simpler.

Dr. Carmen Simon: It is a balance because the more I investigate the brain, the more I'm recognizing that actually we synchronize better with that, which is complex versus that, which is simple or say appreciate simplicity because given the choice to think or not to think, what do we prefer?

So the brain needs a balance of both because you need to reach some conclusions and conclusions by their nature are simple, but something that is missing is the reception behind those conclusions and the more you help the brain become mobilized by specifics. So show us the story, show us the example, show us the anecdote.

And it's because of those that we then remember a conclusion that we're having simple. So we need the complexity in order to appreciate the simplicity behind the message.

Mikey Mioduski: Amazing how everything kind of ebbs and flows, right? If you know, it used to be so dense and then it went toward like, Oh, let's do Steve Jobs presentations.

And then look, you know, it's not [00:39:00] always just one or the other. I love that you're thinking about complexity, bringing it. You know, everything has a, has a place, I'm sure we have some good brain power here, just like looking ahead, right? Where Mike, like Rick, Carmen, where do you think presentations or presentation design itself is going?

A lot of change in the last year too, right?

Rick Altman: But

Mikey Mioduski: you know,

Rick Altman: what's in store for

Mikey Mioduski: us?

Rick Altman: Well, let's answer that question by asking Carmen what she's going to speak about at this year's conference.

Dr. Carmen Simon: Well, sneak preview, I think, Rick, when you and I were brainstorming on the topic, of course, AI had to come in, in discussion and, uh, the topic will be more related to, or in AI competent enough to coach some of these skills.

So we'll see what the answer is there. And, uh, what I wonder where the future will be is in terms of the impact of AI on design. I just finished, uh, my latest neuroscience research has been about asking you that, with that question. [00:40:00] So, uh, group one saw a fails presentation that was designed by human designers.

Group two saw a presentation that had a mid journey, like Imogen included in it. Both the first groups were delivered by a human presenter. And then I wanted to punch it up a little bit more. So group three saw a presentation that was an AI design presentation and also an AI delivered presentation. Oh, interesting.

Which, which do you think did better? And by better, I mean the variables that I typically monitor are attention. Cognitive workload, fatigue during the session, motivation to keep going. Those are on the cognitive side and on the affective side, I measure vagueness, meaning how much people enjoyed the presentation and the arousal, meaning how alert and awake people were during that presentation.

Rick Altman: Oh my gosh. It has to be. I'm so nervous. This is just quintessential karma.

Molly Geoghegan: It has to be the AI created and not delivered.

Rick Altman: Come on, human.

Dr. Carmen Simon: I [00:41:00] was on the fence. I was on the fence because usually you have to, to have a hypothesis before you start the study. Otherwise you don't have one. It's like anything that you show is like, Oh, I, I knew this.

My hypothesis was similar to a, to you, Molly, in the sense that I'm seeing all of these mid journey, like, um, Graphics and mid journey is not the only tool. There are quite a few out there. We chose mid journey just because at the time. And I say at the time, as if it was years ago, this was about three months ago, things are advancing so much, but at the time the journey was, uh, was very popular and I thought because of their novelty, because of their sharpness, because of their vividness, then surely that would impact the brain a little bit more, but, uh, no, here's to all of the human designers out there up to the presentation summit, they can sharpen up your skills even more because you're still in business.

In fact, here are all the advantages of human design. We showed that, uh, there was a better motivation to keep going with the stimulus. We showed that there was more attention both across time [00:42:00] and to a physical location in terms of the human design versus AI. We showed that there was a higher Eureka effect when people are looking at the human design presentation and keeping in mind, the content was exactly the same.

So we've been in show like different presentations and overall we showed stronger memory after 48 hours from the human design presentation. So I was wondering about the memory piece as you're talking about the future. Oh, we have to anticipate what will happen eventually to the AI design for now, humans are going strong for now, perhaps.

It's because the human design graphics have a stronger emotion. They're more relatable. There are a few criteria that I have concreted on, but surely AI is not going to stay silent for too long or impotent for too long. So we just have to keep on sharpening our own human skills so that we can be colleagues to these AI tools that will keep advancing.

Mike Parkinson: Oh, first of all, Carmen, I love the fact that you said AI is colleagues. Did you use that word? So I was just at another [00:43:00] conference and the keynote was from a AI thought leader. She just published a book and, uh, I am, I used to always advocate that AI is going to be a tool that's going to change our industry.

And she changed my point of view. And now I believe that AI should be seen as an other. What I mean is, is that it is more than a tool. It's not going to replace human beings in the way that we feared anytime soon, unless it starts having emotions, in which case the main point of AI is to get it to become sentient.

I'm oversimplifying what AI is, but the goal of creating and advancing AI. Is that it's artificial generative intelligence. It's just, it's just figuring things out and it's smart. So knowing that it's not in my opinion, design that causes presentations to fail. It's the stuff that Carmen's doing. It's the stuff that is what's your hook?

What's your story? Give me a reason to care. Help me recall, uh, Nancy Dworky stuff with different beats. [00:44:00] All those techniques are something that. Because when someone approaches their presentation, they're usually gonna focus on the thing that they're best at. I'm a good writer, so I'm gonna write a lot of stuff on my slide.

Or I'm a good designer, I'm gonna design an amazing slide. And what I think AI will do is be the other people with other skill sets that are there to help you. The, the metaphor she used was that think of AI as a, uh, drunk intern. That they are always eager to help, but they will make some really egregious errors sometimes.

That's okay. So, I think the future of, uh, presentations and presentation design is going to heavily involve, uh, augmenting with AI.

Molly Geoghegan: I love those perspectives. Thank you.

Mike Parkinson: How,

Mikey Mioduski: how about the future of presentation summit? You kind of. alluded to a new approach.

Rick Altman: So I have been hosting conferences since 1989.

That was the year that Becky and I got married. Uh, so my wife, Becky has only known [00:45:00] of the somewhat Oppressive scheduling that makes it impossible for us to vacation in the fall. This gigantic rock in the river that like takes over October every year. So they're, they're just some things that I'm ready to be done with.

And that's one of them. I don't really fancy any longer making a order of a million dollar commitment to a Hotel that doesn't really have my best interests. Oh, yeah Uh a summer time full of stress wondering if anybody's gonna show up Uh, I I just uh shared this in another podcast that you know We all have the nightmare of walking into the final, uh, and we haven't opened the book, you know Well, for me, it's that it's the day before the conference and nobody's signed it up.

So I'm, I'm, I'm just ready to be done with those things. I am not ready to be done with the community. I'm not ready to be [00:46:00] done with the high touch value of us all coming together like this. I'm also pleasantly surprised that the virtual conference is so much more engaging than I thought it would be.

And I really enjoy doing that. It will never approach the, uh, the, the, the, the feeling of being in person. But we, I believe we actually exceed people's expectations by a larger margin on virtual. And that is enormously satisfying. And it doesn't come with any of that other stuff, the hotel commitments and the stress and all of that.

So we're going to continue to make people's heads explode by, by teaching them incredible things on virtual. And we will have other ways of congregating in person. That's going to start with a cruise actually in February of this coming year that Mike's already signed up for. Nice Mike. And, uh, it's called the summit cruise.

It's branded this way. And this is actually the [00:47:00] second one we've done. And next fall. I want to hold an unconference. Do any of you know what that means? Molly's nodding her head no. Does it mean you don't

Mikey Mioduski: have to put 250 K down for Yes. No house? Okay. Other

Rick Altman: things? Good. And, and so in fact, Carmen and I have actually been to one, I think I had remind you of this.

So we were in San Francisco one day. We attended, I think they called it Bar Camp. And I don't know where that, that, that phrase came from. But it was this very organic collection of people that came together for a very organic day where the first thing that we did was we decided what we wanted to talk about.

So it's an unconference. It's not organized the same way, but the same free exchange of ideas, the same wonderful spirit. And, and, and feeling of giving and just being, uh, among these people have all become BFF. So I, I, I, uh, I have very, um, [00:48:00] strong desire to continue the community. And I think we can do it in a way where people can still feel like they're going to get something out of it.

Yeah, but I'm going to be delivered from all those things that I said. I'm now too old to do

Molly Geoghegan: different format. Yeah. And with that, thank you, Rick. We are, I think you're in the spice cabinet, Mikey. We'll add these, you know, go to better presenting. com. Carmen, before we leave you, what is your, we have to ask everyone on the podcast.

What is your walkout song that you next time you're coming up to a key keynote? What do you, what song do you want playing? If you've ever, or if you've ever had one playing, what has it been? Oh,

Dr. Carmen Simon: there's a song that I just got introduced to recently. And it's only because, um, I'm a fan of, uh, jump roping.

And this woman was jump roping to this German song that is called abracadabra. Have you guys heard it? Oh,

Music: yeah. Oh, I love that.

Dr. Carmen Simon: I think those two who are singing it are just the perfect, uh, Representation of what a good presentation could [00:49:00] be.

Mikey Mioduski: All right, Dr. Simon, have a great time playing tennis. Good luck at that presentation summit.

Love you.

Molly Geoghegan: Thank you. See you. See you soon. Love you. And Mike, I know something else we love talking about in the spice cabinet. You've dropped a few names for us earlier. I wrote them down. Of course, we've got Carmen's most recent book made you look, you also had predictably irrational. I will link that. Any other favorite podcasts, resources, or speakers that you like to follow for inspiration to recommend?

Mike Parkinson: Well, Good Lord, uh, Presentation Podcast. Big fan of them. Uh, they have a wonderful podcast. Uh, any book, Echo Swinford, Julie Terberg, I mean, they, their book about PowerPoint templates is Through the Roof. Because I'm on the spot, I'm drawing a blank. I know that Steffi, Who is, uh, one of the staples of the conference is coming out with a new book soon, and, uh, I'm doing the foreword, and I just read it, and it is by far, hands down, one of the most accessible books for [00:50:00] designers I've ever heard, but what she does is it says Are you used to this and put some kind of Adobe ui?

Well, here's how you do it in PowerPoint. Ooh,

Music: uh, wow. Cool. That's that's awesome. Very

Mike Parkinson: graphical, amazing Steffi's book I is is, is going to be in Incre. It is incredible. 'cause I saw it here. I'll tell you what it's called. It's called a Reluctant Designer's Field Guide to PowerPoint. Awesome. So that is, that is a book coming out.

Steffi Hogan. Steffi Hogan. Steffi Hogan. I'm so sorry. Yes. So many. I know Nolan Haymes, uh, uh, Richard Goering, I'm, I'm drawing a blank on so many people. Troy Collar. Yep. Uh, his wife, Lori. I mean, all of these people give and share so much incredible, helpful information. And of course, Rick. I remember reading Rick's book back in the day, Power, what, what is it, was it PowerPoint?

How did, how did PowerPoint

Molly Geoghegan: