Franchu’s lair

I am always surprised each time I read an article that talks about someone and describing him as THE source of knowledge in a certain field I am interested in.

Most of the times what surprises me the most is that it is the first time I have seen that name! Not that I should know every person, but if it is a field I am interested in, at least I try to know who should be my guiding lights and whose ideas I should follow to forge my own opinions and expectations.

This was the feeling when a good friend of mine sent me a video on Public Relations by a guy called Seth Godin. It is incredible how this 48 minutes video of his speech for Google’s top marketing manager can change your perception on public relations and marketing.

As a telecommunication engineer (or more precisely… a soon to be telecommunication engineer), my background is purely technical. Nothing on marketing, nothing about public relations, nothing! I have been reading and learning about these topics on my own for some years now, but had never found someone that could explain so much and so well in such a short time. A really pleasant surprise indeed.

Just a few days ago I found an article on Slashdot about a guy called Edward Tufte. As in the previous example, I had never heard about him. After researching a bit more I found out that he is a renowned expert in the presentation of informational graphics. That is how to enhance the effectiveness and value of the information communicated visually.

One particular thing that has surprised me about his work is his views on powerpoint presentations. It seems that lately if you have to give a presentation and you have not preparated some slides, you have not prepared your presentation or you have nothing worth to say. In the corporate world you are no one if you don’t have a fancy slideshow full of bullets and texts that you just read aloud in front of your audience.

Nevertheless, in all the trainings I have attended on presentations I have been told that you should not read the slides and that the contents should support your dissertation, not substitute it. I am very happy to see that an expert shares those views and gives some more tips, like… do not use bullets!

From now on, in my presentations I don’t know if I will manage to scape the bullets, but for sure I will not write text that will be just read aloud. If you have never tried, I can tell you that it is worth the experience. You will notice that people are actually listening to you if you are talking about the important things that are not in the slides, because if you write everything down they will just read and ignore you completely.

And last but not least I feel compelled to add to this list of people Jakob Nielsen. I read about him for the first time two years ago, but his views in web usability had the same effect on me as the afore mentioned persons. He was bringing new points of view and approaches to usability that would have never come to my mind.

The common word that defines these three persons is that they are called gurus of their fields. For me the term guru is a criptic buzzword that just brings more charm to what I would describe as brainy people capable of speaking up what common sense would dictate.

If you think about their recommendations they make sense because it is what common sense would say… only thing is that you have to realise it and say it aloud for others to see it clear. If they want to call gurus to people who are able to do it, I am fine as long as they keep providing me with food for thoughts.

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