Pleasanton lost one of its most popular business and community leaders on Friday, Jan 20, when Roy Dronkers surrendered to clinical depression and took his life. We now strive to look past how he died in order to celebrate how he lived. Here are my thoughts from our friendship.

It will be easy for me to remember Roy Dronkers in the way that he deserves. He and I shared many passions, and our common love for tennis stands as one of the more profound statement of Roy’s character. There we were on court one afternoon, as he struggled to find his groundstroking rhythm.

Enjoying one of his many passions

“You know,” I said, “if you rotate your grip just about a quarter-inch, you’ll be able to hit with more force and more accuracy.”

Roy lived for hidden treasures and little nuggets of information that he could run with, so he wasted not a moment in trying it. Well, you would have thought that he had been transported to Centre Court Wimbledon, as he took delight in sweeping up the back of the ball and smashing forehand after forehand. I have never seen a grown man as giddy as he that afternoon. All from a quarter-inch turn on the racket handle.

It will be easy for me to remember Roy. He simply couldn’t get enough of people. I remember being invited to spend an afternoon on a yacht he rented. I can remember neither the occasion nor the purpose, but I recall vividly thinking how impossible it should have been to fit that number of people onto one boat.

I remember when he rented out a movie theater for the holidays. I can’t remember what we watched, but my vision is indelible of Roy shaking the hand of every person who entered.

And then there was the awards ceremony for a society that he personally established. Again, I have long since forgotten what the society stood for, but I remember Roy, microphone in hand, thanking everyone for attending.

With son Jeffrey

Roy embodies that wonderful quote from Maya Angelou: “I might not remember what you said, but I will never forget how you made me feel.”

It will be easy for me to remember Roy, thanks to our quarterly lunches, which would always leave me dizzy. How can anyone ask 10 questions in 30 seconds…about how Microsoft Outlook handles blind CC? His zeal for self-renewal was boundless…

…let me show you my new smartphone

…what do you think of this idea for a marketing support group

and yes, let me tell you about my new real estate agency.

He had the attention span of a five-year-old, and I would tell him so often. In response, he would invariably flash that grin that was about twice the size of yours or mine (which seemed normal because his head was about twice the size too).

Something magical would happen at those lunches. With his world going a mile a minute, with 50 things happening around him, with most of our lunches having to survive two or three reschedules before taking place, there was magic when we sat down at the table.

He could make time stop.

For that hour, I was the only person that mattered to him. I had his complete attention. I became the most prominent person in his orbit.

That is an extraordinary gift. That is a gift that I will remember for the rest of my time here on Earth. Time on Earth that Roy has helped me realize can be quite precious.

To an audience, there are few things more powerful than a presenter who offers a true apology. Showing that level of humanity, sincerity, and vulnerability is difficult to do and proves endearing on many levels. So let’s talk about what qualifies as a sincere-sounding apology.

If you include “I’m sorry” in a sentence, there is no guarantee that it will be interpreted as an apology, and in fact, the exact opposite effect is in play. Take these examples:

“I’m sorry that you feel this way…”

“I’m sorry that you took offense…”

“If my advice upsets you, well, I’m sorry…”

These are unfortunate word choices that could backfire. In the first case, you are not taking responsibility for making the person feel that way; you’re only expressing dismay that he or she does. In the second example, you are allowing for the suggestion that the person is wrong to have taken offense, and the third example sounds downright defensive. All three of these statements could make a situation worse, not better.

Being sorry is really a mediocre commodity. It could be thrown into dozens of phrases, in which it loses all resemblance to contrition. One of my standard lines when discussing people’s expectation of PowerPoint is: “Sorry, but it doesn’t work that way.” This phrase does not get me into trouble because nobody interprets it as an actual apology. The “well sorrrrree” remark is universally interpreted as sarcasm. And that’s precisely the point: being “sorry” is really not worth much.

It is far more difficult to misuse the words “I apologize” or “forgive me” and therefore they carry more weight.

“I apologize for making you feel that way.”

“I apologize for any offense taken.”

“Please forgive me for that upsetting advice.”

What a difference! These sentences acknowledge accountability — they show you know that your actions or words made something bad happen. They deal with real pain and real awareness. They are more genuine and more impactful.

To strengthen my argument here, I look to a portion of my audience for whom this advice is implausible. I have clients who work for city governments, planning commissions, public utilities, and in political arenas. For many of them, the public apology could be politicized and used against them. This is why you often hear the watered-down phrase of “regret.”

“We regret the actions that caused the local grocery to close down.”

“We regret that 50 people lost their jobs.”

If you regret something, it could mean little more than that you wish it hadn’t happened (definition: to feel sad, repentant, or disappointed over). Don’t use language like that unless you are blatantly dancing around an apology. The fact that issuing an apology could get politicians into trouble is exactly why I want you to use it when warranted. It is real, it is raw, it is powerful.

The next time you have to offer up a mea culpa, don’t just be sorry. Apologize!

As a professional observer of the craft, I admit to feeling a bit cheated. But not because I will never be able to witness him in action again; I feel cheated because I will not be able to watch him realize his potential. Indeed, I believe Steve Jobs was only half as good as he could have been and I believe he was about to find that other half.

Why was Jobs such a great speaker? It’s a bit easier to answer that if you start with the end result: he compelled audiences to feel the weight of his message. He made people around him feel better about themselves, and he inspired others to look beyond their own perspective. He did all this with an impossible-to-imagine ease of accomplishment that defies explanation. This made him fascinating beyond proportion.

What I find equally fascinating about the man is the qualities of great public speaking that he did not exhibit. If you were to add up all of the reasons why he was effective, compile lists of his qualities, there would be one that is conspicuously absent:

Himself.

He gave very little of himself. As wonderful as they were, his product announcements and state-of-the-technology addresses were consistently devoid of personal glimpses. It is clear that he worked very hard at them, that he practiced diligently, that he mastered the craft, and that he dedicated untold effort to this mastery. But you would not come away from them with any heightened sense of knowing better the man. He almost never made his speeches personal; he almost never let you in.

Those who knew or studied Jobs would attest to his being intensely private. Most of us learned more about his personal life in the five days since his passing than in the previous three decades. His having been an orphan, his having fathered a child prior to his marriage to Laurene Powell, his having dated Joan Baez. While these personal factoids were not closely guarded, neither were they well known. With few exceptions, Steve himself offered none of them. I always wondered how amazing it would have been if he had.

I chalked it up to the crafted facade of the CEO of arguably the most enigmatic corporation in the world. I really wanted to believe that it was calculated, that the Jobs mystique would make product launches, and the products themselves, all the more tantalizing. And as a result, a part of me actually looked forward to his resignation. As is so often the case, once people are out of the game, they tend to let a bit more of their hair down. They open up more, they share more, they are more honest with and about themselves. I was so looking forward to Jobs’ first public appearance post-resignation. I had it in mind that it would be a true coming out, that he would make it more about himself.

Were that to have happened, I believe his speeches would have become even more powerful. Is that even possible? That’s the scary thing — I think Steve Jobs could have been twice as effective as he was. Imagine all of the personal stories he could have shared about his time with Apple, about those heady early days, about creating all of that insane greatness. All of the things that he never allowed in his product demos and MacWorld keynotes.

It is the exception that proves the rule: watch this under-the-radar speech he gave for 2005 Commencement from Stanford University. It is more formal than his keynotes, as he stands behind a podium and reads from a script. But focus on the substance — listen to how he weaves his personal stories into his message. And imagine if he had done that at MacWorld all those years.

It’s almost scary to imagine how impactful his speeches could have been. And I feel cheated that we will never know.

YIN: Julie Terberg returns for her incredible makeover sessions, creating something wonderful from something…less than wonderful.
YANG: Sandra Johnson shows how to create complex shapes in PowerPoint, creating something from nothing.

YIN: Connie Malamed returns to discuss the significance and impact of visual communication.
YANG: Nick Morgan makes his debut to expose the hidden communication, the so-called “second conversation.”

YIN: Wayne Michael wants to talk to you about freshman orientation.
YANG: Nigel Holmes wants to talk to you about hot dogs and helium balloons.

YIN: Olivia Mitchell flies in from New Zealand to show you how to create a presentation in one hour.
YANG: Ric Bretschneider wants to show you how to give a presentation in six minutes and 40 seconds.

YIN: Ric will also go until nearly midnight in his traditional Guru session Monday night.
YANG: Garr Reynolds will start his keynote address right about then, from his home in Osaka Japan.

YIN: Troy Chollar will show you how to design for wide screens and large impacts.
YANG: Dave Paradi will show you how to reduce your environmental footprint.

YIN: You’ll learn amazing amounts all day long.
YANG: We’ll go out for amazing evenings in downtown Austin, including a fully-hosted private reception on the ultra-happening Sixth Street Tuesday night.

All of the components that have made our conference famous will be in place: The ever-accommodating Help Center, for free, drop-in technical support; the flexible scheduling that allows you to pick and choose seminars as you go; the delicious meals; and perhaps above all, the friendly and intimate atmosphere that we create for the presentation community, facilitating true relationship-building and bonding — unmatched at any other business conference you will attend.

We have about 30 seats left and we would enjoy nothing more than to see you reserve one of them.

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Now in its ninth season, the Presentation Summit has offered seminars and workshops on such far-reaching topics as software automation, simultaneous projection on multiple screens, presenting in non-native languages, and dealing with unfriendly audiences. Since its inception in 2003, however, no seminar topic has been more popular than the traditional makeover — where a member of the conference design team reviews and redesigns slide decks.

This year, there are three distinct before-and-after sessions: a template makeover and two design makeovers, all from work submitted by conference attendees.

“People love makeovers of all kinds,” notes Julie Terberg, who has starred in enough makeover sessions as to earn the unofficial title of Makeover Maven. “Turn on the TV and you’ll see an endless variety: home makeovers, room makeovers, garden makeovers, personal style makeovers, fitness and lifestyle makeovers. You usually can relate to something in the ‘before’ situations and so you want to see what the experts do with their transformation.

“The same applies with presentation design. How would another designer treat this concept? How will he or she transform the graphics or images? What can I learn to make my own work that much better?”

Conference attendees have several reasons to enjoy these sessions. As Julie notes, everyone can relate to the struggles and issues that are typically represented in the “before” slides and they love being inspired by the metamorphosis. Further, if your slides are chosen for one of these makeover sessions, you will be able to return home with the “after” slides, compliments of the designer. That translates into a takeaway that would typically cost a client several thousand dollars.

This is not to say that there is no reward for the designer, who can measure the return in warm-and-fuzzies. “I love when patrons say how much they learned from the makeovers,” says Terberg. “It warms my heart to hear from them about how they applied the ideas to their own work.”

You can view a snippet of one of Terberg’s makeovers at the conference’s [intlink id="1800" type="page"]video vault[/intlink].

Conference host Rick Altman also stages a makeover session, but he will be the first to tell you that he is not in Julie’s league. “I am not a professional designer,” he says, “and ironically, that is what makes it work. I focus on creating clean and consistent business design and I’m pretty good evaluating message and story. I’m not going to inspire anyone with my design brilliance as Julie does, but I can infuse confidence in people. My hope is that people come away from my sessions saying, ‘I see what he did, why he did it, and I could do it too.’”

Conference patrons pay nothing extra to have their work accepted for a makeover, and with three sessions on tap this year, late registrants can still get in on the action.

The Presentation Summit runs September 18-21 in Austin TX. You can read more about makeover sessions and  see the entire schedule, at http://www.PresentationSummit.com/schedule. Seating at the conference is limited to 200 patrons.

You might think that an opening keynote address for a presentation conference would discuss technology, or PowerPoint, or slide design, or how to speak more effectively.

You wouldn’t normally expect it to focus on how to win an eating contest.

Patrons of the Presentation Summit have come to expect the unexpected, and after his 2010 debut, Nigel Holmes has become famous for providing it. Last year, the former art director for Time magazine squeezed out an entire tube of toothpaste along the stage and later dressed up in a caveman suit.

This year, it will be eating hot dogs. And studying shadows. And, allegedly, helium, and the inhaling thereof.

Last year’s keynote might prove a tough act to follow and Holmes is quick to note that integrating physical performance into a presentation can’t be just about shock and awe. “When thinking about ‘performance,’ never do it just for theatrical effect,” he says. “There must always be a point. When dealing with statistics, the possibilities are endless. It’s a great way to depart from yet another bar chart.” Indeed, last year’s toothpaste caper was in lieu of a conventional chart to show personal hygiene statistics.

“While this kind of presentation is not for everyone, you’d be surprised at what you can pull off, if you relax and try. Presenters are too often tethered to the podium, but it really pays for the audience to become part of your presentation. They will remember being part of it for a long time.”

And the risks of eating hot dogs, sucking in helium, or donning a caveman suit? Holmes is more concerned about being gratuitous than in having something go wrong on stage. “Do not worry if things don’t go according to plan. Mistakes are a perfect introduction to talk about why it went wrong, so I see mistakes as opportunities. It also makes people understand that you are just another human, like them. So to fail slightly and then recover is good, in a funny way.”

Mistakes and all, the Presentation Summit runs September 18-21 in Austin TX. You can read more about Nigel Holmes’ keynote address, and see the entire schedule, at http://www.PresentationSummit.com/schedule. Seating at the conference is limited to 200 patrons.

We’re good with either hypothesis — just as long as we get to discover new talent. This year’s find comes to us from the state of Michigan: Meet Tany Nagy, our 2011 winner. Her clean and crisp work blends modern slide design with Texas authenticity.

Our contest is not an easy assignment. To win, your design needs to be professional, attractive, speak well of both your and our sensibilities, yet above all, must wear well and remain understated. It will be the backdrop across four days and over 50 sessions — it can’t be too loud. Furthermore, in many cases, its purpose is to tee up the work of our own designers and stay in the background as their work is showcased. Lots of potential cross purposes there!

Tany Nagy, Design Contest winner

“I approached my entry from a research standpoint,” explains Tany. “Never having been to Texas or to the conference, I invested a good part in gathering information, typography, images that I felt lent themselves to being strong foundational design elements. Textures, rich deep earthly colors, branding, seals/crests, weathered materials, rough edges, patterns — I felt ‘sensory’ elements would capture the spirit of the conference and of Austin.

“For the conference identity, I incorporated the triangle [in the Summit logo], a silhouette of the state of Texas, and a star as a symbolic reference to Texas. Designing with the elements I choose was wonderful, as working with them during the design process opened my eyes to different techniques and styles. I love learning new things and challenging myself as a designer, and this opportunity combined those things together for me perfectly!”

Tany was born and raised in Detroit, MI and now resides in Waterford Township, MI. She graduated from Lawrence Technological University and earned degrees in Architecture and Digital Imaging. For over 10 years, Tany developed her core skills as a designer and visual communicator before, in 2009, launching Pulse Design Studio (http://www.pulsearchdesign.com).

For her creativity and effort, Tany receives VIP access to the conference, Sep 18-21, with the $1,095 fee waived in its entirety.

For this post, however, I am more interested in their shared experiences than their disparate ones. Across all four cities, I have found some common threads among the few hundred people that I have encountered. Here are a few of those common threads…

1. What’s a designer?

Very few people come to the presentation industry from a background in the arts, and yet they are asked to design presentations practically on a daily basis. What does that mean for them? Really, this gets down to the core question of what the word “design” actually means. Most people use that word in an aesthetic sense — they might say “that is a well-designed slide,” when they mean “that slide is pretty.”

But that’s not what design means. The word design is meant to refer to how something is built; how it functions; what its structure is. Decoration is a different thing altogether. I’m as guilty as others in using lazy language around this word, so I try to differentiate between presentation design and slide design — the former implying the more accurate meaning of the word and the latter referring to how a slide looks.

2. You’re better than you think!

Irrespective of what the word means, most people attending our workshops believe they have no design skills. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that they have never been given a chance to find out. Most slides today afford no opportunity to think like a designer — with six or seven fully-formed sentences on a slide consuming every last pixel of open space, who could possibly think like a slide designer? Once the message is refined and the verbiage honed and distilled, then (perhaps for the first time), content creators get a chance to see if they have any instincts for creating attractive slides. I speak to this point in my Three-Word Challenge video.

3. Version 2003 is still with us

Most users I have encountered are using version 2007 and a few are at version 2010. But those who spent time first with version 2003 are still using it…even if they’re not. One of the biggest changes between those two versions is the handling of slide masters and layouts — there is a sea change of new capability and function that began with version 2007. In the last two months, I have seen hundreds of sample decks in which people are using version 2007 but stuck in version 2003 mentality. They create far more slide masters than they need to (instead of creating layouts under one master) and confine themselves to the two traditional title and content placeholders (instead of creating as many as they might need). They spent so much time with version 2003, they think as if they are still there.

When version 2007 users have their eyes opened to the true power of layouts and placeholders, it is a head-exploding experience for them.

4. Animation is an abandoned concept

So many people have had ridiculous animation foisted upon them when in the audience, they have developed an aversion to it. In fact, I have heard from many that their corporate standard is literally to forbid its use. What a shame! When used properly, animation can spell the difference between a presenter just delivering information and being able to fully convey the weight of a message; it can mean the difference between audience members merely hearing a message and truly appreciate its impact. This from the tool that also brings us boomerangs, spirals, and other childish effects that are at the core of Death by PowerPoint. How ironic.

5. PowerPoint is terrible at defaults

When I am in front of a room of several dozen people and I have hand to mouse actively working the software, it becomes more apparent than at any other time how inflexible certain parts of the software are. When I am working in private, I am more able to overlook some of these deficiencies; in a large room with 50 people looking over my virtual shoulder, PowerPoint’s issues become more evident.

Let’s return to Animation for just one of many examples. My most-often used animation is a one-second fade set to occur after the previous element is finished. That is simple to accomplish, but there is a world of difference between a function being easy and being accessible. Look what I have to do to perform that command:

1. Use the Add Animation command to choose Fade. If that command is not visible, I must first change ribbons so that it is.

2. Change On Click (the permanent default) to After Previous.

3. Change the speed from .5 (the permanent default) to 1.

This wouldn’t be so painful if I could at least Tab through those controls, but I cannot. In fact, if the Animation ribbon or task pane is not present, I have to spend one more click just to get there. And don’t tell me that I can use the Animation Painter to clone from one object to another; while fine for copying a complex animation, it is not the answer for quickly applying preferred settings. Practically every other software program that I use offers changeable defaults and custom styles; why not PowerPoint? It is almost scary to think how much less tedious my activity would be if I could simply tell the software that I want my starting point for an animation to be a one-second fade. To say nothing for how much richer the experience would be if I could create a set of styles to anticipate my common requests.

Even Word does this. Sigh.

6. People believe they should never look at the screen

I am amazed at the degree to which presenters have taken the advice about how to regard the screen that is behind them. I know that Toastmasters cautions against turning your back to the audience; I wonder if that advice has become twisted and distorted over the years. In any event, I find that many people would rather ignore the screen altogether than refer to it. And yet, when an accomplished presenter can use the screen in a natural fashion and treat it like the simple visual aid that it is, audiences respond very well to that. They do not respond as well to the screen becoming the primary component of a presentation and they do not respond well to a presenter pretending like it’s not even there. This takes practice to integrate the screen into an organic and natural-feeling conversation, and it is effort well spent.

We attended spring training.

To get an opportunity to meet members of her beloved SF Giants, Jamie was beyond thrilled, and I was thrilled for her. I was also fascinated to observe this parallel universe to our own, where the schedules, demands, and whims of overtalented young men take precedence over just about everything else.

First, some background. As winners of the 2010 World Series, the Giants were the talk of the town and the objects of extraordinary attention. We just never could have imagined how extraordinary. The photo below was taken before 7:00a, over four hours before the team was to take the field for workouts and drills, the week before exhibition games were to begin. The doors to the right lead into the clubhouse and these throngs of people are waiting and hoping that players arriving at the facility will stop and sign autographs.

So they’re all fans, right? Wrong. A healthy majority of this group is made up of grown men (and some women) actively seeking to create marketable memorabilia. A $10 baseball will sell for $25 if Aubrey Huff signs it; a $15 photo will fetch $35 after Cody Ross adds his name to it; and a $50 Tim Lincecum jersey will be worth over $100 if the man himself takes felt pen to polyester. Jamie is in the middle of that pack somewhere, but she is dwarfed and overwhelmed by a sea of businessmen who care only that the Giants are world champions. Next year, in the likely event that the team does not repeat as champions, most of these peddlers will be elsewhere.

This is not a story of cynicism, although admittedly it is easy to succumb to the feeling. Didn’t these players know that most of these autograph seekers cared only about the profit in it? The answer would be yes, if they had the luxury of being able to discern. But most of them just needed to try to get through the process and could focus only on signing, signing, and signing some more. They put their heads down and signed anything placed before them. It was largely a depersonalizing experience for them, made that way by the crowd of hawkers who depersonalized the ballplayers by caring only about the value of their signatures.

There were exceptions. Andres Torres, described by all who know him as one of baseball’s nicest guys, saw Jamie as the obvious fan she was, decked out in black and orange, and made sure to sign her shirt. And when he got to her, he was happy to stop and pose for a photo. Note that in said photo (below), all of the people around Jamie are men with balls, bats, jerseys, and binders full of carefully-cross-referenced baseball cards.

However, cynicism did not rule the weekend — exuberance and exhilaration did. I never would have believed that ballplayers could bring such joy to fans with the smallest things. Once inside the stadium, we went right to the rail, in the hopes that Jamie could get a close encounter with her beloved, the 2010 rookie-of-the-year catcher Buster Posey. As he was heading out to the outfield for warm-up, she was barely able to muster a “Hi Buster” through her runaway nerves. In response, he turned in her general direction and waved his catcher’s mitt.

You would have thought he came up and kissed her. This 23-year-old put Jamie over cloud nine with a vague wave of a blunt hunk of leather. About an hour later, she summoned the courage to ask him for an autograph as he walked by, and he demurred in his deep-south accent, saying “Sorry, I’ve got something to do.”

Well, that became her catch phrase for the entire weekend — I’ve got something to do. Buster Posey actually spoke to her. Never mind that he blew her off — as far as she was concerned, he opened a window into his soul with that little rejection. He made her day, no, her entire weekend. Later on, when she actually did get his autograph, and their fingers touched during the pen exchange, her reaction reminded me of the crazed Beatles fans who refused to wash their hands because they came in contact with a pillow case that, three weeks earlier, Ringo Starr was reported to have used in Room 715 of the Hilton Hotel.

The phenomenon of stardom plays out in many ways and I can’t help but feel a bit of sympathy for these athletes, however overpaid and overindulged they are. I think of all of the activities that we take for granted that are implausible for them. It rained Saturday afternoon so Jamie and I walked to the Denny’s a block away. Buster Posey couldn’t have done that. The following evening, we walked to the famous Sugar Bowl dessert shop in Scottsdale and browsed Old Town. Could the enigmatic relief pitcher Brian Wilson have done that? Only if he were willing to sign hundreds of autographs along the way. I imagine I would like the idea of earning $12 million dollars per year and I bet I could get used to receiving free stuff on a daily basis. But would I be able to give up my freedom? I bet most of us couldn’t really imagine what it would be like, but watching the way autograph hawkers pounced on these ballplayers last weekend, I got a glimpse of life in their bubble.

I give up my freedom for four days out of the year. At the Presentation Summit, I am public property and 200 people have unfettered access to me 18 hours out of the day. I’m sure that this is nothing like what the celebrities experience because I welcome it, I indulge it, I enjoy it, and I know that it is very temporary. The more relevant point of comparison is some of our keynote speakers who are like the rock stars of our industry. People like Nancy Duarte, Garr Reynolds, Nigel Holmes, and Julie Terberg. Patrons regularly tell us ahead of the event about how excited they are  to get a chance to meet their idols and heroes. They seek autographs, they hang on their every word, and they watch how they conduct themselves in public.

Here is the important distinction, and forgive the implied sales pitch, but it is one of the qualities of the conference of which I am most proud: our rock stars do not act like rock stars. Very few of our presenters blow in, give a keynote, and depart. They hang out with the patrons, they eat lunch with them, socialize with them, talk shop with them, sometimes get drunk with them. And I get to see how much the patrons value and appreciate that. (Garr Reynolds appears via Skype from his home in Osaka, but even from a virtual stage, our patrons enjoy the privilege of feeling as if they really get to know him.)

Professional presenters understand the value of showing genuine qualities and not indulging in pretense. They know that they cannot depersonalize encounters with people the way that athletes are forced to. One of these days, perhaps the Summit might attract a true A-list celebrity to deliver a keynote and then it would be fascinating to see how these two worlds collide. How would someone accustomed to being mobbed deal with our environment which urges high-fliers to come down to sea level? Perhaps it would be refreshing for her. Maybe she’d become a regular.

Well, I can always dream…