Currently Reading: Eudora Welty’s Biography

Tags

Eudora Welty

Born and raised in “The City of Southern Charm,” it should come as no surprise that I am a lover of Southern short stories and novels.  So many fantastic authors have written about the American South: William Faulkner (my personal favorite), Flannery O’Connor, Harper Lee (also a Chi Omega), Truman Capote, and Tennessee Williams among talented others.

Image courtesy of cliff1066

Eudora Welty was never on my radar until my literature-obsessed father name-dropped her, and after hearing about a few of her short stories, I was excited to read her myself.  My mother, also a book lover, first read Welty’s biography and suggested I start with it and then move to The Optimist’s Daughter.  Welty was a photographer, a member of the Junior League, and a college-educated woman at a time when women didn’t attend college: the mid to late 1920s.  I cannot wait to read more about Welty and then move onto her short stories and fiction.  After procrastinating for several months (I’m more of a fiction girl), I am finally starting it tonight!

Click here to purchase Eudora Welty: A Biography by Suzanne Marrs.

Inspiration: Presentation Zen

Tags

Garr Reynolds, presentation zen

Chiara Ojeda introduced me to Garr Reynolds, and the man changed my life.  I’ve been teaching and presenting for four years, and I will never go back to my old method of cramming as many words as possible on a slide.

Check out the introduction to Reynolds’ film Presentation Zen below.  I hope it will change your presentations… for the sake of your audience!

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh4SegWhnOE

Click here to purchase Presentation Zen on DVD.

In The News: PowerPoint = Worthless

Tags

death by PowerPoint, Keynote, slide, slideshow, visual design

Swiss candidate Matthais Poehm and I agree on one thing: PowerPoint is worthless.  Information design, advertising, and marketing have changed the way people think about visual presentation, and creating a boring, death-by-PowerPoint slideshow will have your audience tuning you out in favor of their iPhones.

While I don’t agree with Poehm that PowerPoint should be abolished completely, I think public speakers and presenters can learn a lot from the Nancy Duarte and Garr Reynolds methods of visual presentation.  To learn more, visit their blogs.  Essentially, the ideas of Duarte and Reynolds are:

• A PowerPoint with text-only and bullet points should instead be a document that you hand out to the audience.
• Apply the picture superiority effect to your slides.  This principle explains that human beings are visual creatures, and we remember images as opposed to text.  If you want to create a slideshow that resonates, use clear, powerful images to connect with your audience.

• Avoid 1980s clip art and selecting the first cheesy image that pops up when you are using a Google Image search.  Duarte says, “If you feel tempted to use a picture of two hands shaking in front of a globe [...] think about taking a vacation.”
• Consider all three elements of your slide: the image, the text, and the empty space (also known as blank space or negative space).  You should design a slide so that these three elements work together.
• Billboards and other forms of advertising use glance media.  A slide should do the same thing; your audience should be able to glance at a slide and understand its meaning in a few seconds.  Since images connect and text does not, use phrases only when adding words to a slide.

• Don’t use a premade template.  We live in a presentation generation, and if your audience can immediately identify your template by name, your presentation seems tired and boring.  Even though you haven’t even started speaking, you’ve already lost your audience.
• Keep visuals simple.  Apply the theories of Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen.  Reynolds emphasizes simplicity, elegance, and restraint.

• Guy Kawasaki talks about slideuments: “As much text as possible is jammed into the slide, and then the presenter reads it. However, as soon as the audience figures out that you’re reading the text, it reads ahead of you because it can read faster than you can speak. The result is that you and the audience are out of synch.” Read more on Kawasaki’s blog.
• If your slide contains more than 75 words, you’ve created a document.  While there’s nothing wrong with handing out a document, there IS something wrong with trying to pass this off as a visual presentation.  ”Visuals” indicate images, graphs, charts, and video clips.  Duarte calls these “slideuments.”

Check out the blog of my slide mentor and visual presentation guru, Chiara Ojeda.  You can also see examples of visually-driven presentations that I’ve created on my blog.

Inspiration: Sir Ken Robinson

Tags

education, schools kill creativity, Sir Ken Robinson, TED, TED Talks, TED.com

Sir Ken Robinson’s “Schools Kill Creativity” from TED.com

Direct URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY or visit TED.com: http://www.ted.com to watch all of Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talks.

LinkedIn

Tags

LinkedIn, resume

Please visit my LinkedIn page:

URL: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/alex-rister/3a/421/661

Alex Rister – Visual Resume

Tags

visual resume

My Visual Resume

Direct URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrFgmgRVXB4

For more information, please email me at alexrister1@gmail.com.

Leadership: JLGO Harvest Hustle 5K

Tags

5K, Harvest Hustle, JLGO, Junior League

The Junior League of Greater Orlando (JLGO) is proud to present the 4th Annual Harvest Hustle 5K on October 27, 2011 in Baldwin Park at 6:30 p.m. An after-party and costume contest will be held in Baldwin Park immediately following the race. The League is committed to utilizing the skills of our volunteer-based organization to make the greatest impact in the areas that need help most and have focused our efforts on the core cause: childhood health, hunger and poverty. Funds raised will support JLGO community programs such as HIP Kids and Kids in the Kitchen, which help combat childhood hunger and poverty while educating impoverished children and their families on healthy habits.

To register, please visit http://www.run4acause.org/jlgo.