Slide:ology

I just finished Nancy Duarte’s book, Slide:ology. I’ve recently become interested in presentation development, not because I give many presentations anymore, but primarily because I think presentations shared online through services like Slideshare have the potential to be good vehicles for visual explanations.

My overall impression of the book? Excellent! It should be required reading for anyone who has to develop or give presentations. She starts with an overview of the need for better presentations, discusses some basic prerequisites like identifying audience needs and touches on ideation and story development briefly. The majority of the book though focuses on design aspects of presentations and slides. Lots of good, useful information. I outlined the basic content of the book in a mind map, below. Take a look then buy the book.