What book to read to make reports better?
UPD : the title has changed at the request of the public. The previous version was "How to read a book and become better."
At the beginning of October, the publishing house Mann, Ivanov and Ferber suggested that I write what I think about the book “Presentation Skill” by Alexey Kapterev. Why me? The reason for this is my posts on Habré on the art of presentations ( tyts , still tyts ).
The book was interesting, I agreed. Since they don’t pay for the review, and I don’t work in the publishing house, below is a guaranteed honest review. Will you become better or more successful if you read another book? You decide: in fact, I am writing my impressions so that the discussion in the discussion will decide whether we need to read such books and that they can give us something new for success.
')
In short, my opinion: the book is worth reading just because it helps to become better. Do not make presentations better, but rather understand why and how to communicate with people, how to do it more effectively, in a word - how to do more good for yourself and people at the same time.
For me, the most important argument for this book was the recommendation of Ilya Segalovich , co-founder and permanent technical director of Yandex: “Alexey knows and knows how to teach the science of storytelling. Listening to him is fun, and advice is priceless. ”
The book struck me, and before you decide whether to read this review further, I immediately warn you: in addition to a barrel of honey, there will be a few spoons of tar. Let's start, for cheerfulness, with good.
The main ideas of the book, as I see them (and fully share as a speaker and as a listener):
From the point of view of the author, the true concept of the presentation is the triad “focus, contrast, unity”, the three components of a successful presentation. About her and described in detail - how and what to focus on, how to achieve contrast, and in front of listeners (or Youtube viewers) to create a struggle of opposites, at the end leading to a sense of unity and integrity.
One of the undoubted, delightful, remarkable advantages of the book is a huge number of links to other books, articles, studies, useful websites, little-known useful applications and excellent presentations known in narrow circles. Such an abundance of references is more characteristic of serious scientific work, and that is why I have a book of Alexei that caused more trust than other publications on a similar topic.
Undoubtedly, as a collection of links to hell of useful information (and not only on the skill of presentations) the book is good. But this, of course, not all.
Even if you are an experienced speaker, you are sure to find some new thoughts in your book. For me it was:
The book is quite a lot of space given to the use of different fonts on the slides , as well as the history of creating fonts. That’s why this post has got into the “Typography” hub - actually, a post about the art of presentations and self-study for it.
The author gives less original, but also very interesting advice on compliance with the regulations; in fact, Aleksey suggests sacrificing the time limit to an exciting performance (“if you run out of time, be sure to tell about it yourself, and if you like your report, you will be asked to complete it without looking at the time limit”). I categorically disagree with this approach: as an organizer of conferences, as their participant and as a speaker, I have a very negative attitude even to very good speakers, because of which the entire network of reports at the conference flies to hell, and no one can understand what report in which room and when will be. Neglecting the time limit is permissible only if your report is the last one and the rent of the hall is paid until the morning. Otherwise, you can let everyone down - participants, and organizers, and the next speaker (he may have a plane right after the report!)
Alexey wrote a fascinating book, it reads almost like a novel, and fortunately it examines many practical examples: how to make a very good presentation from an average presentation, how to talk to an audience that is not very interested in you, how to build a good slide on which reflect a lot of information at once.
In the book - three large sections, three components of the presentation: the story (which you tell the audience), slides and presentation. Each is described in detail - why it is needed and how to do it well.
For me the most interesting part was the third one - the presentation of the material. It talks about the drama of the presentation itself as an action, and not as a collection of slides. Along the way, the book mentions many interesting sources of additional information, but due to the fact that the book is a translation from English, there is no reference to the voice training of the ICPD . For some reason I thought about him when I read the section of the book about how the author developed his voice, performing romances. I was not at this training, but I heard a lot of good things about him (although mostly from strangers).
Now - the promised fly in the ointment.
The publishing house Mann, Ivanov and Ferber is not a simple publishing house, it also claims for an original business model (with the slogan “Maximum useful books”) and unusual work methods (for example, they have no office). It publishes only the most successful books, and these books are worth the money. The design of the first two editions for Mann, Ivanov and Ferber was made by the studio of Artemy Lebedev (a book by Alexey Kapterev was done by other designers).
Perhaps all this has increased the bar of expectations and the level of preparation of the book. In the case of “Presentation Mastery”, the publisher has frankly overdone it : the book has been released on very good glossy paper, typed in unusual fonts and has been curtailed in an unusual way (with pseudo-copied notes in the margins).
The design turned out to be expensive, but inconvenient: glossy paper almost always gleams (normally you can read only on the street in cloudy weather, and under any other lighting the page will glare like glossy photos). I even specifically checked whether this was so by reading a book at home on the couch, on the train, on the bus and on the street.
Marginal notes are not always perceived as part of a book, and sometimes there is something important in them, even something more interesting than the main text.
The author is a fan of Apple products, and he talks a lot (even slightly obtrusively, in my opinion) about how well to make presentations using programs under Mac OS X, from time to time talks about PowerPoint, while I, for example, 6 years as I do not use anything for creating slides, except OpenOffice Impress. However, this is all the little things.
A real fly in the ointment is a translation. Although the author is Russian-speaking, the original of the book is written in English. And although the translation turned out to be quite good, in some places it causes sadness: it was possible to translate much better.
The most offensive miscalculation is the incorrect translation of the paragraph, which mentions the complexity of non-sample thinking, “thinking out of the box” (p. 49). The translator failed the literal translation of both the expression itself and the pun associated with it.
There are also some minor translation shortcomings (and if it were a cheap detective translation, I wouldn’t pick on it, but Mann, Ivanov and Ferber do not knit brooms, they’re from demand!) - this is also a “font like Arial” (tracing paper with font such as Arial, which is better to translate in “Arial” font), and “option” instead of “possibility” or “option”, and “communicate” instead of “transmit”.
<bore mode on>
There are about five minor typos that have passed the proofreader, but I’ll just tell the publisher’s staff about them — maybe they will correct it if they are reprinted. The 328 pages of the book is not so much.
<bore mode off>
Conclusions : if you are able to make presentations, the book will definitely be interesting for you, although some of its parts may seem trivial or boring. The abundance of links to new information and a discussion of interesting cases from life compensate for these moments of boredom from several hours of fascinating reading.
If you have not prepared or made presentations before, part of the book (which the author honestly warns on the first page) will not be interesting for you, but over time it will be easier for you to move to a new level of mastery, holding the book of Alexei Kapterev in your hands.
And he, and I, and many Habr readers hope to make the world a little bit better, communicating with other people and trying to be more understandable and better understood. It would be great if the book that I read and tried to briefly describe in this article will be useful for you as well.
At the beginning of October, the publishing house Mann, Ivanov and Ferber suggested that I write what I think about the book “Presentation Skill” by Alexey Kapterev. Why me? The reason for this is my posts on Habré on the art of presentations ( tyts , still tyts ).
The book was interesting, I agreed. Since they don’t pay for the review, and I don’t work in the publishing house, below is a guaranteed honest review. Will you become better or more successful if you read another book? You decide: in fact, I am writing my impressions so that the discussion in the discussion will decide whether we need to read such books and that they can give us something new for success.
')
In short, my opinion: the book is worth reading just because it helps to become better. Do not make presentations better, but rather understand why and how to communicate with people, how to do it more effectively, in a word - how to do more good for yourself and people at the same time.
For me, the most important argument for this book was the recommendation of Ilya Segalovich , co-founder and permanent technical director of Yandex: “Alexey knows and knows how to teach the science of storytelling. Listening to him is fun, and advice is priceless. ”
The book struck me, and before you decide whether to read this review further, I immediately warn you: in addition to a barrel of honey, there will be a few spoons of tar. Let's start, for cheerfulness, with good.
The main ideas of the book, as I see them (and fully share as a speaker and as a listener):
- We must sincerely believe in what you are telling.
- Need to tell the truth.
- In the presentation must be the unity and struggle of opposites.
From the point of view of the author, the true concept of the presentation is the triad “focus, contrast, unity”, the three components of a successful presentation. About her and described in detail - how and what to focus on, how to achieve contrast, and in front of listeners (or Youtube viewers) to create a struggle of opposites, at the end leading to a sense of unity and integrity.
One of the undoubted, delightful, remarkable advantages of the book is a huge number of links to other books, articles, studies, useful websites, little-known useful applications and excellent presentations known in narrow circles. Such an abundance of references is more characteristic of serious scientific work, and that is why I have a book of Alexei that caused more trust than other publications on a similar topic.
Undoubtedly, as a collection of links to hell of useful information (and not only on the skill of presentations) the book is good. But this, of course, not all.
Even if you are an experienced speaker, you are sure to find some new thoughts in your book. For me it was:
- Slide titles typed in hard-to-read fonts are better remembered (but they are less encouraging to action).
- To make presentations as well as Steve Jobs, the author of the book advises himself to repeat the presentations of Steve Jobs - literally, using the same slides, the same text. This is an interesting exercise, I heard about it, but I have never tried it myself.
The book is quite a lot of space given to the use of different fonts on the slides , as well as the history of creating fonts. That’s why this post has got into the “Typography” hub - actually, a post about the art of presentations and self-study for it.
The author gives less original, but also very interesting advice on compliance with the regulations; in fact, Aleksey suggests sacrificing the time limit to an exciting performance (“if you run out of time, be sure to tell about it yourself, and if you like your report, you will be asked to complete it without looking at the time limit”). I categorically disagree with this approach: as an organizer of conferences, as their participant and as a speaker, I have a very negative attitude even to very good speakers, because of which the entire network of reports at the conference flies to hell, and no one can understand what report in which room and when will be. Neglecting the time limit is permissible only if your report is the last one and the rent of the hall is paid until the morning. Otherwise, you can let everyone down - participants, and organizers, and the next speaker (he may have a plane right after the report!)
Alexey wrote a fascinating book, it reads almost like a novel, and fortunately it examines many practical examples: how to make a very good presentation from an average presentation, how to talk to an audience that is not very interested in you, how to build a good slide on which reflect a lot of information at once.
In the book - three large sections, three components of the presentation: the story (which you tell the audience), slides and presentation. Each is described in detail - why it is needed and how to do it well.
For me the most interesting part was the third one - the presentation of the material. It talks about the drama of the presentation itself as an action, and not as a collection of slides. Along the way, the book mentions many interesting sources of additional information, but due to the fact that the book is a translation from English, there is no reference to the voice training of the ICPD . For some reason I thought about him when I read the section of the book about how the author developed his voice, performing romances. I was not at this training, but I heard a lot of good things about him (although mostly from strangers).
Now - the promised fly in the ointment.
The publishing house Mann, Ivanov and Ferber is not a simple publishing house, it also claims for an original business model (with the slogan “Maximum useful books”) and unusual work methods (for example, they have no office). It publishes only the most successful books, and these books are worth the money. The design of the first two editions for Mann, Ivanov and Ferber was made by the studio of Artemy Lebedev (a book by Alexey Kapterev was done by other designers).
Perhaps all this has increased the bar of expectations and the level of preparation of the book. In the case of “Presentation Mastery”, the publisher has frankly overdone it : the book has been released on very good glossy paper, typed in unusual fonts and has been curtailed in an unusual way (with pseudo-copied notes in the margins).
The design turned out to be expensive, but inconvenient: glossy paper almost always gleams (normally you can read only on the street in cloudy weather, and under any other lighting the page will glare like glossy photos). I even specifically checked whether this was so by reading a book at home on the couch, on the train, on the bus and on the street.
Marginal notes are not always perceived as part of a book, and sometimes there is something important in them, even something more interesting than the main text.
The author is a fan of Apple products, and he talks a lot (even slightly obtrusively, in my opinion) about how well to make presentations using programs under Mac OS X, from time to time talks about PowerPoint, while I, for example, 6 years as I do not use anything for creating slides, except OpenOffice Impress. However, this is all the little things.
A real fly in the ointment is a translation. Although the author is Russian-speaking, the original of the book is written in English. And although the translation turned out to be quite good, in some places it causes sadness: it was possible to translate much better.
The most offensive miscalculation is the incorrect translation of the paragraph, which mentions the complexity of non-sample thinking, “thinking out of the box” (p. 49). The translator failed the literal translation of both the expression itself and the pun associated with it.
There are also some minor translation shortcomings (and if it were a cheap detective translation, I wouldn’t pick on it, but Mann, Ivanov and Ferber do not knit brooms, they’re from demand!) - this is also a “font like Arial” (tracing paper with font such as Arial, which is better to translate in “Arial” font), and “option” instead of “possibility” or “option”, and “communicate” instead of “transmit”.
<bore mode on>
There are about five minor typos that have passed the proofreader, but I’ll just tell the publisher’s staff about them — maybe they will correct it if they are reprinted. The 328 pages of the book is not so much.
<bore mode off>
Conclusions : if you are able to make presentations, the book will definitely be interesting for you, although some of its parts may seem trivial or boring. The abundance of links to new information and a discussion of interesting cases from life compensate for these moments of boredom from several hours of fascinating reading.
If you have not prepared or made presentations before, part of the book (which the author honestly warns on the first page) will not be interesting for you, but over time it will be easier for you to move to a new level of mastery, holding the book of Alexei Kapterev in your hands.
And he, and I, and many Habr readers hope to make the world a little bit better, communicating with other people and trying to be more understandable and better understood. It would be great if the book that I read and tried to briefly describe in this article will be useful for you as well.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/156723/
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