It’s Blog Action Day, Gore & the IPCC just won the Nobel Peace Prize, and I sure as heck have something to say about how that happened. So I give you: What Good is a Presentation?

So you present. So what? Why? Because someone makes you? Because you have to? Seriously, why bother? PowerPoints are mind-numbing. Nobody wants to hear you stand around and talk talk talk. Can’t we all just get out of this meeting soon, anyways?

It doesn’t have to suck. Not if you’re really trying to do something, and not if you connect to that.

So, what good is a presentation? It’s a sh*t way to deliver a whole massive lotta content, concepts and ideas. It’s not even a good way to persuade if you make it all about you and what you think and you know. It has to be about the audience. It has to connect with them where they are today.

Watching Inconvenient Truth you can see how Gore used metaphors, comparisons, stark visual displays of information and appeals to emotion to show that — and why — the audience should be concerned about climate change. There was nothing in that movie that I hadn’t heard about while studying environmental science and public policy 15 years ago. The difference was in the connections he made with the things people care about. You can’t change people, but you can move their hearts and minds.

By now you’re laughing. Move their hearts and minds at the weekly (weakly) Monday morning status meeting? Ha. I’m lucky if they even look up from their coffee!

You’re not going to care about your next status report or even client pitch as much as Gore was concerned about the environment when he set out to start speaking on Global Warming, sure. But so what? Presenting is going to take up your time and “their” time, so it’s worth doing well. Figure out what you need to accomplish when you present?

How can you move hearts and minds, even just a little? That status update? Don’t just dump everything you’re doing and where you’re at. That level of detail works better in a list anyways, not in a presento. Take it a step further and consider why the team needs the update. What are the most valuable, pertinent bits you can shave off the top of your mass of information and deliver in a way that your audience needs? Share some excitement for what you do & why it matters. Make your report connect to their emotional & professional lives. Talk about what’s relevant, then shut up & sit down.

You don’t believe me? Your subject matter too dull to matter?

“This week I ordered paper, pens, sticky notes and toner. I checked that we have sufficient supplies of pencils, pens, binder clips, staples and white out…”

OR

“Since it sucks to waste time looking for office supplies, I made sure we have enough of everything. Here’s the list. Let me know if you need anything else.”

I haven’t engaged in discussions on it publicly and intellectually in a long, long time. But, I am extremely concerned about the disconnects between science, policy and the environment. There’s a great deal that we have known, for a very long time, that is very bad news. Lots of folks with an axe to grind will try to pretend it ain’t so, and do all in their power to undermine the messengers. Go ahead and hate Gore, hate the movie, hate the super-mega-international-jetfuel-burning lecture tour if that makes you feel better. But what that won’t do is change the message — the Inconvenient Truth of it all.

And the brutal truth is that it’s ultimately not about “Saving the World,” it’s about saving ourselves and each other. Looking long, long back through the scientific record it is plain that “The World” will survive no matter what we do to muck with it. Life’s like that. But if we muck with it enough, it will have “no qualms” killing us off and getting on with its day. So, um, yeah.

More links on the Peace Prize award: AP News, MSNBC , Newsday, Boston Globe