Presentation Power – Yes You Can!

Posted on 18 January, 2012 by Ian Tan

A few years ago, I attended a company course called Presentation Power. Its main objective was to teach people how to make more powerful and impactful presentations. I’m going to distill the entire course (or at least what I can remember of it) into one single sentence:

“What’s in it for your audience to listen to you for more than a minute?”

You can be speaking on any topic on earth, but as long as you know what your audience is interested in listening to, and you know how to tell it that way, you’re already a powerful presenter.

I write this post because recently, I sat through an awful presentation. The presenter spoke English well (he’s a native speaker) and he had interesting things to say. Unfortunately, it was on a topic I had little interest in, and I was made to believe before the meeting that we would be discussing about something else.

I gave it my all to be as polite as possible and listen to what he had to say (why, maybe there might be something I could learn or benefit from this), but then it was Death by Powerpoint for nearly an hour. Look, I might work for Microsoft and I do use the Office Suite a lot, but I can tell you that with a great program comes great responsibility – Powerpoint is very easily used for the wrong purposes.

To make it worse, the Powerpoint deck he was using, appeared to be designed for another audience and objective in mind, but the presenter had deemed it okay to re-use it on me. To cut the long story short, by the end of the presentation I was really tired and not really interested in finding out more.

Not everyone can be a good or great presenter, and I think I speak too much Singlish to be a great orator. However, I can share with you a few tips I learned from the course, my journalism experience (where I met hundreds of good and horrible speakers) and my work in Microsoft.

1. Be very clear, both to yourself and your audience, what you are going to speak about before you even begin. Otherwise you’re mismanaging expectations. I often dread attending church when their most boring and longwinded speaker is giving a sermon, and ironically, he gave a sermon called “Are you wasting your time” a few weeks ago.

2. Give a good summary page/overview of your presentation, so your audience has a chance to tell you which segments they might want to skip to. Or just get to the point and expand upon it from there.

3. Use as few slides as possible. Some people have learnt how to cut down on the number of images and text paragraphs on their slides, but it’s still not enough. You have to distil distil distil your slides until it contains the barest minimum of information and visuals. Let your mouth do the talking, and not have people staring at the slides all the time trying to read reams of information.

4. Learn to read your audience and adjust your presentation on the fly. Are they yawning? Are they getting stoned out? Are they playing with their handphone? What is the reason? The one thing NOT to do is to keep droning on until you get to say what you planned to say. The right thing to do is to engage them directly and start asking them questions. You get to know if they were listening, if they were interested or if their mind is already on another planet. The feedback that you get from them will allow you to decide if you want to change topic, cut short your speech or just do something else.

Once you lose your audience’s attention, your presentation has broken down.

5. Give them a great reason (or many reasons) to listen to you with absolute rapt attention. Like I wrote earlier, what’s in it for them to bother about you and your topic? No matter whether you are a sales guy, journalist, teacher, doctor etc, your audience needs a good reason to keep listening to what you have to say. Does it benefit them financially or emotionally? Is it a matter of life and death? Will it change society as they know it? Can you say it in five minutes instead of fifty?

(Note to church preachers – you don’t need to fill up the entire 45min speaking slot you know).

Really, you don’t have to speak like a lawyer to be a great presenter. Just put yourself in the shoes of your audience and you can soon see the flaws of your presentation. Poor presentations are often the same in nature – they just don’t connect with the audience.

Sadly, many people are only interested in listening to themselves, not someone else, and that’s why they’ll never understand what an effective presentation should sound like.

You can avoid their pitfalls very easily – just recall all the bad presentations you’ve been in, or keep observing the bad one you’re stuck in right now – and ask yourself how do you avoid boring/annoying people like the guy on the stage.

How to increase your likability by Kawasaki

Posted on 9 October, 2011 by Ian Tan

From Guy Kawasaki’s blog. Some of the words are a bit small and hard to read, but because it is a vector image, you can zoom in (Try CTRL + on a PC, and Command + on a Mac) to read the text. I was so excited by this image I bought the book “Enchantment” immediately on Amazon as a Kindle ebook. After 2 hours, I am already halfway through it and feeling uber inspired.

Nikon should have gone further than 1-inch

Posted on 21 September, 2011 by Ian Tan

I’ll just start off with the disclaimer that I don’t fancy Nikon cameras. There is a long story behind how I gained much respect for the Nikon semi-auto F4 camera, and lost it all when I was forced to use the atrocious Nikon D1 as a young photojournalist. When it comes to professional dSLRs, it’s Canon or bust for me.

(Never mind the fact that I use my Olympus Pen more frequently than any other camera these days.)

Anyway, the world was waiting for Nikon to announce its new mirrorless camera system and they did just that this week. I was expecting more from Canon’s longtime rival, but they lived up to their disappointing reputation. Calling it the “Nikon 1″ system after the 1-inch sensor in the camera body, this will no doubt send the fanboys into ecstasy. But there is little reason to, and here’s my take.

The 1″ sensor is just too small to compete

Here’s how the various sensor sizes stack up, from Dpreview.com

This Dpreview article goes into detail about why the author thinks that making a 1″ sensor system will work well for Nikon – that it will not cannibalize their cash cow dSLR market. I completely disagree. The Nikon sensor needs to be at least as big as the Micro Four Thirds sensor to succeed.

dSLRs, despite their popularity, are really designed more for professional work than casual use. The casual user will probably never bother to learn how to use the manual dials on his dSLR camera, and sooner or later, will be frustrated by the sheer bulk of it. Neither will they be keen in investing in better zoom lenses, or even prime lenses.

The main reason why many people have upgraded to dSLRs in the past ten years, is due to the obvious limitations of their compact cameras in terms of image quality and flexibility. And some very effective marketing too.

With the Micro Four Thirds and NEX sensors being about half the size of a 35mm film frame, yet producing an image that is nearly as good in color and resolution as a dSLR (to most consumers), the three small players Panasonic, Olympus and Sony have grabbed an amazing amount of market share in just two years.

According to this Bloomberg article, the mirrorless camera has jumped from 5% in 2009 to 40% market share today in Japan. Canon and Nikon’s number crunchers must be petrified by this figure, but I’m sure things aren’t so bleak for them worldwide. Still, it’s a sign of things to come as the Japanese are often early adopters.

Nikon is coming into a new market that has been created by the smaller players. It has to play by their rules and benchmarks. By now, many consumers may have become aware of the great quality produced by the current crop of mirrorless cameras. Consumers are not stupid, and many do their research online (especially those who can afford a mirrorless camera worth USD700).

It just takes a few review websites to demonstrate in coming weeks that a smaller sensor will not produce the same image quality, especially at the same megapixels. It will also produce less depth-of-field effect, which is a great marketing tool (hey see that dreamy out of focus look!).

Nikon might be trying to avoid cannibalizing its own dSLR market, but as market data already shows, the mirrorless cameras have already done just that. So why not just go with what consumers want, and grow the market by selling a big-sensor mirrorless camera rather than run away from the inevitable decline of dSLR units?

The Nikon V1 is not that small

And furthermore, Olympus has an upcoming Micro Four Thirds camera called the E-PM1 that is 110 x 64 x 34 mm in dimensions. The Nikon V1 is 113mm x 76mm x 44mm, and the lower-end J1 is 106mm x 61mm x 30mm. The J1 is not that much smaller, and yet has a smaller image sensor than the Micro Four Third line of cameras.

Now personally, I’m comfortable shooting with a modern smartphone, my Olympus XZ-1 compact, my Pen camera or EOS 5D. They all produce great images for the money, and my photography experience can help overcome most of the inherent limitations they pose. But to the average joe, they want the best of every world, and yet they don’t know how to expose a photo correctly. They just want to buy a camera that can do it all, and must be the most advanced out there if they are going to fork out the cash.

The consumer will judge the Nikon 1 system not merely by its design, but by its minute specifications and review ratings. So unless Nikon pulls a big rabbit out of the hat, the N1 series already takes a hit before launch.

Legacy lenses support but…

What can help Nikon or Canon catch up is some form of legacy support for its older lenses on the new, smaller body. On my Pen, you can use an adapter ring to mount other bigger Oly E lenses or old school manual lenses from brands like Leica. For example, I currently use a 25mm lens meant for the bigger E-series on my Pen.

The Nikon 1 system will have an adaptor for older Nikkor lenses, but the crop factor is so high at 2.7x, I’m not sure if this will entice any existing Nikkor owner to get the new body. For example, if my maths is correct, a 24mm Nikkor wide angle lens will produce a telescopic 65mm field of view on the N1, totally negating the value of the original wide angle. And imagine a 300mm Nikkor lens on a Nikon 1 body! This is all because, I reiterate, the sensor is just too small.

I won’t comment on subjective things like design (I do dig the metallic red!) but I would just say that in trying to compete with the smaller players, Nikon may have actually forgotten that it’s no longer just a two-horse race. Instead, the hounds are actually racing ahead of the horses.

Now, I could be completely wrong in my analysis above and the Nikon 1 does roaring business when it launches in late October. And my bias towards Canon will never motivate me to buy a Nikon to begin with.

I just hope I’ve laid out some objective facts before you spring for this system. Do give all the various platforms a try and make your own decision.

Let’s see what Canon comes up with, and I hope to be thrilled.

Update: An interview with Nikon’s RnD GM was published by Dpreview after I had posted the above. It’s interesting how the Nikon 1 sensor is able to do all sorts of advanced stuff like shoot at 60 frames per second, and uses a hybrid autofocus system. There’s also this quote:

And, if the company’s market research is correct, there’s every chance this market sector’s expectations are very different from those of the enthusiast photographers who are currently scratching their heads and expressing their dissatisfaction about the new product.

Hey, they’re referring to me! But Nikon, please hear me out. For any new camera system to take hold of the mainstream, it is often up to us early adopters and enthusiasts, as well as the professionals, to embrace it and start spreading the word around. The average consumer is not confident of investing in any new camera system unless it is obviously amazing/groundbreaking or comes with much recommendation from their friends or from their social networks.

One mistake I felt that Olympus made when they were launching the Pen system in 2009 was trying to attract the female crowd with lifestyle ads. That’s not wrong in itself, but they failed to convince the early adopters and pros to come onboard (“is this Pen a girly camera?”), and that’s also part of the reason why Panasonic had more opportunity to shape the market despite Oly launching its products first. There are those of us who sprung for the EP-1 immediately at launch even without reading an Oly ad (and I never regretted it), but there are even more who have sat on the fence because of mixed messaging.

And Nikon is also assuming that the new features they’ve packed into the Nikon 1 system is a big carrot to entice the average consumer – let’s see how the market reacts.

And I always thought I was being objective

Posted on 11 September, 2011 by Ian Tan

I was at our neighborhood watch shop today and checking out a Seiko model. I noticed that the second hand was not pointing directly north, and was aligned a little to the left, by a mere fraction of a millimeter.

The shopkeeper looked puzzled and took a good look at the watch. He said: “No, it’s pointing straight up! If it is misaligned, I’ll have to send it back to the distributor but it looks ok to me.”. His father also took a quick check and affirmed there was no issue.

I took another close look again and it was just a bit off. And as an ex-photographer, I do pride myself on noticing the smallest details, especially when something minute is misaligned.

Both of us were puzzled for a while, then I took a look at my own Seiko wrapped around my wrist. To my horror, the second hand was misaligned in the same way as the shop’s Seiko!

I realized that it could be related to my lazy (left) eye, so I closed my right eye and voila, the second hand was aligned correctly on both watches. I took off my glasses and peered closely at the watches, and there was no more apparent parallax error. But when I put on the glasses again and looked at the watches at arm’s length, there, it seemed a little misaligned once again. The stereo image my mind was forming was misaligned, not the watch.

Just so you know, I’m very short-sighted in my right eye (about 400 degrees) and just mildly myopic in the other (about 150 degrees). This was because as a child, I used to read lying down on my side and put too much strain on my right eye. Over time, the right eye became the dominant one while the left eye became the “lazy eye”.

So as I thought about it, it could have been two reasons:

1. The glass curvature in my right spectacle lens was causing light to bend more than it should. Rather unlikely but you’d never know.

2. My brain is so used to processing information from my right eye in priority to the left over the years, that now when I see a stereo image, it is actually an image with a bias towards the data coming in from the right eye.

It dawned upon me that this was a demonstration of the brain’s wiring that leads to our lack of objectivity and personal bias. No matter how balanced we think we are, our brains may be processing information in different channels and mixtures.

So before I tell someone that “I’m objective about this matter! I can see both sides of the story”, I’ll take a step back and think hard: “What am I seeing wrong about the picture here? Or what am I not seeing though it is right in front of me?”

Frightening isn’t it, when what you always thought was a fair and balanced worldview, turns out to be otherwise.

A journey with the Space Battleship Yamato

Posted on 20 June, 2011 by Ian Tan

For better or worse, I tend to go overboard with my hobbies. What was supposed to be a dalliance with photography turned into a full-time job. My love for tinkering of PCs has kept me working with, and currently, in the IT industry. And about a year ago, I started to get fascinated with Bandai model kits and now I have more paint bottles and unopened model kits than I can keep track of.

I’ve been trying out various grades of Gundam model kits to develop my airbrushing and assembly skills. But when I found this Space Battleship Yamato 1/500 scale model kit, I knew that this would be the one kit to pour all my learning into.

Now let it be clear that I don’t really like battleships, whether they are WWII models or even Star Destroyers. It’s more fascinating to admire the small planes that take up space on a carrier (eg. Tomcat, Phantom etc). And I remember building a few ship models when I was in primary school and hating the whole gluey mess along with ridiculously small parts.

But the Yamato is different. For one thing, this formed part of our childhood memories. Our generation of boys watched dozens of iconic Japanese cartoons when they aired randomly on SBC’s Channel 8 during the 1970s and 1980s. With little to do in the house in those days before the Internet or Xbox, one could spend hours just watching different anime dubbed in Mandarin. And the unique mix of a traditional Japanese warship with futuristic space cruiser elements really sticks in the mind for decades.

Bandai cashed in on the Takuya Kimura movie vehicle late last year with this new plastic model kit that stretches across 70cm in length. Before I started on the kit, I looked around the Internet to see how others had built their versions. Without painting, the kit looks like a big piece of flat plastic. OK, many different pieces of plastic.

But I also wondered how much “realism” or weathering effects to give this baby. As I’ve gotten more into this “gunpla” hobby, I have observed that too many people spend big money on kits and airbrushing systems without understanding the basics of aesthetics.

For example. I would look at some of the showcase models at some of the hobby shops in Singapore and shake my head at the over-Gundam shading done on beautiful models. Less is more, folks. In my case, my background in art and photography does help me visualize the final look of my kits.

Now while I would prefer a cleanly painted and glossy robot that looked like it just stepped out of the factory, the Yamato demands a dirty or aged look. The anime and movie are set in dire times for humanity, and the Yamato first emerges from its underground factory, breaking through concrete and mud. A flat coat of paint would not give the Yamato the character it deserves – so there was not much choice but to give it gradated airbrushing and further washes of grey to bring about the post-apocalyptic look.

This project took about three months, or perhaps eight to ten man days. A lot faster than the last Votoms Scopedog project that took nearly a year thanks to prolonged procrastination.

Overall, I would say that the Yamato is relatively easy to build until you come to the small parts. On some turrets, some plastic pieces broke off (combination of thin plastic parts and several layers of paint) and I either glued them back or just threw them away. The nice thing about a “weathered” look is that you can always claim it was “battle damage” when it comes to missing or broken parts.

On one hand I was terrified of losing the tiny turret parts (there are about 34 turrets if I counted correctly). On the other hand, pressing them into the main ship body really caused my fingertips to hurt, and a few other hull parts cracked in the process.

The other difficulty I had was deciding what shade of medium blue to use. The red was easy – just go for a screaming red tone like a Ferrari. The blue was tough because if you go for the default blue that the plastic was moulded in, the whole ship looks too dull. A lighter blue would allow for more details to be called out, but would not contrast well with the red lower hull. Personally I think I could have used a deeper shade of blue but what the heck.

The other odd thing I noticed was during the final panel lining stage, using black enamel paint to wash over the base acrylic coats. With the semi-glossy red portions, it was easy to remove excess wash with thinner. With the dull blue portions, the enamel paint was very hard to remove with enamel thinner so I had to work fast and use it to create more weathering effects like vertical streaks across the hull. Perhaps I had to coat the entire ship with a glossy coat before I did the panel lining.

Oh well, live and learn. Enjoy the pics, taken with my trusty Canon 5D. Which I had trouble taking in my cramped HDB apartment because this ship is just so long!

Living a disciplined life

Posted on 15 June, 2011 by Ian Tan

Gadgets can change your life in the most unexpected ways.

Last Christmas, I bought myself a Nike Plus Sportband which works with a Nike sensor in your running shoes to track your pace and distance.

I bought it because I thought it might help me do better at my IPPT fitness test in March but it went much further and transformed the way I’ve been living my life in 2011. Here’s what happened:

Previously, I would use online maps to decide the distances that I would run around the Bishan area. The trouble was that I did not have a fixed running schedule, so there would be weeks or months between each run. And that I could never go past the 3km mark because my mind was telling me that the distance was long enough.

After all, the only reason why I ran was to ensure I would pass the annual 2.4km test for National Service.

The Nike Sportband changed my approach to running because it keeps a constant log of all your runs and speeds “in the cloud”. And with every upload of data, you can share your latest run on Twitter and/or Facebook. You can see this as either showing off to your friends, or asking them to keep you accountable on your running regime. And because it measures your running pace, it makes you feel embarrassed if you drop below your usual speed.

Over the past seven months, I found myself running three times a week, and at least 5km each time. That’s phenomenal by my own standards, because apart from my dragonboat and army days, I could never bring myself to go exercising regularly. At one point in April, I actually ran over 10km, which was the first time in 15 years. To date I have clocked about 288km since last Dec and by God’s grace, my knees are still feeling fine.

At the same time, as I dragged myself out of bed every other day at 6am, I began thinking about how to lead a more disciplined life. Where I used to relish in an unpredictable life, I now desired more order, more control and more awareness.

- I sleep earlier now and have largely stopped playing PC or console games so I can have enough energy to run. Doing up a Gundam model can take months instead of days as my sleep comes first.

- I’m trying my best to practice my violin so my teacher doesn’t give me his weary look every Monday. But man, scales and arpeggios are more tiresome than work!

- I began to go to work earlier so I could get some emails done before 9am.

- I started an aquarium which required me to do constant water changes and daily feeds (It’s been a really tough hobby as I’ve had two or three batches of fish die on me, but the latest bunch of tetras seem to be doing well)

- I drove less and walked more, to add more calories burnt every day.

- And recently, spurred on by a finance discussion with old buddy Weizheng, I decided to cut excessive bills like my Starhub broadband account (I went from 100mbps to 30mbps with a recontract), and started to balance my budget for each month with Excel and an expense tracker on my phone.

It could be that I’m getting older and being more careful about my health and expenses. But I do attribute a lot of the changes to the daily discipline and clearer thinking (running clears the mind, my friends) unwittingly enforced by the Sportband.

In an ironic twist, the Sportband didn’t help my 2.4km run very much. In fact, my timing actually got worse compared to last year. That’s because I’ve gotten so used to running longer distances at a slower pace, I really struggled to run briskly during the 2.4km test!

Isaac’s first real Gundam

Posted on 18 May, 2011 by Ian Tan

For the life of me, I don’t know why and how Bandai sells so many of the entry level “Super Deformed” Gundams. They are cheap (under S$20 in Singapore) but come in really low-grade plastics, the short limbs and body parts often come off easily after you assemble them and have very poor poseability (ie. articulation).

Having assembled a few of them with Isaac (who is eight this year), I gave up on the poor quality and presentation of the SD Gundams and told my son: “Let’s build a real Gundam.” I went shopping at Sunshine Plaza and got this HG model the RX-121-1 Gundam TR-1 Hazel Custom edition featuring oversized armor and really big kneecaps. At only S$23, it was great value and a big leap over the models he has built.

The project took us a few days, and the kid has really improved at cutting and cleaning up the plastic parts. I can’t imagine how I used to assemble model kits without a proper plastic cutter (I had only cheap scissors), but kids today are luckier I guess.

We didn’t bother to fully paint the kit with my airbrush, and it was a little disappointing to see that Bandai included normal sticky decals, not water-activated decals. I took a penknife and cut out the excess decal clear portions, and also used enamel paint to line the grooves for a more manga effect.

The downside with the HG series is that since the plastic parts are all pretty small, they risk getting broken off if you use too much force or drop the model on the floor. The Gundam’s antenna came off during the painting process, but I glued it back.

The upside is that if you take some care in assembly, and learn how to use paint to fill in the panel grooves, you’ll get a very good-looking toy that poses very well.

For Dads into toys (that’s like most of us), it’s a good idea to do some Gundam kits with your sons. It’s not only good for buddy time, but also builds observation skills and a better understanding of how things can come together for artistic effect. And of course, it builds plenty of patience!

More pictures below:

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History repeats itself

Posted on 15 May, 2011 by Ian Tan

This morning, I was stunned to read this post from Dr Tan Cheng Bock, former Member of Parliament. It was his speech from 1985 (mind you, that was 26 years ago), part of the debate on the President’s Address. He was speaking on the growing disconnect between the PAP and the people, and Dr Tan reposted this speech this week in the wake of the General Elections 2011 where the PAP saw a vote drop from 66% to 60%.

This paragraph spoke to me the most, both as a father and a citizen:

Mr Speaker, Sir, I would like to relate an incident involving my son. I took him to the Botanic Gardens one day, when he was very young. I was eager to see the Orchids section, and so I walked very very fast. He shouted to me to wait for him. I turned around, only to urge him on. I had presumed he was able to follow me but suddenly he stopped calling. I turned back and found him seated on a stone at the far end of the road. I walked to him. I saw that he was angry and in tears and, with arms folded, he burst out, “Why didn’t you wait for me?” He refused to move in spite of my apologies. He was hurt. He interpreted my fast pace as not caring, and this is how the people view the PAP.

I didn’t want to keep harping on the General Elections, but his post shows that history always repeats itself. Amusingly, the Gahmen and school principals have discouraged students from studying history and literature over the years in the pursuit of hard sciences and engineering.

Look what that has wrought.

Empty Vessel

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