Edited launch video. Full version (1hr 20min) here.

Steve Jobs is rightly regarded as a master of the presentation universe. How many presentations get that level of global PR hype, both before and after the event?

Here are 10 lessons to draw from the iPad launch speech:

1.    Open with an attention-grabbing  amazing fact: in this case, that Apple has now shifted its 250 millionth iPod. Which tells the audience: we’re probably right about this new product too.

2.    No jargon. Jobs uses none of the clichés that bedevil corporate speeches, particularly in the IT field. No “enterprise-class solutions”. No “best of breed”. Just a conversational chat the way any normal human would talk.

3.    No excess information on the screen. No ever-present logo bars, event titling or other clutter. If you can take something away without it affecting the message, then do it.

4.    Strong use of quality images. In the shot below, a single photo that sums up Apple’s unique marketing positioning. No extra verbiage required.

5.    Don’t be afraid to create an enemy, in Jobs’ case the Netbook, which he says is just a cheap PC that doesn’t do anything well. A lot of people will tell you that all negative messages are bad. That advice is well-meaning and wrong. If your product is the solution to a problem, you’d better spell out exactly what that problem is. And remind everyone how much it pisses them off.

6.    Perfect timing on the screen graphics. Nothing comes up too early to spoil the surprise, and nothing hangs around afterward as a distraction. Which comes from:

7.    A huge amount of rehearsal. Anyone who’s demonstrated software will know the tremendous scope for things to go wrong. The more effortless a presentation looks, the more effort has gone into planning and rehearsing every detail again and again.

8.    A distinctive look, where every detail is consistent. The Apple stage look is always designed for zen-like simplicity to match their products. Jobs’ clothes are always consistent – even if the jeans came straight off Seinfeld. It might not work for other companies, but it works for Apple.

9.    He demonstrates the product sitting back in a comfy leather chair.  The underlying message is: this is a product that isn’t just designed for work. You can’t kick back in a chair and read a laptop comfortably. With the iPad, you can relax and enjoy yourself. Good stage design can send messages like that.

10.    Use of the blank screen. If there’s no visual that goes with the words at any point, go to blank. The focus is on you, the presenter, with no distractions. Then, when the images return, they have much more impact.

It wasn’t a perfect presentation. It wasn’t exactly a revelation to see the iPad “just go straight to the New York Times web site” and allow you to look at it, like every other web device on earth. Snipping out some of this filler would have made it shorter without reducing the impact. But these are minor quibbles in a presentation that generally acted as a showpiece of how to get a message across clearly.

The stage can be a dangerous environment. From the audience, it looks like a walk in the park. Just get up on the stage, do your thing, and try not to fall off. I’ve seen:

> A software demonstration guy lean too far back in his chair, and catapult backward off a six-foot high stage in a convention center.

> A hyped-up CEO fall into an orchestra pit at a network marketing motivational event.

> An MC scorched by pyrotechnics from a product reveal.

It can be really dark up there. There are lights in your face, whether you’re speaking at a conference, or reviving your 80’s hair metal band at the Tony Awards.

So, smug viewers at home, don’t assume that Poison singer Bret Michaels is a brain-dead labrador in human form, who couldn’t find his way off a stage if a row of imaginary talking rabbits told him which way to go.

Of course, that might just be true. But like most people on a stage, he has other things on his mind, and he might not have been expecting a stage flat the size of the Hoover Dam to land on his head.

As always, the lesson here is: rehearse in the actual stage space.

A quick run through in your office or boardroom is good, but there’s no substitute for getting to the venue early and getting used to the stage environment. Practice walking on and off the stage in the dark. Get used to the lights. Speak through the actual microphones you’ll be using for the presentation. When it’s time for your speech, there are no surprises.

And you and your audience will have, well, Nothin’ But A Good Time.

With media full of Obama speech analysis, it’s not a good time for would-be politicians to come up short in the oratory department.

JFK’s daughter Caroline Kennedy has withdrawn her candidacy for Hillary Clinton’s old Senate seat, citing ‘personal reasons’.

Helping her decision was a firestorm of media ridicule for a interview in which she said “y’know” 139 times. It made the average teenage girl sound like JFK by comparison.

It’s tough on her. She’s a well-educated, intelligent person, but she’s just not used to the spotlight, just like many presenters.

And when you’re nervous, there’s a natural tendency to fall back on a favourite phrase: going forward, like, anyway and other favorites. You don’t even know you’re saying them.

The only way to weed them out is to rehearse.

Start with informal rehearsals, just you  in the office or wherever you feel comfortable. Videotape yourself. You won’t just pick up the “y’knows”, you’ll also notice physical mannerisms like touching your face or jingling coins in your pocket.

Then plan for an on-site rehearsal for the actual presentation, particularly if it’s in a staged environment. Everything feels different with a dark room and lights in your face.

Spend the time to get comfortable on the stage. Meet the AV techs and do a voice check. So when you hit the stage, you’re concentrating on a powerful opening and creating a link with the audience, not worrying if the microphone’s working properly.

Learn more in video form here.

Pic courtesy JonnyStiles

Many readers have written in asking for an explanation of the world economic crisis, and how it applies to presentations.*

Let’s Talk About Leverage

Much of the answer lies in the concept of ‘leverage’.

Leverage became a corporate buzzword a while ago, in tandem with ‘synergies’. For example, large companies will announce “we are seeking to leverage our supplier contracts to achieve mutual, synergistic benefits”. If you’re their supplier, it’s a very similar form of leverage to that exerted by an enormous tattooed biker cellmate in prison movies starring Rob Schneider.

As in “I’m gonna leverage you real good, boy.”

How To Get Rich, For a While

Leverage in the financial markets delivered a similar result in the long term. Rather than just invest the money you own, the idea was to borrow lots of other people’s money to magnify the returns, assuming the value of everything went up forever.

If you got it right, you could tick the ‘gold tapware’ option on your private jet.  Get it wrong, and you end up with debts that will be settled by your children’s children’s children, or if you fill out some simple forms, by a massive government bailout paid for by everyone else’s children’s children’s etc.

So you must be careful with leverage.

And that’s as deep as the analysis gets, because our economic guidance comes from friends in the investment banking industry, and most of them are now combing the backroads for recently deceased squirrels.

Getting to the point, at last

As a presenter, you too exercise leverage.

Consider for a moment how much time you can waste by yourself. During the course of a day at work, you can waste up to eight hours Facebooking, drinking coffee and taking calls about exciting new phone plans.

That’s eight hours you won’t get back again, eight hours that are an absolute drain on your company. But the damage is pretty much capped at eight hours, assuming you work 9-5.

Boring presenters, on the other hand, have much greater time-wasting leverage. Let’s imagine you’re boring (not you personally, we’re speaking of a hypothetical boring presenter here). You’re talking to a conference audience of 250, for an hour.

And imagine that you completely fail to get the message across, because you just stood there at the lectern and read out words that were projected on the screen.

That’s 251 hours you’ve wasted right there (including yourself, but not including your preparation time, or time the audience spends during the break talking about how dull you were.)

At an average white collar wage of $38 per hour including on-costs and coffee, that’s nearly $10,000 you’ve burned right there.

Think about this in terms of harsh cost-benefit analysis: they’d actually be better off paying you $5,000 not to turn up.

Positive Leverage: It Works Both Ways

So you owe it to all those people to use your powers of leverage wisely: to use more imagination with your presentation material, to spend more time thinking about the audience, to turn up early and rehearse, and all the other elements that make a difference.

Because then, you experience the upside of leverage – an hour of your time can make a big difference to a large number of people. You can change the way they see things, make their lives easier, or even just get some of them to share the excitement you feel for your topic.

You won’t get a private jet, but you’ll get a lot of gratitude and respect, and no hedge fund trader ever got that.

*No they haven’t.