Nancy Duarte has driven the vision and growth of Duarte for 20 years, building
an ... Nancy's next book Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform ...
Dear mosaicoelearning blog readers, it is with great pleasure that this time we host an exclusive interview with one of the World’s most successful people regard to communication and presentations. Nancy Duarte has driven the vision and growth of Duarte for 20 years, building an internationally respected design firm, which has created over a quarter of a million presentations. She has helped shape the perceptions of many of the world’s leading brands and thought leaders. Nancy is the author of the bestselling and award winning book Slide:ology The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations, where her experience was distilled into best practices for business communicators. She continues to advance new forms of presentation through partnerships with innovative forums like TED and PopTech. Nancy serves as a TED Fellows committee member, is a 2009 Woman of Influence and 2008 Communicator of the Year. Nancy’s next book Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences is published by Wiley and you can find it in bookstores since October 2010. ABOUT YOU As we read from your rich website, Duarte is a growing machine that “maintains relationships with more than half of the world’s thirty most valuable brands” (including Apple, Adobe, Ford, Disney, Cisco, Nokia, Nestle, Google, Dolby and Intel). What else you (and we) have to expect more from Duarte? Technology advancements are happening very quickly right now, so my firm is trying to stay on top of them. We have an iPhone app coming out at the end of the year, we’ll be re-releasing Resonate as a multimedia piece plus are trying to determine the role social media plays in a presentation.
Today you lead a successful company and you are a model for many. But how did you become popular? How did you transform a passion into a successful business? From the very beginning in 1988 my husband and I were determined to give our clients great service and a quality product. From there, word of mouth helped spread the news. For 22 years we’ve adjusted the business as technology and the communication industry migrated. Sometimes it was hard to stay focused on the niche of presentations. We dabbled in other forms of marketing deliverables but kept coming back to the fact that we love presentations. So we decided to become an agency that focuses solely on presentations and that was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made.
ABOUT COMMUNICATION AND E-LEARNING In many ways, when we make elearning courses we tell a story to the students. The instructional designer work is partly this, partly to find the best way to do it, depending on the audience. According to your experience, what is the best way to determine how to tell a story? Story can be used as a structural device and to create emotional appeal. Story is a powerful container for information. Insights delivered in the form of story are easy to repeat and recall which is an important component of learning. Story helps students see the gap between what they currently know and the value of what they could know.
“A picture is worth a thousand words”. In some ways this is one of the more mundane and recurring phrases, but at the same time one of the most powerful and truthful. It 'also one that we can find on your site, which offers many interesting ideas to those involved in communication and presentations. What is the best way to turn a concept expressed in words into an image? There are some tips and tricks, or secrets? It’s easier to have words on a slide than to muster the brain-power to develop a conceptual a way to communicate. The most memorable presentations have unique concepts in them. The best way to turn words into picture is to brainstorm unique ideas. If you go with the first most obvious idea, that’s not interesting. It means you’ll have to take risks and think of expressions never used in your industry or presentations before. Images are an opportunity to create emotional appeal where words can’t. An image creates a sense of suspense or sympathy and can make you understand a point better or create a sense of attraction to a brand. One of the things I always say, is that “There is good learning only if there is good communication”. What do you think about this? And how do you suggest to improve communication power in the specific area of online learning? Communication is a very valuable skill yet few invest in it. Many leaders prefer to stay focused solely on their subject matter (which is important) but the difference between an average contributor and someone who moves onto impacting others on a broad scale is how they communicate.
ABOUT MOSAICOELEARNING Please, could you leave a message to all of our readers? Creating effective eLearning is one of the most important shifts in business communications. As more training moves on-line, learners can become less engaged unless you incorporate story and appeal to the human nature of the learners. Take care in making the modules as interesting as possible, making them feel engaging as it would be if it was occurring in-person. ©http://www.mosaicoelearning.it
