Steve Jobs unveiled the new operating system (ios) for the Apple i-family an an Apple special event in San Francisco last week. This generation of ios will bring multiplayer gaming and quality high definition photography to iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches. He also announced in his presentation that the next version, ios 4.2, will bring wireless printing and media streaming in November–and it’ll be released in November.

It was a characteristically smooth launch presentation by Jobs, who must be the only CEO whose audience avidly spend their time during the presentation taking pictures and video of his performance.

The presentation is certainly helped by the iconic design status of the Apple product range. There’s interest and excitement. And it’s palpable.

Other corporate presenters must wish that they had as much as 10% of the material that Jobs has to work with.

That apart, Jobs doesn’t elect for the easy option. This presentation demonstrated the range of new attributes with a good display by Jobs inter-working with various applications. He handled it with aplomb; quite a difference with his last iPhone presentation where the technology proved reluctant to work with him!

Colin Firth stars as the Duke of York, later King George VI in the film, The King's Speech.

Film previews of the King’s Speech reveal the extraordinary relationship between the future King George VI and his voice coach.

The film dramatizes the events leading up to the abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936 and the accession to the throne of George VI seen through the prism of George’s public speaking problems…a speech impediment, stutter and a shy, retiring nature.

His first public speech is a disaster and his wife, the Duchess of York, takes charge of the problem. After a string of unsuccessful coaches, the film tells how an out of work Australian actor, a voice coach, is eventually hired to get the Royal Duke (Bertie) ready for a speech…and then prepare him for all his future public speaking roles; no small amount of work with the looming war in Europe and the eventual abdication of Edward VIII.

It looks a fascinating film with starring performances from Colin Firth as George VI, Geoffrey Rush as the speech coach and Helena Bonham-Carter as Queen Elizabeth supported by Michael Gambon as George V and Timothy Spall as Winston Churchill.

Prince Charles starts his whistle stop tour of the United Kingdom

The heir to the throne, Prince Charles, has started a Green campaigning whistle stop tour of the United Kingdom with a speech in Glasgow. The tour, known as Start, aims to promote a green way of living for the UK. Recognising that people are more likely to start doing some good than being hectored to stop something, the Start campaign aims to show people just what they can do.

Prince Charles will be accompanied by a party of 14 people on the 8-carriage Royal Train as it makes its way from Glasgow to Wales, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and then London.

It’s an ostentatious way to travel–costing the taxpayer some £50,000–but both his Start spokesman and good friend Tony Juniper were keen to point out that the Royal Train operates on recycled cooking oil, bio-diesel! Don’t get down wind of this Royal Train.

Whistle stop tours used to be a favoured way for political campaigns to be organised in both Britain and the USA. So, it’s a return to old-fashioned campaigning, old-fashioned transport and old-fashioned values. And that’s, perhaps, a key part of the Start programme. The tour is supported by many of the great and the good, knights of the realm such as Stuart Rose and many of Britain’s leading businesses, who no doubt sense some advantage.

The last whistle stop is London where the Start initiative combines with the IBM Summit at Start, a nine-day conference beginning on Wednesday 8th September. Prince Charles will give a speech at this conference on his return to London.

Mark Thompson Delivers the MacTaggart lecture in Edinburgh

The annual MacTaggart lecture is often the highlight of the Edinburgh International Television Festival. Not least because the occasion is used by speakers to lambast the BBC.

Certainly that was the case last year when James Murdoch of Sky was the speaker.

This year’s speaker, Mark Thompson, the BBC Director General, took the opportunity to put things right and bash Sky.

This was a long speech by Thompson. Just like the BBC that he heads, he’s not short of material; much of it repeats. His approach, therefore, was to rush his way through his content speaking at a great pace. The result? many of his words were less than clear. Points were lost and arguments faltered as he rattled his way through the speech.

Reading mistakes were few. But his fast pace meant that his eyes typically looked at his script as he read the script aloud. He couldn’t look at his audience as he made each point.

I sensed that his speech would have been better with some editing. At 8,000 words this was a blockbuster of a speech. A BBC editor could have been commissioned to extract the nuggets and present a more worthwhile…and shorter whole.

George Clooney became the fourth recipient of the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at the 2010 Emmys last weekend.

His acceptance speech was lucid, well-prepared and expertly delivered. He knew that his time on the podium was limited, but he didn’t rush. He paused for effect and it worked.

His speech mixed humour with due seriousness for the humanitarian causes he supports.

His message for the gathered celebrities at the Nokia theatre in downtown Los Angeles?

Don’t forget the disaster appeal once it’s no longer on the tv screen. Keep on giving. A sound message as news of disaster in Pakistan begins to recede from the rolling news.

The Lincoln Memorial, August 28th 1963 or 2010

There’s a time and a place for everything. Saturday 28th August was the time and the Lincoln Memorial was the place. Are we discussing Dr. Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech?

No. Saturday 28th August 2010 was the date for speeches by Republican would-be Presidential candidate Sarah Palin and the broadcaster Glenn Beck.

The speeches by Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck’s from the Lincoln Memorial attracted a characteristic outcry beforehand. It does seem that whenever Sarah Palin is on the speaking podium she inspires criticism.

In the event her speech, and that of her fellow speaker, Glenn Beck who organised the restoring honor event were not the stuff of legend. Estimates for the size of the crowd ranged from 87,000 to 500,000. A big spread!

The time and place mean something for a lot of Americans. I can’t imagine that this event will upset the significance of the time and place in the annals of speech making, either.

New Orleans five years after Hurricane Katrina was the subject of a speech by President Obama at the weekend.

His speech began with his customary recognition for local public servants: the Governor, Senators and Congressmen in addition to many more people with contributions to the New Orleans clean-up operation. It’s a very inclusive technique and it works well with his usually partisan audiences.

Story-telling featured strongly in this speech. Stories that described how the citizens of New Orleans persevered over the last five years. Stories of hope and resilience…not least the story of the Superbowl winners, the New Orleans Saints.

Repetition featured with a whole litany of “we see” sentences:

“And we see that here at Xavier…”

“We see New Orleans…”

“We see the symbol that this city has become…”

“I’ve seen the sense of purpose…”

“We see the dedication…”

“And we see resilience and hope…”

There was humour at times. A reference to his earlier meal at the Parkway Bakery and Tavern noted that he hadn’t had the pudding just in case he fell asleep during his own speech. A nod perhaps to others who have taken to falling asleep in his speeches?

Not this but that clauses were also prominent near the end of his speech:

“Ultimately, that must be the legacy of Katrina; not one of neglect, but of action; not one of indifference, but of empathy; not one of abandonment, but of a community working together to meet shared challenges.”

His conclusion fittingly referenced the greenery of New Orleans and the green shoots of recovery with a quote from the Book of Job:

“There is hope for a tree if it be cut down that it will sprout again, and that its tender branch will not cease.”

A fitting way to finish his New Orleans speech five years after Hurricane Katrina’s devastation.

A PowerPoint presentation from the the Dachis Group aims to make your understanding of the social networking revolution that much easier. The Dachis Group, based in Austin Texas has the mission:

“to help businesses create and capture value from emerging trends in technology, society and the workplace. We call this approach Social Business Design: the intentional creation of dynamic and socially calibrated systems, process, and culture.”

Phew!

Their mission isn’t any easier to understand when it’s portrayed with a PowerPoint presentation slide.

It just goes to show that no matter the level of innovation involved there’s much more to presenting with PowerPoint than meets the eye. Simple design, simple text and an easy colour palette are the foundations for a good presentation. A coherent message is also another good thing!

Lt. General James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, briefs his new team.

He might be a super-sleuth but spymaster Lt. General James Clapper still couldn’t stop a copy of his first PowerPoint presentation reaching the Washington Post.

The new Director of National Intelligence, the fourth person to have the job in five years, used the presentation to brief his new staff.

The presentation provides a clear insight into the mind of the new spymaster. He’s a hierarchy chopping administrator; a manager with an organizational re-structuring mission.

Regrettably, there’s nothing in the presentation that smacks of spying or national secrets. No salacious details. No inside information.

In essence, the presentation is pretty much like any other piece of corporate PowerPoint from any business in the Washington area. There’s a corporate template. Bullet lists are plentiful. There’s a ton of text on many of the slides in the deck and there’s an organization chart!

What is different however, is the use of visual imagery in the presentation. The new Director doesn’t use flashy media or attractive colour schemes in his PowerPoint, but he does use cartoons and he’s clearly not afraid to poke fun at himself.

Jokes aside, and there are a few in the presentation, there’s a hint of steel.

Noting that he’s the fourth Director in five years his reference to the “we-be” factor in the organization was telling. Personnel who reckon on being here when the Director arrives and being in post when he leaves are in for a surprise!

Over to you, Sir.

Integrating JChem and Marvin with an ELN from ChemAxon on Vimeo.

Amsterdam was the scene last month of the ELNs (Electronic Lab Notebooks) & Advanced Laboratory Solutions conference. Dr. Ian Berry of Evotec (UK) Ltd was a key presenter with his presentation titled, Integrating JChem and Marvin. It wasn’t the best title for a presentation; more of a subject description really.

Management speak was a problem with this presentation. The presenter’s easy-going style, characterised by him swallowing his words at the end of sentences, was nothing compared to his presenting language. Here are some examples:

“An intuitive system”

“off the shelf, integrated system…”

“fairly agnostic…”

“drill down…”

“agnostic to the cartridge…”

“out of the box…”

Jargon is one thing–particularly at this very specialised conference. But management-speak?

In a seemingly never-ending litany of management-speak the Evotec presenter took his audience through an unremarkable PowerPoint presentation; unremarkable in that it was just like so many other PowerPoint presentations that are inflicted on audiences in offices every day. It featured the standard “about us” slide at the beginning, a corporate template and plenty of busy, wordy slides.

The scale of the management-speak was such that the Evotec Principal Software Developer’s message was dangerously close to being lost. And that wasn’t his aim. The best bit? He took a question at the end of his presentation, proving that someone was clearly paying attention. Well done.