The Other Side of Data and “Slides”

When you think of process data and presenting data, you think of excel and charts. But generally all this is static or hard to show complex relations and concepts. In addition you can’t easily see how this data changes over time. At the Stockholm Challenge Week, I was recommended to see a presentation on Gap Minders. The presentation was made in TED and can be seen here.

“I have a head.. I don’t need a overhead”, that is a phrase (by a Lady in government) that I heard in a Business Forum when I was fresh here in Stockholm (fall 2007). The meaning of this is that when you present, people pay so much attention to the slides and forget about the presenter. This is ironic since the slides should support the presenter and not the other way around.

Why I mention the above? Well.. Gap Minders tools may shift the attention to the slides, since is a way to make a presentation of complicated data with rich media and then the presenter gets a big overhead. The interesting part is that with enriched media like this, used in presentations and controlled entirely by the presenter, the “slides” become an extension of the presenters voice. And thanks to that extension, maybe now you can fill that gap which will permit people to not only remember you or your slides, but your message.