I’ve been meaning to write an ode to Nancy Duarte for a long time. Now I have the ideal examples to write my ode in a California-China-Chile context! Yes!

Nancy and my dad worked together many years ago at Apple. In 1990 she founded Duarte Design. The company has since grown into the world leader in presentation design and training. Clients include Al Gore and most of the world’s top tech companies.

She has written two fabulous, colorful, and useful books.

A few years ago, while preparing a presentation skills training for a group of Chinese lawyers, my dad suggested that I read the Duarte blog for inspiration. I became a loyal reader. Her ideas about storytelling inspired me to spice up a speech about patent invalidation procedures in China. My client, a patent attorney with a pHd in chemistry, came to me with a draft of the slides for his speech at a conference in France. I read through the slides, and noticed on slide #26 a pharmaceutical compound more commonly known as Viagra has been invalidated a number of times in China. I saw this as a goldmine to transform a dense, technical presentation into a memorable story that would really resonate with a roomful of patent attorneys.

The final version of his speech started with a riddle. “It’s blue. Six letters. Men like it. Can you guess it? Yes, it’s Viagra! And Viagra is useful for more than one thing. It’s useful for understanding China’s patent invalidation process. Let me tell you about the first time Viagra’s patent was invalidated…”

The speech was a hit! Every attorney at this conference remembered his message!

I had the great fortune to meet Nancy Duarte in person a few months ago, when I was home in California. She had just booked a trip to China, and she had lots of questions about how the Chinese think. I recommended The Geography of Thought, which is a fabulous conversation starter.

This week, Nancy gave a speech in Beijing, and posted about the experience on her blog:

I spoke in Beijing on Saturday, and worked with an interpreter for the first time. Public speaking is hard enough, and working with an interpreter complicates things… unless you’re prepared.

I had two interpreters. One was the primary and the other was a secondary interpreter, plus they had two on stand-by (paranoid event planning I guess). The primary interpreter, Sally, was a subject matter expert, and the secondary interpreter, Rebecca, was a professional interpreter. Sally kicked it off and was doing great (I thought) and then I got a note to have it switch to Rebecca. Then a note to switch back to Sally. Apparently, because Sally wasn’t a professional interpreter, she was looking at me and at her notes and not at the audience. Even though she is a compelling communicator when alone on stage, they felt she was bringing down the energy of the talk. They slipped in Rebecca, coached Sally and had Sally come back on and she kicked it up! She and I both learned from this experience.

Interestingly, it was when Rebecca was interpreting that she created a S.T.A.R. Moment. That’s an acronym for Something They’ll Always Remember. In my talk, I was describing in what a S.T.A.R. moment is. But when Rebecca relayed in Chinese what a S.T.A.R. moment was the place roared with laughter (they didn’t laugh when I explained what it is.) Rebecca had inserted a traditional 4-character Chinese saying that means “something you’ll remember until you’re so old your teeth are falling out.” She did a great job mapping my information to the local culture.

Her suggestions apply for anyone communicating across cultures, not just VIP keynote speakers with four interpreters on hand! Here’s her full post:  Six Tips for Working With an Interpreter While Public Speaking.

I thought of Nancy yesterday while sitting through a full-day conference here in Chile. While some speakers gave clear, educational, and visual presentations, the majority brought to mind the phrase “Death by PowerPoint.” Too many slides! Tiny graphs! Bad typesetting! Ugly, mismatched colors! Impossible-to-read graphics “enhanced” by complex animation! A vertical, paragraph-filled PDF report with tiny type and tiny graphs, projected on screen! You get the picture.

The conference did have many redeeming values. I learned a lot and met many people that showed interest in my new business. But I wanted to use Nancy’s methodology to rework almost all of the presentations, as to inspire the audience, not put everyone to sleep!

It also gave me inspiration to continue packing my speeches with personal anecdotes and photos from my camera.

The following photo has made it into nearly every speech I’ve made in Chile. I use it to illustrate my Silicon Valley background, and truly connect with the audience.

If you have any interest at all in visual communication, public speaking, or the getting your point across in general, please read Nancy’s books, follow her on Twitter, and subscribe to her blog. Your audience will thank you!