To Have Content, To Be Compelling

Emotional TV in Florianópolis, more here.

Rodrigo Baggio has a few stories that he likes to tell when explaining the successes of CDI. One of them involves a remote jungle village using email to seek military assistance to combat invasive narcotraffickers. There are several stories of homeless kids who were able to use skills learned in CDI’s schools to find employment and escape the favela. But there’s one story that I love. It’s about a village, a river, Text Editor, and PowerPoint.

Somewhere in Brazil there is a small village on a river. The people in this village used to throw their garbage in the river. Some concerned villagers worried that the river was becoming too polluted, and they mounted a campaign to teach people why they should try to keep the river clean.

First, they used Text Editor to create some flyers that they posted around the village announcing a special meeting at the computer school. Then, they gave a PowerPoint presentation at the meeting explaining the importance of keeping the river clean and proper waste disposal methods. Rodrigo says that this campaign was 100% successful, that no one in the village continued to throw their garbage in the river after the meeting.

When I heard Rodrigo tell this story, I thought “100%?” because I’m skeptical of such perfection, but I suppose that the point of the story is that the campaign was very successful. But that’s beside the point. For me the real takeaways were “Text Editor?” and “PowerPoint?” because I didn’t think you could do anything neat with those programs.

Yet the fact that the campaign was successful seems to prove that you can.

PowerPoint meets Senhor Marks a Lot.

This gets me thinking about a relationship that many people have already thought about. You can take courses and read books about this relationship. It’s the relationship between what you say and how you say it. The only course that I remember taking about this topic is Edward Tufte’s “Presenting Data and Information.” I recommend that course to anyone even remotely interested in public speaking and presenting. The time and money I spent on that course might be one of the best academic investments I’ve ever made.

My point in writing this entry, however, is not to give any tips on presentation, but to examine the mechanics of presentation and what it means to be compelling.

Part of my aversion to PowerPoint—€”or my belief that it isn’t neat—€”is informed by Tufte’s excellent criticism of the program and how it has affected how we communicate. Having already sat through countless PowerPoint presentations in my short life, I agree with Tufte that there are serious flaws in PowerPoint as a medium to communicate complicated ideas. It dilutes the power of both words and images, yet somehow, it remains a compelling medium. And, despite its shortcomings, was able to clean up a river.

I think the secret to PowerPoint’s success as a medium thus-far is the fact that most people don’t know how to use it. Read on…

All of these looked cool once. If one looks cool today, it’s not for the same reason that it used to.

I vaguely remember the first time I was able to use a dot matrix printer to print out my name. I thought it was neat. I remember thinking the same thing when I saw my name printed on a laser printer. I don’t know what I’d think seeing my name on a marquis, although I’m pretty sure I’d rather not know. I know that people pay to see their names written on a grain of rice.

When I saw my name printed, my name was nothing new to me, but I enjoyed seeing it in a new way. I had never been able to write my name as clearly as a printer could. My name had never looked so official.

I guess that it’s by the same token that old, insignificant, or false information can become exciting by being presented in a way that appears to demand some sort of professional skill. This is why people will trust things printed in books sold in a nice store or sometimes published on good looking websites. This is also why many people will tolerate pointless PowerPoint presentations (neat pun!). This is also why a literate person would probably not pay to see his name written on a piece of paper with a pencil.

The tragedy of PowerPoint is that it is a massive time waster. People waste time creating PowerPoint presentations in lieu of rehearsing what they will say to their audiences and often in lieu of creating convincing arguments. A PowerPoint can allow a lazy presenter to stand in front of an audience and say almost nothing for an entire meeting, but I’m digressing.

Despite its shortcomings, PowerPoint was used to provide an argument compelling enough to clean a river. Now, Rodrigo, believing in the power of technology, believes that PowerPoint, as a medium, made the river cleaning message more compelling. I think I agree with him. A PowerPoint presentation will impress anyone who is unfamiliar with how it is made, and the villagers who attended the presentation were probably very impressed.

I’d wager, however, that the presentation would have failed to impress me or any other person familiar with PowerPoint. The information in the presentation might have enlightened me, but the presentation itself would have commanded no special attention, nor would the Text Editor flyers.

Now, I might be wrong, but I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I’m so convinced of it that I’m betting my career on it, at least for a little while. I’ll explain that in a moment, but before I do, I want to say that ideaနand Rodrigo’s story about the clean riverနkeep me believing in CDI’s work.

Early on in my internship in Brazil, I quoted Steinbeck’s East of Eden on PushSamba, a blog I tried to create about open source software in Brazil. I quote him here again, with the same conviction:

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

Technology can be used as a tool to allow the mind to “take any direction it wishes.” It can be poorly used and it can be lazily used, but it can help people make compelling and beautiful and important things (e.g. river cleaning programs). Even PowerPoint can do it, as long as the presenter knows his audience and has something to say.

I’ve enjoyed blogging, and I hear that people have enjoyed reading my blogs. I could not have written these things and published these pictures without the help of technology. Nonetheless, I don’t know if I’m going to keep blogging in the traditional sense of the word (is it funny that there is already a traditional sense of blogging?). I have decided to move on to another medium…

A Gentle Bossanova—The Filmmaker

This is what I was talking about when I mentioned “betting my career.” Many of my readers already know that I’ve been working on a short documentary film about Cilantro for about a year. A series of revelations has led me to commit myself almost full time to the film for the foreseeable future. I like to tell stories about people and places, and I think that people enjoy my perspective (unless people have been lying to me). I believe that film can be a more compelling medium than text, especially when considering documentaries. I love the richness of imagery and sound that film provides. I am excited to learn how to make films, and I’m stoked that Cilantro will be my first.

I invite all of my readers to watch for news on the Cilantro documentary film website. I’m a little sad to inform you that Vivo Sonhando is now officially closed. Thanks for reading! I love you all!