”I know kung fu.” This is Neo’s pronouncement in the movie, The Matrix, eleven seconds after porting with the ship’s computer via a thick cord fixed to the back of his neck. “Show me,” says Morpheus who has spent those seconds watching Neo’s face twitch and eyeballs roll around beneath his closed eyelids. Off they […]
There is a famous saying from Theodore Roosevelt that is often quoted as “Nothing worth having comes easy.” Dig around the internet a little and you will find the accurate quote. It is far richer and more powerful than the popular paraphrase. Roosevelt actually said, “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing […]
“I was just listening to the BBC and they were doing a story on a 14 year old girl killed by cannibals in prehistoric America. Next thing I knew they were talking about wine. For just a second I thought the were recommending the best wine to go with human flesh, then I realized I […]
The Oxford dictionary defines resilience in two ways: The capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness The ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity For us humans, the first is a good literal translation. The second is a wonderful metaphor for recovering quickly. And isn’t that […]
Don’t data dump! Inspired by my favorite data storytelling book, Say It With Charts by Gene Zelazny, these two videos will help you tell a story with your data. How should you present a chart? Be a good movie director using a wide shot, medium shot and close shot. Grappling with how much information to […]
Last week, I had to stop a presenter as he was mid-way through explaining his chart. “Can you back up?” I asked. “I think I first need to understand what the numbers on the side mean.” It happens a lot. After spending a few days or even weeks synthesizing data, pulling out the meaning and […]
A few years ago in a session of The Story Compass, a participant asked me, “Don’t you think storytelling is a bit primitive? I think we’ll evolve past it, communicate in a more sophisticated way.” My first thought was, “Whoah! Slow down buddy. You just called the whole course into question!” Then I thought about […]
One evening last week, I warmed up two chocolate chip cookies and, at the urging of my dad, sat down to watch Formula 1: Drive to Survive on Netflix. By the end of three episodes, I had decided two things. First, I would ask my son to hide the cookies. Second, I would be watching […]
Fear of the unknown. Is there anyone not feeling this right now? If our usual changes at work are like Gandalf showing up at our cottage door and asking, “Hey, want to go to Mordor and destroy this dangerous ring?”, COVID is the unmarked van that peeled up onto the sidewalk, threw us in the back, […]
“Tell them that joke you know.” When we think of engaging our audiences, we often think of things like telling a story, a joke, making eye contact or asking a question. And those are great suggestions. (Unless you’re not funny. Then – please – avoid the joke.) But what about giving them a voice? You […]