Dave Smoley

ex Apple VP, tech innovation enthusiast, avid kiter/skier/boarder/biker. Clemson Tigers.

[Dave Smoley @dsmoley]

Super annoying to wait for more than 30 min in the @ATLairport @tsa Pre security line. Come on Atlanta, this is unacceptable.

[Netskope @Netskope]

Dive into the just-released book, "The Cyber Savvy Boardroom: Essentials Explained" co-authored by Homaira Akbari, President & CEO of AKnowledge Partners, and Shamla Naidoo, Head of Cloud Strategy and Innovation at Netskope. Get your copy here: https://t.co/MUvseMb5vC

[Peter Yang @petergyang]

Tony Fadell co-created the iPhone.

In his book, Build, he explains why product management and product marketing should be the same role.

"Your messaging is your product. The story you're telling shapes the thing you're making."

I've always believed this as someone who did both.

[Aaron Levie @levie]

You can now use AI to synthesize information that's hundreds of pages long, like Warren Buffett's letters.

[Box @Box]

📢 We're excited to be ranked among the best content collaboration platforms according to IDG Connect PeerSpot users. See why business leaders are loving Box. https://t.co/oXP6ibmieY

[Aaron Levie @levie]

With AI we can now pull out critical data from any content like an invoice, contract, or resume. You can then automate any kind of workflow based on the data, run reports, and more.

[Aaron Levie @levie]

Today we're announcing Box AI, a breakthrough in how you can interact with your content! Box AI leverages leading AI models, starting with GPT 3.5 and 4, to let you ask questions, summarize, pull out insights, and generate new content! https://t.co/Ek305FeTQ3

[Aaron Levie @levie]

Box AI can read through extremely long documents, like the Fed's 120 page review of the SVB collapse, and answer any kind of question.

[Gokul Rajaram @gokulr]

How to present

In 2006, I helped @ericschmidt create a deck outlining Google’s strategy, for a presentation Eric was delivering to the company. It taught me a profound lesson on how to present.

When I showed up to my first meeting with Eric, he asked me to visit with every product team at Google, chat with them to figure out what they were working on, and then summarize it on one slide (for each team).

Easy enough, I thought. I would use 3-5 bullet points per slide. Piece of cake. I started mentally mapping things out and got ready to leave.

“But”, Eric said, “I want no words on any slide”.

My well-laid plans disintegrated in an instant. How was I supposed to convey the key messages from each team, without WORDS?

Eric must have seen the panic on my face, and kindly gave me a hint. “Put the text in speaker notes”.

“But what goes on the slides, Eric?” I continued panicking.

That classic, gentle “Eric smile” fluttered on his face. “Why, images, of course!”

“You mean, you want each slide to just be comprised of images?”

“You got it. And use the title wisely. 7-8 words max. Let’s meet in a week to review progress.”

As I left the meeting, little was I to know that this conversation would fundamentally change my view on how to deliver effective presentations.

17 years later, I still cling tightly to the following principles:

1. The larger the audience, the fewer the words on the slide. In Eric’s case, the audience was thousands of employees, so we had 0 words per slide.

2. The title does most of the heavy lifting, which means it cannot be passive. It must be action oriented. Eg: not “Subscriber retention” but “Subscribers continue to be retained strongly” or even better “Net revenue retention continues to be > 100%”.

3. Use memorable images that substantiate and give credence to the words of the title. This image is what will occupy most of the slide area, so you need to spend much of your time thinking about what picture will best get the point (made by the title) across. In some cases, it might be a customer image or logo. in other cases, a graph. In yet other cases, it could be something else entirely. For the Google presentation, one of the images that gave me the most trouble was a slide on Google Search Appliance and other Enterprise products. The title stated that these products were increasingly being used by larger customers. The team didn’t want to share customer logos broadly since some were confidential, so logos were not an option. I decided to go with a trend line on the % of searches from enterprise customers, but the person who was supposed to pull this data for me, flaked at the last minute and I had to scramble. I ended up scrambling to create a mosaic of a bunch of consumer product logos with some kind of icon that denoted large enterprises. Not my finest moment but it got the point across.

4. Use speaker notes. Like Eric said, speaker notes should contain most of the details. It puts a lot of burden on the speaker since they cannot just read off the slides. But this doesn’t deter good speakers, since they prepare dozens of times, and then again.

So there you have it: my 4 principles for delivering compelling presentations to live audiences.

(CAVEAT: If the presentation has to be emailed to an audience who will consume it asynchronously, that’s completely different and has different rules).

How did the 2006 Google strategy presentation turn out, you ask? It went quite well, and later I got a nice thank you note from Eric. I didn’t realize at the time that I should have been the one thanking him for the once-in-a-lifetime learning opportunity.

[Dave Smoley @dsmoley]

@javilopen Fascinating! Thanks for posting!

[Dave Smoley @dsmoley]

Check out my recent episode of ESI with @evanreiser & @saammotamedi where we discuss my experience with hands-on digital transformations throughout my career and best practices for partnering with startups. Listen here: https://t.co/CFO14Dh9hT

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

Steve Jobs passed away 11 years ago today.

His 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University is a treasure trove of his wisdom.

7 quotes and lessons from the incredible speech:

[Jon Erlichman @JonErlichman]

“Most people never pick up the phone and call. And that’s what separates sometimes the people who do things from the people who just dream about them.”

~Steve Jobs

[Marius Hauken @mhauken]

Your iPhone is about to receive a new update on Monday.

And it's going to transform how you experience your phone forever.

Here are 9 new features that will change everything:

[Esther @escoen]

Apple Watch series 8 is for people who don't want to die, the ultra is for people who do

[Paul Graham @paulg]

A founder with knowledge of the US labor market told me that decreased immigration is now a significant drag on economic growth, as boomers leave the work force and there is no one to replace them.

https://t.co/6KotqN0hp6

[Kim Mangone’s Spirit @KimMangone]

Retweet if you want to see Beto O’Rourke crush Greg Abbott

[ian bremmer @ianbremmer]

a stat that never fails to horrify, because us political leaders refuse to address it

[Marc J. Spears @MarcJSpears]

"Fifty senators in Washington are holding us hostage," Steve Kerr said.