T. Boone Pickens uses old school whiteboarding to show the future

This clip is just brilliant. While I find it hard to be an unabashedly enthusiastic supported of T. Boone Pickens (some of his machiavellian corporate buyouts in the '80s and his million dollar challenge in support of 2004's Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are truly despicable), I have to hand it to him for his energy knowledge, vision, and whiteboard style.

(Click here or image to launch the video.)

His live drawing of the facts and concepts behind potential future energy plans for the US is worth watching in its entirety. I have a hard time coming up with a better example of how to create a series of simple pictures to explain a complex concept.

After watching this, I not only feel like a know more about American energy production and consumption than before, I also clearly understand his vision and why it just might work. That's pretty impressive for a 10-minute video showing nothing but an old guy and a whiteboard.

Watching this clip also reminds me of one of the most important messages I like to convey to "back of the napkin" communicators: a good napkin sketch is *not* something that you need to come up with on the fly. You visually work through your ideas in advance and then rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

Sharing an idea with a picture is like any performance. The more comfortable you are in advance creating your picture and pointing out what is important about it, the more your audience will believe you and appreciate what you have to say and show. And most importantly, the more confident you feel in creating your prepared picture, the more willing you and your audience will be to then begin to improvise and riff.

And that's when the greatest ideas are going to appear.

Comments

[John Lafferty]

Just came across your book and immediately ordered it from Amazon. Having now seen your blog -- why don't you stick to communication ideas and cease the politics. I may well care about your communication ideas and comments. Your politics? Not a whit.

[Tim]

Hi Dan, thanks for sharing this.

I thought it could be improved by giving a sense of what a trillion dollars can do. There's a guy who worked that out (instead of war spending):
http://www.whatwecouldhavedonewiththemoney.com/

I liked the way he remembered all his numbers, and the way he used the whiteboard to represent the geography of the USA.

So nice presentation, but would be more useful if he dealt with CO2 emissions - he only solved the $ problem, not the underlying problem.