Digital Roam

Health care napkins take top honors

I'm excited that the health care napkins I created with Tony Jones have just been announced as the "World's Best Presentation 2009" by Slideshare.net and Business Week.

It tells us a lot about the power of simple pictures that over 100,000 people have viewed the slides. After all, this is a PowerPoint presentation about health care; what in the world could possibly be more boring?

Yet by making it visual, simple and clear, people don't mind taking the time to look it over.

Healthcare Napkins All

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This is the real lesson for all of us who need to present information to others:

There is no such thing as boring knowledge.

There are only boring ways to present it.

The second and third place winners make the same point. Orphanages and kidneys? *...Yawn...*

NOT.

Sheltering Wings

View more presentations from Sarah Cullem.

Feels Bad On The Back

View more documents from mohamad faried.

Scaling the Grand Hyatt SF

On Sept. 23 I'll be talking and drawing at the SF Chapter of the American Marketing Association. I hope to touch on:

• Solving any problem with a picture.
• How anyone can draw.
• The best 2 business pictures ever made. (Einstein drew one of them.)

Reception starts at 6:00pm at the Grand Hyatt, drawing on napkins starts at 7:00. Thanks Mark Evans for setting this up. Hope to see you at the Hyatt, right off Union Square.

Register here.

My Speech to Congress (anticipating Obama)

Just when you thought health care was over... BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! (Now how much would you pay??)

After the success of our first round health care back-of-the-napkins, Dr. Jones and I realized we still had a bit more to say. When we heard that President Obama was going to be speaking to an extraordinary joint session of Congress next week (Wednesday, Sept. 9 at prime time) we took upon ourselves to say it for him.

So here are the index cards we recommend the President take with him when he mounts the stage next week. (Yes, we know he uses a Teleprompter, but we kind of liked the old-school approach. It lends an additional needed air of 'authenticity'.)

You can recite our proposed speech index card-by-index card below (click on each image to enlarge for better readability) or view as a PowerPoint on Slideshare.net.

We'll be watching next week to see if he takes up our talking points. Anyone have a direct line to Jon Favreau?

Health care napkins update: FOX news, Huffington Post, etc.

Two weeks ago, I published here and on slideshare.net a series of "back of the napkin" visual explanations of the health care debate. I created the napkins in order to myself understand the essentials of a public debate which had become more vicious than any in recent memory. I also hoped others might find them a useful baseline description of the issues.

The response has proven to me (again) the staggering power of simple pictures.

Healthcare Napkins All

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Since I posted the slide show, it has been viewed more than 76,000 times, embedded in 265 other blogs, cited on the HuffingtonPost.com and prompted FOX News to ask me to explain on air what the debate is really about.

(On a side note, I find it interesting that FOX was the first network to call. My politics rarely align with those of the pundits appearing on FOX, so it was gratifying that they found the clarity of my napkins more compelling than any political slant. That's something to be especially optimistic about.)

As the government reconvenes in the next weeks, I'm sure health care will remain as contentious an issue as it was before vacation. I plan to create a second set of napkins as the debate heats up again. Watch for them here.