Presentation Zen



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Paperback
229 pages
ISBN 9780321525659 Published Nov. 2007
New Riders Publishing
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Presentation Zen
Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery
By Garr Reynolds, Guy Kawasaki 

Related Blog Posts
PresentationZen
Posted June 7, 2011 4:00 a.m. by jon
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

Maybe you give presentations often. How effective are they? Maybe you've never given one. Want help heading in the best direction? Thankfully, there's a book like Garr Reynolds' PresentationZen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery.

At some point, you're going to have to communicate an idea to a group of people. Better to communicate clearly, interestingly, and effectively rather than simply saying words and showing slides while everyone anticipates the end. This book will show you how to do that by thinking differently and creatively about how you express and show your idea. Seth Godin even encourages people to NOT buy the book so that his style of presentations don't become more common!

But Guy Kawasaki, who wrote the forward to the book, does encourage people to buy it. In fact, he's got a promotion running now:

Buy a copy of Guy Kawasaki's Enchantment, and get a FREE copy of PresentationZen.

Simply buy a copy of the book, and send Guy your proof of purchase at this link. You must follow these steps in order to get the free book (we are not fulfilling the freebies - Guy is).

Get Enchanted and enchant others through the new presentation skills you'll learn through this cool offer.



Internet Algorithm Arrives at Top 100 Business Books
Posted Aug. 31, 2009 7:59 a.m. by todd-sattersten
In Lists - 800 CEO Read Blog

Jurgen Appelo at Noop.nl has created and algorithm that takes the number of Amazon reviews, average Amazon ranking, and number of hits on Google to create the Top 100 Best Books for Managers, Leaders & Humans. In talking about some of the analysis Appelo says:

The book with the largest number of Amazon reviews is Freakonomics (#53, by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner). And the book with the largest number of Google hits is The World Is Flat (#56, by Thomas L. Friedman). However, both books scored a somewhat low average rating, which means they didn't end up among the top 10. The book with the best average rating is Love 'Em or Lose 'Em (#36, by Beverly Kaye, Sharon Jordan-Evans), though this book scored only a moderate number of reviews and Google hits.
Any experiment of this nature produces interesting results. You'll find a mixture of old and new, common and uncommon. I have pulled over the top 10 off the list:

  1. The Success Principles by Jack Canfield, Janet Switzer
  2. The Elements of Style by William Strunk, E. B. White
  3. How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
  4. Made to Stick by Chip Heath, Dan Heath
  5. Peopleware by Tom DeMarco, Timothy Lister (out of print)
  6. Influence by Robert B. Cialdini
  7. What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith, Mark Reiter
  8. Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins, Jerry I. Porras
  9. Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds
  10. Getting Things Done by David Allen
You can find the rest of the list here. Appelo has a similarly constructed list for The Top 100 Best Software Engineering Books.



SalesHQ Recommends Their Twenty Favorites
Posted July 22, 2009 4:23 a.m. by todd-sattersten
In Sales - 800 CEO Read Blog

SalesHQ has posted a list of their 20 Must-Read Sales Books. Like any good list, there is tried and true as well as some less-knowns.

  1. Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer [1]

  2. The Game by Neil Strauss
  3. Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds
  4. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cold Calling by Keith Rosen
  5. Sales 2.0 for Dummies by David Thompson with Elaine Marmel
  6. How to Master the Art of Selling by Tom Hopkins
  7. Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith [1]
  8. The Psychology of Selling by Brian Tracy
  9. Attitude 101 by John C. Maxwell
  10. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson
  11. Dog Eat Dog and Vice Versa by Jerry Rossi
  12. Secrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Zigler
  13. Secrets of Question Based Selling by Thomas Freese
  14. The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino
  15. Selling to Big Companies by Jill Konrath
  16. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie [1]
  17. The Art of War by Sun Tzu
  18. Covert Persuasion by Kevin Hogan
  19. The Definitive Book of Body Language by Barbara Pease
  20. Raven by Tim Reiterman

Each book has 50 to 100 words of commentary, so jump over there if you are interested.

I found out about the list from a blog post by Josiane Feigon at Cubicle Chronicles. She laments, "Why is it that anytime someone assembles a list of the best sales books that Zig, Tom, Og, Jeffrey, Dale and Brian have to be on that list?". You can read further about her likes and dislikes.

I like that she pointed me to the list.

1 - This is a book from The 100 Best Business Books of All Time



Amazon's Best of 2008
Posted Nov. 5, 2008 2:58 a.m. by dylan
In Uncategorized - 800 CEO Read Blog

Amazon has posted its editors' picks for 2008. In the Business & Investing category, they chose:

  1. The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder, Bantam

  2. A Sense of Urgency by John P. Kotter, Harvard Business School Press (Jack Covert Selects)

  3. The Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis in Brand Value and How to Avoid It by John Gerzema, Jossey-Bass

  4. The Momentum Effect: How to Ignite Exceptional Growth by J.C. Larreche, Wharton School Publishing

  5. The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures by Dan Roam, Portfolio (Jack Covert Selects)

  6. The Gone Fishin' Portfolio: Get Wise, Get Wealthy...and Get on With Your Life by Alexander Green, John Wiley & Sons

  7. The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By by Scott A. Shane, Yale University Press

  8. Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li, Harvard Business School Press

  9. The Contrarian Effect: Why It Pays (Big) to Take Typical Sales Advice and Do the Opposite by Michael Port, John wiley & Sons

  10. Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition by Guy Kawasaki, Portfolio (Jack Covert Selects)

The Snowball was also #5 on the Biographies and Memoirs list, Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat & Crowded was #1 on the Audiobooks list, and The Drunkard's Walk by Leonard Mlodinow was #6 on the Science list.

Amazon did something rather interesting this year, releasing their "customer favorites," otherwise known as their best-sellers, alongside their editors' picks. The Business & Investing list was:

  1. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely, HarperCollins (Jack Covert Selects)

  2. The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder, Bantam

  3. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery by Garr Reynolds, New Riders Publishing

  4. Nudge; Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein, Yale University Press (Jack Covert Selects)

  5. The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means by George Soros, PublicAffairs

  6. Economic Facts and Fallacies by Thomas Sowell, Basic Books

  7. Bad Money: The Global Crisis of American Capitalism by Kevin Phillips, Viking Press

  8. The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures by Dan Roam, Portfolio (Jack Covert Selects)

  9. The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash by Charles R. Morris, PublicAffairs

  10. Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution: Solving the One Business Problem That Makes Solving All Other Problems Easier by Gary Harpst, Six Disciplines Publishing



    Bunches of Business Book Recommendations
    Posted Aug. 25, 2008 4:00 a.m. by todd-sattersten
    In Lists - 800 CEO Read Blog

    There has been quite a run in the blogosphere in the last two weeks with people recommending business books.

    Josh Kauffman may have started this tidal wave with his updated 2008 version of The Personal MBA. His list is 77 books long with the mantra "skip b-school and the $100,000 loan: you can get a world-class business education simply by reading these books."

    BusinessPundit followed with their 25 Best Business Books Ever post, placing Adam Smith at #25 and In Search of Excellence at the top spot.

    For The Best Business Book of 2008 (so Far), Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog directs people to The Opposable Mind, Presentation Zen, Rain Making, Groundswell, Senior Leadership Teams and Brain Rules.

    And then people started finding old lists to highlight. A "Business Book" hit on tweetscan directed me to a October 2007 post at Newly Corporate titled "15 Books For Rogue Professionals and How To Read Them At No Cost." Their no-cost solution is the library, and they recommend everything from Carnegie to Chris Anderson to China Inc.

    This led me to another tweetscan hit where Melissa Woo, inspired by this post, spent the morning tweeting her favorites. As a fellow Milwaukeean, I thought I would list all of her favorites.




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