Raise you hand if you have ever been almost killed by a boring presentation.

Yes, I think that almost everybody out there has had some experience with this.

Truth is that  boring and bad architected presentations are just part of the problem, at least according to my personal point of view. I have done a lot of public speaking recently and, you know what, it’s getting boring at least.

I definitely hate the scenario where I am confined behind a podium and I am supposed to be the subject matter expert about something while the people is sitting in the room listening to me. Worse is that their only option to interact with me is the usual ‘Do you have any questions?’ at the end of the speech. There is no interaction, no real time feedback, and no option to adapt the content of your speech to the audience reactions.

Yes, that may be really scaring for most speaker. Most of them feel really comfortable being confined in the borders of their slides. Think for a second at the potentiality of a scenario where you can distribute in real-time additional content to you audience, make the environment react to what you are presenting while not being confined behind a podium but being part of the audience itself.

If we go forward we could even image to transform a speech in a participated event where everybody gives his contribution to the content, maybe with just a ‘like’.

At the very same time while you speak you see a lot of people using their notebooks, tablets, phone and you are sure that there may be a continue flow of twitter, or Facebook statuses being posted.

I think there is a lot of unexpressed potential in delivering content and stories to people. It’s time to take action and build something exciting!

Over the course of time I have discovered that it’s much more exciting to work on something new with other people, and that’s why I am calling for help and contributions.

I would like to form a group of people working on new and creative ways to deliver content and stories. Give a new set of tools to digital storytelling. All what will be produced will be licensed with a Creative Commons License and made publicly available. At the very same time software will be distributed with a good Open Source license.

I already have a few ideas to build upon and a few bricks to use:

• Use Microsoft Kinect Sensor or you webcam to control your presentation.
• Arduino to control lights, sounds and other physical elements in the room.
• node.js to make the presentation interact with people in the audience, collect rel time feedback, and distribute extra content.
• Collecting social networks feedback in real-time and display it in a way that is meaningful to the speech.
• a lot more…

So, if you are interested in this drop me a line at js email
and let’s see how we can move on to build something exciting.

I am looking forward to hearing from you!

P.S. No, you don’t really need to be a magician to do this.

Have a look at this: Marco Tempest – The electric rise and fall of Nicola Tesla

Photo Credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com