It’s been a couple of years since Simon last poked his head in and the first difference was people cheerfully queuing around the block to get in!

So Simon, was it worth the wait?

“It did everything a great Ted event should do – from Dr Noel Sharkey (him off of Robot Wars) talking about how robots are being turned into a force for bad, through to a film producer turned criminologist talking passionately and humorously about the power of communication.

Add to that some modern dance, some amazing stories from amazing people (one guy who visited EVERY country in the World without flying anywhere – and the entrepreneur who arrived in the UK with one word of English – ‘bucket’) and it was a great event.”

This enthusiasm (along with the pics below) made me wonder whether this was really a ‘work’ day at all….

“The event proved that great stories, told with passion, structure and wit can keep a mixed audience on the edge of their seats for over 4 hours. It was inspiring to see what great storytelling can achieve.”

Hmm, well that’s okay then….

This whole train of thought was set in motion by the story of Gustav and the important role he played during D-Day. Gustav delivered the first news from the Normandy beaches back to the UK.

But Gustav wasn’t a radio operator, an encryption specialist or a spy – Gustav was a pigeon. During one of the most complex and dangerous military campaigns of all time, the first indication of how things were progressing was delivered by a pigeon.

The fact that Gustav was given the Dickin Medal for his efforts (the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross) shows just how important this communication was.

In a situation more complicated, dangerous and challenging than anything you’ll ever face in a boardroom, effective communication came down to paper, pencil and pigeon.

Communicating by flags is not a new idea either and one of the most impressive examples of how this simple system works when others would fail was seen last week at the Isle of Man TT.

The TT presents some unique communication challenges – the riders are spread out along the 37.73 mile course, they are all wearing helmets and ear plugs, and they are travelling at speed (130mph or thereabouts). Houses, hedgerows, moorland and mountains all pass by faster than the human brain can thoroughly process them. Catching the riders’ attention without causing an accident is no mean feat – and the safety of everyone concerned relies on flags.

With an audience focussed on winning the most dangerous race in the world, effective, safe communication comes down to a stick and some cloth.

Which brings us surprisingly to Britain’s Got Talent and the 2013 winners Attraction. Attraction won by using one of the oldest communication mediums available – shadow theatre.

Believed to have originated in the Han Dynasty China (206BC – 220AD) shadow theatre has been used for centuries to convey complex, emotive stories. It works because it does not require the audience to be literate or share a common language with the presenter (making it perfect for the plethora of BGT audience jokes that I am studiously avoiding).

So when your audience doesn’t understand your language, does effective communication come down to prancing about in a leotard?

Well, much to my personal relief, the answer’s no. But shadow theatre is the pinnacle of visual communication and achieves a level of audience connection and investment that we should aspire to with every image, chart and graph we include in our presentations.

We are however, experiencing a spate of staining. Yes, you read it right – staining – as caused by excited Eyefulites not paying proper attention to their beverage handling skills.

We understand better than most how easy it is to get carried away on a tide of innovation but we do have standards you know. So we decided that the best option lay not in suppressing the creative carousing but in providing a suitably Eyeful solution – Eyeful coasters.

With the offer of old style cash money in the air, our designers gave it their all and came up with some stonking ideas:

It was a tough call but *expectant silence* the winner is *drum roll* Phil Evans *applause, wolf whistling etc* and here is the winning design….

Now we just need to perfect our Margo Leadbetter impression – “Coaster please Jerry”

The first vacancy is for a Consultant / Relationship  Builder.

Our consultants are not just sales people. You need to be au fait with the latest in presentation technology, addicted to effective communication and have a creative streak a mile wide. In return for your endeavours we provide sales leads and the backup of the most skilled design, customer engagement and delivery teams in the business.

We are also recruiting for a Key Accounts Assistant to work in our beautiful HQ in Leicestershire.

Working to support our consultants from our creative heartland in Desford, this role is about ensuring that our consultants have everything they need to wow our customers every time. By contacting new and existing customers you will pay an important part in spreading Eyeful love around the globe. This is a part time role (16 hours a week) and ideally your hours will be 4 hours a day on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

As for the team at Eyeful – our latest 6 month anonymous employee survey showed that 100% of the team are proud of Eyeful and telling people about Eyeful. We can’t promise an easy ride but it’s never boring….

If you think you’ve got what it takes to be part of a market leading presentation team please contact us.

We’re always willing to go the extra mile for our customers here at Eyeful but recently it was a case of altitude rather than aptitude.

Whilst working on an existing deck for a customer one of our designers was unhappy with a graphic that had a vaguely cartoony / clip art vibe to it. Whilst the idea behind using the image added to the storytelling of the presentation, the actual image left a lot to be desired. This is just the sort of thing that’s ever likely to bring our designers out in hives – it’s hard to convey a serious message with a flippant graphic.

So we scanned our image files and came up sadly lacking in mountains and a quick chat with the customer revealed no budget for buying images. So, where now?

To the mountain itself as it turns out.

One of our designers, Alex, had been to Everest base camp seven years ago and after a trawl through his holiday snaps, he picked a winner…..

You’ve seen the website, received the newsletter and enjoyed the blog, the luckiest amongst you are armed with an Optimised Presentation and pretty soon you’ll all be able to read the book.

Simon has finally been persuaded to try and trap his wit and wisdom between the covers of an actual book. No really, it’s true, it’s got an ISBN number and everything….

The Presentation Lab: Learn The Formula Behind Powerful Presentations can be yours to own later this year, but there’s no need to wait for Christmas to see what it’s all about.

As if the prospect of writing a book were not daunting enough, Simon is throwing open the creative process for everyone to see how it evolves.

He will be sharing the agony and ecstasy of the writing process through dedicated blog and Twitter feeds.

We can’t promise that it’ll always be plain sailing, and it may need a parental guidance sticker at times, but it is guaranteed to be interesting!

The blog and Twitter feeds will allow you to experience the kind of DVD extras not usually associated with book writing (and somewhere along the way we may discover a reason for this…) – enjoy!

Chocolate aside (not for long I promise) I am, of course, referring to the launch of the Microsoft Office mobile app for iPhone. Which on the face of it sounds like a step in the right direction and indeed it is – if you consider continental drift to be travelling.

There are two key issues before we even look at functionality. Firstly the app can only be used with an Office 365 subscription. Secondly the app can only be used on iPhones and the iPad mini.

Office for iPad is a dream for many business users and not only have we been denied it again but there is a real, *sticks tongue out, turns up nose with thumb and wiggles fingers while singing  na,na,na,na,na* feel to the whole thing being denied to us again. So near and yet so far…

But even for those of you sitting smugly with iPhones and 365 subscriptions in hand, the dream remains diluted. The new app will allow the non myopic among you to view and edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. But you can only create Word and Excel documents. PowerPoint creation is not allowed. You now have access to the fruit creams (orange and strawberry) and the Turkish delight but that’s your lot.

From the Microsoft perspective they’ve thrown in some excellent functionality.  All edits applied through the app will be there when you access the docs from your desktop. The Slide Navigator lets you page through PowerPoint presentations quickly. The ‘Speaker Notes’ feature helps you practice presentations on the move. And the Resume Reading feature takes you the precise point in a document where you last left from. It’s almost like they’re saying ‘see who’s trying here; see who cares’….

Microsoft office has over 1 billion users, over 300 million iPads have been sold and I don’t need a venn diagram to illustrate the size of the overlap. Every bone in my body wants to lock Apple and Microsoft in a room together and not let them out until they’ve decided to be sensible about the whole thing, but sadly, that’s never going to happen.

So here we are, iPad users of the world, almost able to taste the merest hint of smooth chocolate but with all the luscious caramel stuck to our chins, and no-one likes to be sticky….

Sanders’ 90 minute slot allowed him to wax lyrical on the Presentation Paradox and Blended Presenting and, if we know anything about him at all, get a little over excited!

He showed his Eyeful pedigree by sharing the type of presentation tips that other experts keep hidden away (no future in espionage for us Eyefulites I’m afraid). Using examples of our industry leading Presentation Optimisation^TM methodology to highlight his message, Sander gave the audience some real food for thought.

With 40 attendees from a wide range of industry sectors engaging with every attendee was a challenge that Sander rose to – in true Eyeful style.

Sanders’ passion and enthusiasm is something to behold and his animated presentation style really connected with the audience. Fortunately we managed to grab one picture where he wasn’t a complete blur of energy….

Despite the BBC’s failure to televise this particular episode, it was clear from the start that the gloves were off and the scenario was very real. The Dragons adopted their ‘race faces’ from the start and were not averse to challenging each other which led to some fairly lively ‘discussions’.

Every entrepreneur looked the part (always a good start and particularly notable in the student population) setting the tone to ‘serious’ as soon as they entered the Den.

The pitch style varied with students adopting different styles to get their message across. Some simply spoke whilst others utilised technology (including the ubiquitous PowerPoint) and the flipchart proved that it still has a part to play in modern business presentations. There was also a noteworthy appearance by a dynamic Excel spreadsheet which managed to inform without inducing number blindness – not an easy balance to achieve.

All marvellous stuff but as we know the presenter is as important as the content and delivery method – and the standard here was high.

The winning team won because they truly were a team, each person knew their part of the story and how it interacted with their colleagues. This led to a seamless presentation that, to the envy of many a real Den pitchee, also aced the financials. It’s almost as if they were briefed…..

Simon was very excited to be involved with the event and Eyeful Labs is looking forward to welcoming some of the students in the near future – creating a great opportunity for the business people of tomorrow to be involved in the future of presentations – we’ll keep you posted….

We are proud to have created an immersive, innovative, imaginative environment which encourages our creatives, consultants and customers to stretch the boundaries of presentation possibilities (alliteration and exclamation mark tourettes are side effects of our excitement – sorry)!!!

We’ve flung open our doors and ordered extra teabags – stand by for a revolution….

Eyeful Labs is not about what works for our customers now, it’s about what will work for them in 5 years time, how they’ll stay ahead of their competition and why it’s important that they do.

We have one simple rule for each of the workshops, forums and webinars – forget everything you’ve been taught about business presentations.  Doing the same old thing is a situation with truly diminishing returns.

The Lab is an environment for presentation experimentation. Sometimes we’ll light up the room with inspiration, opening new presentation possibilities. Sometimes it will just go ‘pft’ – and that’s good too, because every ‘pft’ teaches us something new.

There are very few truly bad ideas – sticking your head in a lions mouth allows you to spot dental decay easily, it’s only a bad idea if you don’t live to ring the dentist. Eyeful Labs encourages our customers to take the risks that bring the biggest rewards, without fear of decapitation.

Many years ago we had a dream, a few weeks ago we had a mess and today we have Eyeful Labs.

If you think that you have what it takes (simple curiosity will do) to stand at the front as we race towards the future of presentations, drop us a line.