While preparing for my recent presentation for the Design Strategy Conference 2012, I went through a labor of love trying to make some complex ideas and experiences understandable. To help me with this process, I engaged my colleague, Christine Martell from VisualsSpeak, both to use her consulting process to help me shorten and simplify the message and to add some design sense to the slides.

While in the middle of preparing the presentation, it felt like all I had left was the trivial.  I felt like the relevant details were being left out in the process of getting at the essence of the core concepts. I was caught up in the process and losing sight of the purpose of the presentation. Dilbert, as usual, showed up with how hopeless this process sometimes seems to me.

With the shortening of what was previously a two hour graduate school lecture to a short thirty minutes, I wondered what if any impact I would have with the presentation. The immediate feedback after the presentation wasn’t very positive much like the “big boss” in Dilbert:

However, as the conference progressed and deeper conversations ensued, there was a wonderful range of engaging feedback. For myself, I am overjoyed at uncovering the essence of what I was trying to say which Christine captured so eloquently with her imagery for the title slide “When Science and Art Dance – Business Results.”