Jobs structured his talk around four parts and one theme.(3) Show your enthusiasm. Sometimes you may want to curb your enthusiasm, but most presenters show too little passion or enthusiasm not too much. Yes, a presentation on medical treatments by a researcher is different than a CEO’s keynote, but in each case the appropriate level of enthusiasm can make all the difference. In just the first few minutes on stage Jobs used these words: Incredible, extraordinary, awesome, amazing, revolutionary. You can disagree with him. You can say he is over the top; call it hype if you want. But Steve Jobs believes what he says. He is sincere. He is authentic. The point is not to be like Steve Jobs, the point is to find your own level of passion and bring that honest enthusiasm out in your work for the world to see.(4) It’s not about numbers, it’s about what the numbers mean. A business keynote by a technology company is different from a scientific presentation at a conference, but isn’t it always about what the numbers mean rather than just the numbers themselves? So your cholesterol is 199, the national average. Is that good or bad? Up or down? Is “average” healthy or unhealthy? And compared to what? When Steve Jobs talks about numbers in his keynotes he often breaks them down. For example, 4 million iPhones sold Jobs said is the equivalent of “20,000 per day” since the units went on sale (though this says nothing about the current sales trend, etc.). 20 percent market share? In and of itself that does not mean much, but the meaning becomes clear when he compares it to others in the field.
4 million or 20,000 per day… (5) Make it visual. Jobs also does a good job of using visuals to show how something is bigger, faster, cleaner, whatever, such as when he used a pencil to show the relative size of the MacBook Air’s internals. Jobs also goes to much effort to give meaning to how thin 0.16 inch and 0.76 inch really are by comparing them visually with a competitor’s thin notebook. Is 0.76 inch really thin and compared to what? (And of course, everyone outside the USA is saying “wait, how many mm in an inch?”) I don’t know if the MacBook Air is a great notebook or not, but everyone will sure remember that it is “really thin” even if they forget the 0.76 and 0.16 inch figures. People may forget the number, but they will remember that the MacBook Air fits easily in a standard office envelope (they remembered all right).
“The world’s thinnest notebook—what’s that mean?”
Jobs compares his idea of “thin” with current ideas of “thin” in the marketplace today. X means Apple wanted to do “better” than this.
1.20″ and 0.80″ is pretty thin…
but the MacBook Air is much thinner (in green).
MacBook Air’s thickest part is still thinner than the competition’s thinnest part.

The internal hardware is very small. How small? This small.

(6) Save the best for last. People will make an assessment about your performance in the first two minutes, so you have to start strong. But you have to finish even stronger. People remember most the first part and the last part of your presentation. The middle stuff is important, of course, but blow it at the start or at the end and all may be lost. This is why you have to rehearse your opening and your closing so much. And save your strongest stuff for the end. In Jobs’s case he saved the MacBook Air for last—the 4th thing he wanted to talk about.

The 4th part of his talk…


saving the best for last. “There’s something in the air” was the theme in this keynote. This was that something.* (Yes, I am aware of this. I have seen Jobs be pretty cool with a friend of mine–who was not an employee–and pose for a picture, but it is not his thing by any means. My points about Jobs are concerned only with Jobs the presenter on stage, not with the man off stage that does not really like his picture taken with fans.)Via Presentation Zen.