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The UnPresentation

By Alan Jackson on 02 May 2009

Sitting in the audience of the Africa Gathering, a kind of unconference, I was struck by a thought - what would an untalk or unpresentation be like? (I wasn't the first person to have this thought.)

So here's one possible idea of what an unpresentation could be...

The rules of an unpresentation

  1. The unpresenter is allowed to start by saying only one short sentence followed by an invitation for questions eg.
    "Hi, I'm Alan from Aptivate, this unpresentation is on low-bandwidth web design. What would you like to know?"
  2. After that, everything the unpresenter says is in response to a question from the audience.
  3. The use of presentation software (powerpoint, OpenOffice presentation etc) is not allowed.
  4. If a computer and projector are used then only images are permitted and chosen in order to respond to a question.
  5. Images are chosen from a non-narrative list, like a grid view, thumbnails or file-system folder (ie. not from a presentation).
  6. Images are shown full screen with no banner, footer, logo or other unnecessary blemishes.
  7. Diagrams are drawn live.
I then started to wonder what unpresentation software would look like...

unpresentation sketch

June 22, 2010, 8:37 a.m. - Aptivate Speaking at Africa Gathering, London &...

[...] been described as an “unconference” so I may be tempted to slip into a bit of “unpresentation” if the situation warrants it). The reciprocal relationship between ICTs and [...]