Riveting analysis of Steve Ballmer speech

Nancy Duarte (whose company designed the slides in “An Inconvenient Truth”) did a riveting analysis of Steve Ballmer’s Windows 7 launch speech transcript.

She color-coded Apple campaign references; unnecessary filler words or phrases; confusing words, phrases or statistics; Ballmer’s references to himself; upgrade fixes problems, and bold statements with no supporting information.

Nancy’s analysis is a useful technique for all professional speakers to critique their own presentations and see where there is room for improvement.

(Thanks to Rebecca Morgan of SpeakerNetNews for flagging this!)

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Hi Ian: I’m glad you liked my posting in SpeakerNet News so much you posted it here!

Analyses like these are always insightful. David Murray ran something similar — a full-on edit — of Sarah Palin’s resignation speech that was awesome in its awefulness. On the flip side, I’ve done something similar in terms of diagramming a speech beforehand when working with a new exec to help sell the value of content in a speech (especially if I don’t have face-to-face access).



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