Slidedocs: The Smart Way To Spread Ideas

Embarking on my second book I wrote ME Mapping in PowerPoint because I needed to be able to diagram out images and cut and paste things that would not be possible in Word. I loved being able to utilize writing, mapping, and images on the same pages with such flexibility.

After a chat with my agent I decided that a normal route in publishing was not going to be a smooth road, so instead of a book I turned the content into the ME Workshop. It is so much more powerful delivered in person and great for those who attended, but I still wanted to extend its reach wider. My solution was to post a Slideshare presentation with the basics for anyone to see.

I was happy with how it looked and that it was a free format to share/embed. Plus it made a great intro for people who were interested in finding out more about coming to the workshop. Delightful!

I must say I was pretty pleased with myself. That was until I saw Nancy Duarte bring it to a whole new level and do an entire book about taking content sharing even further. She developed what so many of us have been doing in small doses into a whole new format with a cool name and everything: Slidedocs!

Now if you don't know of Nancy she is the brains (and beauty) behind probably some the most famous presentations around. She became famous in the visual thinking community when they made the documentary of Al Gore's, An Inconvenient Truth, making his case about Global Warming. Just him and Nancy's team's little presentation helped spark one of the most important conversations of our day.

Which is kind of her point with Slidedocs. If you have something important to say why shouldn't it be:
appealing- like a well designed visual aid;
informative- with all the key points found in dry and dense business documents;
shareable- like email/ blog posts;
chunk-able- so it can be taken apart and re-used as needed;
updateable- by serving as a living document.

Even though I had written ME Mapping's manuscript in PowerPoint I'm no designer so even when I created the summary slidedeck it was pretty plain. But inspired I have now gone and "Slidedoc-ed up" ME Mapping (the basics) and  ME Mapping: Creating Your Year. And now I'm back to being pretty pleased with myself ;)

You might not be interested in writing a book or sharing big volumes of content with others but I strongly encourage you to at least page quickly through Slidedocs-- it's fantastic and I think you'll get a few ideas about any information you share in the future even if it's a single slide/sheet/document. Bet you'll be pretty pleased with what you can create :)

Thanks Nancy!