I like to do presentations. I really do. It’s not my favorite thing, but I sure love inspiring others from the work I do.

Ever since I learned of many creative ways to prepare a presentation, I’ve liked to undertake the task with a sense of commitment and a great dose of creativity.

I read the Presentation Zen book. The The Non-Designer’s Design Book. I learned about Sketchnotes, I also read about academic presentations and cooking ideas, and many other things. Not in a single stretch, but as a constant search for getting better at something I value. So I’ve come to realize a couple of things. A presentation is definitely not prepared in the computer or presentation software. A computer per se is not good for the creative endeavor, but paper and pen are.

One plans a narrative because people like to hear stories; even about how you deconvolved an image using total variation regularization. If you tell it right, they’ll listen.

However, I like to include my own things. Give it a personal touch. When I prepare the presentation, I doodle and draw to get an idea of the picture or image I’d like to include in my slide. But I’ve often found that my doodle is even better at getting the message through than a picture I can download from the internet. So I draw it on my phone using paper, and I import it to Keynote. They’re just doodles, but (I think) because it’s different from what everyone does, people pay attention. And they get the idea.