Interesting reading: The presentation secrets of Apple's Steve Jobs

If you’re searching for something excellent to read this morning, then what could be better than an extremely in-depth and rewarding interview with Carmine Gallo, author of the now available and extremely interesing tome, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience (Amazon link and recommendation).

This excellent interview (available here) uses YouTube clips to illustrate its points, which give you an advanced overview on just part of what makes the Apple CEO the greatest corporate speaker on the global stage.

At heart, Jobs has a visceral understanding of the power of simplicity and the orator’s arts. “Steve Jobs once said "simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." You can see this approach in how he designs his slides. The slides are stunningly visual and minimalistic. He’s not afraid of empty space. Sometimes, there’s only one word or a simple photograph,” Gallo explains.

Other tricks include Jobs’ penchant for creating memorable one-line descriptions of the products he is talking about; his ability to create drama within his speeches, his genius for creating a moment during which he can make an audience gasp as they realise some new thought, in product form.

In the video above, for example, Jobs didn’t offer some long and rambling product description when he launched the MacBook Air, he simply said: "MacBook Air. The world’s thinnest notebook.” That’s a description that still burns if you search for ‘world’s thinnest notebook’ using Google.

In another example, take the Keynote introduction: Jobs said, "Keynote is a presentation app for when your presentation really counts. Oh, and Keynote was built for me!" Behind the CEO a slide popped up which offered just three words, “built for me”. And that’s what the audience remembered – Keynote is the presentation software built for the master of presentation.

There’s a great deal more in this interesting glimpse at Jobs’ presentation skills, sufficiently so to convince at least one person interested in these to invest in the book itself.

UPDATE: And here’s a video interview with the author as published by BusinessWeek as of c.12.30pm EDT today.

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