Last night nearly 550 people packed into the Temple Nightclub in San Francisco for the book launch party for my new book, “Green Building for Dummies”.

Temple touts itself as a green nightclub and generously donated the venue for the event. As usual, the hardline green people kept coming up to me with their nitpicky “helpful” suggestions:
“Why are the cups plastic and not corn based PLA? You should tell them to change that.”
“Why aren’t these bulbs compact fluorescents? You should tell them to change that.”
“Why didn’t they serve organic chocolate? You should tell them to change that.”
(Very helpful indeed. For the record, I don’t run the nightclub!)

We sold out all of the books, though my hand still hurts from all of the signing (I’m typing this with my left). It was a great evening and thank you to all those in attendance. There was even a special surprise announcement. (If you weren’t there, ask someone who attended!)

Photo and a review of the evening courtesey of: Greenerati (Thanks, Keith!)

There is a commonly held perception that most architects are colorblind. After all, most of them bare, create white boxes of rooms, creating a growing demand for interior designers to come in and make it livable.

I love color, so when I see a great combination of colors I make them into a palette. I also cheat a little with these online tools:

wear palettes

ColorJack

numbr

This story about the carbon footprint of wine contains an interesting map at the bottom.

Essentially it cuts the US into two. West of this line it’s more carbon efficient to drink Napa Valley wines. East of the line it’s more carbon efficient to drink French wines. Carbon efficiency refers to the energy and pollution creted from shipping this wine from it’s source.

This “grape divide” must also have other implications. Think of all of the technology from California, or the films for that matter. Does it take less energy to watch French films on the East Coast than it does to watch Hollywood films?

Ever since my talk last week at West Coast Green, I have received dozens and dozens of emails from people asking, “How did you get PowerPoint to do that?!”

Well, in reality, I didn’t.

First, use the right tools. Like most Microsoft products, PowerPoint lacks good design sensibilities. After years of trying to push it to do what I wanted to do with colors, fonts and video, I gave up.

The real reason I am able to make these presentations so visually rich is using Apple’s Keynote. Keynote handles these elements far better than PowerPoint. C’mon, you should ditch that PC and have a Mac anyway.

Secondly, my speaking style is much more ancedotal. My job is to take this technical information and distill it into stories. As a presenter, my goal is to remove as much text as possible from the slides. You’ll notice there are no bullet points on the slides, and the text is made obnoxiously large to reiterate the point.

At several points along the presentation, I have no slides at all, just an image or movie running in the background as I tell a story. For more on this technique, check out Merlin Mann’s wonderful blog 43 Folders and especially his story on his own presentations.

Lastly, I am no expert on public speaking. Between teaching and traveling to conferences, I just get to to it a whole lot and the practice helps me. I also get to watch hundreds of other speakers each year and see how boring many talks can be.

To prevent boredom, I am experimenting with several techniques, including the Takahashi Method and the Guy Kawasaki Method for storytelling with visuals. The more I know about these ways to convey information, the more I realize how much great orators, such as Bill Clinton, are able to give a speech with such power using only words.

For more on using Keynote in a positive (double entrendre) way read on here and here.