WHAT'S THE POWER, POINT? The latest version of my Media Universe Map is below. Did you know it's just a powerpoint slide? I spent hours updating the Map this weekend - in Powerpoint. I do this twice each month. And that is just a fraction of the time, frustration, and love (yes, love) I put into PowerPoint. The slide has 205 layers and objects. There are twelve font sizes and four typefaces. There are 124 circles representing 124 companies. The objects are sized, to scale, by their market valuation based on publicly available information. Every month, I enter the values of the companies into an excel spreadsheet, which uses a formula I had to ask a mathematician for, to generate new sizes for each planet based on their valuations, which I then adjust (values and sizes) by hand, in PowerPoint, along with numerous other datapoints such as subscribers, households, market shares, etc. I’ve been reflecting this summer. And it turns out that I spend more time with PowerPoint than I do with any human other than my spouse. There are months that PowerPoint gets even more attention (sorry Jill). I devote more time to making PowerPoint than I do eating, talking on the phone, or managing people on my team. (Sorry, ESHAP). The Map below is the foundation of my brand. It’s the first slide in every presentation I give, and I give a lot of presentations. It’s been adopted by many in our community as a semi-unofficial dashboard for the industry. And it’s LITERALLY just a PowerPoint slide. I realized recently, that in addition to being a bit of a Media nerd touchstone, the Map offers larger lessons I’ve learned from conquering PowerPoint - which are not about the Media, but rather about life. The effort to conceive an idea, the rigor to do all the homework, the patience to stay within the lines in order to break the rules, the willingness to fail loudly, are ALL crucial if you want to say SOMETHING, rather than just say SOME THING. I did learn a lot of this by using PowerPoint - to communicate ideas, to share data, to tell stories. Despite this PowerPoint obsession, I’ve never written about it before. Until now. You can get all my dirty little PowerPoint design secrets, learn how to break out of life's "digital lock-ins," and see why "all human knowledge is now stored in PowerPoint..." at this convenient little link: https://lnkd.in/eprq7r2d Read on. Find out why I believe that PowerPoint is not just a software. It’s a lifestyle. #powerpoint #design #communications
I am not at your level as a powerpoint user, but I do use it for a lot of my graphical work - including all of my cover art for my newsletter, thumbnails for videos, etc. As a vector-based model, it ties into the foundations of how I think about computer graphics, a philosophy honed on Micrografx Draw and Visio. But you, sir, take it to a whole new level.
Derek Tan
2w
Evan Shapīro you need have a gif of how the circles change with time, that will be so awesome to see!
Tori Madison
2w
I don’t see the one where we think for ourselves … ???
Evan, I don’t want to take away all your fun, and, I promise, Jill didn’t put me up to this, but both python and Visual Basic could shave hours off your life and automate this for you.
Rupali Saiya
2w
It takes true talent to turn ideas into stories and convey them beautifully in an engaging presentation. The challenge is enabling a whole team to personalize the branded version of a PowerPoint too! You might be interested to check out CustomShow - it allows you to enrich PPTs with more video/engaging visuals and enable a team to easily customize and personalize decks.
Craig Parks
2w
Miro, Lucidspark, and those like it are comin’ for your PowerPoint. They show the real failure in PowerPoint’s idea of it being collaborative. And visually they’re far more flexible. What they are not are storytelling devises, but I see that changing fast. I’ll tell ya what - a cartographer would love Miro way more than PowerPoint.
Jean Carucci
2w
I agree, I spent most of this weekend on various versions of PPT slides and what I LOVE about them is that they can visually bring to life any and all bullet points. Long live PowerPoint!!
Evan, it's a truly amazing slide and I look at it every time you post it. Thank you for keeping the resolution high enough to see the details when you zoom in on the image. FWIW, PowerPoint is a great tool but I find myself using Photoshop for certain things (and incorporating those into Powerpoint). I hope all is well with you and yours. #wedigress #praise
I also feel like I am tasked with re-creating / updating this slide annually. And I too have developed a profound creative ‘Love’ for PowerPoint, which was not at all on my bingo card 20 yrs ago 🤣 Anyway, this slide definitely made its way to me so…amazing work. 🙏🏼💯
Lead Data Engineer at Haymarket Media Group (B2B Digital Media) | Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer Certified
2wHi Evan Shapīro - I just wanted to ask a couple of questions about your awesome Map. 1.- As a heavy user of Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services, I just wonder why you do not include it as a division for Alphabet in the same way that you include AWS for Amazon or Azure for Microsoft, when they're very comparable "business divisions" (for their parent companies) to one another. 2.- I also wonder if there should be some space on your Map to reflect the "global" PSB value/valuation to put it in contrast with all other privately-owned media outlets? At least for the main or top X national public broadcasters and in some aggregated way that would make sense or be fair. Not sure if that would be an interesting proposition for you but since you've been looking more into PSB in the last few months (missed your recent panels in London, unfortunately!) then I thought this idea could be interesting to some other folks too? Also, I think you should get your "PowerPoint is not just a software. It’s a lifestyle" quote on a T-Shirt and sell it ;-)