Ever since I did my "1/2/3 Rule" parody of Guy Kawasaki's 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint, I've thought about doing an all-LOLcat PowerPoint presentation. Granted, I wish it were a "Keynote" presentation, but what can you do?
Friends of mine know that I'm not one to speak idly, so it was only a matter of time after I said "one day, I'm going to do an all LOLcat presentation -- a LOLsentation (because it also kinda looks like LOLsensation." That time came earlier today at the Magazine Publishers of America Magazines 24/7 digital conference.
I was given the opportunity to speak on a panel with Tariq Krim (Netvibes) and Chris Cunningham (appssavvy), moderated by Adam Sherk. Our section was called "Letting Go of Your Brand: The Rewards of Untethering Your Content," which prompted me to title my 6-min presentation, "the hardest part is letting go (OH NOES! I HAS LET GO!)"
Plus, the LOLcats were actually relevant to the discussion, in that they're the epitome of user-generated content, wholly organic and the result of a bunch of strangers collaborating over the Internet. No marketer could have ever dreamed up something like this.
It'll hopefully make some more sense when you see the slides, but without my voiceover, you probably will be as confused as those poor conference hosts when I sent them my slides in advance.
Frankly, I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out, but as the laughter faded after the first LOLcat, I knew things were going to be OK.
The kind folks at mediabistro seem to have liked the unorthodox presentation medium as well.
from "LOLCats Ease Pain of Pushing Mag Content Online"To be fair, Tariq and Chris nonetheless gave great presentations (Tariq even brought an adorable < $200 Chinese laptop; his only mistake was not etching a cat riding an invisible bike on the lid). Cats are amazing creature. I cannot stress that enough. If Da Vinci could have painted in cats and if Michelangelo could have sculpted in them, I think they would have. Thus, I strongly encourage you to include just a couple LOLpictures in your next presentation. You won't regret it. Please feel free to gank slides or ideas -- they weren't really mine to begin with anyway. If a video version of the presentation makes its way to me, I'll be sure to post it. Thanks to the venerable Icanhascheezburger for the images and Scribd for their magic paper.
Even though most mag execs in the room likely didn't know what they were looking at when the first image of the popular online meme fusing strange pet pics with preposterous POV-cat captions hit the magnum-sized screen at Manhattan's New World Stages, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian's slides of the infectious online felines in his presentation within the "Letting Go of Your Brand" panel hopefully helped some attendees take the bitter pill of unmonetizing and better distributing magazine content online in better humor. His was easily the morning's most engaging presentation, making life a bit more difficult for co-panelists...
