kip/bot/blog

Al Gore’s most recent TED talk, a trial-run, or beta if you will, of Inconvenient Truth 2.0, is a great study in the creation of a presentation. It’s got some great moments, but it also has some clunkers, some timing that isn’t quite worked out yet, a few emotional peaks that don’t pay off, some low-intensity moments that turn out to be quite good. For people who follow presentations, there’s a lot to chew on.

I’m not knocking Gore. I’ve been a moderate to big fan of his since his days in the Senate where youngsters spoke in hushed tones about how he writes his own speeches, not his staff . . . can you imagine a Reaganaut doing that?. The first Inconvenient Truth was complex, well-crafted in terms of its visuals and theater and highly evolved in its rhetoric.

Version 2.0 beta is focused on moving the needle from individual action (changing light bulbs to CFLs, buying hybrids) to citizen action (forcing politicians to take the big steps). Version 2.0 also addresses the state of the science, debunks the detractors, comes up with new visualizations of global warming in action today (the polar ice cap). All of it building up to a call to be the generation that history will remember for reversing the tide.

Seeing what works and what doesn’t, and seeing the iterative nature of the talk is a nice look into the craft of the presentation.