How to Adapt the sLab Presentation for the Business Seminar

I've been thinking about how to adapt the presentation I gave on Friday to be more conducive to a business audience. Originally my intentions were to use the same material I presented on Friday as part of the final presentation but I have since decided that perhaps more changes should be made than I had originally anticipated. For the business seminar I think it is still valuable to keep all the exercises I conducted but scrap the rest.

Although I think that for the purposes of the education seminar it was valuable to go through a brief history of written communication I'm not sure if that is best left in for the business seminar. Having an interactive component such as the exercises I provided are very valuable and showing some of the very basic tools that can be used for visual thinking is also important. 

The business presentation will focus on visual thinking and visual learning strategies that can be  applied in the office to create more effective and dynamic solutions for their business problems. 

Should there be some sort of take-away element to this? For example IDEO uses a number of interesting techniques to find solutions that are now available in the form of "Method Cards". These cards outline strategies that can be used to help see the problem from a different angle and come up with better solutions based on these exercises or "methods". This is much the same idea except that it is visual. Much like their Method Cards it does not require any special training or background simply an introduction to the concepts so that they can applied in their future work. 

I still believe however that a seminar is the best way to approach this because it will force them to get involved, which will help re-enforce the concepts. Re-enforcement is a great way to help people learn. 

Based on these conclusions I think it would be best to keep the exercises for now (and possibly expand the repertoire of exercises) and include more of my own work. That would probably mean starting with an introduction about my theory of visual intelligence, tying in visual intelligence to visual thinking, and then demonstrating visual thinking through exercises and examples. I don't want the presentation itself to be too long-winded or I will begin to lose my audience but having them get involved will keep their interest for longer periods of time.