One of the books I’ve been reading and re-reading over the past few weeks is The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam. It’s an amazing book about solving problems and selling ideas with pictures…SIMPLE pictures. I love it, because really, you don’t need to know how to draw to communicate or think visually with the kinds of pictures Dan Roam is writing about. I’ve been trying to find a good way of using the simple ideas presented in this book for classroom training and presentations.
Then, I came across a story I heard on America Public Media’s Marketplace on NPR during my drive home about the current economic crisis and collateralized debt obligations (CDO’s). In the segment, Paddy Hirsch described what CDO’s are and how they are playing a key role in the current economic meltdown. I went to the Marketplace website to see his “presentation” and had an a-ha moment. I think that this is possibly one of the best presentations I’ve seen in a long time…completely analog, built on the fly, and with super simple pictures to illustrate the point. No PowerPoint…just a whiteboard. Check out the video:
If you liked that presentation, Marketplace posted a new video today of Paddy untangling credit default swaps (CDS). Really great stuff, an amazing, simple way of presenting complex financial babble that most of us (including myself) have never understood. So, here’s Part Deux of the Crisis Explainer:
Related posts:
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2 Responses
October 8th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog.
Tim Ramsey
October 8th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Thanks Tim. So glad to hear you’re enjoying it.
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