Elevator Speeches

A preproposal for a business plan typically takes the form of an elevator speech. Imagine that you find yourself standing next to a venture capitalist (VC) in an elevator. Can you pitch a compelling business plan before the VC gets off? You only have 60 seconds, so here's what to say:

• Introduce yourself and state your credentials. (Hi, I'm Kay Linda, president of Dexco Unlimited.)

• Describe the problem that your company plans to solve. To put it another way, describe the potential market. (Did you know that 10% of the adult population suffers from some form of heartburn?) Ideally, you should get the VC to identify with the problem.

• Describe your company's amazing solution to the problem. (I've developed an over-the-counter antacid that reduces acid 12 times more effectively than calcium carbonate.)

• Explain in nice round numbers and percentages how much money you need and what you plan to do with it. (We need four million dollars, of which approximately 50% will go into completing research, 30% will go into marketing and distribution, 10% will go into fabrication, and 10% will cover salaries and expenses for 18 months.)

VCs who leave the office for a while often return to a voice mailbox full of elevator speeches. The best speeches convince VCs that a market is waiting to be tapped. As with anything business related, remember to focus on the financial part of things and to minimize the technical wizardry.

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182 Proposals > The Proposal before the Proposal

Adherence to the Proposal Template

Most proposal committees provide standard proposal templates or guidelines. You need to follow the proposal guidelines as closely as possible. If the proposal requires that you complete 132 sections—half of them clearly for worthless bureaucratic reasons—then you must complete all 132 sections. Do not add extra sections. Do not delete sections. Do not ignore sections. Creativity is a wonderful thing, but this isn't the place for it.

What exactly does following the template mean? Well, suppose the proposal template asks you to provide the names of three customers currently using your product. As an over-achiever, you think to yourself, "Heck, if three customers are good, then four or five ought to be even better." In this case, though, three really is better than four or five. Similarly, if the template tells you to keep the "Technical Background" section under 250 words, then don't feel that providing 500 words is twice as good. If the "Work Plan" section requires a Gantt chart, then you must provide a Gantt chart even if you already have a much better schedule inside a spreasheet.

The Consequences of Not Following the Template

Suppose you are a member of the proposal review committee. Your committee must distribute a ten-million-euro grant for a four-year project. Two proposals arrive, both containing brilliant ideas, but only one of them follows the template. Your committee picks the conformant one. Why? The winning proposal team proved a willingness to follow the committee's rules. The losing team did not. The committee had no intention of entering into a four-year agreement with a team that would be difficult to work with.

Proposal templates are not always clear. What if you don't understand some aspect of the template? You need only ask. For research proposals, the reviewing committee typically designates a program manager whose duties include talking with submitters. It is less embarrassing to ask questions up front than to submit a confused proposal. In addition, the proposal review committee often publishes copies of successful proposals. Emulate the winners.

QUANTUM LEAP

What proposal review committees see in a proposal is what they think they'll get in the proposer. Make sure that your proposal is tidy and typo free.

Proposal Element: Cover Letters

Most proposals require a cover letter, which introduces the proposal and explains why it was sent to the recipient. A cover letter should be short—generally only three paragraphs or so. Where appropriate, it should remind the reader of previous interactions. If appropriate (for example, in a business plan's cover letter), consider providing a "drop-dead date," identifying what will happen if the recipient does not respond by a certain date.

Example 13-1 shows a sample cover letter for a business plan.

EXAMPLE 13-1 Sample Cover Letter

Attn. Barney Rutherford

Dexco Unlimited

317 Kenyon Ave.

Palo Alto, CA 94306

1-650-555-1212

br@dexcounl.com

May 1, 2005

Monadnock Investments

25 Hewitt St.

Cambridge, MA 02139

Attn: Janet Mertrie

Dear Ms. Mertrie,

When we met last month in Atlanta at EntCon, you asked me to prepare a formal business plan for an initial round of funding at Dexco Unlimited. I'm pleased to provide the attached business plan, which explains Dexco Unlimited and why we'd like additional funding.

As you probably recall, Dexco Unlimited has created a prototype for a new enterprise software application that provides personalized human resources information. We believe that our application will dramatically reduce the total cost of ownership for small and medium-sized enterprises and compete effectively against existing firms in this space.

Dexco Unlimited is delighted to offer this initial funding opportunity exclusively to Monadnock Investments. If Monadnock Investments does not respond by June 1, 2005, Dexco Unlimited will present this business plan to other potential investors. If I can answer any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me directly.

Sincerely,

Barney Rutherford

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184 Proposals > Proposal Element: Cover Letters

Proposal Element: Biographies

Proposals require a short biography (bio) of all the principals, possibly with resumes or curriculum vitaes (CVs) attached. When writing a biography, remember that the goal is to convince your target audience that you are exactly the right person to receive the grant. Unfortunately, many people find writing a bio one of the most daunting parts of the entire proposal writing process, and are scared off by the following two conflicting thoughts:

• My background isn't fancy enough to impress the proposal reviewers.

• It isn't right to brag.

Let me end the conflict for you—it is not only right to brag, it is essential. In fact, it is detrimental to think of this as bragging; instead, think of it as optimizing your team's chances of winning a proposal competition. Besides, it ain't braggin' if it's true, so make sure that everything in your bio is 100% true. Every fact on your bio must pan out if the proposal reviewers do a check. Lying on your bio is one of the quickest ways to eliminate yourself from contention.

Half-Lies

Don't write bios that are technically true but misleading. For example, suppose that you played an administrative role on a team that made a major breakthrough. Your bio should not vaguely describe yourself as being a "member of the team." Instead, your bio should describe your specific role, such as "administrative assistant on the team."

Take a look at the bios of people who have succeeded with the proposal review committee. What do these bios have in common? Is it a shining education? Is it technical leadership experience? Is it experience running small businesses? Did previous winners emphasize their publications?

Experienced people often have trouble deciding what to emphasize in a short bio. Don't use the same stock biography for each proposal; cater it for each audience. For example, consider an experienced technologist who is creating a business plan aimed at venture cap-

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Proposals > Proposal Element: Biographies 185

italists. The goal of venture capitalists is to make money. Therefore, the following biography would be suitable because it emphasizes management experience:

Biography of Rajendra Priyadarshan (appropriate for a business plan)

Rajendra Priyadarshan has managed software organizations for the last eight years. For the last four years, Rajendra has served as the director of engineering at Dexco Unlimited, where he manages a staff of 23 and an annual budget of over three million dollars. His engineering team produces two major and four minor product releases annually. Before coming to Dexco, Rajendra managed a QA team for four years at Carambola Software; during this period, the company earned a J. D. Power quality award. Rajendra also has worked at a variety of other organizations including MIT, Digital, and Prime Computer. He holds an MBA from MIT's Sloan School and a BS in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

On the other hand, if Rajendra needed a biography for a book proposal on a particular technology, it would be wiser to emphasize literary and technical experience over managerial experience. In fact, too much managerial experience might suggest to reviewers that Rajendra is out of touch with technology. Consider the following biography, attached to a proposal to write a book on software engineering in the Java programming language. This biography aims to convince the target audience that he has the appropriate experience to write a successful book. Notice how this biography begins by emphasizing Rajendra's publication and technical experience.

Biography of Rajendra Priyadarshan (appropriate for a book proposal)

Rajendra Priyadarshan writes the popular "From the Trenches" column for Software Engineering Monthly. He has led teams of Java programmers on enterprise software applications since 1995. With more than 20 years high-tech experience at companies such as Dexco Unlimited and Carambola Software, Rajendra carries a wealth of writing, programming, and management experience. He holds an MBA from MIT's Sloan School and a BS in computer science from Renssalear Polytechnic Institute.

QUANTUM LEAP

Some business plans now include bios not only of principals but also of the company's key consultants. Attaching your company's name to a "star" often adds clout to a business plan.

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186 Proposals > Proposal Element: Biographies

Proposal Element: Abstracts

Nearly all proposals require an abstract or summary. An abstract is a highly concise summary of your proposal. Organize abstracts as follows:

1. Begin with a strong sentence that summarizes the entire proposal. The sentence should identify exactly what you want and why you want it.

2. Identify the problem you are researching or the market need.

3. Explain how your team will solve this problem or meet this market need.

Capturing all this information in a small space is a tall order. Every word counts. If necessary, reread Section 2 of this book for helpful hints on keeping it short. For example, consider the following abstract for a research proposal:

Abstract

We request a grant of $2.85 million to fabricate, install, and test 1,400 roof destressing systems in hurricane-prone coastal zones. In major hurricanes (category 3 or higher), 30% of all houses within two miles of the coast incur significant structural damage. Hurricane Andrew (1992) alone caused $30 billion in property damage, primarily to single-family structures. High winds cause huge pressure differentials between various parts of a roof, which can lead to catastrophic roof damage. Our team has developed a prototype for a new roof de-stressing system. This system uses aerodynamic principles to shunt high winds away from roofs. This system has proven highly effective in computer simulations and wind-tunnel tests and is now ready for real-world testing. We propose identifying 56 hurricane-prone coastal zones with new construction and placing 25 test devices in each zone.

In the preceding abstract, note the following:

• The opening sentence identifies the amount of the request ($2.85 million) and the reason. Reviewers who only read the first sentence would probably have a decent idea what the proposal is about.

• The next three sentences demonstrate an understanding of the problem by stating several numerical facts.

• The concluding four sentences state a solution to the problem and offer some reassuring preliminary evidence (computer simulations and wind-tunnel tests). The final sentence summarizes the test methodology.

Proposals > Proposal Element: Abstracts 187

Proposal Element: Contingency Plans

By their nature, proposals are glass-half-full sorts of documents. No one writes a proposal intending to fail. However, unbridled optimism hardly matches reality. After all, very few research projects produce important breakthroughs, most new businesses fail after a few years, and publishers lose money on the majority of technical books they publish. Failure is not a secret—the people reviewing proposals are certainly aware of it—yet proposals rarely cover failure. This practice is almost superstitious, as if mentioning failure will lead to it.

In certain kinds of proposals, you should describe possible failures and explain how you will handle them. For example, consider an excerpt from a research proposal on a new pharmaceutical. The following proposal should please members of the proposal review committee because it will prevent funding 18 months of worthless experimentation:

We expect phase 1 clinical testing to demonstrate significant reductions in long-term acne scarring. Although this testing will last 24 months, we expect to have valuable preliminary results after only 6 months. If Cream A is proving less than 70% as effective as expected, we will halt the clinical trial on Cream A and focus our resources on improving Cream B.

Now consider a portion of a business plan that describes an alternate pricing policy based on information that cannot be known in advance. Notice that the following passage describes the alternate pricing policy as a contingency rather than as a response to a possible failure:

Since we are targeting Fortune 500 customers, we plan to sell the software exclusively through flat-fee site licenses. However, if our sales force uncovers significant opportunities in medium-sized companies, we will alter the pricing policy in year 2. If a market for medium-sized companies develops, we will offer per-server licensing on a subset version of the base product.

Describing failure is not appropriate for all proposals. In some situations, you only get one chance to do it right. Book publishers, for example, generally won't let you rewrite an unsuccessful book. Nevertheless, since books usually take at least a year to write, consider describing possible mid-course corrections should the technology change while the book is being written.

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188 Proposals > Proposal Element: Contingency Plans

Proposals for Revolutionary Ideas

Scientists and engineers often dream up improvements to existing theories, technologies, and products. Proposals that explain how to improve an existing technology usually find a receptive audience. However, at some point in your career, you are bound to dream up something wonderfully new and revolutionary. Unfortunately, revolutionary ideas are usually the hardest to sell. In a world where we are exhorted to think outside the box, few people are actually rewarded for doing so.

From the perspective of your audience (proposal reviewers), revolutionary proposals are risky. In a business plan, reviewers worry about who would buy this revolutionary product and how it would be marketed. Therefore, an effective revolutionary proposal must focus on minimizing the appearance of risk. The following list offers a few suggestions:

• Compare certain aspects of the idea with concepts that are stable and successful. For

example, although your product might be revolutionary, explain that your pricing model is just like Microsoft's.

• Inoculate your proposal from reviewer skepticism. Answer the questions that will naturally come to mind.

• Portray yourself as a down-to-earth, well-organized, focused individual. Don't portray yourself as a creative dreamer. Many reviewers fear that highly creative people don't have the organizational skills to bring the dream to reality.

• Avoid describing the idea as revolutionary. Instead, build your case and let the reviewer come to that conclusion.

For example, consider the following passage from a business plan:

Technical Background (for a revolutionary idea)

Our research team can predict commodity prices approximately two hours in advance. Many people have gone broke making this claim; however, we have three years of extensive data to back it up.

Our team consists of four PhD mathematicians and a commodities trader. We have methodically developed pricing formulas based on over 150 parameters. Our team has gradually refined the weightings of each of the parameters to yield accurate predictive formulas for three different commodities.

JUL

Research Proposals

Scientists in the academic world submit proposals to perform research. A research proposal states a problem and your solution to it. Good proposals succinctly state the problem and provide a more comprehensive solution. The competition to write effective proposals is scary since a good grant can make a career. If you are competing for grant money against well-endowed labs, be aware that most of them already have a dedicated, experienced proposal writer on staff.

Understanding the Audience

The people reviewing research proposals are almost always scientists in your field. (In some cases, an interdisciplinary team reviews proposals.) Each proposal review committee includes one leader.

Committees typically hire a project manager (often, a nonscientist), whose duties include interfacing with submitters. Feel free to ask the project manager for bios of the people who will review your proposal.

Strategy

I hate to start with a negative, but it is useful to consider why research proposals get rejected. Possible reasons for rejection include the following:

• The proposed research did not impress the committee; in other words, the committee just didn't think the results would be that valuable.

• The committee wasn't impressed with the proposer's credentials.

• The proposal was fuzzy. (If only the proposer had read, Spring Into Technical Writing for Scientists and Engineers... )

The following strategies should improve your odds of acceptance:

• Excite your reviewers. Make sure that your proposal conveys your own excitement about doing the research. The committee reads many dull proposals; make your proposal sparkle.

• Ally yourself with someone who will impress the committee. Ideally, science ought to be blind to this sort of thing, but let's face it—the review committee is much more likely to turn over money to someone with a track record than to an unknown.

• Write clearly. The writing in most proposals is generally rather cloudy. By submitting a well-written document that clearly defines your proposed research, you might just shock the review committee into giving you money. Just follow the rules identified in Section 2 of this book and you'll have a huge head start.

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190 Proposals > Research Proposals

• Write concisely. For example, the National Science Foundation (NSF) requires that proposals be no longer than 15 pages.

• Make a case for yourself. Your knowledge of the literature and your experience should convince reviewers that you are the best person in the world to do this research.

Contents of a Research Proposal

Many review committees provide an extensive template; others provide extensive guidelines but expect you to figure out the details within those guidelines. As always, proposals previously accepted by your target committee are the best teachers, so read some.

Research proposals typically contain some subset of the following items:

• cover sheet or cover letter

• abstract or project summary

• table of contents

• project description, which should include at least the following:

- significance statement

- objectives and hypothesis

- experimental design and methods

• bios

• schedule

• budget, which is often quite detailed and might contain elements of a business plan in order to justify the money

The project description is the heart of every research proposal. You have a few minutes to explain what you plan to do, why it is important, and how it compares to other research in your field. The next few chunks detail the key aspects of a project description.

JIM

Proposals > Research Proposals 191

Research Proposals: Significance Statements

The significance statement is a one- or two-page explanation of why your research is important. Don't explain why the research is important to you. Instead, figure out why the research would be important to the committee. Read the committee's mission statement or template carefully. Committees funded by government organizations might require that research proposals further some political need. Their idea of importance may have very little to do with your idea of pure science.

The following (fictitious) significance statement is aimed at a (fictitious) government agency that has previously funded projects to improve public safety.

One tactic for significance statements is to start general and gradually get more specific. For example, the following sample starts with a broad statement (hurricanes cause casualties), moves down to the reason (poor predictions caused by imperfect technology), and moves further down to the specifics of this project (our solution improves predictions).

Significance Statement (sample)

The great Galveston hurricane of 1900 caused approximately 10,000 deaths, and the Lake Okeechobee hurricane of 1928 caused over 1,800 deaths. Fortunately, as forecasting skills have improved, the number of casualties has dropped dramatically For example, Hurricane Andrew of 1992 caused fewer than 30 deaths despite being stronger than the 1900 and 1928 storms. Nevertheless, even a single casualty from a hurricane is too great.

A large part of modern casualties are caused by the "boy-who-cried-wolf" phenomenon. When forecasters issue an evacuation order and the storm misses, residents stop taking evacuation errors seriously. The next storm thus causes even more casualties. Superior predictions will eliminate this phenomenon.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) currently bases predictions on five diagnostic programs (NOGAPS, GFS, BAM, UKMET, and GFDL). All of these programs average at least 100 miles in errors 3 over a 72-hour forecast period and over 300 miles in errors over a 120-hour forecast period. These programs are 78% better 6 than the previous generation of forecasting tools; however, they still have relatively wide margins of error.

We have developed a prototype for a program that will cut forecast errors in half within two years. When working with preliminary data, our current prototype already yields hindcast accuracy 20% better than current NHC models.

a. citation

b. citation

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192 Proposals > Research Proposals: Significance Statements

Research Proposals: Objectives and Hypotheses

The project description should include a statement of your project's objectives. In other words, if all goes well with the project, what do you hope to produce? For example, the following sample "Objectives" section concisely identifies the desired results.

Objectives (sample)

We aim to develop a hurricane forecasting program that will cut forecast errors to the levels shown in Table 1.

TABLE 1 Mean Forecasting Errors: A comparison

Current Forecasting Programs

Our Forecasting Program in Two Years

Our Forecasting Program in Four Years

Your objectives should be crystal clear and contain no logical fallacies. (Can you spot the subtle fallacy in the preceding "Objectives" section?)

The project description should also contain one or more hypotheses. As with any research, your hypotheses should be provable. Unless the template permits a tremendous amount of detail (which is unlikely), you should describe only one or two primary hypotheses and omit any secondary or tertiary hypotheses. For example, consider the following:

Hypothesis (sample)

Most current programs forecast motion by calculating the fluid forces that the surrounding environment exerts on the hurricane and weighting the results with climatology. We hypothesize that it is more accurate to study not only the influence of the environment on the hurricane but also the influence of the hurricane on the surrounding environment. Our secondary hypothesis is that climatology can be removed completely from the forecasting program.

1. The table compares the behavior of the current models to the proposer's future models. The performance of the current models is also likely to improve over the next two to four years.

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Research Proposals: Design and Methods

The "Design and Methods" section of a research proposal summarizes the experiments that you plan to perform. Again, most proposal templates don't permit you much space (a page or two), so you must summarize instead of elaborate. A typical organization for this section is as follows:

• Overview. Provide a good introductory paragraph about your experiment.

• Methods and Materials. Explain your technique and the experimental tools you'll need. Where appropriate, identify any techniques pioneered by others. If you are proposing a multipart experiment, summarize each of the major parts.

• Data Analysis (or Evaluating Results). Describe the statistical tests your team will apply to the data. Explain why your chosen method of analysis is appropriate.

For example, consider the following experimental "Design and Methods" section:

Design and Methods (sample)

Our algorithm breaks down the interaction of hurricane and environment into a series of 15-minute "steps." After each step, our program examines deltas in both the hurricane's three-dimensional shape and in the surrounding environment. The algorithm models this pas de deux, readjusting the dance floor after each move.

Methods and Materials. Our team will evaluate environmental data provided by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) from 1992 to present. (Data sets prior to 1992 do not contain enough detail for our purposes.) These data sets are very large and require a tremendous number of floating-point calculations (~10 15 ) to compute a single 120-hour forecast. To handle this load, we require high-speed, eight-CPU machines sharing 8 GB of RAM.

We plan to write approximately 1.2 million lines of C code and to take advantage of approximately 3.5 million lines of existing public-domain C code.

Data Analysis. The NHC currently uses a simple standard metric for determining the accuracy of predictions. Every six hours, they measure the distance between the actual and predicted positions of the storm. The mean of these measurements yields the accuracy of the forecast program. To ensure meaningful comparisons, we will use this standard accuracy metric as well.

As Zeven (2001) notes, seasons in which storms move slowly yield greater projective accuracy, even without any actual improvement in diagnostic programs. Therefore, we will also supply a second metric that factors in the speed of each storm.

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194 Proposals > Research Proposals: Design and Methods

Book Proposals

Writing a book is one of the best things that you can do to improve your career.

The Opening Moves in Writing a Book

A nattily dressed publisher at a conference caught your presentation and asked if you'd consider expanding the topic into a commercial book. You were hoping he would ask, so you launched into a sparkling 60-second pitch on the book you've always dreamed of writing. He liked it, so now is your chance to develop that 60-second pitch into a book proposal.

Understanding the Audience

Publishers are erudite, highly intelligent, well-spoken, friendly people who are typically only interested in one thing:

Selling lots of books

Publishers know every mover and shaker in your field and will drop names to prove it. Publishers also know every book published in your field. They know which of these books sold well and which did not.

Some technical publishers have a strong background in your field. Some studied the field in college or graduate school, and a few may even have worked in the field. Technical publishers typically attend a lot conferences and are up to date with current trends and buzzwords. However, full-time publishers are not current practitioners of your field and won't know nearly as many specifics as you do. Publishers run wide but not deep.

Most people believe that authors come to publishers with ideas. Indeed, that does happen occasionally, but usually publishers think up titles and then go in search of authors. If a publisher approaches you for a book, then chances are decent that he's already figured out that the book will sell.

Strategy

Publishers' pay is tied to how many books they sell. Those publishers that sell only a few books will soon be searching for another job. (Publishing jobs are highly competitive, and turnover is astounding.) Therefore, the overall strategy is "simply" to convince the publisher that you can write a book that will sell lots of copies. To do so, your book proposal should convey the following:

Proposals > Book Proposals 195

• You can write well. The best way to prove this is to have already written a successful book. If you can't make that claim, a well-written article in a magazine will help boost your cause. The ultimate proof of your writing skill is submitting a beautifully clear, well-reasoned book proposal that follows the publisher's template. (Yes, the pressure is on.)

• You understand the market. Your proposal must explain who the competitors are and why your book will beat them. Remember—publishing is all about money.

• You can meet the schedule. Publishers love writers who hit all their deadlines. Writers who miss deadlines cost the publisher money.

What Does Not Impress Commercial Publishers?

The following will not improve your chances with publishers:

• Fame. Unlike fiction, consumers rarely buy commercial technical books based on the author's good name. (On the other hand, if you are producing a book for an academic audience, intellectual fame helps considerably.)

• Lab reports. Publishing many reports in research journals proves that you are an important researcher but doesn't prove that you can write a good book.

Contents of a Book Proposal

Most publishers provide extensive book proposal templates, which include a subset of the following items:

• abstract

• biography

• list of previous publications

• marketing

• detailed outline

• schedule

The following page contains the marketing section of a proposal for a book on a fictitious new programming language named Fenster.

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196 Proposals > Book Proposals

Book Proposal: Example Marketing Section

Who are the primary and secondary audiences for your book?

I will aim this book primarily at professional programmers who have never programmed in Fenster before. Such programmers typically already own many programming books. Members of this audience may already own one of the competitive titles, but they prefer to buy at least two commercial manuals when attacking a new programming language.

The secondary audience consists of students. Currently, Fenster is very popular with computer science and traditional science students. However, because of financial constraints, this audience rarely buys commercial books unless a professor requires the books for class. Fortunately, several universities have just begun to offer Fenster courses.

What are the competitive books? How will your book compare to them? What is unique about your book?

The competitors are as follows:

• The Joy of Fenster (by Arnold Ziff) is the most popular book on this topic, primarily because it was the only book on the topic for almost a year. Reviewers on Amazon were annoyed by the lack of examples in this book. My book will contain more than twice as many examples as this one.

• Fenster Goes to Monte Carlo (by Leonard Hacker) is the second most popular Fenster title. The book features a lot of humor (as will mine), which seems to appeal to the Fenster community. The book's coverage of window manipulation (a crucial feature of Fenster) is very weak; my book will provide extensive coverage of window manipulation.

What is the appropriate price for your book?

Both of the competitors sell for a list price of $34.95. I propose to list the book for $29.95 to compete partially on price.

What are the proper venues (e.g., commercial bookstores, academic bookstores, conferences, and so on) to sell your book?

Both of the competitors are selling briskly through online and traditional bookstores, so these should be the primary venues. Since Fenster is catching on at universities, we should aim a secondary marketing effort at academic bookstores, particularly those selling to computer science departments.

The annual Fenster User Group (FUG) conference would be a natural place to sell this book. Leonard Hacker made a presentation at FUG last year, and his publisher was present to take orders.

Proposals > Book Proposal: Example Marketing Section 197

Business Plans

Business plans aim to get money to start a new business or to expand an existing business.

Understanding the Audience

The target audience for business plans includes potential investors, often venture capitalists. Members of this audience read business plans to determine whether they can make a healthy return on their investment.

Some venture capitalists started off as technologists and gravitated towards business. Other venture capitalists have no formal training in technology but are conversant with it. Your business plan should assume a technologically sophisticated audience—one that is reasonably comfortable with jargon but has very little interest in deep technical detail.

Venture capitalists typically know your market extremely well. They will know which companies have succeeded and which have failed. They will have deep-seated theories on what works and what doesn't.

Strategy

Many technologists mistakenly believe that business plans should focus on technology. True, a business plan must explain the business's underlying technology; however, it must focus on how the company will make money and reward its investors.

A business proposal is essentially a request to form a financial partnership, oftentimes with a stranger. Under what circumstances would you invest money with a stranger? The following list might be helpful:

• The stranger has business experience. Investors are understandably skeptical of business novices.

• The stranger's business is already successful. Note that existing companies that want to expand often write business plans.

• The stranger explicitly states how investors will recoup their investment. Investors want to cash out after a few years, so a good business plan explains how the investors will transition out of their investment.

• The stranger's ideas are clear and sensible. The proposal doesn't hide anything.

• The stranger has identified a market and a plan for selling to this market. The proposal details the size of the market and a plan to beat the competitors. Furthermore, the proposal handles contingencies for a shifting marketplace.

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198 Proposals > Business Plans

• The stranger is no longer a stranger. Again, would you really want to invest money with someone you didn't know? Probably not. Once you identify a group that invests in your kind of technology, try to find a connection with one of the investment principals. Maybe a friend of a friend could help you.

Contents of a Business Plan

Business plans are less "templated" than other kinds of proposals, so you have a fair amount of organizational freedom. Nevertheless, a good business plan contains at least the sections listed in Table 13-1.

TABLE 13-1 Sections in a Typical Business Plan

Section

Details

Front matter Provide a cover letter (see "Proposal Element: Cover Letters" on page

184), cover page, table of contents, and so on.

Executive Summary Provide a quick summary or abstract for busy readers. (See "Proposal Element: Abstracts" on page 187.)

Company

Support

Provide a brief corporate history. Detail how the company is currently funded and who owns the company. Provide bios for your company's management team. (See "Proposal Element: Biographies" on page 185 for help on bios.)

Explain the technological basis for the company. In other words, define what you are trying to sell.

Explain who will provide customer support.

Market Explain who will buy this good or service. If you are breaking into an

existing market, describe the size of the current and future market. If this is a new market, provide realistic estimates, preferably based on reputable market research. What market share percentage can your company achieve? Be realistic.

Marketing Describe your marketing plan. Explain how the proposed company

will fulfill the market better than its competition. How big will your sales force be?

Manufacturing and (If you are selling a service rather than a product, skip this section.) Distribution How will you manufacture your product? In what venues will custom-

ers buy your product? Do you have a distributor in place already?

Finances

Schedule

Detail both your current financial position and your projections. What will you do with the investment? How will investors cash out?

Detail what your proposed company will achieve and by when.

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Summary of Proposals

Before submitting your proposal—while lying awake at 3:00 AM, wondering if a career in dry cleaning really would have been more satisfying—turn on the light and ask yourself the following questions about your proposal:

• Has someone edited the proposal for spelling and grammatical errors? (Do you really want to submit a proposal that contains typos?) Is the writing clear? Are the sentences a struggle to read? Are the fonts obtrusive?

• Has someone outside your team reviewed the proposal? The ideal reviewer is someone with similar credentials to the proposal review committee's members. Does the proposal make sense to the reviewer? Can the reviewer find any logical fallacies?

• Has someone outside your team reviewed the abstract? E-mail only the abstract of your proposal to several colleagues and ask them to describe what the proposal is really about. If your colleagues don't get it right, consider rewriting the abstract.

• Have you followed the proposal template very closely? Have you looked at successful proposals and mimicked their style?

• Does your cover letter contain your current contact information? You don't want the committee to send the check to the wrong address.

• Does your bio do you justice? Will proposal reviewers be impressed by the person described in the bio? Will your experience impress the target audience? If not, have you allied yourself with someone who will impress proposal reviewers?

• If you are writing a business plan or a book proposal, does your business focus come across, or do you sound like a pure techie? Does your proposal provide a cogent description of the current market?

• Do your budget line items sound realistic? (Can you really buy two new computers for only $50?) Do your budget columns add up?

• Do you come across as a grounded, well-organized individual, or do you sound completely scattershot?

• Does your proposal handle contingencies effectively? Have you explained anything other than the best-case scenario?

200 Proposals > Summary of Proposals

CHAPTER 14

Internal Planning Documents

The previous chapter looked at documents aimed at readers outside your immediate organization. In this chapter, we turn our gaze inward to study documents that you write for people within your organization. Instead of the wolf outside your door, you are now trying to please the jackals in the next cube.

This chapter focuses on the following three kinds of internal planning documents:

• Business proposals. These recommend new products or technologies to the upper management of your organization.

• High-level technical specs. These summarize a new product or technology so simply that even the vice president of marketing can understand them.

• Low-level technical specs. These detail exactly how your own engineering team will build new products or technologies.

The key to all three types of planning documents is understanding who your audience is and what it needs to get out of each type of document. Dr. Chekirnov, the barefoot biologist in the next cube over, needs very different information than Sam Minyon, the well-shod gentleman who heads procurement in the corner office.

They Will Know You by Your Writing

Internal planning documents, particularly business proposals and high-level technical specs, are very important to your career. Writing a clear, well-considered proposal or spec will speak volumes about your organizational abilities. Conversely, cloudy specs suggest cloudy thinking.

Business Proposals

Business plans sell a new company to potential investors. Business proposals sell a new idea to an existing company. If you are an engineer with a great idea for something your company ought to be doing, then you would typically write a business proposal to sell your idea to upper management. Writing a business proposal that changes the direction of your company is invaluable to your career, particularly if the project is a success.

Understanding Your Audience

Aim your business proposal at the upper management in your company. Note that upper management includes not only engineering management but also management in completely nontechnical areas. Further note that the top management in an engineering organization is typically years removed from hands-on use of technology and that many members of upper management no longer understand a lot of the nitty-gritty technical issues that you take for granted.

What Motivates High-Level Managers?

Upper management aims to enhance income and reduce expenses by making sound business decisions. That's the standard answer, anyway. The real-world answer is far more complex. For example, some top-level managers see their purview as a fiefdom to be zealously protected, particularly against all forms of change. For this reason, even the most wonderful business proposals sometimes get rejected without due consideration.

The clever writer knows that a great business proposal can only advance as far as his or her political leverage allows. You should campaign for a business proposal by walking it around to upper-level managers and encouraging feedback. Once upper-level managers feel that they have a hand in the plan, the plan has a far greater chance of success.

The Keys to Successful Business Proposals

Effective business proposals persuade readers of the following points:

• The idea is a sound business decision; it will generate a profit or reduce costs.

• The project is achievable; it is not the fantasy of an idealistic dreamer.

• The idea will not hurt current sources of revenue; it may even enhance current sales.

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202 Internal Planning Documents > Business Proposals

To persuade upper management of the preceding points, use the following tactics:

• Rely on market research. Does the market you are proposing already exist? How much revenue does this market currently generate? How much will this market grow over the next few years?

• Compare your idea to successful similar projects at your own or peer companies.

This is not to say that upper management only accepts proven ideas, but it is easier to sell an exclamation point than a question mark.

• Explain how your idea will outsell your competitors' products. Note that the first company to market is not always the most successful in that market.

• Find a corporate champion for the project. If influential people in the company believe that your idea is sound, your idea has a far greater chance of success.

Analysis of the Sample Business Proposal

A two-page sample business proposal begins on the next page. It describes a new, high-end exercise machine. Note the following points about this business proposal:

• This business proposal focuses on business principles, not technical details.

• This business proposal invokes the names of two corporate champions (Elena and Bob) primarily to announce to other readers that two members of upper management have already approved the idea. (Before using this tactic, make sure that other top managers don't hate Elena and Bob.)

• This business proposal contains very few adjectives and adverbs; instead, it offers facts and invites readers to come to their own conclusions about the barrels of money that competitors are making.

• This business proposal uses simple, numerically based graphics to make its points about competitors. Even people who don't read every word of proposals will probably still glance at the two graphics and get something from them.

• The graphics omit the sorry state of the engineer's own company: the fact that the company's own revenues have held flat is buried underneath one of the graphics. (The wise writer doesn't offend the vice president of sales when trying to push a new idea that will require her approval.)

• The purpose of the "Background" section is not really to explain virtual reality (VR) but to suggest that VR is a firmly entrenched technology. (Notice the use of the word old.) The writer did not want readers to think that VR was a new and risky technology.

• Figure 14-2 inoculates against the cannibalization-of-market question by demonstrating that overall revenue will probably increase.

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Business Proposal: Example

Our team recommends that we design, manufacture, and market a new virtual reality (VR) stair-stepper model. This business proposal summarizes our recommendations.

Synopsis

Our R&D team recommends designing a new stair-stepper machine with VR features. This machine, which we are dubbing King Kong, features VR goggles. Customers wearing these goggles will feel as if they are climbing up the outside of the Empire State Building as they stair-step. The new machine uses the same chassis as our existing 3500 model but layers on additional digital components to enable VR features.

Background

Virtual reality is a term several decades old that means portraying fantasy in as realistic a fashion as possible. The ultimate VR system would generate perceptions indistinguishable from reality. Commercially successful VR entertainment is now available at movie theatres, theme parks, and game arcades. Due to gradual drops in digital component prices, it is now commercially practical to produce exercise equipment that offers a powerful VR experience. We can use VR to wed exercise to entertainment.

The Current Market in VR Exercise Equipment

Two of our competitors—Calispindex and Pravda Mills—have already manufactured and sold exercise equipment with some VR features. These competitive models are as follows:

• Calispindex SpinCycle VR20. This stationary bike has a small flat-panel screen that projects images of a rolling rural countryside while the customer exercises. As the terrain changes, the bike reacts accordingly. For example, when the screen shows an uphill portion of the course, the bike becomes harder to pedal.

• Pravda Mills Tread-1000. This treadmill has similar digital components to the Spin-Cycle VR. While running on the treadmill, customers view actual images from the Boston Marathon course.

Both companies featured these two VR products in their last two annual reports. The pie charts in Figure 14-1, taken from data in their annual reports, illustrate the growing importance of VR equipment to these two companies.

II

204 Internal Planning Documents > Business Proposal: Example

Sales revenue of equipment with virtual reality features

Sales revenue of equipment without virtual reality features

FIGURE 14-1 VR-based equipment accounts for an increasing percentage of sales.

Did the growth in VR equipment merely cannibalize the existing market in older, non-VR machines? In fact, as Figure 14-2 shows, both Pravda Mills and Calispindex enjoyed significant overall growth in new product revenue.

$40

Annual Product Revenue in Millions $20 of Dollars

$10

2003 2004 2003 2004

Pravda Mills Calispindex

FIGURE 14-2 Overall sales at companies with VR equipment have grown.

During this same period, our own annual product revenue was flat.

Our Recommendation

When designing King Kong, we worked closely with Elena, vice president of marketing. She emphasized the need to enter this market as soon as possible. The components and manufacturing for this machine will cost us $750 more per unit than the 3500; however, we can sell the machine for $2,500 more per unit. Elena estimates that we can sell approximately 2,000 units in the first year and 6,000 units in the second year.

We estimate approximately nine months from project inception to first customer ship. Bob, vice president of manufacturing, feels that we can build this model in our existing Beloit factory.

High-Level Technical Specs

Once upper-level management gives the go-ahead to the business plan, the lead engineer or product manager writes a high-level technical spec, also called a functional spec in some industries.

Purpose

The primary purpose of a high-level technical spec is to get all the organizations in a company prepared for the introduction of a new product or technology. A really good spec helps unite disparate organizations; a really bad spec offends some of the department managers and ensures a bumpy ride.

Understanding Your Audience

This is the spec that launches a dozen specs. Managers read this spec in order to write specs of their own. Therefore, your audience skims over the spec, selectively attending to specific parts that will help them write their own spec. The purpose of your high-level technical spec is not to write the other specs but to provide enough information so that other managers can do their job. For example, your spec should contain information such as the following to enable a manufacturing manager to write the manufacturing plan:

• the parts required to build the new product

• a diagram or description suggesting how the parts fit together

Remember that your audience includes many people with little or no scientific or engineering background. The vice president of sales understands how to sell products, not how their innards work.

QUANTUM LEAP

Effective high-level technical specs must walk a thin line. The spec must provide information for other department heads without sounding as if you've made decisions that they are responsible for making. Your spec should specify which decisions you are expecting others to make.

Sections in a High-Level Technical Spec

The sections in a high-level technical spec depend on the industry. The sections for specs in the pharmaceutical industry will be quite different from those for the software industry. The following section list, for example, would be appropriate for an industry manufacturing a good old-fashioned tangible good:

206 Internal Planning Documents > High-Level Technical Specs

• Synopsis

• Components

• Assembly

• Schedule

• List of Issues

The synopsis is the most important part of the entire functional spec. Given the harried schedules of most executives and their general disinclination to read specs, many executives will only read the synopsis. For this reason, it is vital to create a concise, well-organized, and (dare I say it) exciting synopsis.

The technical overview should explain what other departments need to know about the product. Remember, you still have the low-level technical spec to detail everything your own engineering group needs to know about the product.

The schedule and the list of issues often serve as the basis for regular cross-functional team meetings. In the opening draft of the high-level technical spec, you typically don't want to give too many schedule details, particularly those for other departments. (Managers from other departments won't want you to get too involved with their schedules.) Nevertheless, you still need to put out some broad starting dates. Then, just sit back and wait for the whining to begin.

Analysis of the Sample High-Level Technical Spec

The sample high-level technical spec that begins on the following page straddles the skinny line between providing enough information and not making decisions for other departments. The following is a list of key points from that spec:

• The spec does not include information on pricing or marketing. True, this sort of information had to be in the business proposal, but now marketing and sales will do as they please in making the decisions.

• The spec includes a fairly detailed list of components, which will be useful for the procurement department. This list carefully distinguishes between components with specific suppliers and components with open-ended suppliers.

• The "Assembly" section contains a few critical details but provides openings that the relevant people in other departments must complete. In some high-level technical specs, details such as how the laptop will be mounted would already have been worked out, and the spec would contain complete diagrams.

• The schedule is fairly sparse. A project manager or project leader will ultimately generate a full schedule containing perhaps several hundred milestones for a project of this complexity.

Internal Planning Documents > High-Level Technical Specs 207

High-Level Technical Spec: Example

All department heads at Social Climber Inc. should read this functional spec. It highlights a new product that we will develop during the year. If all goes as expected, this new product will be the first of many virtual reality (VR) exercise machines that blur the line between exercise and video games.

Synopsis

This spec details the proposed King Kong Climber 4500, which is a high-end stair-stepper machine with a digital twist. As movie fans know, at the climax of the movie King Kong, the great ape climbs up the outside of the Empire State Building. The 4500 will let customers enjoy a similar experience (but without fighter planes shooting at them) while getting a workout.

The key to the 4500 is a pair of VR goggles. These goggles are essentially a very, very tiny computer monitor that displays images. As a customer climbs steps on the 4500, the goggles display images from the Empire State Building. For example, when the customer has climbed the equivalent of 100 feet, the goggles will display the view from 10 stories up at the real Empire State Building.

Technology Overview

All the mechanical aspects of the King Kong Climber 4500 are identical to those of the current Social Climber 3500. In other words, both rely on the same chassis, motor, and pedals. However, the 4500 has significantly more digital components than the 3500.

The DVD of images from the Empire State Building will probably come from a company named Acrophobics' Nightmare. Our legal department is in negotiations with them.

Note that the 4500 is the first of many proposed VR exercise systems. For example, we have recently proposed a 5500 model based on multiplayer virtual races up tall buildings. Please make sure that parts suppliers understand that we are in this market for the long run.

Components

In addition to the components in the 3500, the 4500 also requires the following:

• A Zebra-5 kit, manufactured by Dexco Unlimited. This kit has all the digital hardware we need preassembled. It is essentially a laptop without a keyboard or monitor. Dexco is Goggleplex's preferred OEM.

• Goggleplex Omega 20, manufactured by Goggleplex Inc. These are the virtual reality goggles that the Zebra-5 kit requires. There are no standards for VR goggles, so there is no alternative vendor for the goggles.

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• A CD containing the software to run the 4500. R&D is creating the software.

• A 15-amp power supply from any supplier. Note that the 3500 model draws only 12 amps.

Assembly

The Zebra-5 provides its own chassis. We would like manufacturing to mount this chassis at the top of the Y-bar, using a mounting mechanism to be determined by the mechanical engineering and manufacturing departments. Note the following additional assembly requirements:

• A CD must accompany each kit.

• A hard-copy documentation set must accompany each kit.

Schedule

Table 1 contains a proposed high-level schedule for the 4500. TABLE 1 Schedule for Initial Development and Deployment of the 4500

Preliminary Issues

The following issues must be tracked at regular team meetings:

• How do we document safety issues for climbing stairs while wearing VR goggles?

• Do we need to license the name "King Kong" for this product?

Internal Planning Documents > High-Level Technical Spec: Example 209

Low-Level Technical Specs

Low-level technical specs, called design specs in some industries, are detailed blueprints aimed at the engineers in a group who must implement some aspect of the new product or technology. The lead engineer or engineering manager writes such specs.

Purpose

Low-level technical specs explain the work to be done, who will do it, and when it must be finished.

Understanding Your Audience

Your audience consists of all the engineers in your group. Therefore, use plenty of jargon. For example, the spec should not waste time explaining the C programming language to engineers who already program in C.

A typical project consists of a set of subprojects, each implemented by different engineers. You are under no obligation to provide the same level of detail for each of these sub-projects. For example, the spec should typically provide plenty of details for junior engineers but allow senior engineers more latitude. Nevertheless, to ensure a smooth project, the spec must clearly define the interfaces between the different subprojects. For example, the spec should define the data to be passed between two different programming modules.

Sections in a Low-Level Technical Spec

All low-level technical spec should contain a synopsis of the project and a detailed schedule. Beyond those two requirements, each low-level technical spec depends on the industry and the project.

Analysis of the Sample Low-Level Technical Spec

A sample low-level technical spec starts on the next page. Note the following key points from this sample:

• The "Synopsis" section aims to motivate the target audience. It relies on the prime engineering motivator, which is that success will lead to more interesting projects.

• The different "Team" sections are personalized to provide the appropriate level of detail for each team. For example, Randy is an inexperienced engineer, so the "Team A" part of the spec provides a lot of low-level details for him. Marietta and Eswar are highly experienced, highly independent engineers who flourish in a creative environment; therefore, the "Team C" part of the spec is quite open-ended and only lays out a few requirements.

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210 Internal Planning Documents > Low-Level Technical Specs

Low-Level Technical Spec: Example

The software engineering team (Randy, Jenny, Eswar, Jim, and Marietta) should read this spec, which details how we will implement the 4500.

Synopsis

As you already know, the 4500 adds virtual reality (VR) features to the 3500. To implement VR, the 4500 adds a laptop (minus keyboard and screen) that wirelessly transmits images to a pair of VR goggles. As a customer climbs, the images change with their virtual height. Our team must develop all the software to enable this marvelous act of digital deception.

This is our first VR product, but if we get it right, it won't be our last. If we can sell enough of these, the company will let us do even cooler products next year.

Hardware

The hardware implementation is much more complex than anything we've done in the past. Instead of using PROMs and a tiny bit of RAM, we're now working with all the hardware power of a laptop. All hardware components fit inside a standard laptop (minus keyboard and monitor), which will be mounted at the top of the Y-bar. Table 14-1 lists the laptop's components.

TABLE 14-1 Laptop Components Component Spec

CPU Motonel 5 Series at 3.2 GHz

RAM 256 MB SIMMS running at 400 MHz

DVD player A 12X read-only player

Networking Ethernet board + Goggleplex wireless card (signal is robust for -2.5 m)

We'll be fighting over who gets to use the Goggleplex Omega 20 virtual reality goggles. The actual resolution of the Omega 20 goggles is 1024 x 800, but because the images are less than an inch away from the customer's eyes, the effective resolution is ludicrously good. We've already taken delivery of two units that our team can use for development and QA.

Software Requirements

Our group will develop the software for the 4500. However, we will buy the Empire State Building images from another firm. Note that we will rely on our usual source-code control

system and build utilities. The OEM who assembles our laptop will preinstall Red Hat 4.3. Since all Goggleplex APIs are in C, we will write all code for this project in C.

I've divided the software project into three teams.

Team A (Randy)

Team A must create a small API to fetch the exerciser's workload every 0.5 sec and generate statistics from it. The statistics must include cumulative height climbed, calories burned, and total number of steps. Write the statistics into a 6000-element array. Open a socket, and listen for two possible requests:

• Request "1" means send the most recently updated row in the array.

• Request "2" means send the entire (nontrivial) part of the array.

Team B (Jenny and Jim)

Team 13 must rely on the existing Goggleplex display API to transmit images to the VR goggles. To gather the most recent height reached, use sockets to send Request "1." Then, map the most recent height to the appropriate image on the DVD. Note that successive images on the DVD show views 0.5 m apart. For example, image 10 shows the view from 5.0 m above the street, image 11 is the view from 5.5 m, and so on.

Team C (Marietta and Eswar)

Team C will develop the GUI. Note that the goggles are not only an output device but also an input device that can detect pupil motion (equivalent to mouse motion) and eye blinks (equivalent to mouse clicks).

The GUI should provide a quick shutdown to allow a panicked customer to exit immediately.

At the end of the session, the GUI should display a graph (based on data in the array) showing height versus time, which identifies the fastest and slowest parts of the session. To get the data, use sockets to send Request "2."

Detailed Schedule

[Omitted for space reasons.]

**

212 Internal Planning Documents > Low-Level Technical Spec: Example

Summary of Internal Planning Documents

When reviewing a business proposal you have created, ask yourself the following questions:

• Did you hit the target audience? The target audience is supposed to be high-level managers and, possibly, the board of directors or various investors in the company.

• Is your business proposal too technical? It really shouldn't be very technical at all. Remember that most of the people reading it do not have a technical background.

• Is your business proposal persuasive? It should rely on cold, hard, numerical marketing information, leading readers to come to one inescapable conclusion: doing this project is the right thing for the company.

• Have you "presold" the business proposal by talking it over with various upper-level managers? Does the business proposal invoke the names of several important proponents?

When reviewing a high-level technical spec you have created, ask yourself the following questions:

• Did you hit the target audience? The target audience is supposed to be the people (often managers but possibly project leaders) who will write detailed specs for their own departments.

• Did you make the spec too technical? The head of procurement does not care what language you are coding in.

• Did you provide enough information for the head of procurement or head of manufacturing to write their specs?

• Did you provide too much information about marketing? You shouldn't provide much detail at all about marketing or sales.

When reviewing a low-level technical spec you have created, ask yourself the following questions:

• Did you hit the target audience? The target audience consists of all the people in your immediate engineering organization.

• Did you make the spec technical enough? This group really needs technical details.

• Did you provide enough information for the engineers to get started on the project? After all, that is the goal for this sort of spec.

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Internal Planning Documents > Summary of Internal Planning Documents 213

CHAPTER 15

Lab Reports

Although most scientists love doing research, many hate writing lab reports. This is a real pity because a muddy lab report can soil even the best experiments. Imagine researching a topic for years, getting valuable results, and then being refused for publication just because editors and reviewers did not understand what you are trying to say. Surely, though, that won't happen to you—not with your clear, concise, accurate writing style.

Lab reports typically consist of the following sections:

• Abstract

• Introduction

• Materials

• Procedure

• Results

• Discussion

• Conclusion

• References

The exact list of section names varies somewhat between disciplines and journals. For example, the "Materials" section is sometimes called "Methods and Materials" or "Equipment." Some journals require additional topics.

About the Experiment in This Chapter

The experiment described in this chapter never happened; I made it up. In addition, the citations and references in this chapter are also fictitious. The experiment is simply an example to illustrate how to write lab reports.

VsS!

Abstract

The "Abstract" section presents the entire lab report in miniature. Abstracts must be quite short, running only a single paragraph. Journals impose different length and style requirements, to which you must pay careful attention.

Abstracts must be strong enough to stand on their own. Your abstract will probably be placed in a collection of abstracts. Readers browse these collections to determine which lab reports are worth reading. If you are trying to attract readers, you should expend a fair amount of energy on the abstract. Note that far more readers will read your abstract than will read the rest of your lab report.

"""quantum leap

I recommend writing the abstract after you have written the rest of the lab report. By writing it last, you can lift key sentences from other parts of the lab report and use them (or slightly modified versions of them) in your abstract.

The following list presents a possible template for creating an abstract:

1. Begin with a sentence or two that summarizes the hypothesis that your experiment addresses. You may optionally phrase this opening as a rhetorical question.

2. In a sentence or two, summarize relevant research on the hypothesis.

3. In two or three sentences, describe the experiment.

4. In one to three sentences, summarize the results.

5. Conclude with a sentence explaining why the results are important.

Abstract

Does a child's focus correlate with barometric pressure? If so, does it correlate positively or negatively? Tucker (1999) hypothesized a negative correlation, but this assertion has never been tested. Our team used the MISHA CPT to measure the focus of a group of 150 third-grade students. We divided the students into three groups of 50 students. One group took the MISHA CPT when barometric pressure was low, another group took it when barometric pressure was neutral, and the final group took it when barometric pressure was high. The results found that children focused significantly better when barometric pressure was low than when barometric pressure was neutral or high. The results suggest that when diagnosing ADHD, practitioners should give the CPT when barometric pressure is neutral.

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216 Lab Reports > Abstract

Introduction

Begin the "Introduction" section by identifying the purpose of the experiment. In other words, identify the question you are trying to answer. Try to identify the purpose in a paragraph or two, although for "wide" studies, you may need to provide multiple paragraphs or even multiple pages.

After stating the purpose, explain the theory (or theories) on which you have based the experiment. In your explanation, cite previous relevant research on this topic. (Don't digress too far into tangential studies.) Identify not only what previous researchers have done but also what their research did not cover. Citing research helps bring readers up to speed on the current thinking about this topic. In addition, citing research helps you avoid potential plagiarism charges.

As always, audience definition is essential—figure out what your target audience already knows and then supply the delta they must learn to understand your experiment. The audience for lab reports typically consists of highly educated experts, many of whom are fellow researchers. However, highly educated experts are typically highly specialized and might not be familiar with current research in the broader field.

The introduction should also explain any special equipment that might be unfamiliar to your audience. For example, consider a lab report based on an experiment in transuranium elements. If you are targeting the lab report at a journal that focuses on research into transuranium elements, your introduction should not waste the reader's time explaining the usual lab equipment in that field. If, however, you are targeting the lab report at a journal that prints all types of physics research, then your introduction should explain the apparatus.

The following sample introduction targets a periodical that publishes general psychological research for a broad range of psychologists. If the target periodical were devoted to the study of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), then the author would have omitted most of the background information about the Continuous Performance Test (CPT). Note that a real introduction might be considerably longer than the sample.

I Lab Reports > Introduction 217

Introduction

This experiment seeks to determine whether barometric pressure influences a child's focus. In other words, does a change in barometric pressure change a child's ability to focus?

Tucker (1999) hypothesized that changes in barometric pressure might be responsible for the large variances in focus that the same child exhibits on different days. She suspected a negative correlation between barometric pressure and focus, Siska (2003) determined that focus changes within a child were negatively correlated with blood-sugar levels. However, Siska noted that the correlation was somewhat less than predicted and suggested that other environmental factors (including weather) might be responsible for the delta. Mackinson and Goldberg (2004) found that slight changes in ambient temperature accounted for relatively sharp changes in focus within the same child.

The literature does not provide any studies that correlate focus with barometric pressure.

Our experiment attempts to prove Tucker's hypothesis. We, too, suspect that children focus better on days when the barometric pressure is low than they do on days when the barometric pressure is high. Prior to beginning the study, we sent an informal e-mail survey to 50 elementary school teachers randomly selected in the Washington D.C. area. Of the 32 responses we received, 28 teachers indicated that students were "more manageable" on rainy days than on sunny days. (Barometric pressure is usually lower on rainy days than on sunny days.)

To measure focus, our team relied on the Continuous Performance Test (OPT). The OPT is currently the most widely used instrument for studying focus and for diagnosing Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The CPT is a computer program that looks to most children like a sort of primitive video game. The CPT displays a series of letters on a computer monitor. Children respond by typing certain keys on the computer's keyboard. The version of the CPT we used—MISHA CPT— lasted approximately 14 minutes. Although most clinicians use a CPT when diagnosing ADHD, the MISHA CPT is also an accurate assessment tool for defining any child's ability to focus.

Unlike temperature and relative humidity, barometric pressure is typically the same indoors and outdoors. Therefore, testing children indoors offers as much validity as testing them outdoors.

The MISHA CPT generates 12 separate parameters and a summation index. The summation index is an integer between 1 and 100, with 1 representing an almost infinite attention span and 100 representing severe ADHD.

1

218 Lab Reports > Introduction

Materials

The "Materials" section should state exactly what equipment you used, leaving practically nothing to the imagination. For example, the following list is not precise enough:

• light bulbs

• 24 rats

If another lab team wants to reproduce the previous experiment, will they know what equipment to get? Probably not. Furthermore, if your lab report generates controversy or suspicion, it would be embarrassing to admit that your lab report omitted key materials. A list like the following is more reproducible:

• 24 incandescent 60W light bulbs arranged in a 6 x 4 rectangular matrix (see Figure 2)

• 24 Wistar male rats, all between 10 and 12 weeks old

• a Hyperion Rat Habitat, Model 260-R

If your equipment falls into several categories, it is usually clearer to create several subheads and several distinct lists.

If the test subjects are humans, create a subhead called "Subjects." In this subsection, explain how you chose the subjects and any relevant information about their background.

Materials

Our team relied on the following hardware and software:

• 25 identical Dell laptops, each running MISHA CPT v2.1 on Windows XP

• A detached "desktop-style" Dell keyboard (not the laptop keyboard)

• A digital barometer: the Dexco Unlimited model B-16

Subjects

We tested 150 third-grade students chosen at random from a pool of 346 applicants from eight Washington D.C.-area public and private elementary schools. The students represented a fairly wide range of economic backgrounds. All agreed to participate in our study in exchange for a $50 gift certificate from a local toy store.

Experimental Procedure

The experimental procedure section should detail the exact experiment that your team ran. Do not idealize, do not fabricate, and do not aggrandize—just tell the truth. Describe your experiment so that another lab team could faithfully recreate your experiment.

If the experiment consisted of a series of steps that happened in a distinct order, present the procedure as a numbered list. Otherwise, present the procedure through standard -paragraphs.

If your experimental setup is complex, nonintuitive, or just plain hard to describe, consider providing illustrations. A few good illustrations clarify an experiment and reduce potential ambiguity.

Experimental Procedure

We tested our subjects during the December school vacation week. To ensure a range of barometric pressure readings, we tested on three different days (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday).

We randomly divided the 150 subjects into three groups of 50. Because of hardware limitations, we randomly divided each group of 50 into two subgroups (labeled A and B) of 25 subjects each. We tested subjects in Group A at 4:00 and Group B at 5:00.

Subjects took the test inside separate 4M 2 cubicles. Subjects could neither see nor hear other subjects during the test. The test consisted of the following steps:

1. Approximately three minutes prior to the test, experimenters ushered each subject into a separate cubicle in a large lab area.

2. The experimenters told subjects that the computer would provide instructions and assured the subjects that the test would only take about 15 minutes.

3. After a brief pause, the computer monitor displayed instructions for using the CPT while a recorded voice read the instructions aloud. (The text and audio instructions are the standard MISHA CPT instructions for children; see Appendix A for a transcript.)

4. At the conclusion of the test, an experimenter ushered each subject back to a waiting room, where subjects were reunited with parents or guardians.

The experimenters measured the barometric pressure at the midpoint of each test (approximately seven minutes after it began).

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220 Lab Reports > Experimental Procedure

Results

The "Results" section details the quantitative outcome of the experiment, typically blending some combination of formulas, tables, and graphs. Keep the "Results" section objective and honest. (Later sections will give you a chance to be subjective.) Nevertheless, even while striving for truth and beauty, the statistics you choose to provide and those you choose to omit can easily bias your readers' opinions of the experiment.

Begin your "Results" section with a brief (one or two sentences) reminder of the overall purpose of the experiment. Follow that brief reminder with a brief description of the types of data your team collected. The prose within your "Results" section should introduce and summarize each graph or table. For example, the following paragraph helps focus the reader's attention on an important result:

Figure 2 shows the absorption of 1-131 as a function of the percentage of thyroid gland remaining. The graph is linear between 15% and 100%, but shows a strong discontinuity at around 10%.

If you have a lot of results, subdivide the "Results" section into multiple subsections. Do not give a subsection a meaningless name, such as the following:

Section A

Give each subsection a precise subtitle, as in the following example: Absorption of 1-131 by Percentage of Thyroid Remaining

Begin each subsection by identifying (in a short paragraph) what kinds of data this subsection covers.

Due to space limitations, the following page shows only a portion of a "Results" section.

Lab Reports > Results 221

Results

The experiment aimed to determine whether a child's focus correlated with barometric pressure. To that end, we examined the following types of data:

• barometric pressure

• changes in each child's focus over the three tests

• changes in the entire group's focus over the three tests

Barometric Pressure

Table 1 shows the barometric pressure during the tests. On Monday, barometric pressure was low. On Tuesday, barometric pressure was close to normal. On Thursday, barometric pressure was high. The barometric pressure varied very little between Group A and Group B within each day.

Changes in Focus

Figure 1 shows three graphs representing the distribution of MISHA CPT summary index on the three testing days. (A lower summary index represents greater focus.)

[Figure 1 omitted for space reasons]

FIGURE 1: Distribution of summary index by day.

The subjects showed better focus on Monday (low barometric pressure) than on Tuesday or Thursday. The difference was statistically significant (p=0.01).

The subjects showed somewhat poorer focus on Thursday (high barometric pressure) than on Tuesday. However, the difference was not statistically significant.

The distribution for Thursday was much wider (std. dev. of 12) than for Monday or Tuesday (std. dev. of 6 and 8, respectively).

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222 Lab Reports > Results

Discussion

The "Reports" section contains hard numerical data. In the "Discussion" section, you interpret that data, identifying themes and helping the reader draw conclusions.

Begin your "Discussion" section with a reminder of the hypothesis. Then, indicate one of the following opinions:

• The experiment's results prove (or recommend) the hypothesis.

• The experiment's results disprove the hypothesis.

• The experiment's results were inconclusive.

Build a case for your opinion. For example, explain why you think the results recommend the hypothesis. In building a case, answer questions such as the following:

• What results emphatically confirm your opinion?

• Is there reasonable doubt for your opinion? You are permitted the luxury of pointing out possible flaws in the experimental design or holes in the results.

• How do your results compare with similar experiments? Why might your results differ?

Your discussion can optionally provide alternate interpretations of the data or offer suggestions for further research.

Discussion

Our team attempted to determine whether barometric pressure influences children's ability to focus. In particular, we tested Tucker's (1999) hypothesis, which states that children's focus correlates negatively with barometric pressure.

The results show partial support for Tucker's hypothesis. In particular, children focus significantly better when the barometric pressure is low than they do when the barometric pressure is neutral or high. However, children focused only slightly worse during high pressure than normal pressure. The unusually high standard deviation on the high-pressure day (Thursday) suggests that high barometric pressure might affect some children greatly and others very little.

The results suggest that, when diagnosing ADHD, practitioners should give the CPT when barometric pressure is neutral.

The experiment covers only three different days. A more comprehensive experiment should sample at least 10 different days.

Lab Reports > Discussion 223

Conclusion

Many journals require a "Conclusion" section to summarize the results. At a minimum, the "Conclusion" section should provide reminders of the following information:

• the hypothesis

• the results

Some scientists present ideas for future research in the "Conclusion" section, while others place these ideas in the "Research" section. Some journals require that the conclusion is simply the final paragraph(s) of the "Discussion" section.

Conclusion

Our team tested Tucker's (1999) hypothesis, which states that children focus better when barometric pressure is relatively low than when barometric pressure is relatively high. Our results found strong evidence that children do focus better when barometric pressure is relatively low. However, our results did not find that children focus worse in high barometric pressure than they do in normal barometric pressure.

224 Lab Reports > Conclusion

References

Lab reports must contain a "References" section that expands all the citations that have appeared in the report.

No Reference Format Is Truly Universal

Different disciplines impose different requirements for references. In addition, different journals within the same discipline sometimes impose different requirements.

The information provided on this page is generic. To prevent antagonizing an editor, the best rule is simply to copy the reference style of previously published articles in the target journal.

In many disciplines, a "References" section consists of a numbered list. The numbers in the numbered list typically represent the order in which the citation appeared in the report. For example, the first citation in the report was for Tucker; therefore, element [ 1] in the "Reference" section is for Tucker.

References

[1] Tucker, M. J. 1999. "Focus and Weather," ADHD Papers and Proceedings, 42, 526-530.

[2] Siska, N. S. 2003. "Temporal Focus Affect and Soft Drinks," Psychology and Nutrition, 77, 215-223.

[3] Mackinson, J., and J. Goldberg. 2004. "Temperature and Focus," ADHD Metrics, 13, 482-491.

In other disciplines, the "References" section also consists of a numbered list, but the author presents list elements in alphabetical order.

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Summary of Lab Reports

When reviewing your lab report, ask yourself the following questions:

• Who is the target audience for this lab report? Does your lab report hit the target audience?

• Would a person reading the abstract be tempted to read the remainder of the lab report? Would a person reading the abstract understand what your experiment was all about?

• Does your introduction provide sufficient background (or too much background) for your target audience? Does your introduction cover previous research relevant to this topic?

• Do your "Materials" and "Experimental Procedures" sections describe the experiment so precisely that other researchers could replicate the experiment exactly as you ran it?

• Does your "Results" section faithfully represent the data collected in the experiment? Have you checked the mathematical results carefully? Are the graphs and figures misleading?

• Does your "Discussion" section indicate whether the experiment verified or vilified the hypothesis?

• If someone only had time to read the "Conclusion" of your lab report, would he or she get some sense of what the experiment discovered?

• Does your "References" section cite all relevant research in the citation style that the target journal demands?

Grammar

Many journals require scientists to write lab reports in passive voice. If the journal requires passive voice, you must abide by this style. However, if the journal does not require passive voice, then you should write the lab report in active voice.

In nearly all types of writing, editors are sticklers about maintaining a consistent tense. For example, most technical manuals are written completely in present tense. Lab reports, however, are a strange fruit. According to tradition, you mix tenses within a lab report. When describing the experiment (for example, in the "Experimental Procedures" section) or previous experiments, use the past tense. When describing theories (such as "Tucker's hypothesis"), use the present tense.

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226 Lab Reports > Summary of Lab Reports

CHAPTER 16

PowerPoint Presentations

PowerPoint is the jacks-or-better of the corporate world—you've got to have it in order to stay in the game. Just try giving a seminar without PowerPoint or showing up at a meeting with, gasp, paper handouts. I live in mortal fear that my eulogy will be delivered as a broken PowerPoint stack. {Damn it. Can't anyone get this projector to

work?)

PowerPoint gives the patina of professionalism to even the most amateur presentation. A few snappy bullet points, a stately background, and voila—you've turned Fox into the BBC. PowerPoint presentations obfuscate facts, hide evil, and stifle questions. The devil is in the lack of detail. Everyone knows it, but everyone plays along anyway. Despite it all, you must master the art of PowerPoint presentations.

When asked to present some slides about your new invention to the vice-president of research and development, you might just be at a defining point in your career. Will you grab the funding, or will you get bogged down in a morass of mediocrity?

The Golden Rule of Presentations

Your ideas will fall flat if you cannot keep your audience's attention.

PowerPoint and the CEO

"We had 12.9 gigabytes of PowerPoint slides on our network. And I thought, What a huge waste of corporate productivity. So we banned it. And we've had three unbelievable record-breaking fiscal quarters since we banned PowerPoint. Now, I would argue that every company in the world, if it would just ban PowerPoint, would see their earnings skyrocket. Employees would stand around going, 'What do I do? Guess I've got to go to work.'" [Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, in an August, 1997 interview with the San Jose Mercury Times.]

Organizing a Presentation: The Big Picture

Table 16-1 provides a rough algorithm for organizing a short PowerPoint presentation. TABLE 16-1 Approximate Division of Time and Slides in a Short PowerPoint Presentation

For example, in a 20-minute presentation, divide your time as shown in Figure 16-1.

Introduction

Conclusion Q-and-A

i—r

0 1

16 17

Time (in minutes) FIGURE 16-1 Time allocation in a typical 20-minute presentation.

If a presentation consumes more than 20 minutes, divide it into distinct units. Give each unit its own introduction, body, and conclusion. In addition, layer in a brief introduction and conclusion covering the whole presentation. For example, Figure 16-2 shows one way to organize a one-hour presentation into three units.

Time (in minutes) FIGURE 16-2 Time allocation in a typical 60-minute presentation.

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228 PowerPoint Presentations > Organizing a Presentation: The Big Picture

The Number of Slides

Asking how many slides you need is kind of like asking a programmer the generic question, how many lines of code do you need to write a program? There just isn't enough information to answer this question precisely. Nevertheless, one popular rule of thumb states that you should estimate two minutes per slide. Personally, I find that audiences prefer more rapid presentations, so I like to estimate around 80 seconds per slide.

Parameters affecting the time per slide include the following:

• size of audience

• number of bullet points per slide and amount of text

• information density of graphics

As the size of your audience increases, you typically go through slides at a faster pace. Large audiences generally only interrupt your slides to ask questions during designated Q-and-A periods. Small audiences (seven or fewer) will feel much less self-conscious about interrupting you, and it may take several excruciating minutes to get through controversial slides. When audience members are highly familiar with each other, then the pace also slows. For example, if you are presenting to a 30-member lab team that has worked together for several years, you can expect plenty of interruptions. When audience members are primarily strangers to each other, interruptions drop.

Denser slides obviously take longer to consume, although sparse slides that require compensating voice-over also consume too much time.

Slides that contain complex graphics also take a long time to consume. They typically require long-winded voice-overs. So, for example, a presentation that contains mainly complex graphics might proceed at a pace of 5 or 10 minutes per slide.

PowerPoint Presentations > The Number of Slides 229

The Opening Moments of a Presentation

I cannot underestimate the value of a positive first impression. In every communication medium—from movies to stand-up comedy to newspaper articles and right back to PowerPoint presentations—the first few seconds are the most critical. During those first few seconds, your audience will decide whether you are worth their focus. Succeed at the start, and your audience will root for you. Screw up the beginning, and you'll be scratching desperately for attention and approval.

So, how do you succeed in the opening moments? At the risk of sounding like a 3:00 AM infomercial, the key is confidence—you must believe in your heart of hearts that your presentation is valuable and that your ideas are critical. Dogs may or may not be able to sense fear, but audiences absolutely sense a lack of confidence. Humans attend to confident people; all the slick PowerPoint graphics won't bail the unconfident out of trouble.

Opening with a Joke

Some people tell jokes well. If you are one of those people, I recommend beginning your presentation with a relevant witticism. When you are one of many presenters, a little levity makes your presentation stand out from and rise above the others. Your presentation will be the one that people remember. Naturally, you have to sniff the mood of the room before telling a joke; in some situations, attempts at humor are destined to fall flat. Generally speaking, though, the joke is a little gift you present to your audience. Like most gifts, it is the thought that counts—the audience will appreciate you just for trying. In fact, the joke need not be particularly funny for you to succeed.

Always beta-test your jokes. Nothing ruins a presentation faster than offending someone in your audience. Make sure your beta testers include a wide range of people. One of the safer domains is to poke fun at your own profession.

By the way, spontaneous remarks always get a bigger laugh than prepared ones. So, prepare some spontaneous remarks.

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230 PowerPoint Presentations > The Opening Moments of a Presentation

Introductory Slides: The Traditional Approach

Since the opening moments are critical, your introductory slides better be good. The traditional approach to an introduction is to "tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em." I refer to this approach as the romantic-comedy style of overviews because your audience will know exactly how it is going to end just from watching the first few minutes. We will now consider a few examples of this style.

The slide in Figure 16-3 is direct and concise, but it is suboptimal. The simple title ("Introduction") does not mean anything. If someone were to come across this slide a few weeks after the presentation and read the title, would he or she remember what this presentation was about? What is this presentation really about, and why would an audience member want to pay attention to it?

Introduction

My presentation consists of the following three parts:

1. Hybridization

2 Genetic Modification

3 Biological Nanotechnology

FIGURE 16-3 A suboptimal introductory slide.

The slide in Figure 16-4 offers a more instructive title. In addition, it contains date ranges, which technical audiences usually like and which are a nice device for building excitement. On the downside, the second bullet point ("where we've been") is a cliche. After reading this introductory slide, would you really know the true purpose of this presentation?

Creating Fruit Species

Technologies to create new species of fruit:

- 1900 to 2000: hybridization

- 1995 to 2010: gene modification

- 2010 to 2050: biological nanotechnology This presentation examines where we've been and where we're going.

FIGURE 16-4 A better title, but too cliche.

On the plus side, the slide in Figure 16-5 clearly states the purpose of the presentation (to provide an overview of creating new fruit species with biological nanotechnology). However, this slide looks like it was written by someone in marketing, which is the kiss of death for a presentation to technical people. To make the slide more appropriate for a technical audience, the writer should excise the word "exciting." The author of this slide is so overexcited that he provides almost exactly the same words in both the title and the first bullet, which is a waste of the audience's time. The final bullet will annoy all audience members who are proponents of current technologies.

An Exciting New Approach to Creating Fruit Species

• This presentation examines an exciting new way to create new fruit species:

- Biological nanotechnology

• We'll also explore what's wrong with current technologies.

FIGURE 16-5 Too "exciting" for a technical audience.

The slide in Figure 16-6 has a solid title, a good explanation of the topic, and a straightforward approach that should appeal to a technical audience. The only negative is that it does not tell the order in which topics will be presented. To remedy this problem, the author must add a second slide that lists the order of presentation.

A New Approach to Creating Fruit Species

• This presentation explains how our team plans to create fruit species with biological nanotechnology.

■ We'll compare our approach to hybridization and genetic modification.

FIGURE 16-6 Best of the bunch.

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232 PowerPoint Presentations > Introductory Slides: The Traditional Approach

Introductory Slides: An Alternate Approach

An alternate approach for writing introductory slides is to "tease 'em what you're going to tell 'em." I refer to this approach as the mystery style of overviews because you withhold important pieces of the plot until just the right moment. You can build tremendous interest by promising a surprise and then layering in clues as you proceed. This technique often appeals to scientists since their life's work is essentially solving mysteries. Consider the gambit in Figure 16-7, which uses mystery style.

A New Technology for Creating Fruit Species

Our team has a novel approach, which this presentation will uncover. We'll compare our approach to hybridization and genetic modification

FIGURE 16-7 Use mystery techniques to build suspense.

The title is clear enough to reassure audience members that they are in the right place. The first bullet announces the purpose without giving away the punch line. Humans are a naturally curious species, and intelligent humans are even more so. The audience wants to get to the next slide to learn the secret. Of course, the secret won't be found on the next slide. The secret must be nurtured while you gradually uncover clues. Occasionally, while laying out background information, you should remind the audience of the ultimate goal, as in the final bullet of Figure 16-8.

Genetic Modification: Summary

Pros:

- Desired traits in a single generation

- More predictable than hybridization Con:

- Expensive

Our new approach minimizes the expense

FIGURE 16-8 Remind the audience that the secret will be revealed later.

In the perfect mystery presentation, you can slowly lead the audience to come to the same conclusions that you did.

Body Slides: Pace and Variety

Modern audiences have extremely short attention spans. Very few people can attend to a speech for longer than 20 minutes, and many attendees will be taking mental vacations after only 5 or 10. To audiences raised on television clickers, PowerPoint presentations get dull very quickly. When giving an hour-long presentation, how do you avoid just talking to yourself for the last 40 minutes?

To hold an audience through an hour-long presentation, you must switch focus every 15 minutes or so. After presenting a series of slides, get the audience to do something; for example, consider the following ideas:

• Ask them questions.

• Do an informal survey.

• Challenge the audience to solve a problem or to brainstorm ideas.

In general, keep the audience's attention cycling between the projection screen, you, and themselves. Never let the audience's eyes rest on one spot for too long; intelligent people go into a trance rather readily. Feel free to dim the projector occasionally and turn up the lights to force the audience's focus to change. Prepare for bland stretches by interspersing some interesting digression slides or examples.

Many people feel that a professional presentation requires that all slides have approximately the same length. In fact, this is not optimal. To keep your audience's attention, it is better to mix the length of slides; in other words, after a few long slides, insert a short slide.

When to Make a Presentation

Teachers and seminar leaders are well acquainted with "death valley," which strikes between 30 and 90 minutes after lunch. This is the worst time of day to give a presentation. Seated adults will sometimes fall asleep during this period. Similarly, avoid early morning presentations when speaking to teenagers.

The best time of day to present information is mid-morning (perhaps 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM) or two to three hours after lunch. On the other hand, if you are presenting bad news or speaking to an oppositional audience, schedule your presentation just after lunch, when people tend to be at their most relaxed.

Finally, do not rely too heavily on bulleted lists. Make sure that your slides mix in plenty of graphics, tables, and charts.

234 PowerPoint Presentations > Body Slides: Pace and Variety

Mechanics: Fonts and Backgrounds

Many presenters obsess about mechanical points such as the appropriate font and backgrounds to use on slides. In fact, this is one of the classic procrastination techniques that many people use before buckling down and writing the copy for those blasted slides.

Don't waste your time worrying about fonts. PowerPoint provides excellent defaults for fonts and font sizes. If you feel a strong need to use a nondefault slide template, create one that uses a sans-serif font. Note, however, that the printed version of PowerPoint slides will look better with serif fonts. For more information on fonts, see Chapter 19.

Many companies and conferences mandate the background for PowerPoint presentations. If, however, the choice for backgrounds is yours, don't just pick a pretty one; pick one that is appropriate for your audience. If your audience is fairly stodgy and conservative, consider unintrusive designs with muted colors. If you are trying to appeal to a younger audience, find a more vibrant background.

When making a long presentation, consider color-coding different categories of slides. For example, you might paint a light green background on all slides containing exercises and a light blue background for all slides containing digressions.

For a multiunit presentation, consider giving each unit a distinct background image. For example, each slide in the unit on hybridization might contain a background image of a pea plant, while each slide in the genetic-modification unit might contain a background image of a microscope.

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PowerPoint Presentations > Mechanics: Fonts and Backgrounds 235

Body Slides: Effective Lists

Chapter 7 discusses lists. Beyond the general recommendations about lists in that chapter, consider the following additional suggestions for PowerPoint:

• Place rules before examples; in other words, define a rule and then supply examples to support the rule.

• Ensure that second-level bulleted items follow naturally from their first-level superiors.

• Minimize the number of list items at the third level.

• Keep each element fairly short.

The slide in Figure 16-9 violates most of these rules.

Making Citrus Hybrids

Example, the tangelo is a cross between a pummelo or grapefruit and a tangerine. There are many varieties of tangelos and all are much sweeter than pummelos or grapefruits. - Some varieties, such as ugli, are chance crosses • The ugh fruit is a cross between a mandarin orange and a grapefruit

Most varieties of citrus can be crossed to produce new varieties.

FIGURE 16-9 A slide with problematic lists.

The slide in Figure 16-9 contains some fine facts; however, these facts are defeated by the following faults:

• The title is misleading; it suggests that the slide will explain how to make citrus hybrids.

• The opening bullet is a borderline run-on, which makes the entire slide a bit too dense visually.

• The second-level bullet ("Some varieties...") does not follow logically from its superior bullet.

• The third-level bullet is an unnecessary digression.

• Examples are wonderful, but the general principle ("Most varieties of citrus can be crossed...") ought to precede the example rather than follow it.

236 PowerPoint Presentations > Body Slides: Effective Lists

The slide in Figure 16-10 is somewhat cleaner

Citrus Crosses Easily

Citrus will cross with most other citrus

- Most crosses are intentional

- A few famous crosses are accidental Most tangelos are intentional crosses

- Tang erines x pumm elos

Ugli fruits are accidental crosses

- Mandarin orange x grapefruit

FIGURE 16-10 A cleaner set of lists.

The preceding slide focuses on the key points (citrus crosses through intention or accident) and provides supporting examples (tangelos and ugli fruits). The original slide mentioned the sweetness of the resulting fruit, but that fact was off topic, so the preceding slide omits it.

The slide in Figure 16-10 still contains too much information for some viewers. An alternate approach is to chop the single slide into two slides as follows:

• Place the rule (crosses are intentional or accidental) on one slide.

• Place the examples (tangelos and ugli fruits) on the next slide.

Yet another approach is to use a single short slide that focuses on the rule and then let your voice provide details of the examples. The slide might look like that shown in Figure 16-11. The downside to this approach is that audience members who look back on their slides won't have a record of the example details.

Citrus Crosses Easily

Citrus usually crosses with other citrus varieties

- Most crosses are intentional; for example, tangelos

- A few famous crosses are accidental; for example, ugli fruits.

FIGURE 16-11 Focus on the rule in the slide; provide more examples in speech.

PowerPoint Presentations > Body Slides: Effective Lists 237

Audience: The Theory of Relativity

Your presentation's content and tone should depend on where you are in the organization relative to the people in your audience.

If the Audience Is Mainly above Your Level

Many presenters mistakenly believe that higher management has more technical knowledge than individual contributors. Although some high-level managers do retain their engineering skills, most high-level managers lose technical skills rapidly when they stop using them day to day.

High-level managers get paid to make critical decisions, typically based on financial considerations. Focus your presentation on money, answering questions such as the following:

• How much revenue will this provide?

• How much will this cost to produce?

• How much money will this save the organization?

From manufacturing to biotech to nonprofit, high-level manager ears typically only perk up in response to money and schedules.

If the Audience Is at Your Level

Individual contributors talking primarily to other individual contributors should focus on technical details. Slap on an extra coat of jargon, and keep the nerd-speak rolling. Ignore financial considerations; just get to the good stuff. Beware that this is the most likely audience to stumble down a rathole, so be prepared to shut off worthless debates dictatorially.

If the Audience Is below Your Level

If you are a manager presenting slides to your underlings, your audience may feel a certain sense of fright. They may wonder, Why is she holding this meeting? Is my job okay? Audience members are also nervous about being put on the spot. To get your audience to listen, it is sometimes smart to start the meeting with a perfunctory all is well.

238 PowerPoint Presentations > Audience: The Theory of Relativity

Graphics

Most audiences view graphics as a treat. However, graphics are an expensive gift, taking long hours to prepare. If you have the time though, graphics do jazz up a PowerPoint presentation.

Although a truly gifted artist can tell a story entirely through graphic slides, the rest of us must learn to provide a mix of graphics and text. Mixing text and graphics on the same slide is okay if the following criteria are both met:

• The graphic is relatively simple.

• The text is brief and supports the graphic.

For example, the slide in Figure 16-12 meets both criteria.

R&D: Patent Production

Patents have moie than doubled m (lie last tliiee \e;u* In late 2003, we doubled oui investment in R&D

FIGURE 16-12 Simple graph and simple text shown on the same page.

If either the graphic or text is more complex than those shown Figure 16-12, place them on different slides.

Beware of Cliche Clip Art

PowerPoint provides a widely used set of clip art. A number of years ago, the novelty of clip art appealed to audiences. (Wow—that clip art guy is shocked by our first quarter numbers, too.) Today, though, the included clip art strikes most audiences as somewhat amateurish and cliche. All clip art is not bad. However, audiences now expect more than stock cartoon characters.

The Complexity of a Graphic

Before creating graphics, consider how your audience will view the PowerPoint presentation. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Will the presentation be projected on a high-quality screen, or will it be projected on a wall? Is the wall a bright color?

• Will your audience be close enough to view details in the graphics?

• Will you be able to point (with a light pen or stick) to selected details in the graphics while giving the presentation? (This is always handy.)

One of the classic mistakes in creating graphics for PowerPoint is providing too much detail, particularly when the viewing conditions make it almost impossible for your audience to notice detail. In such situations, frustrated speakers end up spending far too long explaining each graphics slide, which also frustrates the audience. Think it through: if viewing conditions are poor, reduce the detail in your graphics.

A reasonable formula for good graphics slides is as follows:

One graphics slide should hold approximately the same informational content as one paragraph of text.

In other words, a graphics slide has about the right amount of detail if you need to speak about one paragraph's worth of words to explain it.

If a single graphics slide requires too much explanation, break it into two or more slides.

Printed Graphics in PowerPoint Presentations

Many presenters hand out hard copies of their slides to the audience so that their audience has something to write on when trading e-mail addresses and stock tips. Unfortunately, in hard copy, the graphics in PowerPoint slides are often hard to read. If hard-copy versions of slides are truly important, try to keep the graphics simple.

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240 PowerPoint Presentations > The Complexity of a Graphic

Question-and-Answer Sessions

In a successful presentation, your audience will ask lots of questions. (Lots of questions can also be a sign that you aren't explaining things very well, but we'll hope that this isn't the case.) Questions indicate interest. In addition, the rapid shift of focus between presenter and audience makes it harder for audience members to daydream. Two strategies for Q-and-A logistics are as follows:

• If you are speaking to a small audience, invite them to ask questions throughout the presentation. Encouraging questions helps keep your audience engaged.

• If you are speaking to a large audience, urge them to hold off on questions until the end of the presentation; however, if the presentation is lengthy, provide a Q-and-A session at the end of each unit.

The Q-and-A session frightens some presenters. After all, there is no script for it. In addition, questions can occasionally turn hostile. For best results, prepare for the Q-and-A session just as you would prepare for the rest of your presentation. Practice your presentation on a small group of colleagues, and invite them to ask questions. Have someone record these questions so that you can polish your answers later.

If a live practice session is not a possibility, you must imagine the questions that will be asked and prepare answers for them. Visualize your toughest critic (That jerk!) trying to pick your ideas apart. Practice your answers for the worst-case questions. You'll sleep better the night before.

Keep your answers short and focused—never ramble. Thank the first questioner for asking a question, as this will grease the wheels for subsequent ones. If you truly do not know the answer, say so. If you are taking an educated guess, say so.

Okay, you have done all your homework and are ready to take on all questioners and then... no one asks anything. This, too, can be rather uncomfortable. The wise presenter comes prepared with a list of dialog starters on an emergency slide. Turn the tables on your audience, and start asking them questions.

The final question of a Q-and-A session typically concludes the presentation. However, the final questions might wander off the mark or into minutia. Note that the first few moments and last few moments of any presentation are particularly important. Therefore, instead of ending with a final question, you should consider ending by displaying a final slide that truly wraps up your presentation.

PowerPoint Presentations > Question-and-Answer Sessions 241

Different Kinds of Learners

Just as most people have a dominant hand, most people also have a dominant learning style. In brief, most people are either visual learners or auditory learners. Visual learners acquire knowledge more naturally through what they read or see; auditory learners prefer to gather information through what they hear.

When giving a PowerPoint presentation to a group, both visual and auditory learners will be in your audience. The value of a PowerPoint presentation (as opposed to either a straight lecture or a book) is that you can simultaneously cater to both kinds of learners. What makes this even trickier is that the visual presentation proceeds at a much higher bandwidth than the auditory presentation; that is, people can read text much faster than you can speak it.

To cater to auditory learners, you should always provide a sound track; you may not simply throw slides up on the projector without providing any commentary. To cater to visual learners, you should always provide slides; you should not present new material orally without supporting slides. To complicate matters, a percentage of visual learners are distracted by auditory input. (Not everyone can read when music is on, particularly music with lyrics.)

Within the broad group of visual learners, some learn more readily from pictures than from text. Like a polite host offering a variety of dishes to suit many palates, try to provide a nice mixture of graphics and text.

When the Audience Is One

Your audience is not always a group. Sometimes, your audience is just a single person—often your supervisor. In this case, the wise presenter studies the target's learning style.

Does your target generally ignore your e-mail, preferring to get information from you in person? If so, your target is likely an auditory learner. Do not waste too much time writing elaborate slides; she won't read them anyway.

Does your target tend to ask you for written summaries following face-to-face meetings or insist that everything be written down? In this case, your target is likely a visual learner. A crisp executive summary page, followed by supporting pages of details will go a lot further than blah blah blah.

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242 PowerPoint Presentations > Different Kinds of Learners

PowerPoint Speech: The Basics

Many technical presenters put far too much time into perfecting slides and not nearly enough time into practicing what they will say. The next few pages provides advice on improving the "sound track" to your PowerPoint presentation.

You must first perfect the following basics:

• Speak loudly enough to be heard. Project your voice. Imagine that you are launching your voice to the back row.

• Speak clearly. Enunciate the final syllable of each word—make sure you catch all the consonants.

• Make eye contact with different people in different parts of the room. If eye contact frightens you, stare at foreheads instead of eyes. (Your audience won't know the difference.)

• Stand up straight. Don't slouch. Square your shoulders. Bend your knees slightly. Breathe.

• Drink something warm (not hot) just before speaking. Never drink ice water.

When I Turn on the Projector, You Will Fall into a Deep and Satisfying Sleep

Your listeners, no matter how well educated, have a very short attention span. You are at war to keep their focus. To win the battle, avoid entrancing your audience. Just about any form of repetition can put intelligent audience members into a mild trance. To fight it, you must seek discontinuities by altering the following:

• The speed of your delivery. Slow down once in a while, and speed up once in a while.

• The volume of your delivery. Emphasize points by raising or lowering your voice.

• The body motions of your delivery. Never rock rhythmically. Never move your hands rhythmically. Feel free to walk around, particularly if you are using a wireless microphone.

If you must hold an audience's attention for a long time, try to change topics every 15 minutes or so.

PowerPoint Speech: Lessons from the Pros

You don't have to be a superstar performer to deliver a good PowerPoint speech. Nevertheless, technical speakers can benefit from the secrets of professional entertainers. 1 Treat your listeners as an audience whose attention you must hold. Learn to engage your audience. If you don't have their attention, your message will be lost.

These Tips Aren't for Every Audience

As with any form of communication, you must know your audience. If the forum at which you are speaking is very conservative, then beware of many of these suggestions. If, however, the forum is somewhat more casual, then take these suggestions seriously and emerge as the audience's favorite presenter.

Lesson 1: Entertainment Pros Provide a Pre-Show

A pre-show is, not surprisingly, the information that precedes the show. All forms of professional entertainment provide a pre-show to build an audience and to build excitement; for example, consider the following:

• Movies provide trailers.

• Theatres provide playbills.

• Television provides teasers and ads.

Technical speakers can sometimes provide a pre-show. Your pre-show might take the form of an e-mail to your audience. Perhaps you'll have someone distribute interesting handouts related to your presentation a few minutes before you speak. Perhaps these handouts will suggest something intriguing or puzzling.

Get the audience to anticipate your speech before you say your first word.

Lesson 2: Pros Deliver a Grand Finale

Good shows end with something big. Again, the beginning and ending of any presentation are the most memorable moments. Therefore, try to pull off a surprise just near the end, such as a fascinating revelation from your research. Better yet, promise your listeners something exciting but don't deliver on it until the end of the presentation.

1. I developed this chunk from my experience as a professional juggler.

I

244 PowerPoint Presentations > PowerPoint Speech: Lessons from the Pros

Lesson 3: Pros Study Their Body Language

Many professional entertainers watch tapes of themselves. If you have never seen a tape of yourself giving a presentation, you should endure it soon. You will be amazed at what you discover. For added thrills, invite some friends to review the tape with you. Don't worry— this is just as "natural" a process as having a friend edit your writing.

While watching the tape, compare your body language with the following ideals:

• Stand up straight but not too stiffly.

• Lean forward slightly, which projects energy and enthusiasm.

• Project confidence by keeping your body expressions expansive and open. Never hunch your shoulders.

• Project optimism by moving your hands upward.

• Move around a little. Don't feel that you are tied to the podium. You can even move into the audience from time to time.

• Move your hands a bit. Just don't flap your hands enough to go into flight.

As noted earlier in this chapter, the beginning of any presentation is the most important part. Always stride confidently to the podium when it is your turn.

Some people in your audience are highly attuned to body language and will pick up all sorts of clues from it. Some will be trying to detect whether you are telling the truth, or at least whether you believe in what you are saying. Therefore, tell the truth and believe in what you are saying.

The Mute Button: Your Best Instructor

Would you like some help on body language? Consider watching television with the sound off. Watch your favorite comedians, and see how they invite you in through relaxed body gestures. Watch politicians try to convince you of their point of view through persuasive hand motions. Watch how the posture of news reporters conveys gravity or intensity.

Lesson 4: Pros Consider Costuming

Professional entertainers consider what to wear. They try to figure out what kind of costume will help their presentation.

Believe it or not, some engineers and scientists do attend to what you are wearing. Of course, most engineers and scientists take a certain pride in their fashion blindness. However, for those few in the audience that do care about your clothes, try to figure out which clothes will help your cause.

1

PowerPoint Presentations > PowerPoint Speech: Lessons from the Pros 245

PowerPoint Speech: Overcoming Fear

If you are thumbing through this book in a bookstore, then there is a mighty good chance that you turned directly to this page. After all, a stunning percentage of people are afraid of public speaking. Climb a cliff? No problem. Explain to an audience how you climbed that cliff? Terrifying!

If the fear of public speaking is limiting your career, you should strongly consider working with a professional speech coach or possibly some sort of behavioral therapist (such as a hypnotist).

Many speakers fear the fear itself—they are afraid of freezing up and having a panic attack. They are also afraid that the audience will detect the fear and think less of them. These are certainly common fears, but you should know the following two facts:

• Even most professional performers experience stage fright.

• Experimentation strongly suggests that a certain amount of fear actually helps your presentation. This "fear" would seem to be our way of getting our bodies ready for a peak performance.

The best way to overcome fear is to practice the audio portion of your presentation over and over again. Practice it when you are in the shower. Practice it when you are in the car. Practice it right before you go to sleep. The social psychologist Robert Zajonc has noted that an audience helps the dominant response and hurts the nondominant response. In other words, if you truly know your speech, you will probably deliver it better in front of an audience than when alone. Conversely, delivering an unpracticed speech in front of an audience often leads to poor performance.

Practice Relaxing

You have undoubtedly heard someone tell you to relax by taking a deep breath. Everyone knows it works, but most people forget to breathe when tense. To force those soothing breaths, consider the following two techniques:

• If you will read from notes, write the stage direction "[deep breath]" at the end of every paragraph. In other words, script your breaths.

• If you will speak without notes, then when practicing, remember to practice taking a deep breath at the same points in your presentation. The deep breath will then become just as automatic as the rest of your speech.

246 PowerPoint Presentations > PowerPoint Speech: Overcoming Fear

Summary of PowerPoint Presentations

The night before giving your big PowerPoint presentation, obsess over the following questions:

• Have you rehearsed the entire presentation? Have you rehearsed multiple times?

• Is your opening strong? (Note that I'm saying strong, not long.) Are your first words interesting? Are you opening with a joke? Will that joke appeal to your audience?

• If your presentation is longer than 15 or 20 minutes, have you divided your presentation into discrete sections? Does each section contain a distinct beginning and end?

• Are your slides well organized? Does each slide follow naturally from the preceding slide? Are the slides organized into discrete sections?

• Are any of the bulleted list items run-ons? Do any slides contain too many list items?

• Do the text and graphics on each slide make sense?

• Have you fixed all spelling errors and typos?

• Is your presentation appropriate for your audience? Will supervisors or underlings take the presentation the right way?

• Do any of your graphics require more than a minute of explanation?

• Can your graphics be seen from the back of the room?

• Do you have a convincing and memorable conclusion?

• Will you be nervous? If so, do you have a scheme for fending off panic? Finally, consider a few practical matters:

• Where is the printed material? Where are the notes? Where are the slides?

• Does the microphone work? Is it a clip-on microphone? If so, what part of your clothes will you clip it on to?

• Do you know how to work the projector?

• What will you wear? Sleep tight.

PowerPoint Presentations > Summary of PowerPoint Presentations 247

CHAPTER 17

E-Mail

any A, ■' ■■ e-m

e-mail messages—even those sent by one brilliant engineer to another bri t engineer—are unintelligible. This chapter focuses on writing effective mail messages.

Pickford Paradox of E-Mail

Mary Pickford—talented, intelligent, and charming—was a Hollywood superstar during the silent film era. After the advent of "talkies," Pickford noted that talkies were artistically inferior to silent movies. Therefore, in her opinion, silent films should have come after motion pictures with sound. Critics referred to her idea as the Pickford Paradox.

As a scientist or engineer, you might be thinking that the Pickford Paradox is ridiculous. After all, when would a lower-bandwidth medium (silent films) be superior to a higher-bandwidth medium (talkies)?

The strange answer is that we are living through a Pickford Paradox of our own right now. The bandwidth of a telephone call far outstrips that of an e-mail, and yet, corporate employees now communicate more through e-mail than through the telephone. Imagine if e-mail had been invented in the nineteenth-century and the telephone in the 1970s. If that had happened, we would probably still be amazed by the power of the telephone. (Wow, you can have a conversation in real time with your voice!)

Even more fascinating, the effective bandwidth of many e-mail messages is exactly zero. That's because many e-mail messages are so poorly written that no information actually gets communicated.

The Essence of the E-mail Problem

Tom researched some software tools and then used Microsoft Word to compose the following short, formal document:

Recommendations for Performance-Analysis Tools

Sam asked me to investigate various performance-analysis tools and recommend the one I thought was best suited for our department's needs. This short document explains my methodology and recommendations.

Methodology

I downloaded evaluation copies of the following three performance-analysis tools:

• Kaneval Eval v8.2 (made by Dexco Unlimited)

• Pert Burner v3.1 (made by Dexco Unlimited)

• PerfRomance v5.0 (made by Carambola Software)

I used all three tools to evaluate our latest software release, going through the documentation and trying out various features.

Recommendations

I strongly recommend PerfRomance v5.0 over the two Dexco Unlimited products for the following reasons:

• PerfRomance is the easiest product to learn.

• PerfRomance generates the clearest reports. (I've attached some comparable reports.)

• PerfRomance has the lowest cost.

In a parallel universe, Sam researched the same software tools. However, instead of writing up his recommendation as a formal document, he composed the following e-mail:

To: EngTeam

Subject: Recommendations

PerfRomance was very clean compared to the other two. --Sam

1

250 E-Mail > The Essence of the E-mail Problem

Sam's e-mail message is, admittedly, concise, but the message is fuzzy. Furthermore, Sam's message doesn't contain any supporting detail. Engineers are critical thinkers who require substantiation of any claims.

Something strange happens to people when they compose e-mail. Even if an engineer brings great discipline to the art of writing formal documents, that same discipline usually vanishes in the writing of e-mail. When composing e-mail, people get very sloppy. Many busy people write e-mail as a stream-of-consciousness exercise, just blasting out messages. Some of my own e-mail messages have as much coherence (and I'm a professional writer) as the chaotic brain pattern I experience just before falling asleep.

People have much lower expectations from e-mail than from formal documents. Consequently, many people write e-mail to those low expectations, forfeiting all the knowledge they have about good writing. The first rule of writing work-related e-mail is, therefore, as follows:

Use the same discipline in writing e-mail as you do when writing formal documents.

The preceding rule will sound trite until you give it a try. The same discipline includes running e-mail through a spell-checker, capitalizing normally, and even putting the pronoun / in uppercase.

Note that I'm only talking about work-related information. I'm not saying that messages like the following deserve any discipline at all:

To: EngTeam Subject: Lunch

Lunch at Mary Chung's at noon today? --Sam

I Ilk

E-Mail > The Essence of the E-mail Problem 251

Before Hitting the Send Button.

If I were king of the world and the world had fallen into serious economic collapse, I would institute the following rule, which I believe would increase gross world product immensely:

You may not send any e-mail until you have first reread it.

When rereading your e-mail, always ask yourself the following question:

Will the recipient(s) understand this message?

For example, suppose Sam (based in London) sends out the following message to Nicole (based in San Francisco), who has just joined the project:

To: Nicole

Subject: status reports

status report needed by end of day tomorrow

At first glance, the preceding e-mail message seems innocuous enough. However, poor Nicole will probably not understand this message for the following reasons:

• Like many e-mail messages, this message is written in passive voice. In fact, the sole sentence is missing a pronoun altogether. Consequently, Nicole cannot be quite sure whether she needs to produce the status report or Sam needs her input on his own status report.

• Since she just joined the project, Nicole probably has no idea what kind of status report is required. Sam should send Nicole a status report template or an example status report.

• The phrase end of day is ambiguous. Sam's end of day (in London) comes quite a few hours prior to Nicole's.

• Engineers and scientists have an extremely low tolerance for empty bureaucratic exercises. Since Sam does not explain the purpose of the status reports, Nicole might not put the appropriate amount of effort into producing them.

252 E-Mail > Before Hitting the Send Button.

• The message is missing uppercase letters and punctuation. I'm not a literary scholar, but I'm reasonably certain that most of the best writers' start sentences with an uppercase letter and end them with a period.

As is often the case with e-mail, Sam's original message omitted critical details and lacked any sort of empathy with the recipient. A brief moment of reflection on Sam's part would have solved the problem. Sam would do better to send the following e-mail instead:

To: Nicole

Subject: Please send me a status report

Please write a status report and send it to me by 10:00 am (your time) Thursday, Nov. 30. Your status report should contain the following two sections:

* "What I Accomplished This Month"

* "What I Plan to Accomplish Next Month"

For each section, provide a bulleted list containing three or four items. I like brevity, so try to keep each item down to a sentence or two. I've attached a sample status report.

Everyone in my group writes a status report on the last working day of every month. I use these status reports to produce a monthly status report for my own manager. In addition, I store all your monthly status reports and use items from them in your annual salary review.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to send me an e-mail or call me. --Sam

1. One of the primary reviewers of this book (Chris Sawyer-Laucanno) published a biography of the poet e.e. cummings, who famously eschewed capitalization and sentence-ending punctuation in his poems. However, in e.e. cummings' personal letters (the e-mail of his time), he did use traditional capitalization and punctuation marks.

..-E-Mail > Before Hitting the Send Button... 253

After the First Miscommunication.

When composing e-mail, people are often blunt. They type things in e-mail that they would never say in person. People are much wiser (or more cowardly) in face-to-face or telephone meetings than they are while composing e-mail. Therefore, before hitting the Send button, ask yourself the following question:

Would you feel comfortable saying the text in this e-mail message in a face-to-face meeting with the recipients?

The preceding question is a reasonable starting point for e-mail sensitivity; however, you really have to take it a step further. After all, in face-to-face meetings, listeners attune to a whole range of social cues, including body language, facial expressions, and vocal inflections. In a face-to-face meeting, attendees know whether you are being sarcastic, but e-mail recipients might easily miss the sarcasm.

Emoticons

Emoticons are graphics that come in either of the following two forms:

• new-fangled graphic icons, such as the following which are quite popular in instant messaging:

• old-fashioned collections of punctuation marks, such as :)

The oft-stated purpose of emoticons is to provide emotional context for instant messaging and e-mail messages, since words alone allegedly cannot do the trick. For example, notice how the following emoticons defuse a potentially sticky situation:

You're an idiot. :) You have no idea what you're talking about. :) Your experimental design is juvenile. :)

My initial response to emoticons was that writers have somehow managed to convey emotional context through words alone for several millennia. (Astonishingly, the works of Tolstoy, Shakespeare, and Cervantes do not contain a single smiley face.) I now realize that emoticons can be a valuable means of expression in e-mail and instant messaging if all recipients share a common understanding of their meaning. Note that many older readers are not well versed in emoticons and may find them annoying and confusing.

Do not place emoticons in any formal or legal written communication,

1;

254 E-Mail > After the First Miscommunication.

Miscommunication in e-mail often generates rage. For example, consider the following e-mail message, which does not successfully convey the intended idea:

To: EngTeam

From: Quincy (QA Manager)

Subject: Performance Testing on Project Sea Grape

I ran performance tests on Project Sea Grape over the last week. I found performance at the expected levels, except for the Batch Processing Module.

The preceding message angered Tim, who wrote the Batch Processing Module. He was not only angry, but he was embarrassed because Quincy had sent out the e-mail message to the entire engineering team. Tim responded in the following way:

To: Quincy

CC: EngTeams

From: Tim

Subject: RE: Performance Testing on Project Sea Grape

There is nothing wrong with the performance of the Batch Processing Module. In fact, it outperforms earlier releases by a factor of three. How did you test it? Do you have any previous experience writing tests on Batch Processing Modules?

In typical work environments, Quincy and Tim would get into a rapidly escalating e-mail war, with each side accusing the other of greater and greater ignorance. However, Quincy is not a typical engineer. Instead, he obeyed the following principle:

After the first miscommunication, stop sending e-mail. Use other media instead.

Quincy called Tim on the telephone to apologize. Quincy had meant that the Batch Processing Module performed far better than expected. Tim was relieved. Quincy then sent out a clarification to the entire EngTeam mailing list.

Scientists and engineers are more sensitive than stereotypes suggest.

E-Mail > After the First Miscommunication... 255

Summary of E-mail

When reviewing an e-mail message, just prior to clicking the Send button, ask yourself the following questions:

• Will the recipient(s) understand what you are trying to communicate?

• Does your e-mail message contain a relevant subject line? A good subject line not only makes sense initially but will continue to make sense in a few months. Note that many people now use their e-mail system as a sort of database management system for their work life.

• Have you edited the e-mail message?

• Are you sending this message to the appropriate recipients? Are you sending it to anyone who will be annoyed by receiving irrelevant e-mail? Are you excluding recipients who will feel left out if they learn that you didn't send them a message?

• Is the e-mail the right length? Recipients are often annoyed (and will ignore) lengthy e-mail. Conversely, make sure the e-mail is long enough to cover what it needs to.

• Could a recipient misunderstand your e-mail and get angry?

• What is your emotional state? If you are responding angrily to something, consider handling the situation in person or via the telephone instead of through e-mail.

• If you are sending e-mail to people in another culture, examine the message for the following:

- Does your e-mail message contain slang that recipients in other cultures will not understand? In this case, jargon is okay, but slang is not. (See "Native Language" on page 13 and "Native Culture" on page 15.)

- Could this e-mail message offend someone, even inadvertently, in another culture?

- If English is a second or third language to the recipients, does your e-mail contain long, complex sentences? Your message should contain short, simple sentences.

- Are you requiring that a recipient respond through e-mail? A recipient who is relatively unfamiliar with English might feel embarrassed to respond in written English to a large mailing list. Consider allowing the recipient to send an e-mail message directly to you, and then tactfully indicate that you will edit any grammatical or spelling problems before transmitting the edited message to the mailing list.

256 E-Mail > Summary of E-mail

SECTION 4

Editing and Producing Documents

A

Iter completing the first draft of a document, you are not even close to being done with the job. This section explores how to edit properly and generate a professional-looking document.

CHAPTER 18

Editing and the Documentation Process

i :

ngineefs and scientists generally spend more time reviewing other people's documents than writing their own. For this reason, it pays to learn a little something lot about editing and the documentation process.

Editing is the art of humiliating writers critiquing documentation to improve its accuracy and clarity. Generally speaking, editors falls into two categories:

• technical editors (often called technical reviewers)

• literary editors

Technical editors are fellow engineers and scientists searching for technical errors, logical fallacies, and outright lies mathematical mistakes. Good technical editors live only to con vict documents of perjury save writers from publishing embarrassing documents. Good technical editors are the bane of my existence a writer's best friend.

Literary editors are experts in grammar, spelling, and technical writing who, typically, are neither scientists nor engineers. Literary editors fall into the following two categories:

• developmental editors

• copy editors

Developmental editors are writing experts who work at the macro level. They suggest ways to improve organization and writing style. For example, a developmental editor might suggest rearranging chapters or converting passive sentences into active voice.

Copy editors work at the micro level. They pore obsessively diligently through every letter of every blasted word looking for nit picky spelling and grammatical errors. Copy editors are stereotypically bespectacled women with hair pulled into a tight bun highly attractive people who must be respected because we always get the last word, Rosenberg!

Editing and the Documentation Process 259

Editing: What Is It Really?

Most technical people believe completely in the veracity of the following formula: effective editing = finding mistakes

Unfortunately, the preceding formula is flawed. A more accurate formula is as follows: effective editing = getting writers to fix mistakes

The editor/writer relationship is inherently difficult. No one likes to be criticized. As an editor, you can find error after error, but your findings are worthless if any of the following are true:

• The writer believes that you don't know what you are talking about.

• The writer feels insulted by your comments.

• The writer has had dealings with previous editors and has trouble distinguishing you from them.

• The writer strongly believes that his or her way is better than yours. For the preceding reasons, the foundations of successful editing are as follows:

• Building credibility so that the writer will take your comments seriously.

• Sharpening your diplomatic skills to reduce the writer's defensiveness.

In an ideal world, the writer sees that it is the writing, not the writer, being evaluated.

Forgive me—I just reread the previous sentence and realized that I've sprung a ridiculous cliche on you. In my experience, virtually no one can divorce one's writing from one's ego. Many professionals see their writing as an extension of themselves and get quite defensive when anyone criticizes it. Many professionals perceive editors as stumbling blocks—censors of their creative freedom. To many professionals, editors seem intent on removing "all the good parts." Good editors, meanwhile, are just doing their job, which is to uphold truth and improve documentation.

Ultimately, if things goes well, all artifice is removed. The writer sees the edits as valuable and respects the editor's improvements. Documents become more accurate and clearer. Somewhere, in a tiny, seldom-visited place in the writer's ego, the writer whispers "thank you" to the editor.

260 Editing and the Documentation Process > Editing: What Is It Really?

Technical Editing a Peer's Work