Disturbing photos posted in the immediate aftermath of the tragic Empire State Building shooting have caused widespread cries of “too soon.” Consensus on “The Internet” (you know, that monolithic entity that has its own voice apparently) is that those posting graphic images of the shooting so soon after the event showed a lack of respect for the victims.

Slate posted a piece titled The Empire State Building Shooting Photos on Instagram: Were They Too Soon? which included one of the photos. Slate was subsequently beaten senseless by Facebook users who recognized that the journal, in what appeared to be a cheap, exploitative move, was both asking the question and committing the act it was questioning. One user commented:

“Technology apparently warps people’s minds. Really, if I saw a dead body in front of me like that, my first thought wouldn’t be to get my camera out and get a salacious photo of it. This smacks of ‘I’ll-get-famous-if-I-photograph-this!’ type mentality, which current culture seems to support, and which adds to the righteous indignation of amateurs who are quite wrong about all this, I feel.”

The immediate (and simultaneous in some cases) availability of images of disturbing events is nothing new. On September 11, 2001, didn’t nearly all of us watch the second plane fly into the twin towers live on TV? As horrifying as that image was, it is indelibly scratched into our collective conscience, and has served, for better or worse, as a defining moment in our history. It put us on alert, just as the JFK assassination did nearly 40 years before, that in the blink of an eye, the world had changed forever. And it was infinitely more powerful because of its immediacy.

And even though we sometimes can’t stomach this immediacy, it is also something we demand. The ability to quickly take quality photographs and share them with friends is a key driver of social networking and Web 2.0 development efforts. Instagram sold to Facebook for $1B. In 2005, Yahoo paid $35M for Flickr. And critics are applauding faster photo handling as a key feature of Facebook’s iPhone app upgrade this week (the app, along with Instagram, used to take and post most pictures like those we’re talking about).

They used to say in response to critics of TV, if you don’t like what’s on change the channel or turn it off. Social networking is the channel we are unable to turn off. Instantaneous, graphic coverage of even the most violent and disturbing events in the news is something we will all have to get used to. And something we asked for.

Tags: slate, facebook, empire state building shooting, slaying, instagram, too soon

Therapist: You should know I bill based on a 50-minute hour.
Patient: That’s OK, I pay based on a 75-cent dollar.

Time might be real, but units of measure like minutes, seconds and hours are the arbitrary creation of man. Only tradition and laziness prompt us to schedule business activities — like meetings, conference calls, and presentations — for a full hour.

We are all slaves to Microsoft Outlook which not only likes to schedule things to start on the hour, but assumes they should each be an hour long. Event agendas look really tidy with everything starting and ending on the hour. And seriously, a presentation scheduled from 3:13 p.m. to 3:36 p.m. would look really strange, like this road sign on Quito Rd. in Saratoga, CA:

Anyone who has participated in any of these things can tell you how hard it is to listen to anything for an hour, and how extremely difficult it is to find an hour’s worth of things to say.

Which, after some delay, brings me to my point. In most cases 60 minutes is too long for an executive presentation, and as an executive communications professional, I see many advantages to standardizing at 30 minutes instead. Obviously, the amount of time needed for a presentation varies depending upon how much information needs to be conveyed, but in reality, I would venture that >95% of topics can be covered to the satisfaction of the audience in 30 minutes or less.

The 30-minute presentation benefits everyone.

Audience: A 30-minute presentation is faster and more tightly constructed, and therefore more engaging to the people listening to it. A shorter presentation is more likely to be absorbed and understood, and therefore more likely to get through to the audience and achieve the presentation’s objectives.

Presenter: A competent presenter may find it difficult to find 60 minutes of information worth presenting, but will also be challenged to reduce the usual 60-minute story to 30 minutes. This not only produces a more focused presentation, but it inverts the presentation passion pyramid. A presenter who is pushed to speak 30 minutes will be enthusiastic and up-tempo. A presenter pushed to speak 60 minutes will be compelled to drone on and tell lengthy, boring stories to fill the allotted time.

Communications Team: It would seem that as an executive communications professional, I am advocating shorter presentations because it would mean less work for me. Not true! In fact, short presentations are MORE work, because only a presentation pro can present a concept visually and succinctly in one slide. Any hack can do it with four or five meandering eye charts.

So here’s what you can do about it. If you’re building the agenda for an event, consider scheduling 30-minute or 40-minute speaking slots instead of subjecting your attendees to an endless procession of one-hour long auto da fés. If you are a communicator responsible for an executive presentation that could be reduced to 30 minutes, ask the event organizers early if they can modify the agenda.

We’ve all read blog posts, articles and books on how to make individual slides cleaner, simpler and more to the point. (You know, all that “Present Like Steve Jobs” stuff.) But what most people overlook is the opportunity to make presentations simpler and more compelling by making them shorter.

Tags: executive, presentations, long, boring, 60 minutes, 30 minutes, steve jobs