Great audience! Sold out so we're doing it again October 2, same place in Tokyo. On bullet train now enjoying another ekiben and beer :-) Pic here is from the seminar room. Great view across the Palace...

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Years ago, I was inspired by the beautiful bento box lunches sold at Shinkansen (bullet train) stations in Japan. This inspired me to start to the presentation zen website, which became the books, seminars, DVD, etc. Finally, the dream of a sort of presentation-in-a-box or "presentation kit" has been realized. We started this a long time ago, but because we wanted a high-quality product while keeping costs down, it took a lot of creativity behind the scenes and time to bring this to market. My motivation was not yet another product to sell; I just wanted a presentation bento box to give away as gifts and to give to people who took the PZ seminars, etc. Now I've got it and I am very very please with the great work the publisher (Peach Pit Press in Berkeley, CA) did on the design and production. I think it is worth it at $39.99, but at $26.39 on Amazon.com, it is really priced well. What's inside: The original Presentation Zen DVD that came out last year, a sketch/storyboard book, two pencils, two stacks of sticky notes, and a card from iStockphoto for 20 free high-rez images (a $300 value) plus a discount on a future order of images, and the bento box itself is very nice. When you remove the items, the box becomes a nice little 2-level box for storing bits and bobs. I opened up the bento box at lunchtime today on the bullet train on my way up here to Tokyo. You can see snaps below, along with snaps of my lunch for contrast. The cost of the edible bento was about half the cost of the pz bento (@ the Amazon price). So for the price of two ekibens, you can get the presentation zen bento which will last a lot longer (though you can't eat it...).

The Presentation Zen Bento Box (DVD & sketch/storyboard book).

The real bento. The source of the inspiration. Looks good, tastes good, and *is* good for you. Great content and beautiful inside and out.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of my heros. People need to listen to this man and his message. Intelligence, wisdom, & passion and the power to stand and deliver with a mic in his hand. Remarkable.

Below is a press-release from my publisher regarding the Presentation Zen DVD. These awards are for the original DVD. The same video has now been repackaged in a beautiful bento box (Amazon.com) and also includes a sketch pad/storyboard book, pencils, stickynotes, and a card with a code for 20 free high-rez images from iStockphoto. The whole thing looks fantastic.

CINE Golden Eagle Award
After being nominated in the Professional Non-Fiction Division’s “Adult Education” category, Presentation Zen (DVD) has won the prestigious CINE Golden Eagle Award, which has been widely recognized as a symbol of excellence in professional, independent and student filmmaking for over 50 years. It was awarded the CINE Golden Eagle for the Fall, 2009 competition, one of two competitions conducted by CINE each year. Winners of the CINE competitions are chosen through a rigorous, tiered jury system, based on criteria reflecting storytelling, production value, artistry, purpose and overall excellence.

Since its founding in 1957, CINE has been dedicated to discovering, rewarding, educating, and supporting established and emerging talent in film and video. Among great talents whose first films were awarded CINE Golden Eagles are Steven Spielberg, Ken Burns and Ron Howard, and filmmakers such as Robert Zemeckis, Mike Nichols, Martin Scorcese, Mira Nair, Charles Guggenheim, Stanley Nelson, Albert Maysles, Frederick Wiseman have also been recipients of the Golden Eagle Award.

Presentation Zen (DVD) will join the archive of CINE winners, which can be found at www.cine.org.

Telly Award
In addition, after being nominated in the Non-Broadcast Productions - How-To/Instructional category, Presentation Zen (DVD) also won a Silver Telly Award, which is an NAB-related competition. The Telly Awards honor the very best local, regional, and cable television commercials and programs, as well as the finest video and film productions, and work created for the Web.

http://www.tellyawards.com/awards/

To get me more in the mood for writing about naked presentations, I went to my source of the inspiration: the onsen. One of the many truly great and Japanese experiences. Relaxation, nature, and good food. What could be better? This was a very old Japanese inn, very nice. Private bath outside. Would be even better in winter. I shall return.

Pics of the bath and the bamboo forest outside the bath. Great views. Would be awesome in winter with snow falling :-)

A walk around the town.

One of the hotel staff prepares the futons. Meals are served in the room. When you are done they prepare the room for sleep. Breakfast is eaten in a larger room with other guests, all in yukata.

When you enter a Japanese inn, you of course remove your shoes and put on their slippers. Below I show how it takes three pairs of slippers to walk three feet if you need to use the restroom during he night :-)

The gods must have heard about my love of bamboo :-) Here I step out of our room next to the private ofuro (bath) with baby daughter. We're both wearing yukata, which is the custom, worn inside and even while walking around the town.
• Be like the bamboo: 7 lessons from the Japanese forest 

Taking a break on the road in the Ryokan room. Daughter really enjoys laughing and smiling...she is teaching me to do more of both! Sitting here in front of tokonoma in the large room...

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This morning I was watching a new DVD I purchased recently, The Ultimate Johnny Carson Collection (Vols. 1-3). Johnny Carson (1925-2005) is in my opinion the best American TV talk show host ever. I started watching the DVDs to see what I could learn from the master of delivery, a man who was so great in front of the camera, who made it look so easy when we know few things are harder than communicating naturally in front of a live audience and in front of a TV camera. Yet, the interesting thing about him is he was extremely shy and was never seeking the media spotlight, even though he was more famous in his day than Letterman, Leno, and Conan combined. He was (is) an icon. More than once I almost spit my coffee across the room while watching Johnny this AM -- his timing was amazing. And the clips were an emotional journey down memory lane for me.

Anyway, it is this clip of the legendary American Actor Jimmy Stewart below that I want to share with you. This clip appears in the DVD. Please set some time aside today when it is quiet and you are alone to watch this. In this clip Stewart reads a poem he wrote about his dog Beau. It is a simple thing, yet is such a lovely example of storytelling and delivery — it's remarkable. Later, after my eyes had dried, I realized how many images Stewart was able to "draw" with just his words. If you have animals, you will probably enjoy this even more. My two cats were curled up in a ball at my feat while I sat alone in the dark in the media room watching this. I reached down to give them a stroke just to let them know how much I appreciated them. They purred, then stretched, then went back to sleep, the two of them once again curling up into a tight ball of fur, resting against my left foot.

Quote source: http://snipurl.com/zv36j

Shibuya at street level.

Same street as seen from a bird floating above.

A quick bite at Yoshinoya. Cheap and fast.

Then stopping by a book store...interesting books there.