July 30, 2010

First look at the Presentation Zen bento box (presentation kit in a box)

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...).