Turning nouns into verbs

So I just had an aha moment courtesy of The Seth. It's from his essay, Verbs (Gerunds actually) which I read in his killer book Small is the new big.

Here's an excerpt:

People care much more about verbs than nouns. They care about things that move, that happen, that change. The care about experiences and events and the way things make us feel. Nouns just sit there, inanimate lumps.

This got me thinking about presentations (what we do). Most people see presentations as nouns, files with data (that can be uploaded to silly sites). Presentations aren't about the noun though, at least the good ones aren't, the good ones are about the verb i.e presenting. People give give good presentations, they don't make them.

(Cartoon from blaugh. Cheers Rob!)

Rarely if ever have I seen a speaker receive positive feedback for getting the noun right, if they failed at the verb.

This, incidentally, is what Apple didn't understand when they created Keynote as a solution to PowerPoint's problems, but that's another rant altogether.

So, fix the verb first, if you get that right, the noun will just be common sense...!

Update: Seth has a bit more to say about the presentation as a verb thing over here.