Hey everyone, it's Mukundan from Data and AI
with Mukundan. Hey everyone, it's Mukundan from
Data and AI with Mukundan. Have you ever stared
at a Google slide deck or a Microsoft PowerPoint
slide and just wanted to delete it all? So you're
working on a presentation and maybe your boss
asked you to work on this presentation to present
to maybe future investors, right? You've been
asked to walk someone through your thinking.
On a Zoom call and you felt like running. That
was me. Always me. Until the day I woke up with
no memory and a calendar full of goals I didn't
even recognize. This is a story of identity.
Burnout by tech and storytelling. And what happens
when you stop trying to perform and start trying
to connect? This is Theta and AI with Mukundan.
So, here's how it started. I got the request
like we all do. Hey, can you present your work
next week? Or, I think in my case it was Can
you present this work this Friday? Should have
been routine. Right? But something in me cracked.
Because I didn't know what I was even working
on anymore. My dashboards were full. My notebooks
looked fine. You know, those Python notebooks
you work on. But me? Empty. Then I woke up one
day with no memory. And I... blinking calendar
which said an invite for a meeting called spotlight
it wasn't a medical issue it was intentional
like a reset it's triggered by a version of me
that left behind a single sticky note so the
sticky note read you asked for this remember
and i was about to find out what I meant by that.
So that meeting which I mentioned previously,
Spotlight, turned out to be one of the important
company meetings. And I was meeting this person
for the first time. He greeted me. Let's call
him Dwight. Dwight from The Office. Nobody wasn't
like Dwight from The Office, but just for argument's
sake, right? And he was talking about a really
important concept. So I had to really understand
that concept and potentially use that in my presentation
for the coming Friday. So the conversation was
pretty raw. We were like trying to be, since
it was the first time, we were trying to get
acquainted with each other as well and, you know,
just take it slow, but also get the more important
details out of what I would need for my presentation
on Friday. And I just thought it's going to be
pretty simple, but it's just that like I'm working
on this, you know, the notes that came out of
this meeting. and it's hard to translate into
slides like how do i use this like okay maybe
i asked i asked dwight to record the meeting
so that i have a transcription later on and the
idea was to use the transcription as slides um
for my meeting later and you know there's a lot
of requests that keep coming through in addition
to this slide presentation that I need to do.
There's other competing priorities. So where
do you find the time? And it's not just that,
it's just if you're an introvert, I consider
myself more on the introverted side. I wouldn't
say I'm like a complete introvert, but maybe
an ambivert if I'm being honest. You know, you
wouldn't ambivert or introvert I don't think
presenting to people is something you would enjoy
as much as an extrovert would in most cases well
at least for myself and you know it's just like
you need to prepare a lot to have a good presentation
because you are not just like actually preparing
the notes for the presentation you are Actually
preparing for the fears that you face. And so
talking with yourself through these fears, that
is an extra level of preparation that you need
to do. And this is in addition to your day job,
right? And obviously you need to create the presentation
too. Well, I thought this is a lot of work to
do. within a very short period of time and i
mean i'm already on tuesday and i have i'm sure
there's a lot of competing priorities right now
which i should be rather doing rather than the
presentation the presentation is just a more
internal uh meeting but is this something i need
to still prepare for like i said it's talking
through the spheres it's a big task So here's
the thing, and I'm not the only person who doesn't
enjoy presentations, I'm sure. There are other
builders, other coders who are quiet. Data folks,
analysts, designers, engineers, I'm sure. People
I've worked with in these capacities have been
more introverted than not. I asked them, like,
how do you deal with it? And they wrote me, I
freeze every time I'm asked to present. And I
thought I was the only one who hated being on
display at that time, right? And so I just kept
following that calendar. I said, don't drink
coffee today. Just feel it. Call your wife. And
prepare with her if you want to. These are like
internal conversations I'm having with myself.
I was like code, record, reflect, repeat. And
I was becoming something new. Someone new. Well,
maybe I was just meeting that person at Buried
Under Slide Decks. By week four, I wasn't just
obeying the reminders. I was actually curious
about them. So one of these reminders, they said,
do something scary at 4 p .m. And this was way
back when. But yeah, I mean, at that time, I
was just like, well, let me just DM a startup
founder I admired. It was nice to get a response
back. This was regarding a job opportunity at
the time. And another said, don't post anything,
just journal instead. And I wrote about 800 words
that clarified a decision about what I would
be taking next in my life that I had been avoiding
for weeks. The calendar was training me not to
be productive, but to be present. So all this
is before, right? Like, I mean... One day it
was just like open the deck, the one from last
year. You know, I created presentations before.
It's just not, it was easy to create. I thought
it was when I was a bit more extroverted than
I am now. And I had more practice. But here's
the thing now. I have a lot of competing priorities.
So coming back to this, how would I be able to
create a presentation in a short amount of time
using, you know, maybe text from a conversation
like the meeting I mentioned earlier with the
strange person Dwight. I wanted to get the transcript
out of it and get the key notes that were discussed
in the meeting. And it is a... how do you do
it with your day job and that's when i was thinking
well what if i let ai help me build something
here um so i have like i mean i'm already at
the end of wednesday it's wednesday night and
friday's presentation but uh i was like well
it's already late so let me build this tomorrow
let me ask ai to help me with the slides so that's
what I did like I tried to build something with
chat GPT first and I was like well can you turn
this transcript into into slides and yeah it
worked it worked great so it said like basically
you know it took this transcript and it gave
me like really clear notes which I could use
for my presentation the next day and the actual
presentation it was great i had like about 15
slides if i'm not wrong and it was an internal
presentation but it was still important for the
internal stakeholders to understand what was
going on because they were about to have a key
meeting with our external stakeholders like people
on the outside and this was important for them
to understand what was going on but like they
admired the presentation because I used some
help from AI to help speed things up and I thought
like well this has helped me a lot and I'm sure
There are people like me who do not enjoy presentations.
And people I mentioned before, right? These could
be your people you work with every day. And from
my experience as an analyst and as a data scientist,
I've known these people to be more introvert,
like the coders, the data folks, engineers. So
they do not enjoy giving presentations. Or at
least they don't enjoy creating the slides for
sure. Because it does involve a lot of design
work and statistically I haven't seen all engineers
at least to be very good in creating amazing
visuals. And by visuals I don't mean data visuals,
I mean beautiful images. The ones which were
used in presentations may be created by someone
in marketing. Because that's usually not a core
part of our job. A core part of our job could
be analyzing data or coding or whatever. Because
marketing people, they're trained on it. This
is something they go to business school for.
I'm sure building presentations is a skill. It
can be learned. Everybody can do it. It's not
rocket science. Right? And I thought, I'm not
the only one doing this. I'm not the only one
feeling this pressure. I'm sure others are too.
And that's when I decided. I wanted to help these
introverts or these ambiverts, maybe even extroverts,
whoever, right? Whoever does not like to create
slides. maybe help them build an application
which they can build themselves as well and give
it the prompt they need to turn any kind of text
into slides and thinking more about this it's
not just anybody doesn't like slides it's about
anybody who doesn't have time to create those
and so that's what I did and in the show notes
that you'll find it like I have the blog post
which talks about this helps you create a code
I mean helps you see the code which I've used
to convert any kind of blog or any kind of data
really into slides in my example I've actually
used a blog which I created and I also link to
the slides which got generated as a result of
that blog right and this one this particular
one didn't give me images because i'm sure we
can adjust that based on the prompt we use but
that is possible to do as well so if if there's
anything that you would want to see with it like
let's say um you want to create amazing visuals
in your slides from the data that you have that's
something um you can ask the prompt to do or
you can just reach out to me as well and i can
help you guide on that and the best way to reach
out to me is uh on my substack website which
would be in the show notes but um i would just
say just feel free to create your own using my
code right and and you'd be able to just save
a lot of time forget about the slides and maybe
just focus on on your fear because the fear is
something which is a bit more complex to handle
but at least you have some more time on your
hands when you are building out the slides through
some through an ai right and i think that's the
main aim just like to Be more free. Let AI do
the heavy lifting and you can focus on yourself.
And in this case, yourself means improving on
your public speaking skills. So, yeah, that's
pretty much it, right? Don't burn out. Don't
focus on how you cannot do this. It's pretty
easy to do. If you let AI handle some of the
other things, the routine does. Creating the
slides is time consuming. And yeah, I'm sure
the AI will not give you 100 % perfect slides,
but it'll give you a start. Because you'd want
to be able to focus on maybe creating that image
if you want. And the actual presentation. So
everybody, yeah, just like to come back to my
story, everybody loved my presentation and I'm
hoping with these slides, with this app, you're
able to turn any kind of data into slides. So
at that time I had used ChatGPT, but I wanted
to use like a Python -based script, which I've
done in the blog post, which is linked to the
show notes. is just that python will help you
build like a clear application to use time and
again and chat gpt you may need to remember that
chat where you wrote it or these days you can
create your own gpt as well which is something
i'm working on so um have a look have a look
out for that you want to ask these slides to
capture your voice that's something which can
be trained as well in your prompt so a lot of
possibilities to do here that's what i'm trying
to get at with you know turning any kind of text
data into slides or images it allows you to it
allows you to even upload images as well now
it's been a it's been months since this happened
to me but I still write code. Like, I mean, it's
been months since the presentation happened,
but I still write code. I still build the tools.
I still analyze. But now I share like a human,
not a dashboard. I still hate slides, but I don't
fear presentations. So that is powerful, right?
And I'm sure if you say this to yourself, that
I hate slides, but I don't fear presentations.
And only say your hate slides if you actually
hate it. You don't have to unnecessarily hate.
But presentations, you shouldn't be fearing them
at all. I treat them like conversations now.
Like therapy sessions with an audience. I speak
like someone who remembers what it's like to
forget. So... if you're dreading your next zoom
call or google meets these days everything's
virtual or maybe you're presenting to an large
room full of people in person right you may be
in office as well or doing your next team update
or your next walk us through this moment try
this don't present right it's funny i just said
you're doing a presentation but i'm telling you
don't present I'm telling you to connect. Forget
the slides. Tell a story. Maybe even yours. Because
the most unforgettable story you can tell is
the one you almost forgot. Well, thanks for listening
to Data and AI with Mukundan. See you in the
next one.