Sorry, no diss on the excellent career of Dr. Lovins, for which I have ultimate respect -- but for anyone to call this an "excellent" video must really not get out much. This really important information, which the American public needs to know, is not going to get out there with this kind of presentation, and sadly, I don't think Dr. Lovins is the best person to popularize this information either. After An Inconvenient Truth, it's all too clear that the people who've been saying these things for years are just out-and-out bad presenters.

1. It's bad PowerPoint - way too much information per slide. All that stuff is in the Oil Endgame PDF; there's no need to put it on screen. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

2. Presentation style - Lovins drones, to put it politely, and he never emerges from behind his podium. Even his pedantic jokes slide into the oatmeal-like quality of his speaking. This sort of rambling shows disrespect for the listeners' time, and makes it look like he spent all of three minutes preparing what he was going to say. The entire thing needs to be shortened, timed, scripted, professionally speechwritten, and given appropriate dramatic emphasis. Overall this needs to be rebottled in a presentation style more based on images than words, charts and graphs, and someone with a wireless lavalier mic and good stagecraft needs to present it. Get a celebrity spokesperson, or maybe a younger RMI staffer with some media training, but do it.

3. Attention to detail - If you're going to be taken seriously, look the part - if you want Americans to listen to you, TAKE their attention, don't distract from it. Lovins looks like he was stuffed into a suit at the last minute, as his collar is riding up on his jacket lapel. I'm sure that sort of absent-minded-professorism works down at the RMI, where the fashion train last stopped in 1968, but when America's future is at stake, you can't let your appearance detract from the message. Where's Clinton and Stacy when you need them?

4. Video quality. This is a bad home movie made with a single camcorder that actually PANS from the speaker to the screen to capture the PowerPoint. Even Radio Shack sells video mixers these days, and it's not a great leap to capture two video streams (stage and screen) and then mix / edit them after the fact. For such an important presentation, this is amateur hour.

I think you missed the point, AJ.

The video is excellent because of the content.

The presentation is not what you would want to convince the mainstream, that was never their intention. MIT basically just films some classes and conferences and make the results available for free online -- it's a peek at some of what's going on in one of the best institutions on the planet... So of course there are no production values.

It's not aimed at the same crowd as An Inconvenient Truth at all, it's aimed at MIT students and professors; not exactly average... But IF it was something that was meant for wide release, then I would agree with you that presentation would matter a lot more.

I'm just happy they made it available for free on the web.

You can see more here.

MGR, don't get me wrong, I'm glad the material is out there, and yeah, frankly I wish more universities did such a good job of organizing and publishing this info.

But an info-dump is not excellent content, it's quantity over quality. If you start tuning out 3 minutes into the program because the shortcomings are overtaking the material, then there's a rethink needed.

As both a professional communicator, and a lay person with an intense interest / understanding of science, I don't buy the "this was for a technical audience" line. A good presentation makes it easy to understand and memorable, no matter who the audience is.

In fact you can and should be able to give the same general presentation to both technical and nontechnical audiences; the differences should be in the handouts and supplemental materials.

An Inconvenient Truth was full of concepts, graphs and charts but it was very easy to understand, because the inessential material was pared away, the distracting elements removed, the pacing deliberate so as not to lose the audience. Lovins, instead, assumes everyone is as expert with the material as he is, he jumps ahead of himself, then back, and as he's essentially summarizing his PDF, it's not a great presentation at all. And I still stand by my assertion that for MIT, of all places, (the school with the Media Lab!) to have this kind of one-camera home movie is just inexcusable.

I'm not disagreeing with you, the presentation could have been better. Heck, he should join Toastmasters (I'm a member, btw).

But go watch the hundreds of videos at MIT, and most of them look like university lectures because that's what they are. Some speakers are better, others worse, but few of them are Tony Robbins, snazzily dressed, pacing around the stage, varying their delivery theatrically, exuding charisma and confidence, cracking jokes with a backdrop of Steve Jobs-style slides. Sad but true (and believe me, I wish scientists were better communicators).

If you're speaking in front of MIT about a topic, the audience usually know almost as much as you so you better deliver with the details and cutting edge stuff. Engineers love that stuff. To most of them, quantity of details and references is a plus, not a problem. There would probably be a lot of "tell me something I don't know" if Lovins gave them just the headlines Inconvenient Truth-style (even with a more detailed handout).

Lovins is not a great speaker, but I'm sure that he's smart enough to tailor his speech to his audience and that he would have said something different at TED or Pop!tech. I'm not saying he would have lit up the stage there, but his 15 minutes speeches in front of generalist crowds are probably different from his 1 hour 30 minutes speeches in front of engineers.

In short: I still think the video had excellent content and was worth watching for anyone interested in energy and transportation. I'd rather have that than good presentation and lousy content (there's enough of that around), and it's rare enough to find both great content and presentation together that I find it hard to hold it against those that don't deliver on all fronts. Do I wish they were better? Sure. Nobody's against virtue.

As for MIT's camera setup, different rooms are set up differently. Some of them are better than this and have more cameras, slide feeds, etc. Email them to complain if you want to.

But what I'd really like to know is what you thought of the content of the video.

MGR, thanks for the elucidation.

In terms of raw content I can't argue with it, it's all essentially correct and every engineer involved in public or private energy policy, the car industries, the transportation-construction oligopolies etc -- have to see and learn to adjust. I read his 'winning the oil endgame' PDF when it first came out and I thought it was great stuff (although that, too, could use a popularized book version for the masses), and most of the content is similar.

I do think, in his zeal to promote certain solutions above others, he downplays Peak Oil which, based on what I've read, is more reality than fiction. A lot of these plans can get skewed if production drops off much faster than expected. I also didn't see much play for the idea of more compact communities (new urbanism, land use policy, promoting local agriculture over imports, etc.) which, by eliminating or reducing the need to drive at all, will wean North America off its oil addiction just a tad faster.

In Lovins' view, he seems to think we're going to be driving forever, and there's my main issue of disagreement with him.

I agree with you, AJ. I'm not sure why Lovins doesn't talk about certain things.

I think it might be for tactical reasons. He consults for a lot of big business and the US government. Maybe he's found that it works better to say: "Even if oil stays cheap and things stay as they are, here's a strategy to make things better and make/save lots of money, become energy independent, etc.. and IF oil becomes more expensive/things change, then my ideas apply even more and make even more sense!"

Maybe.