I’ve long admired the phenom that is Nancy Duarte. As the CEO of Duarte Design, the largest design firm in Silicon Valley and the fifth largest female employer in the area, she’s a role model for many women in business, and I’m one of them. She’s done a lot in her career, but many people know her best for being the presentation genius behind Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and many of the great TED talks you know and love.

And so, when she writes and talks about design, folks listen.

Her new book, Slidedocs: Spread Ideas with Effective Visual Documents, is here, and it’s ready to disrupt the way we think about conveying our messages to the world. As she describes the book, “the medium is the message.” What does that mean?

Well, firstly, anyone can download the book for free.

The concept behind the book – and the idea of a slidedoc at all – is simple. Duarte believes that the presentation as we know it is dead, and that lengthy meeting briefs litter recycling bins in offices everywhere for good reason. A new solution is needed.

The slidedoc is that solution.

As she says, “My dream is for presenters to stop using dense slides as a visual aide, and instead distribute a slidedoc to supplement their message before, during, or after their presentation. Slidedocs with lots of great thinking should be shared – just not from a projector.”

So what exactly is a slidedoc?

In a busy world where shorter, tighter, visual messaging is key, a slidedoc is the new way to get your point across. It’s a new, multimedia way to convey your message to the world — either in a small group setting or in a large event scenario.

In What Scenarios Should You Use a Slidedoc?

There are many, but here are a few:

• You have detailed information to convey but you won’t be around to explain it.
• You need more detailed support for your presentation, either something that your audience can read before or receive as a hand-out after the presentation.
• You have detailed subject matter that would be more easily understood by combining visuals and text.
• You need to break complex content into more consumable chunks to help people understand the material.
• Your sales team needs modular collateral and tools flexible enough to get the right material to the right customers.
• You need to get people up to speed before a meeting so you can use the time you have with each other for building consensus.

Sound interesting? Sound disruptive? It is.

Download the book for free and see for yourself what this new world of sharing is all about.