Concurrent Creation

Summary

Don't feel compelled to create materials in presentation order. When collaborating, designate one Slide Wrangler to own the master deck.

The Pattern in Detail

Concurrent Creation challenges the instinct to build a presentation sequentially from slide one to slide N. Instead, it encourages working on whichever section you are most inspired to tackle at any given moment, and when collaborating with others, working on multiple sections simultaneously. This mirrors how most creative work actually happens — inspiration does not arrive in linear order, and forcing yourself to complete section two before touching section three wastes productive energy.

For individual speakers, Concurrent Creation means giving yourself permission to jump around. If you wake up with a brilliant idea for your conclusion, write it now — do not wait until you have finished the introduction. If a perfect example for section four comes to mind while you are working on section two, capture it immediately. The key is maintaining awareness of your overall Narrative Arc so that the pieces fit together when assembled. Creating out of order forces you to verify your arc repeatedly. Each time you add a piece, check that it connects to the whole.

For group presentations, Concurrent Creation becomes essential and requires explicit coordination. The most important role is the Slide Wrangler — one person who owns the master deck and is responsible for integrating contributions from all authors. Without a Slide Wrangler, you get version conflicts, inconsistent formatting, and slides that contradict each other. The Slide Wrangler does not necessarily create the most content, but they ensure that all content works together.

Practical guidelines for group Concurrent Creation include: everyone uses the same template and visual theme (Unifying Visual Theme), set a firm cut-off time after which no new material is accepted, and use ugly placeholder slides for sections that need attention. Placeholder slides are deliberately ugly — bright colors, large text saying "TODO: Insert demo results here" — so they cannot be accidentally left in the final presentation. They serve as visual task lists that are impossible to overlook during the assembly phase.

The challenge of Concurrent Creation is maintaining coherence. When different people create different sections, voice and style can diverge. The Slide Wrangler must harmonize these differences during assembly. When an individual creates sections out of order, they must allocate time for a coherence pass — reading through the entire presentation sequentially to smooth transitions and ensure consistent terminology. The payoff is worth the extra assembly effort. Concurrent creation produces richer material.

Plan Analog Before Going Digital

Concurrent Creation has a strong default-medium implication: most of it should happen off the computer. Garr Reynolds calls this "going analog" and treats it as one of the central rules of the prepare phase: paper, whiteboard, Post-its, Sharpies — never start in slideware. The argument is partly cognitive (handling a pen activates right-brain associative thinking; sitting at a keyboard activates left-brain editing instincts) and partly tooling (slideware presents a template, a layout, and a default font the moment you open it, all of which prematurely commit you to decisions that should still be fluid).

In Reynolds's five-step workflow, the digital tool only enters the picture in the final step: brainstorm → group and identify the core → storyboard on paper or sticky notes → sketch visuals by hand → only then transfer into slideware. The first four steps are entirely analog. For Concurrent Creation specifically, this means the brainstorm + grouping + storyboard phases are easier to do as a group in front of a whiteboard or wall of Post-its than in any collaborative slideware tool — physical space lets the whole structure stay visible at once, which is precisely what slideware's slide-at-a-time view destroys.

The practical translation: if Concurrent Creation is the workflow, analog planning is the medium for everything before assembly. The Slide Wrangler's first artifact should be a photograph of a whiteboard or a stack of Post-its, not a template-filled deck. Going digital too early is the most common failure mode of Concurrent Creation — collaborators end up arguing about font choices and slide layouts before they have agreed on the throughline.

When to Use / When to Avoid

Use this pattern for any presentation where you have the flexibility to work non-linearly, and especially for group presentations. Avoid for very short presentations (five minutes or less) where sequential creation is natural and the overhead of assembly exceeds the benefit. Also avoid when all collaborators are not aligned on the template and visual standards — Concurrent Creation without visual consistency produces a Frankenstein deck.

Detection Heuristics

Do not infer an authoring workflow from a coherent final deck. Consistent styling and even section quality can come from many processes. Verify Concurrent Creation only from creation history, collaboration records, or speaker confirmation that the work was authored out of order or coordinated through one Slide Wrangler.

Scoring Criteria

• Strong signal: Creation history or collaboration records show non-linear/shared authoring coordinated through one Slide Wrangler
• Moderate signal: Records show shared or non-linear authoring, but ownership/coordination was inconsistent
• Absent: Records show a strictly sequential workflow or uncoordinated shared editing
• Unevaluable: No creation history, collaboration record, or speaker confirmation is available

Relationship to Vault Dimensions

Relates to Dimension 2 (Structure/Organization). Relates to Dimension 8 (Slide Design/Visual Quality).

Combinatorics

Pairs with Talklet (modular units can be created concurrently by different authors) and Unifying Visual Theme (visual consistency is the glue that holds concurrent contributions together). Also benefits from Narrative Arc awareness — all contributors must understand the overall story to create pieces that fit.

Related Reading

• Reynolds, G. (2012). Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (2nd ed.). Ch. 3, 4 — the five-step preparation workflow (brainstorm → group → analog storyboard → sketch visuals → digital storyboard) describes a concurrent-creation cadence between content and visuals. New Riders.
• Duarte, N. (2010). Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences. Ch. 5, 6 — sticky-notes-on-wall storyboarding as the medium for the divergent and convergent thinking phases; "move out of the linear format of the presentation application and create an environment where you can look at the content spatially." Wiley.