I hate bullet-filled PowerPoint slides, but neither do I advocate having no words on a slide. That’s just going to another extreme. Images and words combined are the most effective PowerPoint slide design for most technical and business presentations. Here are eleven reasons why: 1. A picture may be worth a thousand words – but it may be a different thousand words for each member of the audience. By adding a clarifying sentence you ensure that every person in your audience gets the point you wanted to make with the picture. For example, this slide could make many different points. I…
Speaking
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Most Topular Stories
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Six Secrets from a Professional Speaker on Audience Participation
Speaking about Presenting: Presentation Tips from Olivia Mitchell17 Aug 2010 | 5:37 am -
9 reasons you should put words on your slides
Speaking about Presenting: Presentation Tips from Olivia Mitchell24 Aug 2010 | 1:50 amEllen Finkelstein has organized a series of webinar presentations with a great line up of presenters. And not only will you not have any travel and accommodation costs, the webinars themselves are free! To sign up for the webinars go to this webpage: Outstanding Presentations Workshop. Each webinar will be at 1:00pm PT, 2:00pm MT, 3:00pm CT, 4:00pm ET in the United States and Canada. Here’s the schedule for the webinars. Each speaker’s name is a link to a page where you can read more about the speaker and their topic. In the last column is a link to the time in other countries. -
Lessons from the Japanese bath
Presentation Zen18 Aug 2010 | 6:12 amA long time ago — before PowerPoint was invented — in a galaxy far, far away, leaders gave presentations backed by large electronic wall displays. Below, for example, is a photo of General Dodonna (from Star Wars IV) briefing a packed room full of starpilots, navigators, and droids. Notice how he uses the entire wide screen to display only visual information, a digital vector animation of the inner workings of the death star. Notice too how he has gathered the troops close to the front, how he himself stands close to the back-lit screen (even slightly in front of it at times), and… -
Here is Tom Peters on Story Telling
Excellence in Presentations3 Sep 2010 | 4:23 pm -
Toastmasters Speech 7: Research Your Topic
Six Minutes7 Sep 2010 | 8:28 pm
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Presentation Zen
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Create and communicate meaning
8 Sep 2010 | 7:00 pmWhat entrepreneurship and the art of presentation have in common is they are both really about creating meaning. This simple fundamental is often forgotten (or was never learned). In business, we need to make money, of course. This is a given. But the focus and the very reason one goes into the business should not be money. This is not because the pursuit of wealth is ignoble, but it may be a signal that one's focus is misplaced. If acquiring wealth is the primary goal of an entrepreneur, ironically the wealth will rarely materialize. This video clip below from a 2004 presentation by Guy… -
Presentation Zen seminar in Tokyo October 2
7 Sep 2010 | 12:29 amIf you are in Japan in early October, please consider joining my presentation zen seminar on Saturday, October 2 from 12 noon to 5:00pm. This event is sponsored by Nikkei Business Associé Magazine (pdf of magazine article on this seminar). The cost is ¥29,800 per person and includes the Presentation Zen Design book in Japanese and the pz storyboarding/sketch book plus drinks and a light snack. We held the same seminar in July and it sold out in a few days. I will speak in English while presenting with Japanese interpretation, this is how we did the first seminar and it went really well. So… -
Presentation: A few minutes with John Cleese on creativity
3 Sep 2010 | 11:59 pmBelow is an excellent 10-min video clip from a presentation by John Cleese expressing a few of his ideas on creativity. One of the main problems for many of use today is that we are always in a hurry and our minds are a bit scattered juggling many balls in the air. But if we are racing around all day with a busy mind, Cleese says, we are not going to have many creative ideas. We must slow down our minds to see the connections. There is some evidence that insights, for example, are best captured when we slow down, clear the noise and do not think about the problem at hand. In David Rock's book… -
A long time ago, before death by PowerPoint
20 Aug 2010 | 7:29 pmA long time ago — before PowerPoint was invented — in a galaxy far, far away, leaders gave presentations backed by large electronic wall displays. Below, for example, is a photo of General Dodonna (from Star Wars IV) briefing a packed room full of starpilots, navigators, and droids. Notice how he uses the entire wide screen to display only visual information, a digital vector animation of the inner workings of the death star. Notice too how he has gathered the troops close to the front, how he himself stands close to the back-lit screen (even slightly in front of it at times), and… -
Lessons from the Japanese bath
18 Aug 2010 | 6:12 amLooking back twenty years, I had only been living in Japan a couple of months when I found myself sitting in a large Japanese bath surrounded by my naked coworkers. I was at an onsen (温泉), or Japanese hot springs, along with everyone else from my office, as part of our company weekend retreat. The purpose of the trip was not work, but simply relaxation, dining, drinking, and a little fun with colleagues. By getting away from the formality of the office setting, my boss told me, staff and managers can experience more natural communication and build better relationships which will be good…
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Create Your Communication Experience
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Obama Speech More of the Same
31 Aug 2010 | 9:17 pmPresident Obama gave a speech tonight – second one from the Oval Office in his 19 months in office. It was a yawner. What’s going on here? First of all I want to confess I’ve not reviewed Obama recently because he basically is the same. In delivery. Think of teleprompter, predictability, cadence, professorial, etc. See here and here for a lot more detail. But tonight I was challenged by Michael Hyatt on Twitter, who said; @MichaelHyatt: I’d like to hear @BertDecker ’s analysis of the President’s speech. It’s difficult to comment apolitical. Now Michael is a friend,… -
Lesson from the Hall of Fame: Don’t read speeches!
17 Aug 2010 | 1:34 pmI grew up with the dynamic duo of Joe Montana and Jerry Rice leading our San Francisco 49ers to championships and Superbowl victories. Joe Montana was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2000. I was thrilled when Jerry finally made the 2010 class, and was inducted earlier this month. What I love most about Jerry Rice is his work ethic – it’s unparalleled. We even use him as THE epitome of continuous improvement in our programs. Whether you’re a wide receiver, financial advisor, sales engineer or operations manager, you’ve got to stay on top of your game. That means working hard to keep… -
Learn how to make your ideas stick from Leonardo DiCaprio
22 Jul 2010 | 7:00 amIt’s quite a rarity to get out for a date night or, in our case a date day. We went to see Inception on Sunday afternoon, the new thriller with Leonardo DiCaprio by writer/director Christopher Nolan whose work includes Memento (amazing!), Dark Knight, and many others. It’s intriguing, deep, and action packed. And great effects if you’re into that kind of thing. While I was trying to sort out the plot around whose subconscious was whose, I started hearing the SUCCESs framework from Made to Stick. Disclosure: yes, I am in tune to it, but really not that geeky about it. Seriously, Nolan… -
Announcing the Decker Communications Board of Directors
20 Jul 2010 | 1:15 pm“You will either step forward into growth or you will step backwards into safety.” – Abraham Maslow Today, Decker Communications chooses growth by proudly announcing the expansion of our Board of Directors! Click here for more information via our press release. The Decker Communications, Inc. Board of Directors Bonnie Blair 5 time Olympic Gold Medal speed skater (record), married to speed skating executive Dave Cruikshank, mother of two, Professional Speaker, Olympic Advisor and corporate spokesperson. Milwaukee, WI. Jim Carter Attorney for Decker Communications, Inc. last… -
BP CEO: Communications Failure
2 Jun 2010 | 10:48 pmUPDATE: June 17. CEO Tony Hayward is live giving Congressional testimony that will probably go down as equal to the Mark McGwire disaster. He has said, “I wasn’t involved in any of the decision making,” and “I don’t know” countless times. Congress, led by a hostile Henry Waxman, seemed incredulous. This whole Gulf oil disaster is a terrible tragedy on a deeply personal level for millions of people – in the U.S., and also in England where BP is a key part of their economy. This Congressional testimony happening right now is a PR and communications…
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The Ethos3 Blog
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Presentation God Available for Pre-Orders
2 Sep 2010 | 12:30 pmHow to Be a Presentation God is now available for pre-order on Amazon. Pre-order your copy today! Also, if you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet – PresentationGod.com is now up and running! It is still a bit basic, but at least it is live. Share this on del.icio.us Digg this! Share this on Reddit Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon Share this on Facebook Tweet This! Subscribe to the comments for this post? -
A Confession About Me
12 Aug 2010 | 9:23 amHere is my confession: I love creating web sites. The problem: none of them have worked for me. If you have followed me for quite some time, you have probably noticed that I have created sites here, there, and everywhere. I know, I know. I hardly know where I live online as well. It has all been in my attempt to find the right platform, the right voice, the right feel for my personal brand. Most of these sites were built on Wordpress – a platform I truly love. In fact, this web site lives on Wordpress. However, Wordpress hasn’t been the right fit for me personally. Why? -
Stuff Presenters Like eBook
27 Jul 2010 | 6:44 amI want to introduce you to Stuff Presenters Like: The Top 50 Good, Bad & Lame Stuff Presenters Do Everyday! It is a compilation of all the best presentation terms and definitions I have created over the last year and a half. What will you find in this eBook? 37 pages of fun presentation terms and definitions Valuable presentation lessons and takeaways Insightful thoughts and observations about presenters and presentations Stuff Presenters Like not only provides entertaining and clever presentation insights but also practical advice for readers that will empower them immediately. Download… -
Book Cover for Presentation God
21 Jul 2010 | 12:58 pmHere is a sneak peek of my book cover (just received it this morning from Wiley). Personally, I love it! I am taking the hero/villain angle and fleshing the story out online in the weeks/months ahead. Stay tuned regarding that item. With that said, you should notice the evil “Bulletron” in the background. Enjoy! Share this on del.icio.us Digg this! Share this on Reddit Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon Share this on Facebook Tweet This! Subscribe to the comments for this post? -
How to Be a Presentation God
13 Jul 2010 | 2:24 pmIf you have been following my tweets (@scottschwertly) you may have heard that I am writing a book. It’s called How to Be a Presentation God: Build, Design, and Deliver Presentations that Dominate! and it reveals the secrets for how to build, design, and deliver a fire-breathing, wing-flapping, roar-bellowing behemoth of a presentation. This has been a dream of mine for quite some time, and I am very excited! After many book proposals and failed attempts, a publisher has finally given me a chance – actually, one of the largest publishers in the world has given me this fantastic…
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Duarte Blog
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The Creative Pulse
8 Sep 2010 | 9:23 amI came to Duarte after twenty years in four careers: academia, Hollywood, teaching and freelance creative consulting. I expected to size the place up, categorize it and get a quick handle on the environment, the people and the product. WRONG! My first portal into Duarte was the website, and I laughed out loud. Staff profiles included Yoda, rubber brains, blond wigs, plush toys, and a wide selection of hats. The accompanying quotes referenced superheroes, ’70s tv shows, the Loch Ness monster, and Nintendo. These people seemed real. During the “getting to know you” phase of the… -
Could you present naked? Garr inspires you to try.
30 Aug 2010 | 10:00 amWe are so grateful to have had our friend and author of Presentation Zen, Presentation Zen Design, (and coming soon The Naked Presenter!) Garr Reynolds visit us last week. Garr gave us a sneak peek at some of what he’ll cover in his new book, and shared nine lessons from the Japanese bath. (Yes, nine!) Take a note from the onsen and be more comfortable naked with your next presentation! Thanks to everyone who attended. We hope you enjoyed yourselves; we enjoyed having you! Don’t forget to pre-order Garr’s new book, and save the date (Thursday, October 7) to attend Duarte’s next… -
Thanks for joining us!
26 Aug 2010 | 6:58 pmThe Live Stream has ended. So happy you could join us! Don’t forget to check out Garr’s new book The Naked Presenter. -
Garr Reynolds: Live from Mountain View
26 Aug 2010 | 6:01 pm -
Check Back at 6pm for Live Stream of Garr!
26 Aug 2010 | 4:18 pmIf you can’t be with us tonight, we’ll miss you! But that doesn’t mean you have to miss us! Check back here at 6 p.m. to watch a live stream of Garr Reynolds presentation. Just in case something goes awry (gotta love technology!) you can access our Ustream channel here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/special-guest-garr-reynolds
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Speaking about Presenting: Presentation Tips from Olivia Mitchell
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How to Master the Inner Game of Presenting
6 Sep 2010 | 11:30 pmThe way that you think and feel about presenting – “the inner game” – has a profound effect on your success as a presenter and speaker. The term “inner game” was coined by Timothy Gallwey in his classic book “The Inner Game of Tennis”: “There is always an inner game being played in your mind no matter what outer game you are playing. How aware you are of this game can make the difference between success and failure in the outer game.” Why confidence is not the goal you should aim for You may think that the goal of the inner game of presenting is to be confident. But… -
Hear live from 8 presentation experts without leaving your home
3 Sep 2010 | 1:20 amEllen Finkelstein has organized a series of webinar presentations with a great line up of presenters. And not only will you not have any travel and accommodation costs, the webinars themselves are free! To sign up for the webinars go to this webpage: Outstanding Presentations Workshop. Each webinar will be at 1:00pm PT, 2:00pm MT, 3:00pm CT, 4:00pm ET in the United States and Canada. Here’s the schedule for the webinars. Each speaker’s name is a link to a page where you can read more about the speaker and their topic. In the last column is a link to the time in other countries. -
9 reasons you should put words on your slides
24 Aug 2010 | 1:50 amI hate bullet-filled PowerPoint slides, but neither do I advocate having no words on a slide. That’s just going to another extreme. Images and words combined are the most effective PowerPoint slide design for most technical and business presentations. Here are eleven reasons why: 1. A picture may be worth a thousand words – but it may be a different thousand words for each member of the audience. By adding a clarifying sentence you ensure that every person in your audience gets the point you wanted to make with the picture. For example, this slide could make many different points. I… -
Six Secrets from a Professional Speaker on Audience Participation
17 Aug 2010 | 5:37 amLast week I wrote about the challenge of the third era of presenting: the era of the audience. Kristin Arnold has written a provocative and intensely practical book Boring to Bravo on how to meet that challenge by encouraging audience participation . The philosophy of the book is summed up by this quote from Amanda Gore in the book: When I say, “Use audience interaction,” I don’t mean that you should ask a question and have them call out. You must go further. I have my audiences look at each other and do stuff! The more they connect, the better they can learn and actually have an… -
Are you ready for the third era in presenting?
12 Aug 2010 | 1:29 amThere have been three distinct eras of public speaking and presenting. They are all still present today, but at different levels of maturity. The third era – the era of the audience – is going to be challenging for most presenters and public speakers. It requires a new attitude. But first let’s review the first two eras of presenting and public speaking. The era of the orator Heyday: From ancient times to 1990s. In this era every speech is a performance. Each sentence is carefully crafted and the speech taps into a vast repertoire of rhetorical techniques. I first learnt public speaking…
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Dave Paradi's PowerPoint Blog
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The Corporate Approach to Presenting PowerPoint on an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch
5 Sep 2010 | 5:15 amWhen the iPad was announced, presenters immediately thought they had a new option for doing one-on-one presentations. Instead of lugging their laptop around, they could simply bring their iPad. With the higher resolution of the new iPhone 4 and iPod Touch, presenters saw an opportunity to further reduce the size of the equipment they carry for those presentations to one other person.Unfortunately the reality is that converting PowerPoint to a Keynote format for presentation on an iPad or using an expensive third-party Office substitute application on any of the devices has proven to be… -
PowerPoint Slide Makeover #59: Making Excel spreadsheets meaningful - Part 2
31 Aug 2010 | 4:25 amJust a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. This makeover continues the discussion of ways to make financial figures from Excel more meaningful. It shows how to create a graph that clearly communicates the message and how to use a hyperlink to the spreadsheet in order to answer detailed questions that may come up.This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is… -
PowerPoint Tip: Options for using Data from Excel on PowerPoint Slides – Part 2
24 Aug 2010 | 5:16 amIn a previosu post we discussed options for pasting a summary table of results from Excel on a slide to present numerical information. While showing a table of numbers is one option for presenting this type of data, it is not the only option, nor is it the best option in many cases. Today I want to explain other best practices you can use to present numerical information from Excel.If you are showing a trend in some data or comparing a few figures, use a graph in PowerPoint instead of a table of numbers. If you show a table of numbers and expect your audience to do the math to figure out the… -
PowerPoint Slide Makeover #58: Making Excel spreadsheets meaningful - Part 1
17 Aug 2010 | 2:58 amJust a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. When financial figures need to be included in a presentation, too often an Excel spreadsheet is copied on to a slide. It overwhelms the audience and the message is lost. Use the ideas in this makeover to focus the audience on the few key numbers they need to know in order to understand your message.This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops -… -
PowerPoint Tip: Options for using Data from Excel on PowerPoint Slides – Part 1
10 Aug 2010 | 3:23 amExcel is commonly used to perform calculations or financial analysis. I use it frequently for these purposes, as I am sure you do. While Excel is a great tool for performing numeric analysis, it is not intended to be a presentation tool. If you show a large spreadsheet on the screen, people get overwhelmed quickly and tune out.In a two-part series, I am going to share my best practices for using the information from our Excel analysis in a presentation. In today’s first part, we’ll talk about using a table of numbers from the spreadsheet on a slide. Next time, I’ll cover ways to use the…
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Six Minutes
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Toastmasters Speech 7: Research Your Topic
7 Sep 2010 | 8:28 pmImagine that you are writing your next great speech. As you scour your mind for the fact that will clinch your case, you will discover one of two things: either you know it, or you don’t. Most of the time, you won’t know every piece of information you need to make a compelling argument, but you can find it. The seventh Toastmasters speech project encourages you to go beyond your own knowledge and opinions, and fill in the gaps with various forms of research. This article of the Toastmasters Speech Series examines the primary goals of this project, provides tips and techniques, and… -
Boost Your Speaking Confidence Through Improv
6 Sep 2010 | 8:06 pmThe floor is open for discussion. You have a burning question that you want to ask, but as you try to formulate it, someone asks a different question and the topic has moved on. Have you ever been at an industry conference, a PTA meeting, or a community gathering where you wanted to stand up and voice your opinion, but couldn’t find the words or didn’t have the confidence to put yourself out there? This article shows how you can gain public speaking confidence using an unlikely method — by practicing improv comedy. What is improvisational comedy? Remember the TV show,… -
Professional Speaker Associations
1 Sep 2010 | 9:11 pmOur recent interview with Kristin Arnold, President of the National Speakers Association, led me to several questions: How many professional speaker associations exist? Where are they? How long have they been around? How many members do they have? Do you know the answers? Read on! Global Speakers Federation The Global Speakers Federation (GSF) is a loosely affiliated network of professional speaker associations around the world. It launched in 1998 with member federations from four countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. The GSF now counts 10 full member federations,… -
Interview with Kristin Arnold, National Speakers Association President
31 Aug 2010 | 8:34 pmI recently read Boring to Bravo, an impressive book on audience engagement written by Kristin Arnold. (You can find the Six Minutes book review here.) When I found out that Ms. Arnold is also the President of the National Speakers Association (NSA) for 2010-2011, I approached her to see if she would answer a few questions about the NSA. I’m delighted to be able to share her interview with you here. Question: How did you come to be a member of the NSA? I had already been in business as a professional meeting facilitator and was drawn to “speaking” as a way to get the message… -
How to Axe Your Presentation… and Still Deliver Value
29 Aug 2010 | 8:47 pmYou know your content. Success is in view. But now, your time slot has been chopped in two. Oh my! Oh my! What will you do? ACK! If you’ve been speaking for a while, this has probably happened to you. If it hasn’t yet, it’s only a matter of time. Can you still salvage the presentation and provide value for your audience? Ask Six Minutes Josh H. from Montana writes: I’ve been witness to at least two presentations in the last two weeks wherein, the originally allotted time was hugely condensed by outside forces. For example, an expert researcher came to talk to my…
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Speak Schmeak
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Five things speakers can learn from event planners
8 Sep 2010 | 5:00 pmI have two clients who are event planners. They create amazing social and corporate events as well as weddings that would charm your socks off. If you've ever been to a conference, a wedding, a large fundraiser, a political rally, or a memorial service, chances are an event planner was involved. All event planners have one thing in common: No matter how complicated or difficult the planning and organization, they make the event appear seamless. With vendors ranging from caterers to florists to photographers to musicians to hotels to audio/visual professionals, and every other kind of service… -
The best comedy comes from real life
7 Sep 2010 | 4:44 pm"What we do is take the worst things in our life and turn it into something palatable for everybody else, because the best comedy comes from real life. I think that when you talk about something that really happened, whether you make it a caricature of what happened, or whatever, but it is a version of the truth, you connect with the audience in a way that you cannot with contrived material." ~ Comedian Robert Schimmel, I Am Comic documentary What Schimmel is saying does not just apply to comedians. You may not think of yourself as a comedian and you may not feel the need to use the Comedy… -
When nobody cares if you go long
7 Sep 2010 | 12:14 pmOn Speak Schmeak, I've written many posts about how to be memorable and engaging as a speaker. There are certain rewards that come from offering memorable performances: The audience remembers your message and takes action, you get invited back to speak, you get referred to other organizations, maybe you get a raise, maybe you get a promotion. And of course, there's the personal satisfaction of a job well done. Here's another reward you may not have considered... When you receive an Emmy, the producers let your acceptance speech go on for THREE MINUTES when everyone else is cut off after 40… -
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Guest Post by Irene Brennick
6 Sep 2010 | 10:50 amI hope you're all enjoying a lovely three-day weekend. As my brief Monday-through-Thursday vacation of last week has turned into Monday-through-Monday, I'm going to share one last guest post with you, by speaker and author Irene Brennick before I get back to work tomorrow. If you love analogies like I do, you'll appreciate the one below. A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words Great public speakers don’t just get up and talk, they inspire and motivate us to take action. If we want our audience to remember what we’ve talked about, or if we need to convey a message in a short amount of time,… -
Public Speaking Tips from my Dog Balou -- Guest post by Joey Asher
1 Sep 2010 | 8:00 amStill out of town! Enjoy this post about what a dog can teach you about public speaking! My dog Balou is a 60-pound, black-lab mix that we adopted at a PetSmart rescue day last year in Sandy Springs, Georgia. And if he could only talk and write on a flip chart, I’m sure he’d be a great public speaker. That’s because he understands how to connect with people better than most humans. It’s about connection not perfection First, Balou understands that you can do a lot wrong if you establish great rapport. Balou makes lots of mistakes. He eats the insoles out of shoes. He chewed the…
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The BBP Blog
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Get Certified in BBP in Only 3 Days this November 11, 12 & 13th
31 Aug 2010 | 2:37 pmIf you’ve been interested in getting certified in Beyond Bullet Points, here’s your chance to get a jump start and get trained in an accelerated format. If you attend both the BBP 101 and BBP Advanced courses on Nov. 11 and 12 in Los Angeles, you’re invited to attend a third day of basic certification training on Nov. 13 – at no charge! The day will focus on teaching you to teach others how to apply BBP, and you’ll end the day with an assignment to later deliver your own 1-hour training webinar on the BBP website. When you’re done, we’ll issue… -
Learn BBP in Person at Our First Public 1-Day Courses!
28 Jul 2010 | 2:29 pmAnnouncing – Our First Public BBP 1-Day Courses! Only 14 Days Left for Early Bird Pricing We hope you can join us Nov. 11 and 12th in Los Angeles for our first BBP 1-Day Courses! Click here to download the PDF brochure with course descriptions and pricing: http://www.beyondbulletpoints.com/public/BBP%20LIVE%202010%20Los%20Angeles.pdf If you sign up by Aug. 11, 2010, you can take advantage of our special early bird pricing: $200 off the standard price for a single 1-day course or $300 off both 1-day courses. Click here to register for one or both courses:… -
Share your Story: What has BBP Meant to You?
12 May 2010 | 4:36 pmSince the Beyond Bullet Points book was first published 5 years ago, the world of presentations has seen amazing changes. We’d love to find out: What has BBP meant to you? Submit your stories by 5pm Pacific Standard Time on May 14 2010 (now extended to May 21), and we’ll enter you in a drawing for a Flip UltraHD Camcorder (winner will be chosen at random and announced May 25). Share your story in one of 3 ways: Post it to the comments at the end of this blog post Email it to stacey(at)bbpmedia.com Post it on the BBP LinkedIn group here We’re looking forward to hearing… -
Interview with Nancy Duarte
4 Feb 2010 | 4:02 pmWhat makes an effective presentation? I recently interviewed Nancy Duarte, CEO and principal of Duarte Design and author of slide:ology, to find out what she thinks. You don’t have to go far to figure out Duarte is passionate about story-telling and using effective visuals to tell the story. Meryl Evans: A person is trying to create a presentation that tells a story, but struggles to make it flow. What’s a good way to turn your topic into a story that flows? Nancy Duarte: Seems to me, if you don’t have a flow, the story isn’t really quite there yet. There are many… -
Webinar: “The Backchannel – A Presenter’s Nightmare or a Dream Come True?”
14 Jan 2010 | 11:34 amJoin me at 10am Pacific Time on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2010 for a webinar sponsored by SlideRocket titled The Backchannel: A Presenter’s Nightmare or a Dream Come True? The session description is below – I hope you can join me! Register now at this link. The Backchannel: A Presenter’s Nightmare or a Dream Come True? with Cliff Atkinson Ready or not, the backchannel has arrived! Armed with laptops and smartphones, audiences are no longer sitting quietly while speakers are talking – instead they’re using Twitter and other tools to create a backchannel where they chat with one…
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The Daily Figure
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Study? Fuggedaboudit!
8 Sep 2010 | 2:13 pm“Forgetting is the friend of learning.” Nate Kornell, a psychologist at Williams College, in the New York Times. paradox, the two-faced figure. From the Greek, meaning “contrary to received wisdom.” A recent study seems to show that concentrated study in one place leads to less learning than bursts of study with intervals of unlearning. It’s the re-learning that makes the material stick, apparently. The study’s lead author, Nate Kornell, sums up the conclusion in a neat paradox. To learn, you must forget. The paradox and its Siamese-twin cousin, the… -
Mrs. Figaro Rocks the Marriage Boat!
1 Sep 2010 | 12:58 pmFigaro’s wife, Mrs. Figaro, put this author in a terrible bind. Writing a question on Ask Figaro, she clearly wanted her husband to excoriate a certain pudgy commentator for lying about a historical document. Instead, Figaro found him innocent! Can this literal marriage be figuratively saved? Dear Fig., Is a lie a figure of speech as Stephanie Mencimer implies in her piece for Rolling Stone? Love, Mrs. Fig. Dear Mrs. Fig., It’s so nice to exchange sweet nothings over a public website. In this case you refer to Glenn Beck’s claim that he “held the first inaugural… -
Heil, Glennster
30 Aug 2010 | 1:54 pm“That’s what Goebbels did. That’s what Goebbels did. The truth didn’t matter.” Glenn Beck, complaining about ABC News coverage of his Washington rally Godwin’s Law, the theory that online arguments inevitably end up using Hitler rhetorically. A form of hyperbole, the trope of exaggeration. Mike Godwin had his tongue in his cheek when he first invoked his law in 1989: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” No matter what the subject—gardening, fashion, even tea… -
Rhetorical Eye of the Storm
30 Aug 2010 | 7:35 amWe all remember it keenly: water pouring through broken levees; mothers holding their children above the waterline; people stranded on rooftops begging for help; bodies lying in the streets of a great American city. President Barack Obama in a speech about New Orleans pragmatographia (prag-ma-toe-GRAF-ia), the action sequence. A form of enargeia(en-AR-ja), the special effects of rhetoric. From the Greek, meaning “action writing.” President Bush’s inaction over Katrina spoke louder than words, proving the conservative claim that you can’t rely on government. -
Sign of the Times
30 Aug 2010 | 6:45 amFigaro gets a nod from the New York Times Sunday Magazine: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29FOB-medium-t.html
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A PowerPoint Blog
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OfficeOne Shortcut Manager 4: The Indezine Review
9 Sep 2010 | 2:58 amMicrosoft Office applications allow plenty of customization for toolbars and menus -- and finally in Office 2010, you can even customize the Ribbon tabs. However as far as customization of keyboard shortcuts is concerned, these options are limited (or non-existent) in comparison. Our review product addresses that glaring omission and plugs seamlessly right into PowerPoint -- it works on all Windows versions of PowerPoint right from versions 2000 to 2010.Read the Indezine review of OfficeOne Shortcut Manager 4.Categories: add-in, powerpoint -
miniFreeze: Conversation with Greg Passmore
9 Sep 2010 | 2:42 amGreg Passmore is a former professional musician who toured North and Latin America before transferring skills acquired in the studio and on stage to the corporate audiovisual market. After years of improvising and adapting on the job, he established Kryoco, Inc., to manufacture low cost solutions to high end problems.In this conversation, Greg talks about his new device called the miniFreeze and how it allows you to do some amazing stuff while presenting.Geetesh: What is the miniFreeze, and what is its reason for existence?Greg: The miniFreeze was created to bring the elegance and… -
Learn PowerPoint 2010: Slides and Outline Pane
8 Sep 2010 | 1:47 amContinuing with the changes in PowerPoint 2007, the new Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 interface sports Ribbon and Tabs. However, the Slides/Outline pane continues to be relatively similar in its look and feel from older PowerPoint versions. The Slides/Outline pane is normally placed on the left side of the interface and contains two tabs -- the Slides tab and the Outline tab.Read more about the Slides and Outline pane in PowerPoint 2010.Categories: powerpoint_2010, tutorials -
Brainshark for YouTube: Conversation with Andy Zimmerman
6 Sep 2010 | 10:30 pmAndy Zimmerman, is the vice president and general manager for myBrainshark – Brainshark's free site for creating, sharing and tracking multimedia presentations. He oversees myBrainshark strategy, marketing, partnerships and sales.In this conversation, Andy discusses "Brainshark for YouTube", a new capability announced today that lets myBrainshark.com users and Brainshark enterprise customers turn PowerPoint decks into YouTube videos.Geetesh: YouTube has an audience that spans millions. However, it does not provide the ease of use and simplicity that Brainshark does in creating voice-enabled… -
Indezine News
6 Sep 2010 | 10:26 pmJust released the latest issue of the Indezine newsletter -- there are tons of articles, tutorials, and interviews available -- and information on new PowerPoint templates too.Read Indezine News here.Categories: ezine, powerpoint
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Ethos3 - A Presentation Design Agency
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Presentation God Available for Pre-Orders
2 Sep 2010 | 12:30 pmHow to Be a Presentation God is now available for pre-order on Amazon. Pre-order your copy today! Also, if you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet – PresentationGod.com is now up and running! It is still a bit basic, but at least it is live. Share this on del.icio.us Digg this! Share this on Reddit Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon Share this on Facebook Tweet This! Subscribe to the comments for this post? -
A Confession About Me
12 Aug 2010 | 9:23 amHere is my confession: I love creating web sites. The problem: none of them have worked for me. If you have followed me for quite some time, you have probably noticed that I have created sites here, there, and everywhere. I know, I know. I hardly know where I live online as well. It has all been in my attempt to find the right platform, the right voice, the right feel for my personal brand. Most of these sites were built on Wordpress – a platform I truly love. In fact, this web site lives on Wordpress. However, Wordpress hasn’t been the right fit for me personally. Why? -
Stuff Presenters Like eBook
27 Jul 2010 | 6:44 amI want to introduce you to Stuff Presenters Like: The Top 50 Good, Bad & Lame Stuff Presenters Do Everyday! It is a compilation of all the best presentation terms and definitions I have created over the last year and a half. What will you find in this eBook? 37 pages of fun presentation terms and definitions Valuable presentation lessons and takeaways Insightful thoughts and observations about presenters and presentations Stuff Presenters Like not only provides entertaining and clever presentation insights but also practical advice for readers that will empower them immediately. Download… -
Book Cover for Presentation God
21 Jul 2010 | 12:58 pmHere is a sneak peek of my book cover (just received it this morning from Wiley). Personally, I love it! I am taking the hero/villain angle and fleshing the story out online in the weeks/months ahead. Stay tuned regarding that item. With that said, you should notice the evil “Bulletron” in the background. Enjoy! Share this on del.icio.us Digg this! Share this on Reddit Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon Share this on Facebook Tweet This! Subscribe to the comments for this post? -
How to Be a Presentation God
13 Jul 2010 | 2:24 pmIf you have been following my tweets (@scottschwertly) you may have heard that I am writing a book. It’s called How to Be a Presentation God: Build, Design, and Deliver Presentations that Dominate! and it reveals the secrets for how to build, design, and deliver a fire-breathing, wing-flapping, roar-bellowing behemoth of a presentation. This has been a dream of mine for quite some time, and I am very excited! After many book proposals and failed attempts, a publisher has finally given me a chance – actually, one of the largest publishers in the world has given me this fantastic…
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Business Innovation Speaker and Consultant Stephen Shapiro
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Is Your Organization Playing with a Full Deck?
3 Sep 2010 | 11:45 amLook at any group of people who effortlessly work well together. Odds are the individuals share a lot in common with each other. They might have similar backgrounds, expertise, interests, or personalities. This is natural. Contrary to conventional wisdom, opposites do not attract. We find it easier to work with people who are like us. [...] -
Adult Games vs Kid Games
30 Aug 2010 | 9:05 amIn my blog post, “How Can Goals Enhance Creativity” I said… “…As long as everyone in the organization believes they are playing a game which is designed to get them energized today, and it is not specifically about hitting the target, I can assure you that people will be more motivated.” Games can be a [...] -
One Simple Action Can Change Your Life and Your Business
23 Aug 2010 | 1:08 pmRecently, a number of people have asked me how I became an author and professional speaker. I reflected upon it and realized that it all started with one simple action. And maybe, to make major change happen, that’s all you need: one small move. The year was 1993. I was a relatively junior person at [...] -
Pictures of My Baby, Delivered Today
20 Aug 2010 | 3:34 pmNo, I did not give birth to a boy or a girl. I gave birth to a book. I’ll be handing out cigars later. But in the meantime, I wanted to share the photos of my new baby. Here is the first copy of the Personality Poker book, hot off the press. Previous photos were [...] -
Looking for Reviewers of the Personality Poker Book
19 Aug 2010 | 2:18 pmToday marks 10 weeks before the release of the Personality Poker book. And just a few hours ago I received 100 copies of the “galleys” (the uncorrected paperback proofs). Over the next few weeks, we will be compiling a list of those in the media, including bloggers, who we think would be interested in receiving [...]
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The Extreme Presentation(tm) Method
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McKinsey interview
3 Sep 2010 | 11:39 amI was recently interviewed by McKinsey & Company, and the interview is posted on their internal "Communicate" website. It's only accessible to current McKinsey staff (who can click here), so I've agreed to post it on my blog too. I have also added "translations" of McKinsey jargon in [square] brackets. It's a good synthesis of some of the core principles I have articulated in my books and on this blog. In addition to the interview, McKinsey consultants are being given copies of my forthcoming book, The Presentation: A Story About… -
A Tour Through the Visualization Zoo
30 Aug 2010 | 7:33 amCheck this out:A Tour Through the Visualization Zoo -
Coming Soon—The Presentation: A Story About Communicating Successfully, With Very Few Slides
25 Aug 2010 | 5:06 amMy second book, The Presentation: A Story About Communicating Successfully, with Very Few Slides, will be coming out in a couple of weeks. Subscribers to the Extreme Presentation Breaking News email list will receive a free copy of the ebook version of The Presentation—the complete ebook, not just a teaser chapter or two. If you aren't on the Breaking News email list, you can sign up nowThe Presentation is an exercise in using storytelling for effective communication. It teaches the principles of the Extreme Presentation method, which… -
Layouts that Pass the Squint Test: a New Home
12 Aug 2010 | 9:55 amSome of you are familiar with the "36 layouts that pass the squint test." These are PowerPoint layouts that I designed myself to simplify the creation of slides that pass the squint test. To access these slides, until now you had to download the entire file, and delete what you didn't want.I am pleased to announce that the Powerframeworks site is now hosting the layouts in a way that allows you to download, individually, just the ones you want. You can find them here:http://www.powerframeworks.com/squint-test On the Powerframeworks site you will find several other… -
How to tell a story in your presentation - movie extract
9 Aug 2010 | 12:33 pmRon Galloway recently released his documentary film Rethinking PowerPoint. The documentary is a series of interviews with presentation experts, including Nancy Duarte, Nigel Holmes, Dan Roam, Stephen Kosslyn, Seth Godin, and me. Ron posted a few clips from the documentary on his website, including one of mine, where I'm talking about the S.Co.R.E. method for organizing your presentation into the form of a story. Here it is: For more information on the S.Co.R.E. method, see step six in the Extreme Presentation method and my book Advanced Presentations by Design.
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Great Public Speaking
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Public Speaking: Bombproofing
8 Sep 2010 | 6:31 amAre you afraid of bombing when you get up in front of a group? You don't haveto be. With proper material selection, a few prepared comments in case ofunexpected problems, and attention to time, worries about bombing can bevirtually eliminated. Also remember one key point that Mike McKinley, pastpresident of the National Speakers Association, told me: "The audience doesn'tknow your script. If you make a minor mistake, so what. Just keep on talking."When you want to get a message across using humor, there is one overridingprinciple that will give you the greatest chance of success along with… -
Presentation Skills: May I Help You?
7 Sep 2010 | 6:47 amMany audience members would love to get a piece of the limelight by helpingthe presenter. Take advantage of this fact by giving out jobs. You could have anaudience member writing on the flipchart for you. You could have another onehandling cue cards or timing the presentation.This is also a good method to handle audience members who you fear might be boisterous enough to be disruptive. If you give them something to do, you will have better control overthem and you will be able to give them the attention that they want.Try to make sure potentially troublesome audience members are seated… -
Public Speaking: The Length of the Program
1 Sep 2010 | 1:23 pmThe most important consideration in determining how long a technical seminaror workshop should be is the time required to cover the subject in sufficientdetail. Some subjects require two or three days to tackle the complexities of atopic, while that amount of time would be superfluous in others. The burdensplaced on the presenter(s) should also be considered. In a single-day program,chances are that one individual can handle the entire presentation. If it is longer,either more presenters will be necessary or more participant activity must bescheduled to ease the strain on the presenter.In the… -
Public Speaking: Involving Your Participants
30 Aug 2010 | 8:11 amInteracting with your participants generally increases their learning, holds theirattention, helps you make your points, and possibly provides for newinformation to be shared. Technical presentations hold some different challengesbecause most of the participants will be writing and taking notes throughout theprogram. Interactive processes must enhance the learning process and not justprovide a break or entertainment. There are lots of proven techniques, but theintroduction seems to work best of all and will, as a general rule, get most if notall of the attendees to participate:Attendees at a… -
Public Speaking: Enthusiasm
27 Aug 2010 | 6:33 amI was doing some work for a government agency where I was hired to critiqueand improve the sales presentations of the program staff. It was an earlymorning program full of typical mistakes by typical untrained presenters. Theaudience was nearly asleep from the boring presentations and sugar crash theywere suffering after eating pastries when they got there.I had been watching one particular presenter prior to his segment and I wasthinking to myself, "I'm going to have to really tear this guy up on hisevaluations." He was poorly groomed, including big dandruff flakes on hispoorly fitting…
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Max Atkinson's Blog
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20th 'LibDem' blog in the 2010 Total Politics poll
6 Sep 2010 | 12:25 pmI'd like to thank everyone whose votes took this blog into the top 20 LibDem blogs in the 2010 Total Politics poll - 36 places higher than its first appearance in 2009. As I said then, 'I can only assume that the votes came from people old enough to remember the days when I was invoved as speech advisor/writer/coach to former LibDem leader Paddy Ashdown - and who think (incorrectly) that I carried on in a similar capacity with all the leaders since then' ... (continued HERE)Last year, I was so surprised to see it appear as a 'LibDem' blog at all that I began to worry whether I'd gone astray… -
Sky News Labour leadership debate: how much can you say in 20 seconds?
5 Sep 2010 | 12:10 pmRegular readers will know that, if I were a Labour Party member and/or entitled to vote in the leadership election, I would not be campaigning for Ed Miliband.But I have gone on record to rate him as the most effective public speaker of the five candidates. He confirmed this again in his summing up at the end of today's Sky News debate (above). You really would have thought that politicians at this level of seniority would not only know exactly how much they could say in the allotted 2o seconds, but would also be well enough prepared to say it before being interrupted by the chair (however… -
How many corporate birds can you kill with one PowerPoint presentation?
2 Sep 2010 | 3:48 amIt's just over a year since the BBC website magazine invited me to write a short piece on The Problem with PowerP0int to mark the 25th anniversary of its invention.It didn't include some of the points made in my book Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy aboutwhy the slide-dependent presentation has become so firmly established as the 'industry-standard model' in so many companies and organisations - even though there's so much about it that turns audiences off.Reasons why it became entrenched included the following (pp. 59-60):• Ease and convenienceOne of the great attractions of the… -
Ed Miliband: no return to the 'tyranny of New Labour' or the 'tyranny of Old Labour'
1 Sep 2010 | 3:44 amOf interest to anoraks and anyone with a vote, as from today, in the Labour Party leadership election, The Guardian website has an instructive set of videos in which Polly Toynbee interviews each of the candidates.Given that Lord Mandelson and I seem to share similar reservations about Ed Miliband (HERE and HERE), I took the trouble to watch the whole of his interview with Ms Toynbee.Overall, my general impression was that he comes across as rather glib, verging in places on incoherence. And I still can't help wondering whether he has any idea at all about why Labour spent 18 years in the… -
Mandelson v. E. Miliband - and does the noble lord read (& borrow from) my blog?
31 Aug 2010 | 1:28 amJust over a month ago, I strayed from the usual 'non-aligned' focus of this blog to speculate on where one of the Labour leadership candidates, Ed Miliband, seemed to be positioning himself in the contest: 'Can Labour afford to back the Ed Milibandwagon?'I rather wished I hadn't, as it was picked up by the Labour List website - from where the link implied that I was suggesting that Miliband the Younger is a dangerous Trot, rather than the 'lefter than thou' candidate (at least among the boys in the race). This prompted howls of anger from some of his supporters, one of whom suggested that I…
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Professionally Speaking
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10 Tips for Speaking on a Panel
27 Aug 2010 | 1:11 pmIn a recent posting 10 Tips on Moderating a Panel Discussion I listed suggestions for anyone who has been appointed a panel moderator. In this companion piece, I’ll list tips for those of you who’ve been invited to speak on a panel. Simple math indicates there’s a greater chance you’ll be asked to be on [...] -
Interview: Diane Mariant – Living with a Bipolar partner
21 Aug 2010 | 4:08 pmDiane gives talks about living with bipolar disorder. Her husband, David (profiled in this series back in March) had to overcome his own struggles with bipolar. It’s estimated that 1 in 50 people in the USA have this disorder. It is also estimated that 20% of people with bipolar disorder will commit suicide either [...] -
Interview: Guy Kawasaki – Enchanting Speaker
20 Aug 2010 | 7:08 amGuy Kawasaki is a Silicon Valley legend. The erstwhile Apple software evangelist, now a successful VC, has written a string of best sellers from the 1990 The MacIntosh Way to the 2009 The Art of the Start. He’s currently working on a new book Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions. On [...] -
Book Review: Boring to Bravo, by Kristin Arnold
4 Aug 2010 | 6:13 pm -
10 Tips on Moderating a Panel Discussion
2 Aug 2010 | 7:17 amHave you noticed? Panel discussions are replacing keynotes and solo break-out sessions by experts at conferences. Rather than a rock-star presenter, who might disappoint, meeting planners are choosing to put a panel onstage and hear from multiple points of view. It’s a refreshingly democratic approach to conference content – safer than having all the eggs [...]
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Sticky Slides
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Watch out with charged images
9 Sep 2010 | 2:20 amOur collective memory has some very powerful images. Photo editing software enables us to manipulate them and use them to communicate a message. "Learn to anticipate" says the ad below with a set of shortened WTC towers and planes happily flying over it. Maybe the ad was meant to be funny. Maybe its intention was to shock people and trigger a discussion of a controversial subject (What Benetton tried to do in the 1990s). A "fail" on both accounts. Be careful with charged visual concepts. Via Ads of the World. -
Making the audience feel small
7 Sep 2010 | 7:30 pmYou probably have noticed as well that it is impossible to capture a wide panorama with a camera. "Look at this sunset over the sea! Where is my camera?!". The resulting image is often boring and lacks depth, the exact reason why so many stock images of panoramas fail to excite. The human brain is not restricted by a small 2D screen. It senses distance/3D by blending the slightly different images from both eyes in to one. Eyes never sit still, they constantly move. We are standing at the inside of a gigantic sphere. Eyes compare the size of objects, to assess dimensions. Handing out 3D… -
All caps and sentence caps are harder to read
6 Sep 2010 | 7:30 pmA very interesting analysis of why it is harder to read all caps text on UXMovement. All caps reduces the number of differentiators between words, and hence should only be used in short bites such as titles, logos or lables. I have been ranting about title caps as well before. OK, sometimes I contradict myself, but all caps worked in this presentation with very few, short sentences. -
Chart concept - umbrella
5 Sep 2010 | 7:30 pmThe umbrella protecting you against falling misfortune is powerful visual concept, albeit maybe even a bit cliche (earlier post in defense of cliches). This Red Cross ad uses it very well. Bigger image here. (Via Frederik Samuel's blog) -
Steal this presentation
3 Sep 2010 | 12:58 amThe presentation below is packed with useful and specific suggestions to make you a better presentation designer. By Jesse Desjardins. STEAL THIS PRESENTATION! View more presentations from @JESSEDEE.
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Inter-Activ Presenting and Influencing
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An elevator pitch with a difference!
1 Sep 2010 | 1:12 amI attend quite a few networking groups and as a result I hear a lot of elevator pitches. Some are hot and some are not but recently I heard one which really grabbed my attention. Picture the situation, It’s 8:45 in the morning and 20 keen networkers are seated at a horseshoe of tables in near Romsey in The Potters Heron Hotel in Romsey Hampshire having just had a delicious full English breakfast At one end our speaker rises, An impassioned cry erupts from his lips quoting the immortal lines “Romeo, Romeo, where for art thou Romeo?” As we sit… -
Even presentations by accountants can be fun
17 Aug 2010 | 11:05 amI heard a great presentation this morning in Southampton. I was attending the 4N Networking group and had the pleasure of hearing local accountant David Anderson give a ten minute insight slot on how to use tour financial reports to improve your business. So what was it that made Davids talk stand out? He had a great opening : “How would you like to make an extra £2000 this year?” - He kept his content simple: He focused in on 4 key ratios that help to asses business health His delivery was engaging: Despite using a script, he made excellent eye contact with us all, used… -
Positivity and presentation confidence
16 Aug 2010 | 7:54 amA recent comment to one of my earlier posts by Stephen Hendren prompted me to review some of the research on positivity and performance. Thanks to his post, I found a great video interview by Positivity researcher Barbara Fredrickson. I thought you might like it so I have included it in this post. Dr Fredrickson’s key message is that there is a proven 3:1 “positivity ratio” needed to generate the positive emotions required to enhance self esteem and personal performance. Positivity and presentation confidence is a post from: Inter-Activ Presenting and Influencing -
If you have to use an auto cue or teleprompter
12 Aug 2010 | 11:38 pmThe other day I went into the studio to record some short video clips for my website. As part of the process I wrote three scripts and emailed them to the videographer so that they were loaded onto an auto-cue ready for the shoot. I don’t know about you but, despite having given thousands of speeches and presentations, I have never used an auto-cue before and I was a bit nervous. In front of the camera there was a sloping glass screen upon which my words magically appeared, scrolling up the page as I spoke. To be honest I had some reservations about using the auto cue. I feared that it… -
How to be funny in a speech or presentation
10 Aug 2010 | 3:00 amIn September, my local Toastmasters club is running it’s annual humorous speech contest and I am planning to enter. The problem is I find writing humorous speeches a real challenge. I can often weave a bit of humour into a serious speech without too much difficulty but for some reason, writing a deliberately humorous speech seems much harder. Last year I entered the competition for the first time and wasn’t very successful. I basically researched a load of numerous stories via the web and attempted to string them together into a speech. Whilst I did get a few laughs, the whole…
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MANIACTIVE
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Holy Mackerel! What’s the Best Speaker Gift Ever?
13 Aug 2010 | 8:24 amRecently, I received a can of mackerel as a gift. It wasn’t a speaker gift. It was, however, an unusual gift. It was also an unusually thoughtful gift. How so? A week earlier, I told an off-topic story. I heard an interview on NPR that fish at the bottom of the food chain — sardines, anchovies, herring, mackerel — are nutritious and better environmental choices than salmon and tuna. However, most Americans haven’t developed a taste for these “lower food chain” fish. I mentioned that the NPR interview gave me the inspiration to try to develop a palate for… -
How can you help the socially tone-deaf?
22 Jul 2010 | 10:46 amI’m not a sports fan. There! I’ve said it! However, I know that appreciating sports is a big part of international culture. To this extent, I am mildly conversant in the language of sports. While I don’t enter into sports-related conversations with any depth or passion, I can listen. I can value the enthusiasm of those who do. I can ask questions, and often receive lengthy and fervent responses from people who genuinely love their sport! Photo credit: Axel Bührmann I don’t try to fake a sports-passion I don’t feel. But there’s one feeling I don’t have to fake — I… -
Top 3 Ways Presenters Can Make Sex Boring
7 Jul 2010 | 7:19 amLet’s imagine that you’re asked to give a presentation about sex. Really! Your audience of adult coworkers are eagerly anticipating the fascinating insights you’re going to share with them in your one-hour presentation. I’m seriously asking you to imagine this. Go ahead. Giggle, blush, scoff — but ask yourself: How might you prepare? What might you say? How will you handle Q &A? What props will you use? As exciting as the topic is — and as riveted as you know your audience will be to hear you talk — there are three pretty typical ways a business presenter can… -
Professorial PowerPoint Humor
23 Jun 2010 | 3:05 pmI’ve only been teaching at the college level for a few terms. One of the chief complaints I hear from students about PowerPoint lectures (from other instructors!) is the unbearable boredom when a professor uses the pre-packaged presentations included with the course textbook. These CDs contain mostly bullet-point outlines of the entire book. Yes, you read that right. Bullet-point outlines of an entire textbook. Professors read this mess for an hour or two. In front of their classes! Unbelievable! With all we know about learning and cognitive function, you’d think that professors… -
What is the most interesting part of your presentation?
24 May 2010 | 1:33 pmLet’s say you’ve been asked to stand & deliver a one-hour presentation to a large business audience. So you craft a presentation. You rehearse. At this point, it’s time to deploy an old speechwriter’s tip. Ask yourself: “What is the single most interesting part of my presentation?” Answer honestly. Your response should give you some profound insight. I like asking this “single most interesting” question. It gives me amazing ideas for re-crafting, editing, or restructuring a speech or presentation. When I ask the question and get a shrug,…
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Humor Power
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Observational Humor — Case Study #60
7 Sep 2010 | 6:12 amHere is another Observational Humor Monologue. THE SET-UP (What was said and what happened during the meeting before the monologue was delivered.) 1. A speaker told a story of locking her keys in the car. She had recently made a new friend, Beverly, at a Toastmasters meeting. She rode her bicycle to Beverly’s house to get help with her lock-out situation. 2. The word of the day was PHLEGMATIC, meaning sluggish, calm, un-flappable, or causing phlegm. 3. The emcee was dressed in the same colored suit as Frank. He introduced Frank as “my brother…from another… -
Cartoon Caption Contest
1 Sep 2010 | 3:00 pmIt’s time for our Cartoon Caption Contest for the month of September. We feature the art of professional cartoonist Dan Rosandich. New Cartoon Caption Contests are announced at the start of the month (alternating months). New Joke Contests are announced at the start of the month (alternating months). The next Joke Contest is October 1, 2010. Here is the cartoon: Write as many captions as you can. Then select your best three captions and submit them. You can submit more than three lines, the extra lines will be eligible for honorable mention. Only your first three lines will… -
Analysis of Jokes
24 Aug 2010 | 8:37 amContest Observations — The Perfect Pet What one person finds funny is not the same as the next person. My favorite line was not picked as a top-three line by the judges. That doesn’t mean anyone is right or wrong. That’s just the way it is. Humor is subjective. There is more than one angle to a joke. Just as there are a variety of ways to approach creating a joke…there are just as many ways to receive and “get” a joke. Not everyone does it the same way. Let’s look at some of the connections and triggers that helped people write lines for… -
Contest Results — The Perfect Pet
20 Aug 2010 | 3:07 amHere are the results from our August contest — The Perfect Pet. The top three entries were selected by a panel of six judges (speakers and improv players). New Joke Contests are announced on the first of the month (alternating months). New Cartoon Caption Contests are announced on the first of the month (alternating months). The next caption contest is September 1, 2010. Watch for an analysis of this contest’s entries to be posted on August 24, 2010. Here are this month’s top lines: ** FIRST PLACE ** Stand-up comedian: Hamster Dr. Jayita Deodhar, Mumbai,… -
Canned Laughter
16 Aug 2010 | 9:26 amHere’s an interesting article on Canned Laughter by Ben Glenn II, Television Historian. It was published in the Paris Review Daily and brought to my attention by Loren Ekroth, Dr Conversation.
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The PowerPoint® Blog
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Drugs for Presenters!
8 Sep 2010 | 4:00 amAbsolutely serious - this is an add that was in the Sunday paper. "One out of every three people rate public speaking anxiety as their number one fear... Bravina will prepare you to execute your next presentation." I might need to see the research before recommending this one... - Troy @ TLCOriginal post blogged on b2evolution. -
Clear Formatting Fast (With Keyboard Command!)
3 Sep 2010 | 4:00 amQ - What is the fastest way to clear the formatting to text, shape or picture? A - Select and use keyboard Here is my example. I have formatted the company name with a gradient fill and reflection. Now I want to go back to just the original text (bottom). To get there I just select the text and click the CTRL + SPACEBAR. Done. - Troy @ TLCOriginal post blogged on b2evolution. -
"Where Did I Save That Presentation?"
1 Sep 2010 | 4:00 am"Where did I save that presentation?" is something I say or hear daily. In PPT 2010 there is a great addition to the 'Recent Documents' feature. Go to FILE >> RECENT >> RECENT PLACES The right column shows the folder location of the past 20 saved presentations. Click any of the locations and a OPEN dialog lets you pick any presentation in that folder. - Troy @ TLCOriginal post blogged on b2evolution. -
Comping The Theme In PPT
30 Aug 2010 | 4:00 amWe handle the 'total package' for lots of campaigns, which includes the website, brochures, flyers, postcards, signage, PowerPoint template and presentations, name badges, web banners/ads and any element that needs to be designed to assure a consistent visual theme. But each of these projects begins with developing the theme graphic. For this specific project I was given the general thought of the program (the official title was still be determined). This was a medical speaking series on the topic of "evaluating the traditional/accepted/old therapies and looking toward the future and… -
Why Does My Add-in Not Install With 64-bit Office?
28 Aug 2010 | 4:00 amFollowing the previous post, this is another confusing issue I am hearing a lot. Here is the scenario: - Super cool new 64-bit operating system computer - Install the latest and greatest MS Office 64-bit - Attempt to install favorite PowerPoint add-ins and nothing works.... Add-ins need to be written/coded to work specifically with the 64-bit version of PowerPoint. At this moment there are very few add-ins that have 64-bit versions. So, if you are running the 64-bit version of PowerPoint, do not plan on using any add-ins. This of course will change over time as the add-in developers have…
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Pivotal Public Speaking
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Impact and Income Beyond the Stage: Leverage Your Speaking Career into an Expert Empire
9 Sep 2010 | 1:49 amwith Josh Shipp What can a 29-year-old who specializes in speaking to teens teach corporate speakers and consultants? How about how to create an empire grossing over $1.5 million a year, a six-figure book deal, television show, and multi-million dollar product deal. He’ll share what he’s learned and how you can adapt it to your business. Paid speaking engagements are only the beginning of your impact and income. Learn from Inc. magazine award-winning entrepreneur Josh Shipp how he leveraged his red-hot speaking career into an empire. You will learn: • A step-by-step formula for getting… -
Blast Off to Big Results: Openings Set the Tone
7 Sep 2010 | 5:43 pmWhen you stand up to speak, you have no guarantees that your audience will listen intently to your every word. We all know that behind those “I’m-all-ears” looks, your listeners’ minds can wander. Think about how much your mind has wandered during other people’s presentations! You can’t gain support, sell ideas, or push a new initiative if people aren’t listening. So, it’s your job to shatter that fixed facade, grab your listeners’ attention, and hold on tight. You have to earn their attention right from the beginning of your talk. -
Thought for the Day
4 Sep 2010 | 8:47 pm“Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit.” Bern William -
Today’s read – was (almost) the Bible of PowerPoint
4 Sep 2010 | 6:55 pmBeyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft PowerPoint to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate and Inspire C. Atkinson Atkinson shares his innovative three-step system for increasing the impact of your communications with Microsoft PowerPoint. He guides you, step by step, as you discover how to combine the tenets of classic storytelling with the power of the projected media to create a rich, engaging experience. He walks you through his easy-to-use templates, plus 50 advanced tips, to help build your confidence and effectiveness—and quickly bring your ideas to life! FOCUS Learn… -
Public speaking and success for your business
3 Sep 2010 | 3:37 pmGive a speech. Win a client. As simple—or even scary—as that formula sounds, a host of entrepreneurs have found that conquering public speaking can be the route to more contacts and customers. Impressing people with your expertise at a conference, in a classroom or over the radio can sometimes win more business than making sales calls or manning a booth at a trade show. Not to mention that the most successful speakers can take home thousands of dollars in fees for an appearance. Read on for motivation and some very practical secrets to success. The Gift of the Gab
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Angela DeFinis Blog; Best Public Speaking Blogs; DeFinis Communications Blog; Top Blogs;
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In Praise of Proverbs
31 Aug 2010 | 8:00 amI spent this weekend at the Inn on the Harbor in the charming seacoast village of Stonington, Maine, where I have stayed many times before. Every summer, the innkeeper revises the guest book and adds what she calls a “zany” page that returning guests like me look forward to reading. This year was one of the best for “zany” reading. And yes, believe it or not, even here I found timeless principles that pertain to the art of public speaking! The Zany Page of Revised Proverbs In the guest book was the story of a first grade teacher who had 26 students in her class. She presented each… -
When it Comes to Public Speaking, Less is More
26 Aug 2010 | 9:16 amWe’ve all heard it before: “Less is more.” It’s what the TV makeover professional tells the woman who’s stuck on busy, patterned clothes and too much jewelry. It’s what makes fine-dining portions feel so special. And in terms of presentations, the same concepts are true: Less has greater impact, and small portions make the audience feel special. But here’s the kicker: Less is more work, too. As Mark Twain said, “If I had more time, I would have written less.” In public speaking, the “less is more” concept means that what you do present is carefully selected for the… -
The Big Spill: Who’s the Enemy?
8 Jun 2010 | 9:33 amI had a “business as usual” blog ready to post today, but I can’t in good conscience pretend that business is usual right now. Today is day 50 of the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history. As I write this, 50,932,978 gallons and counting of crude oil are pouring into the Gulf of Mexico. The toxic substance is fouling the ocean, desecrating the gorgeous coastal beeches, destroying wildlife habitat and killing countless birds and sea life. Eleven men have lost their lives and thousands more will be sickened from toxic exposure. Yet, I listened with hope yesterday morning as Coast… -
American Idol: The Impact of Stage Presence
1 Jun 2010 | 9:03 amI watched with surprise as Lee Dewyze became the latest American Idol last Wednesday night. Clearly, he has a bigger fan base than Crystal Bowersox. I like Lee. He’s cute and has a decent voice, and at times he worked hard to show us energy and passion. But as a presentation skills coach, I’m always looking for more from those in the spotlight, especially when it comes down to the finish line with so much at stake. So even though Lee was good, he was missing one key performance element, namely stage presence. In contrast, it’s evident that Crystal Bowersox has plenty. She has more… -
A Public Speaking Lesson from NASCAR
15 Apr 2010 | 7:59 amDoes your speech have a memorable close? Recently, I did a half-day presentation skills training program for a corporate group of one hundred people. I asked three volunteers to prepare short talks ahead of time so they and the group could have a “before” and “after” experience of our Line by Line Coaching™ process. One presenter gave a talk on NASCAR. An enthusiastic NASCAR fan, she prepared and delivered a lively speech. She told great stories, used good delivery skills and created a PowerPoint presentation filled with colorful images and videos of NASCAR celebrities and…
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Business Presentations
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Who Let the Dogs Out?
7 Sep 2010 | 6:11 pmThere was a popular song years ago that went " Who let the dogs out?" And that's a question that's apropos this week in the media. The answer is President Obama let the dogs out in his recent speech in Milwaukee. Alluding to his opponents he said, 'They're talking about me like a dog." What does this tell us? Language reflects thought. While some studies state that words are only 7 per cent of the message, words are powerful. They give us insight into what the speaker believes and feels. In this case, Obama is saying he feels like a victim. The key is the wording "They're talking about ME". -
Speaking at UMBC
24 Aug 2010 | 7:12 amThe University of Maryland Baltimore County invited me to give a keynote and workshop on How to Give a Knockout Presentation.Doctoral students, many of whom are underrepresented in STEM (Science, Technology,Engineering, and Mathematics), attended the PROMISE Summer Success Institute. I was honored to be invited to speak. The students were eager to learn and highly participative. Social media takes speaking to a new level. There was live tweeting during the panel and my keynote. It takes real confidence to keep speaking while the audience is twittering away. It was fun to read the comments. By… -
Got to Be Gook Lookin' Cause It's So Hard to See...
19 Aug 2010 | 8:14 amRemember the John Lennon lyrics, "Got to be good lookin' cause it's so hard to see?"Looks are important for both men and women. Yes, women are unfairly judged and held to a higher standard. Female candidates are scrutinized for every new hairstyle which is not the case for male politicians. That being said, I tell my clients and audiences to honor the power of the visual. First impressions are visual and almost instantaneous. We make decisions about leadership, trustworthiness, success level, and competence based on how others appear visually. Your stage presence doesn't depend on having a… -
How is a Magazine Ad Like Public Speaking?
16 Aug 2010 | 4:47 amI was on the ferry this morning reading the paper and having my green tea when I was distracted by the woman sitting next to me. She was aggressively ripping out pages from a magazine. I looked at the pile of pages next to her to see if there was any pattern to her choices. They seemed random- a page of text, a good looking male model. Curiosity finally got a hold of me as I leaned over and asked, "Are you creating a vision board?" She paused for a moment as if trying to process what I had just said. "No, " she explained, "I'm pulling out the ads. It makes it easier to read." She went on to… -
What Does a Toll Booth Have to Do with Public Speaking?
9 Aug 2010 | 8:32 amOn Friday I was driving home from a coaching assignment in New Jersey. I was on the Garden State Parkway which has a number of toll booths. At the second toll booth, I extended my hand and gave the toll collector a dollar. She waived me on. I remained there not understanding. She said, "The person before you prepaid your toll." I was surprised. It was so unexpected that I couldn't process it at first. Why me? I tried to figure out through the Law of Attraction what was different this particular day that I had attracted such positive energy. All I knew is that I felt good. I was flying high.
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Workshops with Jef Menguin
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Awaken the Entrepreneur Within for NCBA cubao students
8 Sep 2010 | 10:29 amOn September 8, I delivered my first talk delivered before student leaders. This is also my first for my alma mater. On the 17th, they will expect me to deliver a talk on transformational leadership. I will be speaking before 4 more schools this September. I hope to inspire more students and help them discover the entrepreneurs, the heroes, within them. God bless us all. jef menguinhttp://jefmenguin.com See more progress on: Speak more often to student leaders Filed under: 43 things -
Valentine’s Day in September
8 Sep 2010 | 10:19 amEstelle Osorio was great in her first TM of the evening role. Louie Banta guided as into a very solid and substantive evaluation. There were nine guests, and best evaluators in the club were all present. This is one of the best nights of TOPS TOASTMASTERS. As president of the club, I intend to make every meeting a better toastmasters experience. Our next meeting will be on September 22. Between today and the next, I will be sharing with you some ideas on how we can further improve the experience of our members. Our best marketing strategy should be the sweet and delightful experience of… -
The Core of Transformation
6 Sep 2010 | 4:42 pmIt now becomes even more clear to me. My aim is not to be an inspirational speaker. I believe that every nation needs its own inspirational speaker. I am here to serve the Filipinos. So, what makes Jef Menguin an inspirational speaker for the Filipinos. My DREAM is the Filipino Dream; to build a nation of world class people through inspiration, education, and transformation. My VISION is to create the Gawad Kalinga of inspirational speaking and transformative leadership. My PURPOSE is to raise our self-esteem as individuals and kindle our love of country us a nation, to awaken the… -
Transforming the Filipino Dream
6 Sep 2010 | 4:14 pmI am rethinking my business. My target is no longer the top 500 companies in the Philippines or in Asia. My mission really is to transform Filipinos into world class people. I realized that what gives me daily happiness is not that of consulting the big business which is oftentimes soulless and heartless. My happiness springs from inspiring, training, and mentoring the ordinary and small people working both in small and in big business. Thank you Mr Michael Gerber for awakening the entrepreneur, the hero within me. jef menguininspirational speaker See more progress on: daily happiness Filed… -
Letters to Young Leaders and Others
5 Aug 2010 | 5:57 amOn August 6, I will be speaking before 500 student leaders of Lyceum of the Philippines- Batangas on the subject of Transformational Leadership. I realized that before the end of the month, I will be speaking to more than 2000 student leaders. Yes, these are the officers of campus clubs. The other day, I started writing Letters to Young Leaders. The first of these letters will be published on Monday. I write long letters so I will be providing my audience a printable copy of each letter. I encourage you to read these letters and share it to everyone. You can share it to your employees too.
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Breaking Murphy's Law» – Breaking Murphy's Law
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The Weekly Might Have Missed List (09/05/10)
5 Sep 2010 | 8:28 pmEllen Finkelstein — Outstanding Presentations Workshop Learn from the Top Presentation Experts in the World! Free 8-week webinar series! Would you like to ask questions and get answers from top presentation, PowerPoint, and speaking experts? Join my new Outstanding Presentations Workshop webinars, for free! Learn how to eliminate Death by PowerPoint and make your presentations come to life as you listen to guest experts share their best techniques and answer your questions! Phil Presents — Presentation Pitfalls #7: Slide synch (or lack of) While the speaker was fiddling with his… -
Heart to heart…
3 Sep 2010 | 8:45 pmPrinciple #9 states that “Everyone knows that it’s essential to rehearse, but not everyone knows how to rehearse what’s essential.” Is rehearsing the physiological reactions to presenter’s stress essential? From the Core Daily blog: No matter how hard you try mentally, it’s difficult to simulate a heightened nervous condition. “It’s not enough to say, ‘Okay, there are two guys on base,’” Afremow says. “You need to get your heartrate up. I challenge them to do some intense cardio for a minute. You recreate that feeling of flight/fight and then practice. That… -
Four Ways Presentation Mishaps Are Like Zombies…
29 Aug 2010 | 8:21 pmor “Lesson Learned by Watching Shaun of the Dead.” 1) Until the moment they suddenly become mindless, snarling, death-dealing horrors, a zombie (like whatever it was that caused your current presentation mishap) often appears about as threatening as your Mom. A projector with a burned out lamp looks like any other projector. A virus laden thumb drive looks just like a normal, perfectly healthy thumb drive. 2) If you allow yourself to slip into panic mode, the zombie/mishap will either eat you brains or infect you and turn you into a mindless, snarling, death-dealing horror. Stay… -
Even the Gecko has technical difficulties
1 Jul 2010 | 9:19 pmTech rule #1: Keep the boss away from the buttons… Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Sharing: del.icio.us Twitter Categories: Problems with Equipment, Problems with Light, Problems with People, Problems with Sound, Problems with Staging, Problems with Venue Tags: boss, buttons, Gecko, Geico, technical difficulties -
Promiscuous Sticks
28 Jun 2010 | 7:01 pm©iStockphoto.com/belknap Last weekend, veteran AV pro Rick Pillars, a frequent contributor to BML and owner of It’s a Rap Productions, started a Facebook post with these dreadful words: “So, a bad thing happened yesterday. I plugged my USB drive into the show computer.” I asked Rick if I could use the brief but instructive story he related. He was kind enough to send me this greatly expand version so I could share it with you here: Recently I was on showsite as a Video Engineer/Graphics Operator. I put my thumbdrive in what I was going to use as the primary graphics source so…
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TEDTalks (video)
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Alwar Balasubramaniam: Art of substance and absence - Alwar Balasubramaniam (2009)
8 Sep 2010 | 6:38 amAlwar Balasubramaniam's sculpture plays with time, shape, shadow, perspective: four tricky sensations that can reveal -- or conceal -- what's really out there. At TEDIndia, the artist shows slides of his extraordinary installations. -
Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education - Sugata Mitra (2010)
7 Sep 2010 | 7:11 amEducation scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching. -
Rachel Sussman: The world's oldest living things - Rachel Sussman (2010)
3 Sep 2010 | 6:52 amRachel Sussman shows photographs of the world's oldest continuously living organisms -- from 2,000-year-old brain coral off Tobago's coast to an "underground forest" in South Africa that has lived since before the dawn of agriculture. -
Derek Sivers: Keep your goals to yourself - Derek Sivers (2010)
2 Sep 2010 | 6:47 amAfter hitting on a brilliant new life plan, our first instinct is to tell someone, but Derek Sivers says it's better to keep goals secret. He presents research stretching as far back as the 1920s to show why people who talk about their ambitions may be less likely to achieve them. -
His Holiness the Karmapa: The technology of the heart - His Holiness the Karmapa (2009)
1 Sep 2010 | 6:48 amHis Holiness the Karmapa talks about how he was discovered to be the reincarnation of a revered figure in Tibetan Buddhism. In telling his story, he urges us to work on not just technology and design, but the technology and design of the heart. He is translated onstage by Tyler Dewar.
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Why I Love This Job
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Improv Everywhere, and why it's good to have your sense of humor with you at all times.
31 Aug 2010 | 2:08 pmA personal friend of mine, whose name I won't publicize (though it rhymes with Cher Stoplight) was a part of this Improv Everywhere, uh, incident, entitled Black Tie Beach. He sent the video to a few friends, and when I watched it, my first thought was, "wow, that's funny." My second thought was, "does somebody organize these where I live?" And my third thought was, "why have I never heard of this group before? I book entertainment (and speakers) for a living?" Then, when I saw how long they've been doing this, and… -
SeaWorld, Trust, and How to Successfully Leave Money on the Table
29 Jul 2010 | 5:17 pmA couple weeks back I alluded to a speaker about whom I wanted to write, who recently did a great job for one of Keynote's clients. Well, that speaker was Dave Horsager, and boy did he bring down the house. Dave Horsager's book is entitled "The Trust Edge". One of his points is that given the opportunity, most people want to be trusted, want to do the right thing, and will want to continue to do the right thing. And being trusted, and being able to trust others, will make people happier, more productive, and better at their jobs. Hence, he… -
Quick take on some humorous aspects of technology
2 Jul 2010 | 4:00 pmvia funnybizbob.com Awesome funny video from technology satirist Bob Hirschfeld. Am particularly loving his take on social media : "No really, it's useful! Really, it is! It's for work - honest!"If the clip link above isn't working for you, try this.Have a great fourth! -
No Fear
30 Jun 2010 | 2:33 pmThere's an article from the latest "Speaker" magazine, an NSA publication, that caught my eye. Mostly because it reminded me of something I shouldn't ever forget. I'm waiting for a place to point you all to see the article, but in the meantime I'll give you the part that stuck out for me. I'll post the link to the article as soon as I can get it for you.The author, a speaker named Terri Langhans, talked about how she lied, many years ago, in answer to a coaching question from speaker and former NSA president Mark LeBlanc, "What would you do if… -
Some business advice, from the world of funny dog videos.
24 Jun 2010 | 2:14 pmHere's a quick link to a funny, and interesting, video from CNN Small Business today. They entitled it "Comedy's Take on Biz Advice". It caught my eye because I originally thought it might be one of our favorite corporate comedians, doing their thing to help lighten the workload at Corporation X. Something along the lines of this. But no, it's a former product manager from an unnamed company, who quit his job to start a series of funny dog video websites, and other humor websites.I don't know anything else about this man, but he sounds…
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speakfearlessly.net
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The Tao of Leadership (Annoying Truths: Ignore at Your Peril)
2 Sep 2010 | 3:02 pmEditor's note: This is a guest post by BrillianceInc. You possess a pathetically small sliver of the truth. People fear you (by nature of your status) and withhold evidence that may challenge your pathetically small sliver of the truth. Our brains are wired for fear. And fear makes people do stupid things. To bring out the best in others, you must create an environment where people feel safe. Leadership takes courage. That courage does not swagger but is humble and quietly confident. A courageous leader: recognizes her own strengths and weaknesses surrounds herself with people who differ… -
Doing Well by Doing Good
17 Aug 2010 | 8:00 amToday we're so pleased to announce the launch of Project Green Dragon, a strategic initiative designed to help the United States become energy independent by improving the effectiveness of key communicators in environmental technology industries. Read the official press release here. As a first major step in Project Green Dragon, The Henderson Group will introduce customized curriculum and additional discounts for training services such as “Art of Presentation” that are specifically aimed at innovators in the green technology, clean energy, and sustainability sectors. The first… -
Dilbert on Presentations
4 Aug 2010 | 4:00 amdilbert.com Public Speaking and the Value of Freaking Out >> The Fear Factor>> -
The Mathematics of Powerful Communication: Concrete > Abstract
28 Jul 2010 | 4:00 amby Terry Gault This article from NPR's website makes the point that abstract communication is FAR less effective than concrete communication. "Concrete and abstract words activate different parts of the cerebral cortex. Concrete words like hammer, hit and hard are processed more by areas at the back of the brain that handle visual and spatial information. Abstract words like justice, fairly andrender activate the frontal lobes, which process information independent of any particular sense (vision, hearing, touch)." How do you ensure that your communications are concrete? … -
Watch the Game Film
21 Jul 2010 | 4:00 amby Terry Gault This piece from FastCompany magazine highlights a practice we've been using since our inception: videotaping our clients. Whether you are being coached on your listening, presentation, or dialogue/questioning skills, being able to see and hear exactly how you come across and to hear precisely what you did and did not say, is critical. The use of video often results in some of the most powerful feedback you will ever receive on your communication style. So, take the advice of Dan Heath and Chip Heath in this piece titled, Watch the Game Film. Check out what we're…
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Successful Speeches Blog
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Public Speaking Commentary: The Third Era?
18 Aug 2010 | 8:05 amI recently read a post by Olivia Mitchell called “Are You Ready for the Third Era in Presenting?” In the post, Mitchell makes some sweeping claims that still have me scratching my head. The first claim she makes refers to great orators of the past and the era of the orator in general. She claims: [...] -
Speech Writing Video: Successful Speeches Toolkit
12 Aug 2010 | 9:37 amThe Oprah Winfrey reality show contest has come and gone without a call from Oprah, but my desire for being on camera has been rekindled. In the coming weeks, you’ll be seeing more videos from me on the topic of “how to write a speech” and “public speaking”. My first video is for my Successful [...] -
How Much Money Are You Losing Because of Poor Public Speaking Skills?
4 Aug 2010 | 7:58 amHow much money are you losing because of poor public speaking skills and lack of preparation? How much credibility are you losing because your speeches are boring? How badly is the reputation of your organization suffering because the executives are simply horrible when they give a speech? I ask those questions because I attended a [...] -
Emotion in Speeches
29 Jul 2010 | 1:51 pmI just came across this interview with retired professor of speech writing, Jerry Tarver. Tarver speaks from experience, not theory, so I enjoy hearing what he has to say. In this 13-minute video, he brings up some nuggets of wisdom that every speaker, speechwriter and communications professional will benefit from. Enjoy -
Public Speaking Tips: Waiting For Fireworks
5 Jul 2010 | 7:09 amOn Sunday night, I had the chance to witness 4th of July fireworks for the first time in my life. I couldn’t wait to test the “fireworks” setting on my new Kodak EasyShare Z915. As we waited for the fireworks show to start at Lakeshore Park in [...]
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Rhett's Laubach Authenticity Rules Blog
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Resources
16 Aug 2010 | 9:03 pmFollowing is a list of ways to connect, learn and grow from us: http://delicious.com/pliblog - Huge database of leadership content I have gathered for you (and us) from the 150+ blogs I read daily. It contains over 1,000 articles, blog posts, videos, etc. They are all indexed by our curriculum's 10 leadership essentials (http://www.PersonalLeadershipInsight.org). http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pli-blog/id349608878?mt=8 - iPhone app that aggregates the RSS feed from this blog, my other blog, our PLI_Leadership twitter account (We also have other Twitter accounts you can follow - TeamTRI,… -
Training "Filler" Ideas
29 Jul 2010 | 2:37 pmToday I walked a handful of Minnesota FCCLA advisors through tips and strategies on how to host an awesome regional leadership conference. One question that come up from the group was... "What do you do if you are ahead of schedule or a speaker is running late and you need to fill some space in your agenda?" Basically, they were looking for some new crowd involvement ideas their officers could lead. Something different than singing "camp songs" or doing the Cupid Shuffle. The reason for having something is to keep the crowd busy and possibly enhance the conference experience. An idle high… -
Unload and Throw
27 Jul 2010 | 8:50 pmSpeaking to a group is not a diplomatic process. It is largely a one-way pipeline of information and emotion. The most popular and impact-filled presenters follow the advice of my good friend (and phenomenal pastor/communicator) Justin Beadles' dad to his son regarding speaking..."Justin, when you present in front of a group, unload both guns on 'em and then throw the gun!"Be bold. Be grace-filled, but be bold. Leave it all on the table. "Make an impact, not just an impression." Rick Rigsby- Posted using my iPhone on tour in Minnesota. Please visit www.YourNextSpeaker.com to learn more about… -
How to Maximize a Conference Experience
14 Jul 2010 | 6:58 pmJohn Maxwell, the famous leadership author and teacher, tells us there are three things we must do to grow as leaders: 1. Surround yourself with the right people. 2. Consume the right media. 3. Attend the right conferences. When you attend conferences, to make the most of them, follow these five guidelines. 1. Be child-like. This doesn't mean throw a tantrum if the room is too cold. It means ask questions. Lots of them. Don't let your pride or reputation or position keep you from raising that hand and getting clarity, more information or better information. 2. Take organized notes. If you… -
Small Moves
21 Jun 2010 | 6:22 amOne of my favorite movies is Contact. It is a movie about a message sent from outer space containing instructions for building a vehicle to visit the message sender's planet. In the opening scene, a young girl is searching for a response from extra-terrestrials by scanning radio frequencies and sending out messages of her own. She is getting frustrated from not hearing anything and her dad instructs her to stay after it. He says to her, "Small moves, Ellie." Later in the movie, the grown-up version of the girl is the discoverer of the actual ET message. This phrase, small moves, Ellie, came…
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Public Speaking Library
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General to specific
6 Sep 2010 | 7:33 amFellow speakers,When asking interview questions of someone (to interview that person for a speech you are giving), keep your questions broad and open-ended. Instead of asking questions that give a short answer such as, "When did you start writing?", ask questions that lead to a broad explanation such as, "How did you become interested in writing?"Openly,Tim -
Clock watcher
5 Sep 2010 | 7:32 amFellow speakers,When you are interviewing someone to get some information you will use in your speech, watch the clock. Keep the meeting on time so you use the person's time wisely. Only if the interview is going well and the person still wants to tell you more things after your interview time is up, can you continue the interview past the agreed-upon time.Clocking in,Tim -
Been there, done that
4 Sep 2010 | 2:25 pmFellow speakers,When giving a sales presentation, make sure you make it clear that your company has the skills and expertise based on handling the exact sort of cases that the situation requires.Situationally,Tim -
Sales feedback
3 Sep 2010 | 2:21 pmFellow speakers,When making a sales presentation, after laying out what your understanding of the problem is, ask them for confirmation. For example, "Am I on track?" or "Is there anything else you need to hear?"Tracking,Tim -
Thanks!
2 Sep 2010 | 4:11 pmFellow speakers,When giving a sales presentation, never thank people for "their time". Instead, thank them for "the opportunity".Thanking,Tim
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Overnight Sensation - Public Speaking, Communication and Personal Development
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Watch How You Use Social Media
25 Aug 2010 | 1:56 pmSocial media is by far the great tool ever created for making the world smaller and our personal and professional networks larger. And since everyone is different, people use these tools for different objectives. Some prefer to remain anonymous while they chime in on conversations, while others, seeking stardom, would sell their right kidney to have someone mention their name. Every log in is an adventure with no telling what the next few moments will bring. The more we use social media the more immersive the experience becomes. I liken it to a late night party when people have started coming… -
Public Speaking and The Matrix
23 Aug 2010 | 7:38 pmMuch of today’s self-help and personal development programs and materials are geared towards the ‘quick fix’ crowd. People want results fast and the want them with minimal effort. It’s like the film The Matrix where whenever a character within the supercomputer needs to learn a skill, the needed knowledge is downloaded in a matter of seconds. Unfortunately, despite the fact that many tools only feed this frenzy, life simply does not work like that. I think it would be excellent if learning worked the same as it did in science fiction films like The Matrix or Total… -
Why Most Speakers Are Clueless About Social Media
13 Aug 2010 | 7:57 pmMany professional speakers use social media but most of them use it wrong. They see it as a virtual extension of their speeches and simply talk to their audience while completely ignoring what’s coming back their way. While this is one way to use social media, it’s not the best. Most people don’t care about your blog posts, coupons, tips, events or products unless they know something about you. So if all you do is post this “me” information– everyone is going to ignore you. Social media is about interactivity – something many speakers may not be used to with… -
The Worst Type of Risk
12 Aug 2010 | 1:53 amI think most people naturally fear taking risks. There’s so much unknown and so many things that can go wrong. Plus, whenever someone takes a foolish risk and falls flat on his or her face, the story of it travels through that person’s network at lightspeed. So add ridicule and embarrassment to results often associated with taking risks. The topic of risks came up with a few friends recently and I was asked about the worst risk I ever took. While I searched through my memories for the typical things that come to mind like asking out a girl who was way out of my league or investing…
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Speak to Lead
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Survey reveals how journalists rate public relations practitioners and what they want from them
26 Aug 2010 | 8:58 pmThanks to publication coach Daphne Gray-Grant for alerting me (via Twitter) to the Bulldog Reporter/Cision 2010 Journalist Survey on Media Relations Practices. If you are dealing with the media, the survey provides useful information about productive relationships between journalists and... -
Public Speaking: Churchill & FDR Staffs on Speechwriting
24 Aug 2010 | 8:37 amYesterday was, as I was reminded by Max Atkinson, the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. He has included on his blog two anecdotes, one from Winston Churchill's staff, one from Franklin D. Roosevelt's staff, related to the preparation... -
Smile to Connect & Succeed
18 Feb 2010 | 7:59 amOne of the best "tools" for connecting with people is a genuine smile. Note, however, the word "genuine." In a 30-year study, researchers began by going through 141 photos in a Mills College (Oakland, California) yearbook, and marking those with... -
Humor Trivializes Evil - NPR Treats ACORN Child Prostitution as a Joke
24 Sep 2009 | 10:54 amFirst of all, now that I have your attention, I want to make clear this is not an attack on National Public Radio. But it was an NPR broadcast that sparked my thoughts about the power humor has to trivialize... -
Public Speaking: Mnemonic Devices-Barfing Your Way to Success
17 Sep 2009 | 9:33 amMnemonic devices for public speaking have been used for thousands of years. The initial application was to help speakers remember what they were going to say as they delivered the speech. (For an overview and history of mnemonic devices used...
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tellingpeople ~ the presentation skills blog
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prezi for presentations? Perhaps
6 Sep 2010 | 9:06 amI’ve heard a lot of fuss and hype around some presentation software called prezi. It’s an alternative to Keynote and Powerpoint, in that it’s designed to create the visual aids (aka a slideshow) that goes with your presentation. So far so good – the more packages there are in the market the better. Always wanting to [...] -
Presentation phobia. Really? Really, really?
17 Aug 2010 | 8:12 amIt seems to be more and more common (to me, at least) to turn the normal-but-unwanted-and-perhaps-a-bit-unusual into a clinical condition. People aren’t short tempered any more, they’re suffering from Temper Restraint Disorder Syndrome; okay, I made that one up, but you get the idea. (See here and see what you think.) It happens a [...] -
Some basic presentation psychology….. -ish!
8 Aug 2010 | 12:14 pmI’ve been doing some reading recently (sorry!) for a course I’m designing. I came across the idea that emotions on the ’spectrum’ of Anxiety are caused by uncertain goals, that Angry-type emotions are caused by blocked goals and that emotions related to Fear are associated with unattainable goals. Perhaps it’s an over simplification, but it works [...] -
Presentations are not conversations (bit of a rant!)
23 Jul 2010 | 2:53 amThere’s stuff all over the ‘net about how a good presentation should be like a conversation with your audience. By that, the authors are (as far as I can tell) generally trying to get away from the “stand and deliver” style of presenting, where the presenter is more of a talking head than anything, simply [...] -
Such a bad presentation I can’t help
15 Jul 2010 | 12:29 pmI sat through two bad presentations and a great one the other day. The great one was designed to simply give people information they could use to help market their businesses. It was fun, fast and full of useful stuff. The two presentations that came before it weren’t quite so good. In fact they were so bad [...]
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Nick Morgan - Public Speaking Advice and Commentary
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J. K. Rowling, Harvard, and the memorable commencement speech
8 Sep 2010 | 11:13 amA reader was kind enough to send me a link to J. K. Rowling’s commencement address to Harvard in 2008 and ask what I thought of her performance. Watching the video brought to mind how much public speaking has changed and what the new requirements are now for success in public speaking. Let me begin by saying that if you’re a die-hard Harry Potter fan, stop reading. You won’t brook any criticism of J. K., so it’s time to check out now. I’m a Harry Potter fan too, but public speaking is public speaking, and I have to call the shots as I see… -
Can you change the world in 15 minutes?
7 Sep 2010 | 9:30 amA little book arrived in the mail recently: 15 minutes including Q & A: A Plan to Save the World from Lousy Presentations, by Joey Asher, president of Speechworks, a communications coaching firm in Atlanta. Let me say from the outset that I love just about everything about this book. It’s a polemic against long, boring, over-PowerPointed business speeches, and that’s a subject I’ve been blogging about for 4 years now. So what’s not to love? More, within the polemic is some crisp, good advice for organizing brief speeches and delivering… -
Aristotle Was Wrong
27 Aug 2010 | 11:23 amWe want to persuade people to do something new. It’s one of those fundamental – and fundamentally important – human acts. And, it’s a tall order. But it is the essence of speech making: to move people to action. Anything else is wasted effort, because people simply don’t remember much of what they hear. It’s not a good format for imparting information. It is a good format for persuading people to believe in or act on something.And just to drive a stake through the heart of one evil demon: Contrary to popular belief, Power Point slides don’t increase retention rates… -
Public Speaking and the Audience: We've Got a Problem
26 Aug 2010 | 12:32 pmMost public speaking—especially business speeches and presentations—has never entirely caught up with its audience’s changed expectations. Our ordinary speaking styles have become more conversational, but public speakers haven’t learned to deliver the physical closeness that mirrors the closeness and casualness we see all the time on television. Moreover, the candid personal disclosure that we have grown to expect when we are seemingly so close to a televised speaker (they're in our family rooms and bedrooms) hasn’t become part of public presentations for… -
The first time
25 Aug 2010 | 3:47 pmThe first time you give a speech is exciting, unnerving, and inevitably filled with an awkward moment or two. In the speaker’s mind, disaster lurks around every turn of your pages of notes, or every click of your slides. Of course, the audience doesn’t know what it hasn’t seen before, so it won’t be anything like as aware of your gaffes as you are. The trick is not to show your fear, as the surgeon said to the nurse, lest you unnerve the patient. I was in California this week giving a speech for the first time, and all my own words from Give Your Speech,…
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Craig Strachan - Keep Talking!
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An unexpected gift
6 Sep 2010 | 12:19 pmLast week, I ordered a couple of cases of wine from Getwine.co.za. When the wine arrived, Getwine alse gave me a free 100g slab of Lindt chocolate. They didn’t tell me about it when I ordered, they didn’t tell me in the delivery note, the driver didn’t mention it. It was just tucked quietly away inside one of the boxes. That is also not the first time they have done this. How do you give unexpected gifts to your customers? How do you keep your customers loyal? What do you do to get your customers to tell everybody about your great service? Share this on del.icio.us Digg… -
Truth or dare
30 Aug 2010 | 12:48 amI am often asked for my views on keeping the stories in a speech completely accurate as to what happened, as opposed to embellishing the story to make a great speech. My response is that while you need to be true to your stories, you must also be true to your message. Make sure that your audience remembers your message. But it can be a fine line between embellishing a story to make it a great story, and telling an outright lie. Darren la Croux has written a great blog post on this subject, explaining that your stories should at least be “Based on a True Story”. He says, Have you ever… -
A few lessons from Gary Bailey
27 Aug 2010 | 12:41 amGary Bailey Some tips I picked up from Gary (ex goal keeper for Manchester United) at our Toastmasters conference. Enjoy! Manchester United: Is a $1 billion business Has 300 million customers Delivers weekly to its customers The principles of a good soccer team apply to business as well… Be tough- learns to takes knocks Build on gratitude Appreciate staff and all those around you Things go wrong for everybody at some time It’s how you deal with life, not what happens to you that is important Plan for the future Don’t send emotional emails because there is no emotion in email… -
16 Lessons from Dr Ali Backer
25 Aug 2010 | 1:12 amAli Bacher and ,me Dr Ali Bacher spoke at our Toastmasters conference in May. Here are a few lessons from him. Return correspondence within 24 hours Brevity – 2 pages (both speaking and writing) Workplace structures are meaningless (my version is that titles are meaningless) Look after quality people that make it happen If you pay peanuts you get monkeys Keep your door open Promote performers Give responsibility to people you have confidence in Give small gestures of appreciation Be honest – never lie Never break your word Always settle out of court Never record your feelings at… -
Five iPhone Apps for Public Speakers (guest post)
10 Aug 2010 | 4:22 amA guest post by Louise Baker Many people are afraid of speaking in public or have trouble doing so effectively. With today’s technology, the job of a public speaker is becoming easier. Here are 5 iPhone apps that you can use the next time you are giving a presentation. 1. Presenter Pro “Presenter Pro” is available for $1.99 is designed to improve your public speaking abilities. It covers body language, the content of your presentation, the audiovisuals that you use, and many quick tips. By making use of ability of the iPhone to seamlessly blend text, pictures, and sounds, this…
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The Eloquent Woman
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Is drawing a blank that bad? What to learn from the Arizona governor's speechless moment
8 Sep 2010 | 8:00 amArizona Governor Jan Brewer, in the only debate in the state's current election campaign, went blank for several seconds during her opening statement last week--a moment when no one was going to interrupt her--and the coverage created a small firestorm of attention. The Associated Press coverage (from which I won't quote, since AP likes to go after and charge bloggers for doing so) goes into excruciating detail in describing the silent moment and concludes it's a disaster for Brewer. But the Christian Science Monitor, looking back at other politicians' debate bloopers, wondered… -
Using a sheet of paper (and other ordinary things) as props
7 Sep 2010 | 10:21 amYou think your presentation could use a prop, a visual, three-dimensional object to focus the audience and help you reinforce your theme. But you're on the road, without time to hunt for something stunning or room in your suitcase to lug it with you. What to do? Easy. Find a piece of paper. It's one of several low-cost, easy-to-find and portable items that you can use as a prop. Paper, for example, can be folded into elaborate origami shapes to explain mathematical constructs and scientific theories...made into an airplane that can fly over the audience...creased or made into a… -
Ruth Bader Ginsburg gives a labor-of-love speech
2 Sep 2010 | 9:00 amSupreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently gave a speech on behalf of her late husband--his words, his witty and wry language, much of it recounting stories from their shared past. It has to be among the toughest--and most moving--speaking challenges. Slate notes: Martin Ginsburg had been invited to deliver his remarks at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' conference in Colorado Springs, Colo., but he died in late June of metastatic cancer. As Ginsburg explained Friday evening, "He had his speech all written out." And so she read it—with a handful of… -
Guest post on Kate's Voice -- my web 2.0 casserole
1 Sep 2010 | 12:45 pmI wrote this post about using your voice to put a story across and was nearly done with it when I caught up with news that fellow coach Kate Peters, author of the Kate's Voice blog and a guest poster here, was going through a tough time with a medical crisis in her family. So I offered this one to her, to take one thing off her plate--my version of a web 2.0 casserole for a colleague in need. The post looks at a recent NPR story on how storytelling gained importance for humans, usinge a "Get Mortified" public speaking performance as its main example. Kate's a vocal… -
What's the worst public speaking advice you've ever been given?
1 Sep 2010 | 9:30 amI posed this question on The Eloquent Woman on Facebook, and it took almost no time for a gang of readers to agree that the advice to picture the audience naked was their pick for worst speaking advice ever. (Even so, I Can See You Nakedis one of the best-selling presentation books ever.) But there were a couple of other nominees: Bobbi Newman voted for the advice "that feedback forms are important and useful" and Claire Duffy offered, "From my 5th grade teacher: 'To quell nerves let your eyes float above their heads'. Even then I knew it was stupid." If you've had some other awful…
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Presentation Skills and Storytelling in Business
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Make the Body of Your Story More Powerful
26 Aug 2010 | 9:10 amWhen I talk about “the body of your story”, I’m not talking about the middle of your story. I’m not talking about the part between your powerful opening and the point at end. The “body” of your story is the physical aspect of your story - your body language, movement, gestures and reenactments. It’s how you show rather than tell. It’s how you influence rather than inform. Do You Influence, or Just Inform? Most speakers inform their listeners; they just convey information. That approach may or may not work based on the personality of the speaker. -
Columbus, Ohio 4-person Coaching Day
27 Jul 2010 | 9:41 amThere is one spot left for the August 11, 2010 Story Theater coaching day in Columbus, Ohio. Call Deborah Merriman to reserve your spot. 1-719-573-6195 or 1-800-573-6196 -
How to Choose the Point of Your Story - Your Responses
27 Jul 2010 | 9:36 amIn last month’s edition of the Story Theater Newsletter, I told the story of coming home from a booking in Indianapolis, and experiencing a flight delay. If you haven’t had a chance to read the story, you might want to read the June Story Theater Newsletter before you read this article. If you didn’t receive the June Newsletter, email Deborah and she’ll forward it to you. Below is a short synopsis of the story: The delay coming home was due to bad weather in Chicago. That led to the cancellation of my flight, and of most United Airlines flights connecting through… -
How to Choose the Point of Your Story
27 Jul 2010 | 9:28 amRecently, I was in Indianapolis presenting a 4-person coaching intensive. We came together for an intimate and concentrated exploration of advanced storytelling using The Story Theater Method. Four participants, four different stories and four different reasons why they needed to use stories more effectively. One man had an important keynote speech coming up and he wanted to stand out from the other speakers by using stories effectively. Another man needed to learn how to get comfortable telling stories about his consulting process, so people would understand what he does and hire him. The… -
Read the Introduction to my Story Theater Book
6 Jul 2010 | 2:53 pmThis is the Introduction to my book, Doug Stevenson’s Story Theater Method. If you want to be a superb storyteller, in business or in your personal life, this is the HOW-TO book on how you do it. I often refer to my method as “Storytelling Technology.” Enjoy… It was an odd reaction. I was in the middle of a customer service training session when my entire audience put down their pens almost at the same time, leaned back in their chairs and looked up at me with smiles and childlike innocence. It was as if a switch had been flipped in the room and all of a sudden the…
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The Shy Speaker's Guide to Success on Stage
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Enhancing the Quality of Your Visual Presentations with PowerPoint 2007
3 Sep 2010 | 10:29 amAre you a user of PowerPoint? Ever thought of designing and delivering more professionally looking presentations with PowerPoint? Going around, in my quiet moments, I’ve been observing presentations and instances for learning and sharing with you. And the theme for September shall be dedicated to helping you enhance the quality of the design for your [...] -
The Shy Speakers’ Guide on Facebook!
20 Jul 2010 | 10:03 amHere’s an Update that’s taken too long to arrive: The Shy Speakers’ Guide is coming to Facebook! And to celebrate this launch, I’m going to release my latest compilation of speaking tips and techniques (with bonus resources) that will be free for you to download! For all you emcee-wannabes, I may even throw in a [...] -
The Biggest Lesson You’ll Ever Learn About Stage Fright to Become A Better Speaker
27 Jun 2010 | 4:59 pmSo the stage is set – you’re going to stand before an audience and you’re going to have to “say a few words”. Whether it’s for the big presentation before business associates, or deliver a speech at a seminar, or play a bit-part as an emcee, you cannot escape the fact that you’re going so [...] -
Communication Beyond Affection
25 Jun 2010 | 11:12 amFor those of you (Singaporeans) who have had the luxury and opportunity to tune in to the local television network lately, you may have noticed a new family campaign going on. The campaign – more specifically the video – aims to strengthen family bonds and encourage the spirit of filial piety amongst the generation that [...] -
Hello World! Gary’s Back!
25 Jun 2010 | 10:41 amHola! So it’s been almost a year since I last posted a entry… I’m well aware of that, and I apologize to all of my loyal fans and readers out there! Well, you must say that I didn’t leave you without a treasure trove of thoughts, reflections and tips! My only ‘sin’ was that I [...]
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Executive Speech Coach - Business Presentations
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Power Presentations Tip 43: 3 Elements for a Successful Presentation
8 Sep 2010 | 11:24 amDo these 3 things to be successful1.Inform2.Entertain3.Move to ActionA poor presentation often includes just one of them.InformOne of your purposes is to give your audience information. That doesn't need to be totally new. It only needs to be relevant at this time. If could even be a new perspective.The most common mistake when delivering information is to give "too much" information. The worst presenters simply dump information.The key to success is to deliver the most relevant information that your listeners need at this time to make the decision to do what you want them to do. It's your… -
Why Do We Fear Public Speaking?
3 Sep 2010 | 1:11 pmPublic speaking is often rated as the greatest fear that adults have. Yet speaking by itself is not threatening to most. It’s the public in public speaking that frightens people. Why is this?Perhaps it’s the way that you learned to speak in public. Most of us started speaking when we were around 1 year old. Our first words were enthusiastically cultivated and celebrated by our parents. Out first public speaking was what we did on the phone to our grand-parents.Those were the good old days. Every word and sound you made (other than crying) was met with smiles and attention from the… -
The “One Thing” to be a Powerful Presenter: Pause
31 Aug 2010 | 4:58 pmWhat is the one thing that you can do to make your presentation more powerful and effective?Pause – more often and more dramatically.The most difficult thing to do is often the one thing that separates the masters from the masses. That’s true of many pursuits. For example, the hardest thing in personal growth is to know oneself. Similarly the most difficult presentation skill is pausing – to stop talking and say nothing.Just the thought of pausing is painful for those who love to speak. And the idea of science is threatening to those who think they should be speaking.Presentation skills… -
Graduate With Skills, Not Just a Degree
26 Aug 2010 | 11:48 amThe Wall Street JournalBy Heather R. HuhmanNot long ago, earning a college degree could almost guarantee you would land a great job much faster than those who were not college-educated. Today, however, it’s important to have relevant skills, not just a degree. In fact, a degree has started to become the minimum requirement to even be considered for many openings—meaning most of the people you will be competing with have a degree, too.What are these sought-after skills? According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) Job Outlook 2010 survey:Communication… -
Speaker Boot Camp in the UK
18 Aug 2010 | 10:08 amAre you in the UK?Are you a professional or advanced speaker that wants to fine tune your presentations skills even more?This Speaker Boot Camp is not for novice speakers.In this program a maximun of six speakers will receive direct and intense coaching from Warren Evans CSP.You will receive help with structure, content and delivery from a no-nonsence master of presenting.Click here to learn more about this unique opportunity.This Speaker Boot Camp will run October 22-24.Discover more information here.PS: I attended this program in Toronto two years ago. I was already a very good speaker and…
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Public Speaking Can Be Fun
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Three Mistakes with Public Speaking Skills
2 Sep 2010 | 9:01 amThere were three mistakes I noted in my current newsletter this month - the PEPzine. These mistakes were done at a recent seminar I attended. I have listed all three and if you would like to see what I said about each one, subscribe to the PEPzine by going to: www.jackirose.com1. The room set up - all wrong2. The speaker location - all wrong3. The language the speakers used - cliches -
Three Great Public Speaking Quotes
18 Aug 2010 | 2:39 pmI saw a panel of experts in the speaking industry. I quoted each one in regards to what they said about public speaking.“Always make sure you present the way you want to be seen.” Linda Guild, Association Executive “How you see yourself may not be consistent on how your audience is seeing you.” Karen King, Meetings S...trategist “Passion makes a difference on the platform.” Chris Regan, Speaker Bureau President -
Speak for Experience
11 Aug 2010 | 4:52 pmI cleaned out my basement today and found a whole bunch of thank you letters from speaking engagements I gave during the first couple of years getting into the speaking business. I realized I was speaking a whole lot just to get experience and because I loved it so much. You may not love it, but if you want to get experience, get out there and speak, speak, speak! -
Public Speaking and Your Time
21 Jul 2010 | 8:42 amWhen speaking, check with your contact – how much time you have – right before you present. It may have changed. I saw a speaker, keynote, in the middle of his speech and when he saw the time card go up we all heard him say: “Really? I thought I had 45 minutes.” The audience of 400 people now knew that someone screwed up and told him he had longer than he thought. He then had to collect his thoughts, skip ahead, and finish up. Be prepared If your speech gets cut short, know where you need to go, be sure to include your summary/closing and do not end abruptly. -
Public Speaking Tip - Microphone
10 Jul 2010 | 4:31 pmPeople in the Back – MicrophoneIf most people are in the back and there is lots of room up front, do not use the microphone. People may be decide to move up so they can hear you.
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Jane Atkinson, Speaker Launcher Blog, Speaker Coach, Presentation Skills, Speakers Bureaus
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Advertiser or Expert?
24 Aug 2010 | 11:47 amI’ve been preaching the “expert first” idea for a long time, so excuse me if I’m repeating myself. If a client’s first impression of you was: a) reading your article in an industry mag b) seeing a print ad for your business which do you think would have more impact? I vote for “a”. If a client’s first impression of you was: a) seeing you speak at the convention or b) meeting you at your trade show booth…. which do you think would have more impact? I vote for “a”. If a client receives a piece of mail from you: a) an article that… -
Summer Goals, Cha-Chings & Flip Flops
28 Jul 2010 | 8:16 amMy summer time goal has shifted quite drastically over the past 5 years. Where I used to be aggressively thinking about marketing and how to ramp up biz for the Fall, now I base the success of my summer on my flip flop tan line. If it’s well defined, I’ve done a good job! Is it silly and not very strategic to base success on a tan line? Perhaps, but isn’t the point of having your own business to be able to dictate how you spend your time? To me it’s proof that I’ve had fun! If you are in the early stages of your business and you’re working like a dog… -
Have you picked your low hanging fruit?
12 Jul 2010 | 10:10 amWhile talking to a client the other day, we were brainstorming on how to “shake the trees” and see what she has not already capitalized on with her current client base. Funny, she had at least 3 ideas of people she could follow up with about her new keynote, a training opportunity and product sales. Where are your low hanging fruit? Are there clients that you should have re-connected with? When entering into a relationship with a speaking client, do you have a long term goal in mind? One client has this type of sales stream: Someone reads his book Calls to book a speech for their… -
Winners of the Connection Contest
6 Jul 2010 | 8:06 amChoosing the winners of this connection contest was no easy task! There were alot of really terrific ideas. Really! And if you didn’t see all 42 of them, I would encourage you to take another look. http://ow.ly/27zmA The point of the contest? It was to help people think more about the audience, become more “them” focused. Based on the responses, someone reading this post will have a lot of great ideas to learn from. The winners of the book with the top 5 ideas are: Steve Hughes Rhonda Scharf Amanda Gore Gary Minor Marion Grobb Finklestein Congratulations! -
How Well Do you Connect? (+ Connection Contest)
15 Jun 2010 | 5:52 amIn John Maxwell’s new book “Everyone Communicates, Few Connect”, John says….. “Whether you are communicating one-on-one or with a large audience, asking questions creates a connection between you and your listeners that is vital to releasing energy and raising their interest levels. Because my audiences are often so varied, when I begin speaking…. I pose a question related to the topic I’ll be speaking on. I’m simply trying to get people to engage right away.” How do you engage your audience? Are you connecting with them in the first 30…
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The Presenter's Coach
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Words to Avoid
3 Sep 2010 | 3:30 pm“Well basically, fourscore and seven, uh, years ago, you know, I think, our forefathers, uh…” Junk words are those extraneous words (and sounds) that add no value to your message. When used frequently, they diminish your power and credibility. Be direct with your statements. Having to search for the message under the junk words is like digging for hidden treasure – we know it is there somewhere, but we might lose patience and give up. Here are some common examples: “Uh” – Using good eye contact is the best cure for eliminating this word (or sound) from your vocabulary. Watch… -
WoW Em Right Away
1 Sep 2010 | 4:05 pmFirst impressions are important. During the first seconds of your presentation, your audience is deciding whether to tune you in or take a mental trip to Santa Fe. As the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a good first impression! First impressions are not drawn from content or subject matter expertise. First impressions are formed when the presenter has the highest level of adrenaline – the first several seconds of the presentation! Get plenty of sleep the night before your presentation. Eat healthy, and avoid a heavy… -
Resources For Free Graphics
26 Aug 2010 | 12:31 pmBy now we all know that we should be using less text on PowerPoint slides and more graphics. I recently came across this great resource from Slidequest for free graphics. Check it out! http://www.slidequest.com/17/5-best-websites-for-free-stock-photos/ -
10 PowerPoint Tips
19 Aug 2010 | 11:15 am1. Replace text with graphics whenever possible. 2. About one slide for every three minutes of presentation, unless you are using hyper-links. 3. Limit 6 points per slide, 3 words per point…if you insist on using a teleprompter. 4. Limit 2 fonts per slide...avoid the “ransom note” look. 5. Limit 2 levels of bullets…if you still insist on using bullets. 6. Limit animations and transitions…unless they support your message. 7. Black out the screen when the slide is no longer relevant. (Press the “B” key when in presentation mode, or use a black slide, or remote mouse.) 8. Know your… -
10 Webcast Tips
18 Aug 2010 | 9:32 amPractice — practice — practice! (Know your content!) Remain flexible by using hyperlinks to meet the needs of your audience. Set participation expectations at the start by letting participants know that you will stop every 4 – 8 minutes to ask for their input. Plan interactivity every 4 – 8 minutes by displaying a graphic (such as a light bulb) to let them know it is time for their thoughts, comments, and questions. Skip the long cordial introductions and get to your content quickly. Explain the benefits they will receive from the presentation first, then you can introduce yourself…
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Excellence in Presentations
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Here is Tom Peters on Story Telling
3 Sep 2010 | 4:23 pmOne of my earliest posts on this blog was on “Tell them a story“. Every presentation is story telling. It does not matter how complicated your topic is, your success in presentation hinges on your story telling ability. In fact, all the great presenters and speakers have the ability to turn complicated and technical issues into SIMPLE story telling. Any fool can rattle off complicated equations and theories from a set of notes. Only the smart ones can explain them to a non-technical audience. I think they call that communication. -
A presentation by a governor?
2 Sep 2010 | 4:11 pmHere is a video of the Governor of Arizona BOMBING in a debate with her political opponent. Notice the long silence/pause when she was totally lost as to where she was. Her grammar needs improving too. At one point she said: “We have did (sic) what was right for Arizona……” No…governor..you did not. -
Another great video from Tom Peters
3 Jul 2010 | 1:06 pmEverybody is a sales person. How true! I remember when I was in graduate engineering school many years ago and of course I thought I knew everything, I used to look down on sales people. One day I made a derogatory comment about salesmen to my engineering professor who at that time also had a thriving consulting business going. He glared at me and said “Never lose sight of the value of a great salesman”. Ten years later, when I was working for a small consulting firm, the owner of the company used to send out a note to all his employees that read” “Nothing happens… -
I kid you not!
3 Jul 2010 | 12:49 pmThis was an actual PowerPoint slide used in an on-line training course! Accompanying it was a computer generated drone voice mouthing off every single bloody word. -
A sales pitch? Or not!
21 Jun 2010 | 5:09 amI got a marketing email from a friend last night and it goes like this: “In order to grow, brands need to keep moving FORWARD. Sometimes outside influences can make the people responsible for managing brands stand STILL and important initiatives move NOWHERE. We seamlessly helps continue the momentum behind your innovation pipeline, while also providing a fresh perspective to optimize your strategic thinking.” This was a presentation to solicit business from a brand consultant. It is hard to visualize what this consultant is selling. There are a lot of fuzzy words in…
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Ah, Um, Er... A Toastmaster's Blog
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5 Tips for Making your presentation more social
30 Aug 2010 | 11:27 amI am working from the Technical Presentations manual. This week I am giving a speech to meeting the objective of presenting from a technical paper. I have selected an article from Mashable giving 5 tips for making presentations more social. I am not sure how many of my fellow club members read this blog or follow me on Twitter. Still, I thought it would be fun to try some of these tips using this speech as an example. Here is how you can help get me ready for Tuesday (yep, this is a last minute… -
What is it an Area Gov. Actually Does?
2 Jun 2010 | 6:21 amIt is closing in on the end of my year as Area Governor. While I have enjoyed it, I am very ready to be done. I keep coming back to this idea of what it is that I way suppose to be doing as Area Governor. Like most TM trainings, our training last summer focused on the details of making visits and running contests. Even that was limited. What nobody ever talked about was the big picture: Area Governors support clubs. Nobody ever really talked about ways we could do this beyond 2 visits, reports and speech contests.Half way through the year I realized I… -
Electronic Newsletters
29 Apr 2010 | 6:50 amA few years ago I ran a TLI session on electronic newsletters. At the time I focused on the divide between traditional print newsletters and electronic alternatives. I even created a guide on issues to consider, tools to research and the pros & cons of each tool (from my perspective). The response was not massive, but as one of the district's top web people, it was the beginning of an important discussion.Here we are a few years later and Scribd came on the scene. It was a little less than a year ago that I started playing with it. I posted all my old… -
Taking a break, but not really
18 Mar 2010 | 7:59 amI have been taking a break from my home club for the past few weeks. I have been feeling overwhelmed and too close to a growing conflict within the club leadership. I was creating more problems rather than helping resolve them. I felt the best solution for me was distance. I feel I am too invested in the work I did to rebuild the club to have a clear perspective. I have a vision for the club and the immediate leadership is not on the same page. It's not that they don't want what I want, its more that they aren't living up to my expectations of the… -
Speaking, but not communicating
2 Feb 2010 | 10:29 amI am home sick today and catching up on watching The Daily Show. I only get news from the Daily Show. I can't take the pundits from the 24-hour networks and local news just scares me. At least the Daily Show makes me laugh at the world's problems.I just finished watching last Thursday's episode where Stewart covered the previous evenings State of the Union. His guest was Doris Kearns Goodwin, presidential historian. They discussed many things, but the one thing that struck me was a comment made about how the President was a great speaker, but maybe not a great…
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Great Speaking Coach
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Passion is the Key to Persuasion
7 Sep 2010 | 6:58 amListening to the election campaigning going on, I can't help but be struck by two diametrically opposed approaches to communicating with voters. On one hand there are the extravagant visions of future doom--colorful analogies filled with adjectives and exclamations. Very little promises anything concrete and measurable, but it sure gets your blood boiling and your hackles up. You're steamed and you're not going to take it anymore--you will vote! On the other hand there are the appeals to logic and reason. We've already done this and that, and next we're going to… -
Women, Men and Asking for Money
29 Jun 2010 | 6:32 amI'm talking with a female CEO who wants to raise capital to grow her firm. I hear hesitation in her voice as she describes her experiences at gatherings of venture capitalists. "95% male," she says, and "they all have a way to talking that excludes me even when I'm physically standing or sitting in the middle of the conversation." What is it about women, men and asking for money? Do women sub-consciously revert back to earlier times in their lives when they were asking for an allowance from their fathers, or maybe they were struggling over allocation of… -
3 Speaking Mistakes You Can Make Without Really Trying
29 Jun 2010 | 6:13 am3 Speaking Mistakes You Can Make Without Really Trying Do you want to make a positive impression on your audience? Get them to do something important after they listen to you? Maybe promote you, invite you to meet with some decision-makers, perhaps consummate a sale? There's no room in the workplace for people who don't care about making the very best impression each and every time they speak or present. If you make any of these mistakes, you're risking your job and your reputation. There is one common thread uniting these mistakes: they arise because people focus on the… -
Put Down the Doughnut...Take a Piece of Fruit
24 Jun 2010 | 7:14 pm"I haven't had fast food or soda in 12 years," says Chris Mitteldstaedt, CEO of the Fruit Guys. "I am definitely trying to live the goals and values I have for the business." The Fruit Guys were number 2001 on the 2009 Inc. 5000. This great quote in the June 2010 issue of Inc. magazine epitomizes the 'brand values' story that should be a prominent part of any business speech or presentation. Hearing how you live your values is powerful stuff for your listeners The Fresh Fruit Guys provide fresh fruit as an alternative to the usual break-room fare and Chris… -
Listen More Than You Talk
22 Jun 2010 | 11:10 amTip: It's not about you. When it is, you are the customer. Listen more than you talk. Wise words tweeted by Tobias Bray (@tobias_bray) managing partner at 360 Sales Focus. I loved it when I read it. Then I was reminded of it a few hours later when I called a company and was forced to listen to their self-aggrandizement masquerading as the outgoing message for the telephone system. "At company X we do this and this and this better than anyone, and we do that and that and that more effectively," and finally, "gee sorry the party you are trying to reach isn't…
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TJWALKER INTERACTIVE
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ESPN, YouTube Link Up for Promo Campaign
9 Sep 2010 | 12:58 am -
Quiet cars shhhweet news for train riders
8 Sep 2010 | 9:44 pm -
Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck slam Pastor Terry Jones’ plans to burn Koran on 9/11
8 Sep 2010 | 4:47 pm -
NFL Analyst Dan Hampton Apologizes for Katrina Analogy- Another silly comment by a former athlete. What else is new?
8 Sep 2010 | 2:14 pmby Mike Bako Dan Hampton is member of the NFL Hall of Fame and a former professional wrestler. He has obviously taken a few shots to the head but nothing should excuse the ridiculous comments he recently made on the Pro Football Weekly’s television show. “The Vikings need to go down there and hit that town like [...] -
Should I make this a formal or informal presentation?
8 Sep 2010 | 1:05 pmby TJ Walker
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Persuasions Blog
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Sep 7, Proxemics: How Do They Affect Nonverbal Communication
7 Sep 2010 | 6:12 amProxemics -
Sep 7, Kinesics - Body Movements: One of the Types of Nonverbal-Conversaton
7 Sep 2010 | 6:10 amKinesics - Body movements -
Sep 7, Communication in Nursing
7 Sep 2010 | 6:07 amCommunication in Nursing: What is it? How can it be improved. -
Sep 7, Public Speaking Gestures & Facial Expressions
7 Sep 2010 | 6:04 amPublic speaking gestures. Learn and master facial expressions, emphatic gestures and descriptive gestures fropublic speaking. -
Sep 7, Improve enthusiasm In Your Public Speaking
7 Sep 2010 | 6:02 amLearn two techniques to improve enthusiasm in your public speaking.
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Public Speakers Blog
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My SHOCKING Interview on FOX-TV New York
25 Aug 2010 | 7:45 pmThere’s no place in the world like New York City to deliver a speech or be interviewed on television. New Yorkers are outspoken, direct, and fearless in asking questions that make most people blush. I’ve given speeches and interviews in NYC for years, but I have to admit that my interview today on FOX New York shocked me. I guess the lesson for all of us as speakers is to be prepared for anything, especially in the BIG APPLE! Check it out and see what you think. Steve Siebold [See post to watch Flash video] -
Why Do You Speak?
16 Aug 2010 | 2:37 pmWhy do you do what you do as a speaker? There are certainly easier ways to make money. I don’t know a single successful speaker who does what they do for the money. Knowing why you’re in this business may be the one thing that keeps you going during tough times. Watch this short video and see if you can answer this critical question for yourself. Steve Siebold [See post to watch Flash video] -
How To Flood Your Calendar with Speaking Engagements
9 Aug 2010 | 7:17 pmThis is the marketing system I used to build a seven-figure speaking business during the 9/11 attacks. Imagine generating over 300 leads for speeches, training, coaching and consulting dates after delivering one 10-minute speech to a group of referral agents. On October 15-17, 2010 we’re going to host the last meeting of the year of the Siebold Success Network. The deadline to speak at this event is this Sunday, August 15 at midnight. Watch this short video post for more information and then register at www.sieboldsuccessnetwork.com Steve Siebold ( 4:31 ) [See post to watch… -
When Public Speakers Should Write a Book
29 Jul 2010 | 4:05 pmMost speakers I know write their books too early, long before they’ve honed their message and established their uniqueness. That’s why the average speaker sells less than 250 copies of their book, and rarely write more than one. Most speakers books are Think and Grow Rich regurgitated. Invest the time in creating your unique point of view and put it in your book. Take a stand and write in strong, direct language. Writing about positive thinking is great, but it’s been done over and over for the last 100 years. What the market needs is new ideas, especially in a climate of… -
Do You Think Like a Million-Dollar Speaker?
23 Jul 2010 | 3:12 pmI just spent 2-days with 20 of the wealthiest professional speakers in the world. The meeting was held at the National Speakers Association Convention in Orlando. NSA has created a new, invitation-only group called the Million-Dollar Round Table. Each applicant had to submit financial statements to prove they had billed over a million dollars in speaking revenue in 2009. Only 21 speakers qualified, and I was honored to be one of them. All of us spoke during the 2-days, and it was amazing to hear the ideas from all of these brilliant speakers. The entire meeting I kept thinking to myself that…
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Visual, Verbal and Nonverbal Communication
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Mayor Daley's Announcement Falls 'Flat'
8 Sep 2010 | 11:04 amWhat did you see as you watched Mayor Daley announce his retirement yesterday? I witnessed a stranger. Daley was flat and scripted. I challenge the news media to find a clip of Mayor Daley being stoic and reading from a script. He abandoned his normal passionate communication style for a tightly controlled delivery of a message that sent tremors across the nation. The result of his ‘speak no evil’ presentation leaves us empty. Not a typical emotion after a Daley press conference. No jokes about how good his golf game will get, or quips about his wife chasing him out from under foot. His… -
ZMF In the News
20 Aug 2010 | 1:32 pmRod Blagojevich’s post-trial media tour may be just beginning today, but Zagnoli McEvoy Foley has been hitting the airwaves for weeks! ZMF consultants Theresa Zagnoli, Beth Foley, Bill Grimes, and Alan Tuerkheimer have been called upon by media outlets near and far to lend their expertise and insight into the former Illinois governor’s corruption trial and the jury deliberation process. Answering questions from “Was it a mistake to keep Rod Blagojevich off the witness stand when the jury was promised his testimony?” to “How do jurors begin to deliberate with 123 pages of jury… -
Examples of Good Corporate Communication Do Exist
4 Aug 2010 | 8:25 amIn several previous blogs, we’ve highlighted examples of poor communication. From poorly worded media statements of companies in crisis making horrible word choices to poorly phrased email statements to downright awful corporate announcements which highlighted insensitive, inconsiderate and thoughtless communication by corporate leadership – poor communication is everywhere. However, occasionally, I run across an example of corporate communication done right.A couple weeks ago, I read about the acquisition of deal-a-day website Woot by the e-commerce giant Amazon. I knew nothing about the… -
Communication is Communication: Night or day
30 Jul 2010 | 12:40 pmDid you hear? President Obama appeared on The View yesterday. Now people are weighing in on whether the President made the right decision to appear in this type of format. What a hoot – this is just an attempt to discredit his appearance by snooty mainstream media and Rosie O’Donnell worried about their coveted lock on the President’s public appearances. Mr. Obama does not need to speak to the nation through CNN, FOX, MSNBC or Larry King. Communication is communication at night or during daytime. And there is no denying he is a master. It is not like he showed up at the “Bunny… -
Not Minding Your Own Business
21 Jul 2010 | 7:12 amBy Bill Grimes‘You only have one chance to make a good first impression.’ What a curse! That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself. What’s your reaction to someone obsessed with making a good first impression? They appear overeager, unnatural, even suspicious. However they come across – too chatty, too quiet, say “I” and “me” too often – is not likely to be the real person anyway.If you’re overly concerned about making a good first impression, you’re putting the focus on yourself; kind of selfish when you think about it. You don’t want people to walk away from a…
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Better Presenting » Editorial
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Outstanding Presentation Webinar Series
7 Sep 2010 | 5:18 pmThe Outstanding Presentations Webinars Begin September 15 Free eight-week series showcases a who’s who in the industry What’s the next best thing to a live conference? A free webinar series that features the best of the best. Get your questions answered from top presentation, PowerPoint, and speaking experts by joining on to the Outstanding Presentations Workshop webinars, hosted and organized by Ellen Finkelstein, presentation specialist, author, and Microsoft MVP. The workshop begins next Wednesday, Sep 15, with a 60-minute webinar by yours truly, and continues with seven more, each… -
Sarah Palin Loses Herself in the Part
20 Aug 2010 | 8:14 amHere goes my perfect record: After more than 24 months of successful resistance, I’m going to write about Sarah Palin. In the cauldron of emotion that Palin evokes, I suspect I’m not alone in acknowledging that one of them is envy. I think it would be pretty cool to send out a tweet and be able to dominate the national news cycle for 24 hours. If I could do that, I would. To be sure, she is not the only national political figure to be active on social media, but she might be the one to most embrace its culture. And she does herself no favors in so completely immersing herself in… -
Slide decoration: how much is too much?
3 Aug 2010 | 12:54 amThere is a great conversation taking place right now in the Presentation Designers group at LinkedIn. Someone more LinkedIn savvy than I would have to say how to send you there via link, when membership into the group is required, so instead, I am excerpting a few of the comments here. Bruce Gabrielle of Insights Works in Seattle, asked the following question: I’m writing a book about use of PowerPoint in business, and one question I have is: how much decoration on a slide is too much? I define decoration as graphic elements that do not convey meaning to the reader. On one hand, Edward… -
Comfort Zones are Overrated
20 Jul 2010 | 8:27 amThis is the greeting that I offered in the published proceedings from last year’s conference. In the run-up to this year’s Presentation Summit, we think it makes for interesting reading… My daughter Jamie is a capable and confident softball player, having just completed a third consecutive all-star season. This fall, she tried out for a competitive traveling team, comprised of highly-skilled eighth- and ninth-graders, and in her own words, “I used to be one of the best players on my team—now I suck.” I’m not sure if she was angling for sympathy, but if so, she didn’t… -
When Slides Just Aren’t Right…
15 Jul 2010 | 10:42 amThis from Ed Harycki, CEO of Swift Financial: We give lots of presentations for small groups (a few of us and a few of them). Our primary audiences are financial institutions where our product would be a good fit for their customers base, and we are trying to convince them to partner with us to offer our products. In these meetings, we might be able to offer handouts, but not likely to be able to access a screen to have a “live” show. Sometimes, it is challenging to even crack open the deck as the audience members just don’t want it. Do we try to force it or just go with the flow?
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The Accidental Communicator
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It’s Labor Day – Take The Week Off!
6 Sep 2010 | 9:01 pmIf There's A Parade, Then It Must Be Labor Day! In the U.S. it’s the week of the Labor Day holiday (on Monday). Since a lot of you will be making the most of this last gasp of summer, I’m going to join you and take the week off. Enjoy your holiday and we’ll pick our discussions up again next week, same place, same time! - Dr. Jim Anderson Related posts:Merry Christmas – Take The Week Off! Loyal readers & subscribers, here’s hoping that this upcoming Christmas... Happy Thanksgiving — Take The Week Off! Loyal readers & subscribers, here’s… -
Advanced PowerPoint: 3 Tips The Pros Use
30 Aug 2010 | 9:01 pmImage Credit Great Looking PowerPoint Slides Are Easy To Create – If You Know How PowerPoint is a double edged sword when it comes to giving a speech: it can be both a powerful way to add a multimedia impact to your speech or it can end up distracting your audience and taking their attention away from what you have to say. The experts know how to use this tool correctly and here are three of the ways they tame the PowerPoint beast… It’s All About Look & Feel The PowerPoint slides that a speaker uses to augment their speech should look professional. Now this doesn’t mean… -
The 100 Hour Secret To Creating Speeches Everyone Will Want To Hear
23 Aug 2010 | 9:01 pmImage Credit Yes, I Do Have A Secret To Share With You Have you ever gone to hear someone speak and just been blown away by what they had to say? I mean their words just seemed to flow out of them and the stories that they told were right on the mark – a perfect complement to the point that they were trying to make? It turns out that you can deliver speeches like this too… The Secret To Creating Great Speeches If you want to be able to give a great speech, then you’ve got to be willing to invest the time to create a great speech. I’m not talking about shutting down for a… -
Mastering The PowerPoint Beast In 3 Easy Steps
16 Aug 2010 | 9:01 pmImage Credit There's No Need To Fear PowerPoint, Show It Who's Boss! Can we all be honest here? PowerPoint is a part of everyone’s life no matter how you feel about it. We all seem to fall into one of three camps: we fear it, we love it too much, or we just don’t really know what to do with it. With a little help, I think that I can help you out here… Get Your Head Straight The first thing to work out isn’t what your slides need to look like, rather it’s what role PowerPoint should play in your next speech. The answer is, always, a supporting role. This means that… -
Speech Writing Success: How To Make It Happen
9 Aug 2010 | 9:01 pmImage Credit You Can Be A Winner, You Just Have To Know How To Get There… So there you are: you’ve agreed to give a speech and now your mind has gone completely blank when you’ve tried to start to figure out what you’ll say. Where did your energy go? Perhaps more importantly, how are you going to get it back and create a great speech? It’s All About Your Goals If you’ve ever read a book or attended a workshop on motivational techniques, then you already know about the power of goals. If for some reason you haven’t, then you’re going to learn now. In…
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The Campaign Spot
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To Say Nothing of the Koran-Burning Carbon Emissions...
9 Sep 2010 | 4:27 amMy two favorite lines from today's Morning Jolt: Allahpundit, writing at Hot Air [about the proposed Koran burning]: “Glenn Beck’s against it too, of course. The grand irony of this crank pastor’s publicity stunt is that he’s trying to force the public to confront a difficult issue — when, if ever, is it appropriate to offend Muslims? — but doing it in such a grotesque,notoriously fascist manner that he’s guaranteed a united front against him among pols and pundits. Denouncing a book-burning is as easy a litmus test… -
Warning: Serious Polling Geek Talk Ahead
8 Sep 2010 | 2:50 pmPollster Scott Rasmussen was very generous with his time late yesterday; our conversation can be found here. Jim Geraghty -
Is the Hare Cooked?
8 Sep 2010 | 2:14 pmThe problem with this cycle is that early in the year, you pick an upset special that almost no else has noticed or is paying attention to, and then by the time Labor Day rolls around, nobody's surprised to see the challenger ahead. Over in Illinois' 17th Congressional District: Total Overall CHOICE FOR CONGRESS GOP D Independents (D) Phil Hare 38.41% 9.60% 73.09% 22.63% (R) Bobby Schilling 41.15% 79.66% 8.75% 44.41% (G) Roger Davis 3.85% 1.13% 2.84% 7.82% (Some folks say the tables are loused up, although it looks fine in my browser. Overall, Republican… -
A Little Late for a Registered Voter Poll, Isn't it, Fellas?
8 Sep 2010 | 1:49 pmCNN has some new poll numbers out in some key Senate races; earlier in the day, they touted them as being "surprising." They're surprising because they're different from other polls in these races. And they're different, I suspect, because much of the other polling is among likely voters, while the guys at CNN still haven't applied a likely voter screen. They find Kentucky tied. Most of the other polls of likely voters put Rand Paul up by a healthy margin. In Florida, they find Rubio 36 percent, Crist 34 percent, Meek 24 percent. I'm sure the Rubio folks will… -
I'll Bet These Numbers Left Carville Wincing. Er, More Than Usual.
8 Sep 2010 | 1:15 pmDemocracy Corps, Carville's outfit, finds that among likely voters nationwide, 42 percent prefer the Democratic candidate, 49 percent prefer the GOP candidate. Democrats lead among the "drop off voters" -- i.e., the folks not likely to vote this year -- 47 percent to 40 percent. Jim Geraghty
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washingtonpost.com - George F. Will Archive
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As GOP diversifies, South Carolina is rising
8 Sep 2010 | 9:00 pmNikki Haley and Tim Scott's candidacies show that the state has changed for the better. -
The environmental movement in retreat
4 Sep 2010 | 9:00 pmThe collapsing crusade for legislation to combat climate change raises a question: Has ever a political movement made so little of so many advantages? Its implosion has continued since "the Cluster of Copenhagen, when world leaders assembled for the single most unproductive and chaotic global... -
A Rocky Mountain showdown
1 Sep 2010 | 9:00 pmHere's why Ken Buck's looking like a promising candidate for Senate. -
For black children, daunting divides in achievement and family life
28 Aug 2010 | 9:00 pmVarious figures denote vexing social problems. They include 10,000 (the number of new baby boomers eligible for Social Security and Medicare every day), 10.2 percent (what the unemployment rate would be if 1.2 million discouraged workers had not recently stopped looking for jobs), $9.9 trillion (the... -
In the Mideast, the peace process is only a mirage
25 Aug 2010 | 9:00 pmThe biggest threat to Israeli-Palestinian peace might be the peace process itself.
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TSG Speakers Bureau for Motivational Keynote Speakers
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The Passing Zone
26 Aug 2010 | 4:57 amAmong the top entertainers for corporate events, The Passing Zone understands the nuance of corporate culture, convention objectives, team building and the specialized field of corporate entertainment. That's why The Passing Zone is extraordinarily popular on the corporate circuit. This dynamic comic juggling duo will wow your crowd and leave them talking for months! -
Vince Papale
26 Aug 2010 | 4:51 amIn 1976, Vince Papale was working as a school teacher and a part-time bartender. Vince overcame tremendous odds to become the oldest rookie in the history of the NFL. He eventually became a team captain and played in the NFL for four years. He is now a popular motivational conference keynote speaker. -
Robert Thompson
26 Aug 2010 | 4:47 amPassion is the driving force behind Robert Thompson's success. As a sought-after leadership keynote speaker and executive coach, Robert's passion for personal and professional leadership touches the lives of thousands of people every year. Known for his practical, street-savvy style, Robert's fusion of real-life stories and conversational techniques connect with his audience at an intimate, intense and individual level. -
The O’Shea Report
26 Aug 2010 | 4:43 amA little bit 20/20. A little bit Saturday Night Live. All bursting with comedic chemistry. Through their hilariously insightful Keynote and Convention Coverage, Tim O'Shea and Kris O'Shea turn ordinary conventions into memorable experiences that last far beyond the plane ride home. -
Ross Shafer
26 Aug 2010 | 4:37 am6-Time Emmy Award winner, Ross Shafer, is the Funniest Motivational Speaker, Keynote Speaker, & Banquet MC you've ever heard. And with the release of his new book, "NOBODY MOVED YOUR CHEESE!", Ross takes Motivational Speaking to a daring new level.
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Speakersite.com: Artie Isaac
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SpeakerSite: The Soapbox with Kathy Cleveland Bull
Fresh from the woodshed, courtesy of Kim Ann Curtin, I enjoyed a briefer (20-minute) chat with Kathy Cleveland Bull this morning. Here's the video. Kathy is very candid, sharing specific experiences and insights, including how she invests in experts who can propel her speaking business, such as web designers and others. Hope you like it. -
How (Not) To Interview on "The Soapbox"
One of the great aspects of SpeakerSite: when I need to learn, the experts start teaching. After the first episode of The Soapbox (SpeakerSite's new weekly interview), I received this very thoughtful email from Kim Ann Curtin, the co-host of the New York City Reunion of Speakers this summer, where the seed for The Soapbox was planted: Hi Artie! I think it's great. Good for you for following through. Several suggestions: I wouldn't keep the split screen up the whole time. If possible, let it come back after the the speaker finishes answering the questions. [ARTIE'S REPLY: I might be able to do… -
NEW ON SPEAKERSITE: Introducing "The Soapbox"
When a delightful handful of us gathered a month or so ago — at the New York SpeakerSite Reunion — everyone thought that it would be a great idea to have a weekly interview on SpeakerSite.One week, we discussed, might feature a successful speaker. Another episode might present a meeting planner. And speakers bureaus and representatives. And coaches and trainers. And others.Where To Start?One of the reunion attendees, Jack Sims reminded me of this conversation recently -- and Jack offered to be Guinea Pig #1. So I gathered the technology and am building a list of interview subjects.First… -
Way to be, Tennessee!
SpeakerSite member Kathi Browne, the Wingspouse from Maryville, Tennessee, saw the Very, Very Official Invitation For The 2010 SpeakerSite Reunion of Speakers in NYC for next week (7/15/10) and decided to reach out to the SpeakerSite group she founded called Speakers in Tennessee. Kathi is getting the ball rolling on a statewide get-together sometime this autumn. If you're a Tennessean, join Kathi's group and get together! Here's Kathi's message proposing the idea. Way to go, Kathi! You are the very heart of SpeakerSite. Let me know how I might be of help to the Speakers In Tennessee. -
Looking forward to meeting new speakers
It's supposed to be a little getaway with my beloved. We're going to spend a few days in New York City, home of our early years of marriage. But -- with my beloved's permission -- I'm glad to have a chance to meet some of the members of SpeakerSite. So I'm going to welcome all comers -- members, friends of members, and anyone curious about SpeakerSite -- at our 2010 Reunion of Speakers in New York City during the morning of Thursday, July 15, 2010. I hope you can make it. I'll be there! Here are the official details. Let me know if you are intending to attend and I'll send you the specific…
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The Public Speaker's Quick and Dirty Tips for Improving Your Communication Skills
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105 TPS How to Be A Great Guest Speaker - Part 3
2 Sep 2010 | 4:05 pmYou don't want to be that guest speaker. You know, the high-maintenance one, or worse, the boring/irrelevant guest speaker. Learn how to be the one who is enjoyable, memorable, and easy to work with guest speaker. Questions go to publicspeaker@quickanddirtytips.com or 206-350-7970. Like what you hear? Help us out by writing a review at iTunes! -
104 TPS How to Be A Great Guest Speaker - Part 2
26 Aug 2010 | 4:05 pmYou don't want to be that guest speaker. You know, the high-maintenance one, or worse, the boring/irrelevant guest speaker. Learn how to be the one who is enjoyable, memorable, and easy to work with guest speaker. Questions go to publicspeaker@quickanddirtytips.com or 206-350-7970. Like what you hear? Help us out by writing a review at iTunes! -
103 TPS How to Be A Great Guest Speaker
19 Aug 2010 | 4:05 pmYou don't want to be that guest speaker. You know, the high-maintenance one, or worse, the boring/irrelevant guest speaker. Learn how to be the one who is enjoyable, memorable, and easy to work with guest speaker. Questions go to publicspeaker@quickanddirtytips.com or 206-350-7970. Like what you hear? Help us out by writing a review at iTunes! -
102 TPS How to Write Thank You Notes
12 Aug 2010 | 4:05 pmYou may know that you are supposed to write thank you notes, but what exactly do you say when writing a thank you letter? Learn how to write sincere thank you cards. Questions go to publicspeaker@quickanddirtytips.com or 206-350-7970. Like what you hear? Help us out by writing a review at iTunes! -
001 TPS A Conversation About Conversation? (repeat of 7-24-08)
5 Aug 2010 | 4:05 pmLearn how to break the ice and start a conversation. Questions go to publicspeaker@quickanddirtytips.com or 206-350-7970. Like what you hear? Help us out by writing a review at iTunes!
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Power Presentations
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Hiatus
Thank you for reading our blogs. Beginning today our blogs will be on hiatus. We are curently redesigning our website, and look forward to posting more blogs upon its launch. -
“The Wow Factor”
In the article “Best Formula for Selling Yourself,” Frances Cole Jones, author of The Wow Factor: The 33 Things You Must (and Must Not) Do to Guarantee Your Edge in Today's Business World highlighted three proven techniques to close a sale⎯whether to sell an idea, a product, or yourself as ... -
The Rhino
In a prior blog, you read about the analogy of an elephant to presentations. Now, let’s take a look at another similar example to illustrate the importance of integration in presentations. In a recent Bayer’s commercial for women’s birth control pills, six blind-folded women described a rhino by touch. One ... -
Bookends II
Last Sunday, Frank Rich, the New York Times political columnist, provided another lesson in writing style for presenters; in fact, two lessons. In a previous blog, you read how Mr. Rich had used bookends, a figure of speech—a quote, a title, an incident, a person— that he referenced at the ... -
To Slip or Not to Slip
General Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, shared his feelings about his Commander-in-Chief with an advisor, who was later quoted in a Rolling Stone article: Obama clearly didn't know anything about him, ...
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Matt Eventoff
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Fear of Public Speaking? You Are Not Alone…
24 Aug 2010 | 1:23 pmI was perusing the latest edition of Men’s Journal when I came across an interview with Anderson Cooper. I enjoy Anderson’s speaking style – he appears confident, is conversational and has great control and is masterful in his use of paralanguage while reporting. Imagine my surprise to read that Anderson Cooper, who presents in front of millions and millions of people (indirectly) everyday, prime-time, has struggled with…. a fear of public speaking? The same anxiety-inducing phobia that millions of people (including me) have had to, or currently, deal… -
Media Training – How to Handle a Tough Interview
9 Aug 2010 | 1:08 pmThis is a great example of how to handle a tough interview. Ted Olson, former Solicitor General under President Bush, appeared this weekend on Fox News Sunday, hosted by Chris Wallace. The topic was Proposition 8 in California, and a recent victory by Mr. Olson’s legal team in Federal Court. In terms of handling a difficult interview, Mr. Olson did an excellent job, no matter where you stand on the issue. Here are a few reasons why: 1. Message – Mr. Olson’s message was clear, and he did not waver. Nearly every answer contained one or more of the following: … -
How to Blow Up Your Business
21 Jul 2010 | 1:37 pmNot only does everything you do send a message – that message is received, and usually remembered – often for a long, long time. Recently, my wife and I made a large purchase. I happened to show up directly after working out, so I was in gym attire. Our experience involved two saleswomen, one who was a gem, and one who was rude and quite nasty. The nasty saleswoman was condescending, treated us as if we were beneath her, and indicated through her behavior that she could care less if we ever did business with her, or told anyone about our experience with her. One problem… -
LeBron, Decision #2…Speech Coach?
8 Jul 2010 | 7:08 pmDear LeBron, Umm. Over 20 times. Umm. The first (non) word of every answer. Umm. One of the most visible personalities on the planet. Millions watching you decide where to play, live. Only 25 years old. The hero of who knows how many young men and women. A celebrity who seems to truly understand the power you wield over the lives of those who look up to you. And the decision is….ummm The President publicly courted you over seven times. The President! Thirty foot billboards. Six cities courting you. The eyes of the world on you, hanging on every word. Umm…. Pausing… -
BP – 11 More Steps
23 Jun 2010 | 1:27 pmThe disaster has taken a turn for the worse today, just as BP put Gulf Coast native and BP executive Bob Dudley in charge of the cleanup effort. The last few weeks have certainly dropped communication expectations, and everything that has appeared in print with regard to Mr. Dudley indicate he will do a much better job than his predecessor. 11 More Steps BP can take right now: (1.) Actions speak louder… Stop Talking – Communicating is always preferable to silence, except when it is covering up inaction or irresponsibility. If you have nothing good to say, say nothing. Following Mr.
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Thoughts On Presenting And Design
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DC’s Sewer System Fail In Today’s Storm
12 Aug 2010 | 6:31 amDownload now or watch on posterous IMG_0005.mov (4906 KB) Posted via email from Mike Pulsifer’s posterous -
Very Well Put…
28 Jul 2010 | 3:07 amThe following is a reply to a comment. View the comment thread. by Galeforce10 July 26, 2010 2:13 AM PDT Quote from another forum. I apologise because I cant remember the posters name and I don’t know if it was original or he copied it from somewhere: “This is where I think most analysis goes off the rails. It seems logical to think that the person who knows the most about phones (technology) should be the one who can best guide us in buying a phone. But in reality, the opposite is often true. Tech Geeks are more knowledgable so they can quickly figure out the arcane aspects of a… -
How To Botch A UI
26 Jul 2010 | 6:50 amvia 37signals.com * First of all, note the two-line app name. Not a wise design decision for a device with a limited screen size * Email icon for Text Messagin’ * Different names for the same app: “Text Messagin…” and “Text Mess” * Replacing a letter with three characters that together take up more space than the one letter: “Text Messagin…” vs. “Text Messaging” * Inconsistent status bar icon heights * Music icon looks like a push-button or HAL with it’s “eye” closed. Take your pick. It’s poor UI design… -
WTF Barnes & Noble?
21 Jul 2010 | 1:54 pmI was walking by a Barnes & Noble, trying to browse news.cnet.com and instead of getting the page I requested, I got this. Not cool. Sent from my iPhone Posted via email from Mike Pulsifer’s posterous -
Who’s this interrupting my commute?
21 Jul 2010 | 4:39 amPosted via email from Mike Pulsifer’s posterous
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Professionally Speaking
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Breaking Bad Habits in Presentations
1 Sep 2010 | 5:00 am"An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones." W. Somerset MaughamBritish playwright People who speak in public are often not aware of their bad presentation habits. That is until they see themselves on videotape. If I had a nickel for every time participants in my presentation skills classes… -
Presentation Tip: Say It Again, With Feeling
25 Aug 2010 | 7:13 amI am a volunteer docent at the U.S. Botanic Garden where I give tours of this glorious facility nestled at the foot of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. The Conservatory building and outdoor gardens are exquisitely beautiful with ever-changing seasonal displays, each more creative and alluring than the last. My tour presentation, alas, is not ever-changing. I highlight the same plants and use the same stories each time I give a tour. And herein lies the public speaking challenge.How do you keep a presentation fresh when you deliver it over and over and over?The key to success...and the most… -
Q & A in Presentations
18 Aug 2010 | 9:39 amEach time you make a presentation, you have a decision to make about how to handle questions. Will you take them throughout your remarks? Will you ask people to hold their questions until you have finished delivering your information? Will you announce a specific time for Q & A?Q: Which option is best?A: Although it depends somewhat on the format of your presentation, the size of the audience and the venue in which you're presenting, my bias is to welcome questions at anytime during your presentation. Questions demonstrate that the audience is engaged and stimulated by what you're saying. -
Presentation Tip: Don't Memorize
11 Aug 2010 | 1:15 pmMemorization works well for a lot of things: telephone numbers, Latin verb endings, the song lyrics for the holiday concert. Memorization doesn't work so well for presentations.Yet far too many times, presenters -- novice and experienced alike -- resort to memorizing their material. Ironically, of all the preparation techniques for a presentation, memorization is the riskiest. Forget a word or phrase and that can derail your entire presentation as you struggle to remember what comes next.ANOTHER PROBLEM WITH MEMORIZATIONMemorization makes it difficult to be really present with your audience. -
5 Ways to Get the Most Out of a Presentation Skills Course
30 Jul 2010 | 12:45 pmDear Presentation Skills Course Participant: Now that you are scheduled to attend a training course to improve your public speaking skills, I know that you are looking forward to being transformed into a brilliant presenter upon completion. And while I, too, would like to see that happen, alas, my magic transforming wand can only accomplish so much. Given that slight limitation, I offer you these suggestions for participating fully in the transformation process:1. Come to the course with a specific objective. You have undoubtedly already had a small amount -- possibly a great deal -- of…
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Speak Without Interruption
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SEND A MESSAGE
9 Sep 2010 | 3:26 amThe November mid-term elections are just around the corner and they are shaping up to be one of the most interesting in recent history. Not since the 1960′s have I seen the country so politically charged. Political scientists and the media will be watching with bated breath as this election may very well have an impact on the 2012 presidential election. Congressional approval ratings are at a new low. A Gallup Poll of June 23, 2010 reported, “Americans who believe most members of Congress do not deserve to be reelected support their position by saying representatives are simply… -
I’d bitch about health care, but I’m too sick.
8 Sep 2010 | 6:53 pmMy apologies, peeps: I’ve been rogue lately. Was knocked on my butt last week with chest pains and shortness of breath. When I got home from picking up a few groceries on Wednesday evening at 7:30, I sat down to check my mail like I usually do, when I suddenly felt sharp pain in bands across my back and I was having noticeable trouble breathing. My breath was coming in short gasps. My roommate gave me a couple of muscle relaxers, as I thought it might be from my Fibromyalgia, but after thirty minutes I had no relief, and so she decided to take me to hospital. I HATE going to… -
No Peace for the Israelis
8 Sep 2010 | 6:28 pmNo Peace for the Israelis By Alan Caruba Writing in the Jerusalem Post recently, Daniel Gordis wrote “Life in our region has taught us that the first necessary step to defending yourself is acknowledging that someone else is out to destroy you.” The peace talks the White House is sponsoring, much as previous administrations going back to Jimmy Carter have done, are doomed to failure. Just prior to the talks, four Israelis, one of whom was pregnant, were murdered and Hamas took credit for it. In Gaza, 3,000 turned out to celebrate the killings. The Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud… -
Locus of control: Who Runs Your Life?
8 Sep 2010 | 5:13 pmAt the very first session I had with my therapist oh so many years ago, the opening question out of my mouth was, “How long will this take?” Being ever the smart aleck, he replied, “About 50 minutes.” “No,” I responded. “How long will it take until I am fixed; you know, healed; normal?” I am not alone when it comes to asking that question. One of the first items we want checked off our “to do list of change” is a date specific that we can mark on our calendar alerting us to the face that – voila – goal achieved! Like a… -
Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King
8 Sep 2010 | 4:22 pmRemembering Martin Luther King I was thinking about Reverend Martin Luther King about a month ago and it occurred to me once again that he has gotten a bad rap in some Conservative quarters. He possessed some traits we see far too seldom these days – for instance; courage to take his case to the court of public opinion, a cause based on our constitutional and the willingness to own the risks of doing so. What caused me to think about Reverend King was my reflecting on the civil destructiveness of black intercity men and women every time their favorite team loses a championship or some…
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997 Ways to Be a Great Speaker
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Get Started on the Right Foot… Write Your Own Introduction!
5 Sep 2010 | 4:41 pmThe introduction to your presentation is not the speech opening. It’s also not your biography. Too many speakers, and Masters of Ceremonies think the biography of the presenter is what should be read before a speaker reaches the lectern. A bio can be printed and read in the program of the event, but a well-written introduction will help you connect with your audience before you even take the stage. The speaker’s introduction should not be taken casually. It’s importance, however, is often overlooked. The introduction sets the stage for your opening and your speech. An… -
Mastering the PowerPoint Beast in 3 Easy Steps
20 Aug 2010 | 12:52 pmCan we all be honest here? PowerPoint is a part of everyone’s life no matter how you feel about it. We all seem to fall into one of three camps: we fear it, we love it too much, or we just don’t really know what to do with it. With a little help, I think that I can help you out here… Get Your Head Straight The first thing to work out isn’t what your slides need to look like, rather it’s what role PowerPoint should play in your next speech. The answer is, always, a supporting role. This means that you need to make sure that your audience doesn’t end up… -
Public Speaking – How to Record Your Live Presentations Yourself on Audio
18 Aug 2010 | 9:33 amPublic speaking can lead to a lucrative career on its own or it can simply be used as another (very powerful!) marketing tool for your small or home-based business. Regardless of the reason you plan to speak, consider recording yourself so you can use that recording for continued marketing success in the future. Using video can be expensive and is a hassle to get organized. But an taking audio recording of you delivering your speech can be quick and simple to do if you have the right, easy-to-use tools. This really is one of those tech-type things you can do on your own even if you’re a… -
Vocal Variety Matters – So Speak Up!
16 Aug 2010 | 10:06 amYou have a good clear voice. You can be heard across the room, yet every time you speak, someone tells you it was a good speech but all it needed was some more vocal variety. What is the matter with these people? What are they talking about? Pssst! They’re talking about the way you use your voice to create interest, excitement and or emotional involvement. That’s vocal variety! Whether you realize it or not, according to Roy Hanschke, founder of Voice Personality: your voice has a personality that tells your story. It says you are capable, interesting, competent, incompetent,… -
How To Connect With Your Audience – 5 Things You Can Do Right Now!
6 Aug 2010 | 7:37 pmThe moment I start to write a speech, the following lines from one of my “theme” songs go off in my head: “Every face tells a story/No need to hide and lie/Every face tells a story/Yours is saying goodbye.” The difference is that while the tune remains the same, the words become: “Every speech tells a story/Audience response don’t lie/Every speech tells a story/Will they be saying goodbye?” No, I’m not crazy. Every speech does tell a story and audience response does not lie. We, the audience could not care less how great your content is if you…
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The Presentation Advisors
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Ten Tips for Delivering the Perfect Wedding Toast
8 Sep 2010 | 8:32 amThis post originally appears as a guest post on the Weddingistas blog. Being chosen as a groom’s Best Man or a bride’s Maid of Honor is truly an honor (as the name implies). It’s a title that one receives when they’ve meant the most as a friend to the bride or groom. Of course, once the emotion subsides it gives way to the fact that being a Best Man or Maid of Honor comes with great responsibility – not the least of which is the Wedding Toast. Image: Robert and Kathleen Photography To ease your nerves and make your Best Man or Maid of Honor speech go as smoothly as possible, here… -
The Power of Story in Presentations by Nancy Duarte
1 Sep 2010 | 9:26 pmAs I was buzzing around Vimeo today, I checked out what Duarte Design had in their queue. Just a few hours earlier they had posted the video you see below. I was originally planning on tweeting it out, but that wouldn't do it justice. In the video Nancy Duarte, CEO of Duarte Design in California, explains why stories are so powerful. Most presentations are designed to report and disseminate information but fail to capture the power of storytelling and ultimately flatline. As Nancy mentions, storytelling has been used since the beginning of humanity to pass on… -
3 Sure Fire Ways to Win Over Your Audience
30 Aug 2010 | 9:24 pmWhen you step onto that stage, or into that boardroom, or in front of those students, or behind the mic for a webinar, or the many other circumstances that precede a presentation, you're never presenting alone. Now, that may be true simply because you're part of a group of people presenting, but even if you're solo, you're never really alone. That's because you're just one part of the presentation equation. The audience is the other HUGE part of that equation. It's no secret that having an audience on your side will make a presentation seem easier, less stressful, and even fun! … -
Reader Survey: What YOU Want from the Presentation Advisors Blog?
18 Aug 2010 | 6:45 pmI apologize. After recently attending the Audience Conference, I've realize that I haven't done enough to understand what you, MY audience, wants, needs, and cares about in regards to my blog. The range of this blog has exceeded what I originally intended, straying from just PowerPoint design to a broader view of presenting, public speaking, marketing, social media, sales, engagement, and more. I broadened the scope as my passions broadened, but this blog isn't about me - it's about the value I can offer for you, my audience. I've created a survey to find out exactly what you… -
The Audience Conference 2010 - Social Media, Comedy, and Relationships
16 Aug 2010 | 7:59 pmOver the weekend I attended The Audience Conference at historic Caroline's on Broadway in the heart of Times Square, NYC. The conference was to be a blend of social media and comedy, and their similar relationships with content, audience, and the like. Only a 60-minute train ride and an affordable $100 price tag, I couldn't pass it up. Overview:Via the suggestion and rave-review by C.C. Chapman, I signed up only minutes after learning about this conference. I was particularly intrigued by the fact that there was NO Tweeting, live-blogging, or connectivity of any…
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Dahle Communication
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I Hate Public Speaking Song
7 Sep 2010 | 6:22 amThanks to Megan for sending me this video yesterday. It sums up what a lot of people feel when they are getting up and speaking. It comes from a public speaking company. I have no idea how good they are, but I liked their video and wanted to share it with you. Enjoy! -
Foursquare Badges Tell Stories - Which One Is Another Story
30 Aug 2010 | 6:06 amIf you don't know what Foursquare is you are not alone. There are a little more than 3 million users currently on Foursquare. Now that is quite a jump from the 725,000 users in March, but it is still quite short of the 500 million users on Facebook. What is Foursquare? Well, I am not talking about the game played on playgrounds with four squares and a ball, but a mobile application that "aims to encourage people to explore their neighborhoods and then reward people for doing so." If you visit a location often enough you can become the 'mayor' of the location. Some… -
Hello....Is There Anybody In There
23 Aug 2010 | 7:01 amThat is what I am sure a lot of you have been asking if you have been checking my blog for updates this summer. This has been a long summer - a total of 5 posts from the end of May to today...that is just sad. I could try to give you excuses as to why - I've been busier this summer with meeting clients than I have at any other time, I've been working on a lot of things, my hands felt just like two balloons (not really), etc - but you don't want to hear that at all. The fact is, even if I am busy, the information I put on this blog I take pride in. I want to show people that… -
Ignite SD # 3 is tonight!
2 Aug 2010 | 6:41 amIgnite SD is finally making its way to Sioux Falls this evening and I have the pleasure of speaking at the event. While a lot of cities have hosted Ignite events, the 9 Clouds, Inc. team wanted to have the event in more than one location. To understand why is to understand South Dakota. We are a small state and have a connection to each other, even though it takes us 6 hours to drive across it!So, if you are in the Sioux Falls area and feel so inclined - here is the information:Location: Museum of Visual Materials, 500 N. Main Ave, Sioux Falls, SDTime: 7:30 P.M.I hope to see you there - and… -
Book Review: Everyone Communicates - Few Connect by John C. Maxwell
12 Jul 2010 | 6:44 amThroughout this book, the focus is on connecting with others at three different levels: one-on-one, in a group, and with an audience. John C. Maxwell stays true to this statements in his new book "Everyone Communicates, Few Connect" that I have had the privilege to read over the past couple of weeks. Sadly, I wanted to write about this a few weeks ago when I first got a copy, but I tend to read books a little too thoroughly. I highlight parts, make notations on the sides, and use tabs to mark key spots - and I tend to read about 6 books at a time - which is basically the excuse…
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Speaking Pro Central
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Create and communicate meaning
8 Sep 2010 | 7:00 pmWhat entrepreneurship and the art of presentation have in common is they are both really about creating meaning. This simple fundamental is often forgotten (or was never learned). In business, we need to make money, of course. This is a given. But the focus and the very reason one goes into the business should not be money.Brought to you by: Speaking Pro Central -
Best Selling Author Don Yaeger Endorses THE Executive Speech Coach
8 Sep 2010 | 6:53 pmNew York Times Best Selling Author Don Yaeger Endorses THE Executive Speech Coach Patricia Fripp. However, it goes both ways. Patricia Fripp recommends Don Yaeger. Yes, he is a best selling author and Sports Illustrated for years. On a personal note I am not interested in sports. Clients often bring him back.at How They Think 1.Brought to you by: Speaking Pro Central -
Five things speakers can learn from event planners
8 Sep 2010 | 5:00 pmI have two clients who are event planners. They create amazing social and corporate events as well as weddings that would charm your socks off. If you've ever been to a conference, a wedding, a large fundraiser, a political rally, or a memorial service, chances are an event planner was involved. Understand the purpose of the event. Be flexible.Brought to you by: Speaking Pro Central -
Barack Obama - Hey, maybe this dude just didn't suffer enough
8 Sep 2010 | 3:58 pmI once worked for a woman who only hired wounded types. 0160; "Unless you have a dismal childhood, you don't have the push." quot; That's what she always used to say. 0160; She also had a thing against those who had gone to good schools. from a women's Roman Catholic College, I was a shoo-in. Brought to you by: Speaking Pro Central -
Freelance Writing: Pay to Play [it's worth it]
8 Sep 2010 | 2:00 pm"I was in Washington D.C. this past weekend and the freelancers like you who are based there pay to join organizations like the American Independent Writers. 0160; They're getting plenty of assignments. 0160; Even my daughter has joined up." 0160; Well, as usual, he's on the money. Brought to you by: Speaking Pro Central
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The Strategic Communicator
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Connecting with an Audience – A Shift in Perspective
30 Aug 2010 | 5:00 amIt’s always surprising to me how many outgoing extroverted people clam up when they have to deliver a speech. It’s as if once they step on the platform, the microphone sucks out all of their charisma and energy. Next thing you know, you have a boring monotone shell of a speaker in front of you. Bound to Make a Connection by jaxxon What happens in the minds of these otherwise peppy individuals that turns them into boring speakers? There is a shift in their focus. An charismatic person is usually a great conversationalist because they are ultimately focused on making a connection with the… -
What Twitter Teaches Us About Communication
23 Aug 2010 | 5:56 amLike many of you, I have dived into the dicey waters of Twitter. How can this thing drive business? How can I avoid this taking over my life? Does anyone pay attention to this thing anyway? Even though I haven’t been able to answer those questions – along with many others – I have noticed a few lessons that Twitter can teach anyone about successful communication. Power in Brevity: I have been teaching this lesson from the platform for years. When we have to create a message that can be succinct enough to fit in 140 characters, we must practice extreme editing skills. We all know… -
Avoiding a Culture of Complaints
18 Aug 2010 | 11:55 amComplaints happen. It’s a fact of life. One of your team members feels snubbed by something you said in the last meeting and so he complains to his coworkers to vent his frustrations. Someone doesn’t feel appreciated and they spend the day hopping from cubicle to cubicle making sure everyone knows they should be appreciated. Or, there is a building tension amongst your group and the culture of complaints seems to be spreading a viral YouTube video. If you notice that your office is on the verge of collapse from complaints, keep reading. People often latch on to a subject and continue to… -
What Every Presentation Needs: Wrapping Paper!
2 Aug 2010 | 4:12 pmAn observation in style vs. substance in presentations. It’s your birthday. Your friends have decided to throw you a surprise party. You come home from work and inside your living room are your family and friends yelling, “SURPRISE!” You have a great time hanging out, having a few drinks, and talking with everyone. After you blow out the candles, it’s time for presents. You see an array of small and big boxes wrapped in colorful wrapping paper. You spot a few distinct well branded gifts that have obviously come from high-end retail stores. Then you notice a surprisingly odd looking… -
Sharí’s Article Featured on Top Management Web Site
9 Feb 2010 | 7:27 amClick here to read Sharí’s article “Networking and Selling Using Body Language Secrets” at ManageSmart.com!
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Les Posen's Presentation Magic
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Useful resources for presenters from the design field: Smashing Magazine’s 25 useful design videos and presentations
15 Aug 2010 | 8:21 pmEven regular presenters do well to pay attention to others in their field. You can pick up new ideas about familiar subjects, new subjects presented in a familiar way, and new ideas presented in unfamiliar fashions! Those of us who, like I, use the cognitive neurosciences to inform their presentation skills do well to give attention to those in the design field, and vice-versa in order to advance their skills. So for me, in addition to my newsfeeds of psychological topics, I also have a selection of design feeds. Most of these are not about presentations per se, but about design in general,… -
Why Apple needs to strike hard and fast to make Keynote the dominant presentation software in colleges and other institutes of education – it can be done in the next five years despite Powerpoint’s undeserved current dominance.
13 Aug 2010 | 8:37 amIn my last several posts, I’ve asked you to observe with me a changing landscape for presentations, in particular how the nature of audiences is forcing a shift towards visually-rich media. Some of the research I have cited argues that a new generation is coming through who have grown up with the internet, especially broadband, which can deliver media in different ways than it was for their parents for whom dialup was the standard, as was your traditional text- and bullet-point driven Powerpoint stacks in college and the boardroom. Young people coming through the ranks have grown up… -
More mainstream media evidence that presentation skills need to enter the 21st Century – looking at generational divides and why default Powerpoint won’t cut it.
10 Aug 2010 | 11:44 pmMany Presentation Magic readers and workshop attendees will know that I am always on the lookout for evidence for how presentations are changing to suit changing times. Often, technologies and shifting economies drive the need for presentations to alter, especially when audiences shift in their desires to be informed and entertained. The last week I have come across three mainstream media articles I wish to share with you now to reinforce the message that audiences are changing and the standard default means of delivering messages via slideshows - the so-called Cognitive Style of Powerpoint… -
More evidence that the cognitive style of Powerpoint is a thing of the past – evidence from museums and art galleries
28 Jun 2010 | 7:29 pmI have a new breakfast habit each morning. Since I purchased my 64GB/3G iPad last week, I now take it with me to breakfast where I read the day’s newspapers on real paper (supplied by the cafe) while the iPad sits at the side of the table, open to email or twitter so I can get my day off and running. This morning’s Age newspaper’s Arts and Style section contained an interesting article on art galleries and museums, and their curation. In the last few years, the Macintosh User group of which I’m currently President has continued a relationship with the featured museum,… -
Presentation Magic presents to a Coaching audience which includes military Powerpoint users: funny stories of how they deal with the usual “Death by Powerpoint”
6 Jun 2010 | 5:15 amI gave a half-day Presentation Magic workshop to about 50 members of the Australian Psychological Society’s Interest group in Coaching Psychology on the weekend. (See the flyer APS IGCP workshop flyer) Rather than giving them a cut down version of the two day or even one day course of training I offer (such as at Macworld), I gave the introduction session which outlines the essential problems with most presentation nowadays, especially if they follow the traditional style of powerpoint most favoured by academics and within the enterprise setting. I emphasised the evidence base for a…
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PRESENTability
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I Quit….With Creativity
4 Sep 2010 | 11:05 amThis is one of the most creative resignation. Girl sent 33 pictures of herself explaining the situation on a white board While I don’t think it is a good idea to attack people, I must admit that this is pretty funny. You can see all the pictures at The CHIVE. UPDATE: fortunately, this is an hoax. But it’s still very creative. Hoax details. Posted by: Denis Francois Gravel Return to front page -
Birdy Juice Box Concept
29 Aug 2010 | 10:59 amVery creative juice box design. This birdy box should amuse the kid in you. Source : Jeksel™. via LaughingSquid.com via Guy Kawasaki Posted by: Denis Francois Gravel Return to front page -
World Record for Interactive Ad
27 Aug 2010 | 9:06 amThis is the most clickable interactive Ad I have seen. Click on the button to make the hamburger Better. Congrats to McDonalds for this ad. Seriously, I don’t think there is a world record for interactive ad, but with the number of clicks of this one, it is a serious contender. Source : PubInteractive.ca via Luc Dupont Share with me: Did you click all the way thru the ad? Posted by: Denis Francois Gravel You liked this post? You can receive future posts for free by subscribing. RSS Feed Return to front page -
Most Creative Rain Boots Ever
18 Aug 2010 | 2:46 pmWith some creativity, you can create a new and attractive product. These level rain boots are probably he most creative boots I have seen in a long time Source: Regina Regis Rain via @MademoiselleC Posted by: Denis Francois Gravel Return to front page -
Comment Faciliter Votre Développement des Affaires!
18 Aug 2010 | 7:38 amFaciliter le développement des affaires. Décoder les situations de ventes avec aisance. Choisir l’approche la plus efficace à tout coup. Voici le révolutionnaire programme Efficacité Vente. J’annonçais en avril dernier ma collaboration avec Dolmen Capital Humain. Dans ce billet, j’expliquais mon implication dans le développement d’un programme qui s’annonçait totalement différent des programmes habituels. Pour découvrir ce nouveau programme de développement et l’impact incroyable qu’il pourrait avoir dans votre organisation, inscrivez-vous à l’un des webinaires…
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Vital Speeches of the Day
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Vital Speeches of the Day podcast: COMMENTARY—What can Vital Speeches do for you?
COMMENTARY: What can Vital Speeches do for you?? Vital Speeches editor David Murray queries executive communication professionals, speechwriters and other rhetoricians on their needs, and how we might fulfill them. (1 min.) [podcast]http://www.vsotd.com/media/podcast/cando_final.mp3[/podcast] Click here for more FREE podcasts on the subject of executive communications. -
When is it okay to tell tall tales at the lectern?
On my personal blog, I weigh in today on Glenn Beck's recent white whopper about having held the George Washington inaugural speech in his hands. Generously, perhaps, I attribute his speech-giving gaffe to an absence of a background in journalism, where he would have learned to fit the facts to ... -
Former White House scribes, academics break down Obama’s rhetoric
Yesterday's C-SPAN panel on "Obama Administration Speeches and Rhetoric" is an hour and 41 minutes, but it is the most efficient path to a coherent point of view from every angle of the subject. Sit back, as I did, and listen to former West Wing speechwriters Vinca LaFleur, Jeff Shesol and ... -
Vital Speeches finds challenges outnumber opportunities two to one
Slamming together Vital Speeches of the Day this morning, I wasn't sure whether I had or hadn't inserted a George Allen speech into the final document, so I searched for "Allen." Allen was there—but what the search also turned up in the month's dozen speeches, 42 uses of the term ... -
Vital Speeches of the Day podcast: COMMENTARY—Bill Lane to appear at “Leadership Communication Days”
Bill Lane to appear at "Leadership Communication Days" Just good are your best practices? Run them by the longtime speechwriter to G.E. CEO Jack Welch. (2 min.) [podcast]http://www.vsotd.com/media/podcast/lane_final.mp3[/podcast] Click here for more FREE podcasts on the subject of executive communications.
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Biblical Preaching
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Why Not Use the Main Idea for the Message Title?
8 Sep 2010 | 10:35 pmJust following up on yesterday’s post, I thought I’d clarify why I don’t think it is usually a good idea to simply use the main idea of the message as a title. 1. You don’t want to give away any sermonic tension. Obviously if you are preaching an inductive message, then you need to withhold the main idea until the end of the message. But if you’re preaching a deductive message, wouldn’t it be okay to advertise the main idea? Occasionally it could be effective to do so, but I would generally choose not to do so. Even in a deductive message, you… -
Sermon Titles: So Tricky
8 Sep 2010 | 6:05 amOver three years ago, when this blog was first beginning, I wrote a post about sermon titles. I called it “Tricky Little Things” and for some reason it was the post that consistently got the highest level of hits in the couple of years that followed. So I thought I’d revisit it today with some tweaks. Let’s think about sermon titles: I don’t find it easy to write a title for a sermon. Actually, I do . . . a bad one! I don’t find it easy to write a good title for a sermon. So what makes a title tick? Even before we get to that question, let’s consider… -
When Does This Touch My Heart?
6 Sep 2010 | 10:20 pmFollowing on from yesterday’s post about the process of preparation being logical, but not mechanical, I’d like to come at the same issue from a different angle. There is a danger that we follow a process like the 8-stage approach presented on this site, and then afterward seek to “add affect.” That is, we work through the steps, end up with something of a message, but then try to add the affective elements to it. These might include adding some sense of its effect or affect on us, the preacher. Or adding elements to stir the affections of the listener. Adding… -
Logical, Not Mechanical
5 Sep 2010 | 10:19 pmI teach an 8-stage approach to preaching preparation, always emphasising that each stage should be saturated with prayer (avoiding suggesting prayer as a single stage, or suggesting that this is a prayerless process). The 8 stages are in a logical order. You cannot prepare the message until you’ve worked with the passage (1-4 before 5-8). You cannot study the passage until you’ve selected it (1 before 2-4). You cannot determine the idea of the passage until you’ve selected and studied it (1-3 before 4). You cannot finalise your message idea until you’ve… -
Dumbing Down Preaching?
3 Sep 2010 | 10:20 pmAfter my post on making sense I received the following very helpful comment from Martin: You make good points but I am left wondering. There is so much dumbing down in America, are your encouraging the dumbing down of the sermon too? How do you lift the bar for the congregation? How do you keep the focus of the bright ones without leaving the newcomers behind? In a rhetorical sense, should pastors check their brains (and learning) at the door to appeal to the least common denominator? In so doing, do the more educated listeners leave the service longing for more meat and less milk? In sum,…
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PowerPoint Tips Blog
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5 simple rules for creating world-changing presentations
6 Sep 2010 | 7:55 amWatch this video by Nancy Duarte on her company’s 5 simple rules for creating world-changing presentations. At the same time, the video is a showcase of what you can do in PowerPoint 2010. Who said PowerPoint has to be boring? Nancy Duarte is one of the great speakers in the Outstanding Presentations Workshop. The opportunity to hear her — and the other speakers — for free is unprecedented. Don’t miss this amazing opportunity! The workshop starts September 15th. Attendance is limited to 1000 people and we’ll reach that easily, so don’t delay. Here’s the link… -
Amazing free webinar series! Outstanding Presentations Workshop
1 Sep 2010 | 8:53 amI’m excited to announce an unprecedented opportunity for you to hear top presentation experts present on what they know best: How to create outstanding presentations! Never before have so many famous presenters come together to speak to you, people who present day in and day out. It’s called “Outstanding Presentations Workshop.” Click the link and complete the simple sign-up form on that page. You’ll need to confirm your registration. It’s 8 free webinars, starting on Wednesday, September 15th and going through Wednesday, November 10th. The time is 1pm… -
Review: Everyone Communicates, Few Connect by John C. Maxwell
25 Aug 2010 | 11:57 amEveryone Communicates, Few Connect is a book about speaking in a way that connects with the audience. Author John C. Maxwell makes the point that no matter what you say (even with your body language), you’re communicating something, but it takes more effort to connect with people. Using stories about his own struggles to communicate effectively, first as a church pastor, then as a speaker, the author explains principles and practices that anyone can use to connect. He breaks these down into little steps that are easy to implement. I was surprised at the tone of the book; it’s… -
PowerPoint idea: Introduce a panel of speakers
24 Aug 2010 | 8:59 amTo introduce a panel at a panel discussion or employees to a group, you can create a slide with their photos, name, title, and so on. Because you want to speak about each person in turn, you can use animation to display each person’s photo and name when you click. Here is one approach you can use. Follow these steps: Collect the photos of your panel members. Ideally, they should be approximately the same shape. Insert a shape and size it according to your needs. This will contain the photo. Insert another shape and move it adjacent to the first shape, as you see here. This will contain… -
PowerPoint 2007 tutorials help you make the most of the features
22 Aug 2010 | 2:43 pmDanny Rocks offers a 2-CD set called, “50 Best PowerPoint 2007 Tips, Tricks & Techniques.” If you know something about PowerPoint but want to make better use of the features, I recommend this series. The 2 CDs contain 41 lessons organized into Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced levels. Each lesson is a professionally-produced video in which Danny verbally explains the feature while showing you how to use it. The lessons run from about 6 to 10 minutes. The lessons are a great combination of technical information along with his wisdom on when and why you should use the…
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PowerPoint Ninja
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Using Shadow Effects in PowerPoint 2007
16 Aug 2010 | 6:29 amShadow effects can help images to leap from your slides. (c) Thinkstock One of my favorite new features of PowerPoint 2007 is the ability to add shadows to images, objects, and text. Previously in PowerPoint 2003, you were only able to add shadows to text — that’s it. You would need Photoshop and the necessary graphic editing skills to create professional-looking shadows for anything else. Now Microsoft gives you some Photoshop-like shadow effects in PowerPoint 2007. Before I get into how to use PowerPoint 2007’s shadow effects, I’d like to provide a couple of use… -
Ensure Your PowerPoint Presentation Spurs Discussion
19 Jul 2010 | 6:52 amDon't be a slave to your PowerPoint slides! (c) Thinkstock You have an important internal presentation coming up where you’re going to present to a group of senior managers at your company. Here’s your big chance to make a great impression and land the promotion you’ve been after. You’re excited to learn that they’re going to give you a full hour. You invest a lot of time in creating the perfect presentation. However, as you finish your last slide right before the hour is up, you realize you made a critical mistake — you left no time for group… -
Image Fading Technique in PowerPoint
3 Jun 2010 | 7:28 amImage fades can be useful in many situations (just like a good pair of jeans). (c) Thinkstock You may have run into a situation where you wanted to fade a part of an image for a PowerPoint slide. By fade, I don’t mean the fade animation effect in PowerPoint. By fade, I mean blending the image into the background color or another solid color of your choice. You may have thought you needed Photoshop to create a fade effect with your images. However, you can achieve a fade effect directly in PowerPoint using an object with a blended transparent gradient fill. Step 1 - Identify where a fade… -
What Makes an Image Good for Presentations - Part II
7 May 2010 | 6:44 amComposition also makes images better. (c)Thinkstock In the first part of this article, I discussed how good presentation images need to be both relevant and unique. In terms of the uniqueness of an image, there are two factors: the subject of the photo and the composition of the photo. In the previous article, I looked at how the subject of the photo can make a presentation image more interesting, and now I’m going to turn my attention to the second area: composition. Composition of the Photo The method that the photographer uses to capture or manipulate a photo can contribute… -
What Makes an Image Good for Presentations - Part I
27 Apr 2010 | 6:49 amLots of photos are taken, but few are chosen. (c) Thinkstock If you’ve read any presentation design books lately (Presentation Zen Design, Slide:ology, etc.), you’ve probably decided to use more images in your presentations. However, you may still be wondering if the images you’re selecting are good, average, or lame. Using more lame or average images in your presentations is about as helpful as adding more bullet points or animations to your PowerPoint slides. “Good” can be extremely subjective or relative. Just because you’re using an image from a stock…
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Speak for Success!
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Great Speaking? -- It's About Performance Over Content
16 Aug 2010 | 6:50 amAre you married to your content instead of your true love, your audience? Too many public speakers are guilty of this crime of passion. To be in love with your information instead of your listeners is to ruin the marriage of content and influence that makes any presentation a success. Like many hopeless lovers, speakers can be too easily dazzled by the obvious and the pretty: the selling points and bullet points that they’ve tenderly selected for their presentation. “But this is a labor of love,” we can hear them saying. – “This proposal is exactly the way I want it to come… -
How to Motivate as a Speaker in Tough Times
20 Jul 2010 | 3:14 pmRecently, I coached a Marketing Director for a beverage company who said his job was “to convey facts and figures.”After hearing that, I needed a stiff drink.Actually, his viewpoint wasn’t surprising. And he quickly understood when I suggested that his real purpose was something quite different. His job as a speaker, I told him, was meeting the needs of his listeners and achieving lasting influence.In tough economic times like the present, the distinction between conveying information and activating audiences is more important than ever. Merely informing audiences becomes a serious… -
General McChrystal's Lesson in Dealing with Print Journalists
28 Jun 2010 | 6:48 amWhen the news broke that Gen. Stanley McChrystal was being fired by President Obama, I was conducting training at the U.S. State Department on how to deal with the media. My yearly Media Training course is for senior-level diplomats at our embassies and consulates abroad. The two-day course covers aspects of appearing effectively in the media, as well as handling oneself in the face of reporters’ ploys and tactics.On Day Two, I discuss the differences between television, radio, and print journalism. I also point out the unique perils of speaking to newspaper and magazine reporters. It was… -
BP's Tony Hayward and Surviving Congressional Testimony
21 Jun 2010 | 11:39 amIn the media training I conduct for executives and political figures, I emphasize a goal of not merely surviving a media encounter, but thriving. In the media as in sports, the individual or team that focuses solely on defense usually will not win. Media appearances offer unique opportunities to reach huge numbers of stakeholders. They should be embraced with enthusiasm, rather than with the notion that escaping with one’s skin is a victory.Yet some media encounters are barely survivable. When ambush is the order of the day, or where bias is institutionally entrenched, showing sheer guts… -
The World's Most Amazing Public Speaking Technique
13 Jun 2010 | 5:57 pmFor people the world over, speaking in public is a terrifying proposition. Yet what is more exciting than a powerful speech on an important topic? Speeches and presentations have changed history, inspired millions, created instant superstars, and rallied entire nations to action. On a more everyday level, they contribute to professional advancement and help organizations accomplish their mission. With such a momentous pedigree, you’d think that speaking in public would be an ultra-sophisticated task, approachable only by the best and brightest among us. Yet public speaking is relatively…
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slidecoaching.com
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PowerPoint Whiteboarding
15 Aug 2010 | 11:05 pmIt’s always hard to keep students engaged and listening during a class and especially so during a long one. Here are five “low tech” suggestions for teaching with slides from a university professor: Design the slides so that certain content is missing, allowing for interaction and construction with the students Project the slides over a whiteboard Use markers to fill-in-the-blanks and to comment/expand on the content Invite students to take notes and build the content during the class Take a digital photograph of the whiteboard before erasing. Here are some photographs I… -
One message per slide, please
11 Jun 2010 | 1:07 amIf you want to show a lot of data, spread it out onto multiple slides, with one key message per slide. The slide shown above comes from a recent seminar. Too many bits of information on a single slide dilute the message. In addition, the slanted writing in the background also competes with the data for attention. If you are not familiar with Garr Reynolds and his presentation zen blog/books, take a look at some of his great examples of having just one key message per slide. His books are listed in the right column with other reading suggestions. Sample slides by Garr Reynolds -
Don’t write your speech on the slide
14 May 2010 | 7:53 amThe temptation is often present: as you build your presentation slides, you think of the messages and words you want to say, and you end up writing them on the slide. Then you look at the “wordy” slide and decide an image might help visually. So you make room and add one on the side. This is an example that I recently saw at a conference I attended: The result was this: the audience automatically disconnected from the presenter to read ahead the text that appeared on the slide the audience read faster than the presenter talked the audience couldn’t wait for the presenter to… -
Fatal attraction: the projection screen
22 Apr 2010 | 12:25 pmIt happened again. A good speaker, a good topic, a large and interested audience, but… the speaker frequently turned to look at the slides projected on the large screen behind him, effectively turning his back on much of the audience. This was not necessary because: The stage was fitted with a couple of screens on the floor on each side facing the presenter, so he could have easily avoided turning his head away from the audience. He had a presentation remote, so he could have moved freely on the stage. Next time you are up on stage, remember to keep your eyes on the audience as much as… -
How to activate URL Links in Slideshare
12 Apr 2010 | 12:15 pmSometimes presentations include URL links. URL stands for Universal Resource Locator and is an internet term. It generally refers to a website address such as http://www.slidecoaching.com. If you build a presentation with PowerPoint, the URL link will automatically get underlined, it will appear in a different color and it will be active when you show the presentation with PowerPoint; when you click on it the browser will open and the webpage will be displayed. A link which is recognized as a URL by PowerPoint will also be recognized as such when you upload your presentation to…
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All About Presentations
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What is the ideal image size for PowerPoint?
5 Sep 2010 | 12:30 pmImages are available in all kinds of sizes on the internet; 640x480 pixels, 800x600, 1024x768, etc. When you download images from Google or from websites like flickr, freedigitalphotos.net you have a wide choice. In Google you can filter your search by image size (large, medium, etc). While buying images from any stock images site you have the choice of various sizes. If you download an image from freedigitalphotos.net you are given three choices:medium (640 x 425)large (1024 x 681)high resolution (2858 x 1900)How do you then choose which size to download?My experience tells me that users… -
Take The 1 minute Billboard Test and be amazed
3 Sep 2010 | 10:24 amToday I will ask you to take a test. A simple test which will take no more than 1 minute. There are no scores but there is a lot of fun. Without much ado just see the presentation below. It is better to view full screen.The 1 Minute Billboard TestView more presentations from Vivek Singh.RSS & email subscribers might be required to come to the blog to take the test. Do so because it is worth it. After you take the test, share your answers, comments and experiences with me by leaving a comment. -
Can you present in your mother tongue?
2 Sep 2010 | 2:30 amThis post has been written for people living in countries like India. Our mother tongue is not English but we communicate in English all the time.Which language do you use to make presentations? English, of course. This is so obvious to us that the question might seem ridiculous. English is all pervasive in our lives. Most Indians speak their mother tongue at home but when it comes to business communication, we always speak English.Imagine presenting in your mother tongue. Just imagine... go back to the presentation you gave last week. Would you be comfortable presenting it in your mother… -
9 design errors you should avoid in a presentation
25 Aug 2010 | 12:30 pmHere is a list of errors which creep into your slides silently and spoil the look and feel of your presentation. You might not have intended but they are there lurking in your slide somewhere. Remember, a great content presented badly is a not-so-great content.1. Different font types on different slides.2. Different font sizes of header and body text on different slides.3. Highlighting an important point in various ways (underscore, bold, blue colour font and red colour font) all in one slide.4. Highlighting too many things on one slide resulting in confusing your audience as to what is… -
Do you justify your text in PowerPoint?
22 Aug 2010 | 12:30 pmWhen your slides do have a lot of content, do you keep the text left aligned or you justify the text? Here is an example of what I mean to say.The text on your left has been left aligned (which is the default setting in PowerPoint). The text on your right has been justified. Which is your preferred option? Which one do you think looks good?I feel the left aligned text is better. The problem with justification is that it leaves a lot of space between words. At times, this space reaches abnormal proportions and words get placed very far away from each other. It does not look natural any…
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Speak & Deliver - A Public Speaking Blog For the Speaking Public
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Speaking Season - 21 of 107
3 Sep 2010 | 8:39 amA relatively good turnout last night - some folks drove in from up to 2 hours away to discover how to send their kids to China next year as student ambassadors. Even though I was a one-man show again yesterday, hearing how far these folks come to hear about the opportunity, and the students enthusiasm for international travel, inspires me to put on an energetic show.Energy is a big seller - whether you are selling an actual product, or simply a way of thinking. The more authentic passion you show on stage, the more likely you'll transfer that energy to the audience. Notice the word authentic… -
Speaking Season - 21 of 107
2 Sep 2010 | 8:48 amLast night my Super Deluxe Robot Leg and I got some *star* treatment by the Sound Engineer for Mitchell Auditorium at the College of St. Scholastica - Scott Pike. Scott recently took this job to be home with family after 20 years on the road with rock groups like Toto, Aerosmith, and yes, my favorite, STYX! His adventures took him all over the world, but he said life in Duluth is just as rewarding, now that he finally has more time to spend with his wife of 25 years and four kids.Many speakers like to say they shared the stage with other top speakers - but how many can say they've shared… -
Speaking Season 20 of 107
31 Aug 2010 | 10:19 pmAll By Myself...Tonight I spoke at Marshall High School to a group of about 130 people - High School and Junior High School families - and I was almost, but not totally, all by myself. No teachers, 1 alumni student, and a principal subbing for the AV guy. Despite the overall lack of support, it was a pretty good meeting, I believe. I added a lot of content of my own in place of the testimonials we normally get from teachers and alumni. I talked about my own summer travels to Europe, and how as a dad of six, I had to check the program out for myself before I'd recommend it to them.I… -
Road School: Lessons from the Road #3
27 Aug 2010 | 10:47 pmSpent 11 hours driving from North Platte, NE to Minneapolis, MN today. As opposed to straining for radio stations, or even taking advantage of the free XM, I chose Road School - listening to CDs and DVDs from Tom Antion, John DiLemme, and Avish Parashar.Antion's stuff is a bit dated, but that's my fault, not his, really. Listened to several CDs from his "Internet Marketing Butt Camp" from 2005 or so. Still some good info and inspiration."Finding Your Why Now!" was the subject of DiLemme's CD, which was recorded in 2008, but I just got in the mail about a month ago. Solid motivational… -
Speaking Season 13 of 107
27 Aug 2010 | 8:37 amDepending on your equipment, speaking can seem this dangerous...North Platte, Nebraska today. Small audience at the local community college. OK video setup, booming audio, overall a positive experience - except for the microphone, which was corded. I've spoken at 100s of venues over the last 22 years, and only used a corded mic, believe it or not, 2 or 3 times. So few I barely remember.The most unique aspect about using it last night, however, was something new. Normally, you can feel the cord with your leg and brush it out of your way. With the prosthetic on my left side, I didn't feel a…
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Manner of Speaking
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Quotes for Public Speakers (No. 53)
7 Sep 2010 | 1:13 amOliver Goldsmith (1730 - 1774) Irish Writer and Poet “Of all kinds of success, that of an orator is the most pleasing.” - Oliver Goldsmith -
A Public Speaking Alphabet
4 Sep 2010 | 4:12 amA Audience Fitting that it comes first. The most important part of any speech. A speech is for the audience and about the audience. Always. B BooksThere are so many resources available these days for public speakers. Invest a small amount of money in yourself and pick some up. Here are three of my favourites: Presentation Zen; Made to Stick; Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln. C –Concreteness. Cut out the jargon and doublespeak. Use simple words, images and props to get your message across. Remember what Leonardo da Vinci said: “Simplicity is the ultimate… -
Quotes for Public Speakers (No. 52)
1 Sep 2010 | 12:15 amWilliam Shakespeare (1564 - 1616) English Poet and Playwright Cassius: “Did Cicero say any thing?” Casca: “Ay, he spoke Greek.” Cassius: “To what effect?” Casca: “Nay, an I tell you that, I’ll ne’er look you i’ the face again. But those that understood him smiled at one another, and shook their heads. But for mine own part, it was Greek to me.” - William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar, I. ii. 278) -
The Empire Strikes Back
31 Aug 2010 | 9:39 amA few months ago, I wrote about the extent to which PowerPoint has permeated the military in the United States, and how many people, including high-ranking officers, believe that it has gotten out of hand. Well, it appears that PowerPoint has friends in high places. Salon.com recently reported about Lawrence Sellin, a United States Army Reserve Colonel who was on his second tour of duty in Afghanistan. Fed up with the constant onslaught of inane, numbing PowerPoint presentations that he had to endure, Sellin wrote an unauthorized editorial in which he made no secret about how he felt. -
Two Slides You Can Lose
30 Aug 2010 | 8:36 amMuch has been written (in this blog and elsewhere) on ways to improve the quality of slide presentations by, for example, reducing the number of words on a slide, using good visuals, going easy on the bullet points, turning the screen black from time to time, etc. Today, I want to share another tip for your presentations: Drop the slides at the end that say: “Thank You” and “Questions?”. Sometimes it’s one or the other; sometimes it’s both on the same slide; sometimes it’s a quick “Thank You” slide followed by a “Questions?”…
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Effective Presentations and Presentation Design - Blog from ReThink Presentations
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Rethink Presentations now on Facebook! Become a Fan and win the PresentationEssentials eBook!
22 Aug 2010 | 2:56 pmIn order to also to discuss more with you and also in order to connect better, I have decided to expand Rethink Presentations into Facebook! If you’re on Facebook, the Rethink Presentations Page is a great place to get new information in addition to the regular newsletter! Whilst the regular newsletter will give you regular tips, the Facebook page will give you a platform to discuss and also ask questions. So why wait? Join now and become a Fan of Rethink Presentations on Facebook. Become a fan today and join in the discussion with fellow presenters and enthusiasts! Additional Prize for… -
Quickly replace one font with another in your PowerPoint slides (Guest Post by Ellen Finkelstein)
12 Aug 2010 | 4:58 pmI’ve recently read the helpful online book from fellow presentation/blogger colleague Ellen Finkelstein entitled 101 Tips Every PowerPoint® User Should Know and I want to share with you one of her tips - Quickly replace one font with another in your PowerPoint slides: Choose Format> Replace Fonts. In the Replace box, choose the font you want to replace. In the With box, choose the new font that you want to use. Click Replace and then click Close. (In PowerPoint 2007, choose Home tab> Editing group> Replace> Replace Font. You may get a message asking you to select a double-byte… -
Should I have the logo on each slide? (Questions and Answers)
29 Jul 2010 | 3:04 amQ: As I’m doing a corporate presentation, do you think I should put the logo on each slide? A: This is a tricky question and not easy to answer. Many times, corporations will have overloaded templates that have colored elements and logos on each slide. And oftentimes you will be obligated to use these templates when creating slides. But in my opinion, big logos and elements will clutter the slides and might get in the way of content. So for many of my own presentations I will usually start with white, empty slides. I will usually have a “design style” in mind already (e.g. -
Science Slam Cologne, Germany #1 (Part 2)
25 Jul 2010 | 2:53 amThen it began. I won’t give you a presentation-to-presentation review, but to give you an idea on what the topics are, here is a short line-up: The first preentation started and it was about Cologne’s Klüngel Society… nepotism society would be the best phrase to describe it, I think. The person presenting it had written a doctoral thesis about it. The second presentation was about laughing. Of course, this presentation would already score some points just by having this subject. The actual subject was about how laughing compares to physical activity (crunches / sit-ups) for… -
Science Slam Cologne, Germany #1 (Part 1)
15 May 2010 | 7:29 amToday was finally the first Science Slam in Cologne! After anxiously waiting for a couple of weeks for the event to finally take place - right after work I went to this cool event which took place under the tracks of the Cologne Main Station (it’s a really cool location - coincidentally, I have spent some late party nights there in the past few months). Science Slam is a presentation format, where scientific research (such as a bachelor thesis or a research project) can be presented. The presenter has a maximum of 10 minutes (with an option of a 3-minute extension if approved by the…
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No Sweat Presentations! - Reduce the 'Fear of Public Speaking!'
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A Speaker’s Template – SEE The BIG PICTURE
2 Sep 2010 | 11:00 pmUse this Speaker’s Template to Develop, Practice and Deliver Your Presentation A Speaker's Template - Click to Enlarge! This Speaker’s Template gives you the Big Picture. Your entire speech is on a single page. It’s a great visual to ‘See’ how the Content of a Speech should be constructed and all the pieces ‘fit’ together. We think in terms of pictures. By using icons, images and colors, it’s easy to work on the separate modules of your presentation. Literally, and physically, the entire speech can be on one page. This has many… -
When You Speak, Don’t Jingle or Deliver Other Distractions!
26 Aug 2010 | 11:00 pm“Did you ever spend a lot of time on a ship?” That was the question I asked the speaker I was evaluating at a Toastmaster Meeting. The reason I asked, was that Michael, the person I was critiquing, possessed the habit of rocking from side to side during his speech. He wasn’t aware of it, but it was so bothersome I had to mention it. Michael, like all Toastmasters, was attending the meeting to improve his presentations. Just telling him what he did correctly wasn’t going to help him get better. I certainly did mention the positives of his presentation, but… -
Lessons from a Street Performer
20 Aug 2010 | 3:00 amThis one was O-U-T-S-T-A-N-D-I-N-G! I was in Boston last week and had an opportunity to do some sightseeing. Around the famous Faneuil Hall Marketplace there were several street performers. They’re mostly very good. One was O-U-T-S-T-A-N-D-I-N-G! The Content of his performance was juggling. The Great Delivery was what set him apart from the majority of street performers. I was reminded of Delivery Lessons all great speakers should emulate. Here they are: Take total responsibility for your performance. His performance was 100% his responsibility. He controlled background music and… -
BLOG!It will make you a Better Speaker!
13 Aug 2010 | 3:00 amBlogging (Writing) and Speaking Go Hand-in-Glove. They are both communication skills a speaker needs to continually sharpen. Writing is a great way to develop, and make better, the content of your presentations. The analogy is: “If you really want to learn about a subject – Teach It! The same holds true for blogging. I know the subject of Public Speaking and Presentations. I’m an expert in this field. I’ve practiced and studied it for years. However, each and every time I write a new blog Post, I add to my knowledge of the subject. My good friend and internet… -
Be ‘The Man in the Arena’!TR’s Famous Speech – A Great Lesson!
6 Aug 2010 | 3:00 amBe In the Arena – Not in the Crowd! So you give your speech and stumble – BIG DEAL! Remember what TR said . . . It’s been a bit over 100 years since President Teddy Roosevelt gave his ‘Arena Speech’, but the message rings as true today as it did then. The essence of that quote, from the longer talk Roosevelt gave that day (one of my favorites and placed at the end of this blog post), is that it is far better to have tried and failed, then to have not tried at all. The ‘crowd in the arena’ watches the battle, but doesn’t benefit as much as the individual actually in the…
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Fast Track Tools by Ken Revenaugh
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Learn how to learn to propel your career
8 Sep 2010 | 10:04 pmTo improve the learning process, climb the learning ladder in stages. Have you ever learned something the wrong way? For me it was golf. I play occasionally, but never bothered to really learn the basics. Recently, I decided to focus on improving my game. I realized that I had skipped some learning steps along the way and needed to start from scratch if I really wanted to master the game. In essence, I needed to apply the same learning model I employ when teaching my “Communicate to Win” workshop. This model is a variation of the one popularized by the late psychologist Thomas Gordon… -
PowerPoint-Tastic Templates – #019: Three Options
7 Sep 2010 | 10:01 pmEach week, the Fast Track Tools training company and the Cubicle Ninjas design firm work together to publish a template that makes it easier for you to communicate your ideas. This week, we bring you a layout that helps illustrate various options. It is easier to persuade your listeners if you give them options and highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each choice. This free template will help you quickly present your preferred direction at the same time you present options that fall into the categories of take caution and must avoid. As you can see in the free, down-loadable template… -
How to run effective meetings: 5 tools to build consensus
6 Sep 2010 | 10:01 pmConsensus building tools help you get through meeting impasses or inaction. Don’t let your meeting get bogged down due to an impasse or sudden lack of attendee action. Learn how to retain and combine members’ best contributions and maximize results. Have you considered how to build consensus? There are five important tools that I recommend to help you reach agreement. Follow THIS link to download a free ebook with detailed information about running meetings that work. Keep up-to-date with Fast Track Tools by subscribing to our blog so you don’t miss any free offers. -
What your boss wants from you
1 Sep 2010 | 10:01 pmYou may be surprised to learn that today’s boss wants you to think more. And do less. You’ve probably met or will meet fellow employees who are perfectly happy to work within the system. They’re the ones who: Always follow the company manual to a T. Check. Always use the current processes. Check. Always do things pretty much the way things have always been done. Check and double check. Then there are the other types. While handling their jobs, they’re always thinking…thinking about new and better ways to do things. Every company needs great thinkers like these. They are rare and… -
PowerPoint-Tastic Templates – #018: Step 1-2-3
31 Aug 2010 | 10:01 pmEach week, the Fast Track Tools training company and the Cubicle Ninjas design firm work together to publish a template that makes it easier for you to communicate your ideas. This week, we bring you a simple layout for presenting three parts of a process flow. This free template will help you quickly illustrate the progression of three interconnected concepts. As you can see in the free, down-loadable template below, you have editable text and the arrows can be re-sized to fit your requirements. Don’t miss a single free template! Keep up-to-date with Fast Track Tools by subscribing to our…
