6 presentation tips from a professional speaker

Scott Berkun’s book Confessions of a public speaker is an entertaining and enlightening read on what it what it takes, and what it’s like, to be a professional speaker.

I’ve shamelessly cherry-picked the presentation tips from Scott’s book that I most agree with. [Read more]

What’s my best presentation tip for the presentations that you do?

Every type of presentation has its own challenges. As part of a “Public Speaking and the New Year” blog carnival organized by Angela DeFinis, I’ve identified what I see as the major challenge or trend for each presentation type in 2010 and given you my best presentation tip to overcome it.

Best presentation tip for a training session

Running long (sometimes all-day) training sessions is probably the worst possible method of learning. So, as trainers we have to compensate for the terrible format. John Medina, author of Brain Rules, delivers 50 minute lectures. His experience, backed up by peer-reviewed studies, was that after about 10 minutes of the lecturer talking, most students had checked out. So he applies the 10 minute rule: [Read more]

How to propose a toast

Give the gift of public speaking this holiday season. It’s the time to show your love and appreciation for your family and friends. Here are some tips for proposing a toast:

1. Plan your toast in advance

[Read more]

How to prepare a Pecha Kucha or Ignite presentation

This week I went to my first Pecha Kucha night in Wellington, New Zealand.

Pecha Kucha and Ignite are two time-limited and slide-limited presentation formats. Pecha Kucha was developed as a presentation format to allow design and creative types to share their passions and show off their work. The format is very tight. You have to present with 20 slides and each slide is shown for 20 seconds. Ignite is the equivalent for geeks (20 slides in 5 minutes , 15 seconds per slide). Both these format have the great advantage of keeping presentations short and concise – perhaps accounting for it’s popularity around the world. However, it’s challenging to prepare a good Pecha Kucha or Ignite presentation and even more so to deliver it well.

[Read more]

Don’t follow these presentation tips

Whenever I read a top 10 presentation or public speaking tips post, I often find at least one tip that makes me cringe. And I’m not talking about the obviously stupid presentation tips like “Imagine the audience naked” or “Look at the back of the room”.

So here’s my list of the top 10 tips presentation tips that you should not follow.

1. Anything starting with “Must”

[Read more]

3 things speakers should know about virtual presenting

This is a guest post by Roger Courville. You can find out more about Roger in his bio at the end of this post.

Web seminars (AKA “webinars” or “webcasts”) are online seminars or presentations used to synchronously engage remote audiences with any content that can be presented from a computer desktop. Using Web conferencing is simple, like logging into a Web site. Participants engage aurally with audio conferencing using their telephones or computers with headset, and many solutions offer video to enhance the visual connection between presenters and audience members.

Besides reducing travel, webinars deliver many potential benefits such as reaching audience members who may not otherwise been able to attend your presentation or including additional presenters who are also remote. Web seminars don’t replace face-to-face presentations, but any speaker who hasn’t added live remote instruction to their toolkit is missing a unique opportunity.

Webinars are a change of environment, and adapting to a new medium ideally means adapting one’s delivery strategy. Like pilots learn to fly both by sight and by their instruments, remote presentation is much like the latter. Step one in adapting to a new medium is adopting an attitude of creativity. Here are the 3 things to do when you have to give a virtual presentation: [Read more]

What you need to know before your first presentation

Giving your first presentation or speech is daunting.  I’ve worked with many new presenters and here’s the advice that has made the most difference to them.

1. Content is king

Your audience is there for what you are going to say. Not how you say it.

[Read more]

Be inspired to speak by Susan Boyle

I first wrote this post in a state of great excitement when I first saw Susan Boyle singing on Britain’s Got Talent. Three days later, the YouTube video has gone viral round the world and I’ve had time to reflect a little more on what the phenomena of Susan Boyle means to us as presenters.

If you’re one of the two people who haven’t yet watched the video of Susan Boyle singing on Britain’s got Talent, go and watch it first. Now. Then come back and read the rest of this blog post.

[Read more]

How public speaking makes you richer, thinner and better in bed

This post grew out of a fun exchange on twitter by a group of presentation and public speaking bloggers on the benefits of public speaking. A number of us are posting under the same title – Laura Bergells, Lisa Braithwaite, Jeff Bailey and Michael Cortes. Check out their posts.

Public speaking hasn’t made me richer, thinner or better in bed… but it has changed me. I was a shy person growing up. I had just a few good friends and was much more into horses than people. My introduction to public speaking was Toastmasters when I was in my early 20s. Learning to speak in public has the obvious benefit that you can inform, persuade and motivate a group of people. In my case, it’s also become my career. But there are a number of less obvious but equally important benefits. Here’s what public speaking has done for me:

1.  I can make small talk and socialise

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15 ways to improve your presentations in 2009

This is a big meaty post with 15 ways to improve your presentations.  These ideas are designed to challenge you to stretch yourself. With each idea I’ve pointed you to further resources from fellow presentation bloggers or from my own archives.

Choose one or two to work on at a time. Bookmark this post, so that once you’ve implemented those, you can come back and work on some more during the year.

1. Customise your presentations for each audience

[Read more]