How to prevent and recover from mind blanks

Are you concerned that you might suffer a mind blank during a presentation? The fear of a mind blank can be a large part of the fear of public speaking for many people. It happened to Sally Field in her Emmy Acceptance speech in 2007:

How can you avoid this happening to you? [Read more]

8 Presentation Tips for beating Audience Boredom

I asked you, my readers, to tell me about the challenges you have with presenting on “boring” topics.  Ann Hemplemann wrote to me:

Oh, Olivia, you are ringing my bell on this one! I’m an environmental engineer and educator, and my topics range from dull to confusing. I give presentations designed to help plant operations people comply with complex air quality regulations, which require a lot of technical detail. I can’t say I think the topic is inherently interesting, but I do thing the outcome – improved environmental performance at large facilities – is very important. Thanks for any suggestions you might have!

Amy Sutton is a Human Resources Manager:

I have to do presentations about company policies or new laws that impact the workplace.  Often this is somewhat tedious subject matter.

[Read more]

Do you have to give boring presentations?

My next post is going to be on “How to make a boring presentation interesting”.

I’d like to make the post as relevant as possible to the problems you face giving presentations. So if you have to give a presentation that you think could be more interesting, I’d love to know:

• the topic of the presentation
• the audience to whom you would present on this topic
• how you feel about this topic (eg: do you find it boring, or maybe you find it interesting but think it must be boring for your audience).

I may feature a couple of presentations as case studies and give specific advice on how they could be made more interesting. So this is an opportunity to get advice specifically for your presentation which could make a big difference the next time you have to present it.

[Read more]

PowerPoint Design in 2009: Most promising new technology

This is the fourth post in the series guiding you through the 40 contributions to “PowerPoint Design in 2009?  The first three posts are:

PowerPoint Design in 2009: Does Design Matter?
PowerPoint Design in 2009: Develop visual thinking skills
PowerPoint Design in 2009: Six most recommended tips

Here are the links to all the contributions to the PowerPoint Design in 2009 project:

1. A list of all the blogposts  with a one or two sentence summary of each post.
2. A list of all the blogposts with quotes from each post.
3. The e-mail contributions that I received quoted in full. These are from Cliff Atkinson, Guy Kawasaki, Julie Terberg, Michael Alley, Nancy Duarte, Richard Mayer and Seth Godin.

[Read more]

PowerPoint Design in 2009: Develop visual thinking skills

This is the second post in the series guiding you through the 40 contributions to “PowerPoint Design in 2009″.  In the first post I explored the issue  “Does Design Matter?”.

And here are the links to the PowerPoint Design in 2009 resources:

1. A list of all the blogposts  with a one or two sentence summary of each post.
2. A list of all the blogposts with quotes from each post.
3. The e-mail contributions that I received quoted in full. These are from Cliff Atkinson, Guy Kawasaki, Julie Terberg, Michael Alley, Nancy Duarte, Richard Mayer and Seth Godin.

[Read more]

3 reasons to use less stock photos in your presentations

Here’s what I would like to see in PowerPoint slide design in 2009 – less stock photos of people.

I’m guilty too. Last year I loved istockphoto. It saved me so much time. I loved recommending it to our course participants and showing them how quickly they could find the photo they wanted.

My New Year’s resolution is to use istockphoto less.

Why use less stock photos of people in your presentations?

[Read more]

The five word presentation challenge

If you were only allowed five words in your presentation – could you do it?

That was the challenge facing winners at the 2008 Webby Film and Video Awards on Tuesday night. A five word limit on their acceptance speech.

This five word limit forced people to be focused, simple and concrete. Just like a longer presentation should be. Here are some of my favourites: [Read more]