Posts tagged as:

Presentation opening

Three levels of presentation openings – which should you use?

April 8, 2009

I get frustrated at presentation advice which says you have to do something clever or dramatic at the beginning of a presentation to grab your audience’s attention. That’s for three reasons:
1. You don’t have to grab the audience’s attention at the start. You have their attention at the start. The challenge is to keep it. [...]

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Claim your Space

May 27, 2008

Lisa Braithwaite from Speak Schmeak has commented on my post about the attention-getting myth. I started responding to her comment, but my response got so long I decided it was worth a blogpost in its own right.
The issue is how to best help nervous speakers at the start of a presentation . Lisa suggested that:
Using [...]

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Why you don’t need to grab attention

May 18, 2008

As a relatively new blogger I’m spending a lot of time reading other people’s blogs. I came across this intriguing story from the Washington Post which was blogged by both Seth Godin and Laura Fitton when it was first published last year.
A world-class violinist, Joshua Bell, was asked by the Washington Post to busk during [...]

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Attention-getting – The Evidence

May 11, 2008

In my last post I wrote about the attention-getting myth. I argued that the idea that you have to grab attention at the beginning of a presentation is a myth. Here’s the evidence to back that up.
Studies have been done measuring the attention levels of students in university lectures. Here’s the results of a study that [...]

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The attention-getting myth

May 9, 2008

There is a pervasive myth in public speaking and presenting that you have to have an attention-getting opening.
I would argue to the contrary. The beginning of your talk is the one time that you can guarantee that the audience is paying attention. They will pay attention for the first one or two minutes to see if your presentation [...]