Posts tagged as:

presentation

8 states of mind that will make you a more compelling presenter

April 22, 2009

I believe in the inside-out method of presenting. Rather than thinking about what I’m doing on the outside eg: a specific gesture or movement, I choose what’s going on inside – my state of mind. My state of mind is the biggest influence on how I come across. Different states of mind work for different [...]

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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 [...]

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Why most attempts at audience participation fail and what to do about it

March 25, 2009

Yesterday I had a skype conversation with Twitter follower Todd (@TJList) on how to include audience participation in a presentation. He’s presenting on getting through the economic downturn to an audience of small business owners. Here was his question: How can I involve my audience in the presentation? I want the audience to feel like [...]

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How to present like Michael Wesch

March 20, 2009

Michael Wesch studies YouTube the way David Attenborough studies insects and lizards. Along the way he’s developed a superbly engaging presentation style. I don’t often watch presentation videos to the end – but I was glued to the screen for the entire 55 minutes of this presentation: What is the Michael Wesch style? It’s a [...]

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7 time-saving tips for planning your presentation

March 13, 2009

In my last post, I wrote about why it’s worthwhile to spend time preparing a presentation. But it’s also possible to waste time preparing a presentation, by not going about it in the right way. So here are my 7 time-saving tips to help you prepare a presentation efficiently. 1. Always be preparing Professional public [...]

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4 reasons to spend time on planning your presentation

March 12, 2009

Devoting time to preparing a presentation is worth it. Here are four reasons: 1. The audience’s time Balance the time that you will spend planning the presentation against the time of the people in your audience. Say you’re presenting to 10 people for 40 minutes. That’s 400 minutes of people’s time – 6.6 hours. Isn’t [...]

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8 Presentation Tips for beating Audience Boredom

March 4, 2009

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 [...]

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Is Twitter a good thing while you’re presenting?

February 26, 2009

I’ve recently written two guest posts on Twitter and presenting. On Laura Fitton’s Touchbase blog, I looked at the benefits for the audience and the speaker of people twittering while you speak and how to manage it. On Chris Spagnuolo’s Edgehopper blog, I went to the next step and explored how you can use Twitter [...]

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6 ways to engage your audience through the social channel

February 24, 2009

Just as we have a verbal channel for words and a visual channel for images, we have a social channel for non-verbal signals. That’s the big idea of Alex Pentland’s book “Honest Signals”. Alex Pentland is a professor at MIT Media Lab. He and his team have used a specially designed digital sensor called a [...]

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How to make a boring presentation interesting #1

February 18, 2009

In my post Do you have to give boring presentations? I asked you to tell me about the boring presentations you have to give. The pain and frustration you suffer from having to give boring presentations poured into my e-mail inbox and the comments section of that post. In this post, I look at the issues [...]