And here's another video of the same product

You may not be able to see the whole width here so just go to YouTube and look up project Natal.

One more, the famous project Natal.

Here's another one

Latest technology trends

Just been cruising around on the Internet checking out some nice examples of Augmented Reality. I found this little video of a product that actually exists and which was quite fun.

Great presentation, but your mouth's not for breathing!

A good example of what mouth-breathing does to your presentation:



It makes you sound hurried, breathless (because you probably are) and stressed. Try to breath through your nose and at the same time it will make you slow down (hard to speak at the same time!), you won't dry out your mouth and throat as much and you won't make those sounds that the microphone picks up so easily....

Trust me!

My interest in social media as a tool and a phenomenon has recently led me in the direction of thinking a lot about the issue of trust. If you want to inform people, to spread the word, to educate or enlighten then there are several efficient methods for doing this using the Internet. There are many ways to draw traffic to your site and channels through which you can push out e-mails, for example. Spreading information requires of course thought and work but it's not that difficult. It becomes a totally different issue when you want people to act on that information. Whatever it is you want them to do: to help you spread the information further, to change their behaviour, to buy something, to support something and so on. This is when you also need trust and credibility.

So, simply put, whenever you're selling in the broader sense of the word then you need to invest in building relationships with other people that involve some degree of trust. Of course that's not to say that you don't need trust or credibility to spread information. Without some possibility of judging its source the information can become quite worthless. But there's a big step involved in getting people to act.

So if you take the example of standing in front of an audience holding a presentation and you need to make the transition from being a credible source of information to a trustworthy influencer of people's behaviour, how do do this? Well, I have a lot to say about this! Not really enough room here, but here's one simple thing.

Take a look at this video on TED.com: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/shai_agassi_on_electric_cars.html

Watch it without the sound for a while. This is a person who has a tremendously powerful message. Credibility at a high level and impressive in many ways. I think this comes across even without hearing the words. And I think one of the reasons has to do with his posture. This is a good example of what is sometimes called the Professor's Stance. Leaning slightly forward, hands clasped in front of the chest, shoulders slightly forward and maybe a bit raised. Head also forward, gaze predominantly downwards. You can contrast this with the so-called Heart Stance where the solar plexus is projected forward, head slightly back, chin up, eyes looking mostly upwards and accompanied by a wide and open gestures with the hands. 

The professor's stance gives an impression of a learned person, of introversion, of attention to detail and all the things we associate with an intellectual. But it shuts out other people. It gives us an impression of a closed world to which we're not admitted and unfortunately is often accompanied by a language that does the same thing, full of specialised terms, details and complications.

The heart stance is a collection of gestures that signals "you can trust me, I have nothing to hide, and I trust you not to attack me!" the throat is exposed, the gaze is open and direct, palms of the hands are visible and more importantly the sensitive area on the inside of the wrists.

This is all extremely powerful stuff. It sends signals that go directly to our unconscious primitive selves and it's quite hard to ignore the gut feeling that we get. So despite the fact that this person is talking great sense and there are many things in the message that convince us intellectually,  I'm not sure that he would succeed in actually getting people to act. In other words really SELLING the ideas. And in just one word: trust. We are, after all, mostly unmoved by logic or purpose or intention, unfortunately. If we were, not many people would smoke... Gut feelings, a relationship with the person who's influencing us and motivation that comes from our emotions are just some of the things that are needed to get people to spring into action. 

So body language is just one small thing, in a situation where you're giving a talk. As I said, there's a WHOLE lot more.

The dark side of presentation technique

I just read an entry in Nick Morgan's blog see: http://bit.ly/cgyocY
The top 10 list of speakers audience abuse! Yes, we've all seen these. Nice list. I was thinking about some of this stuff a few weeks ago when I listened to lots of talks over a period of some days. There was one speaker that was excellent in many respects. He had great charisma, an important message, backed up by a lot of experience and credibility. His body language was relaxed and friendly and everything seem great. But I found myself drifting off time and time again and I missed big chunks of what he was saying. So pretty soon I started wondering why. After some thought I realised that it could only really be one thing: he was speaking really fast. Since then I've heard a couple more people do exactly the same thing, they are also good speakers with authority and presence. For me at least, this is quite a barrier to getting through. It signals lack of preparation. It gives the impression that they are going to run over time even when they've just started and you get appropriately nervous over this. Not many people can talk fast without exuding stress with every syllable they pronounce. Even if everything else is good I start to feel exhausted after a while and need a break from listening. It also stops you from really digesting what is said. When we hear other people's words all of us have our own unique set of associations, pictures and follow-up thoughts in our heads. We're neither on the same straight track as the speaker, nor always capable of keeping up with the pace they set and many of our own sidetracks are more important to us than the speaker's train of thought. So speaking very fast is way, way off. On the contrary, you need to speak far slower than you normally would. Let people get used to your accent and voice and give them time to follow their sidetracks and come back to you again.

I could make a list of things that indicate to me that the speaker is there for their own good and not the audience's. One of these would certainly be speaking very fast. Then of course there's a bunch of things that are on Nick's list. Like not even looking at the audience for instance. Then there are a few things that are just plain annoying and distracting. Like waving the laser pointer around wildly and drawing circles and arrows in the air that only you can see inside your head! Or pacing and hopping back and forth repeatedly. Movement is tremendously distracting but you can take advantage of that and use it in a constructive way. Lots of ideas about this! But now I'll quit whining and try to come up with some constructive thoughts :)

Come and meet me at Handelskammaren Stockholm!

I will be taking part as an exhibitor in the Handelskammaren Expo next week. Why not come by and say hello? Entry is free, as well as the cakes... Here are the details:

Välkommen till Handelskammarhuset

vid Kungsträdgården där vi arrangerar

företagsmässan HandelskammarExpo den 20

april. Du får nya affärskontakter och möjlighet

att utöka ditt professionella nätverk genom

personliga möten och tillfälle till samtal.

På HandelskammarExpo
möter du

utställande företag från en mängd olika

branscher, samtidigt som du kan marknadsföra

ditt företag. Vi tror att personliga relationer är

vägen till framgång och att skapa en kontakt är

första steget.

Se en presentation av utställarna på vår

hemsida www.chamber.se/expo

Alla intresserade är välkomna -

även företag och personer som inte är

medlemmar i Handelskammaren.

Inträdet är gratis och vi bjuder på kaffe

och tårtbuffé!

När: tisdagen 20 april kl 13-16

Var: Handelskammarhuset,

Västra Trädgårdsgatan 9

Anmäl dig gärna i förväg till:

info@chamber.se

ange namn och företag

Keep it short, again

Back again after a short absence! I had way too much to do the last few days and a whole bunch of important presentations and courses coming up. Thought I'd better follow my own advice and prepare properly...

It's strange how things seem to bunch together into trends, the last week or so it's all been about keeping things short. It seemed to start just after I put up that last post, weird that. So I've been thinking about ways to cut down your talk, maybe just because it's too long, or maybe because you're facing the serious challenge of saying a lot of stuff in five minutes or even less. One way you could try is to first write down everything you want to say (you don't need to write every single word, just enough so that you can remember what the full sentences would be). Aim for approximately the right length of time but it doesn't matter if you're a fair bit over. Then talk your way through all your material and just see how long it takes. Now you know how big the problem is. Maybe there are some things that you can take away already, and having experienced how much excess material you have, the resulting adrenaline level may help you here. Chop as much as you can. Now talk through it all again. Still panicking? Take off some more. When you're getting closer to the right length of time then you can start taking away smaller pieces. Details, complicated ways of saying things, lists with more than three items,etc. Can you think of any similes are metaphors that will save even more time? Do you have any pictures you could use?

So now you're hopefully fairly close but either way, here's something to think about if you want to both shorten your talk and get across your message. For each sentence or statement pick out the really important keywords. There are not usually so many. Use a highlighter pen to mark them.When you speak, these are the words that you need to put the emphasis on and if you put plenty of emphasis on these then you can also take it away from some of the small words between them. Try to figure out the absolute minimum number of words that you need people to hear in order for the message to get across. This serves two purposes, making sure the key message sticks as well as saving precious seconds on the things that you don't actually need to say, people will understand anyway. Of course this also makes your voice easier to listen to when you vary the emphasis on different words. You can see this as the same process as reducing text on a slide down to 3 bullet points with maybe only two or three words for each. There are really an awful lot of things that you don't need to either write or say in order to get the message across, and doing an exercise like this you may be surprised at how few words actually carry the core of your message. 

Of course this is just one way to work and one way to look at the principal of keeping a talk really short. You can never ignore the absolutely key activity of first considering who the audience are and what your main message is (see an earlier post). Does anyone have any other tips about keeping it short?

Thomas Jefferson said:

"When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it." A great quote which goes to the heart of the issue of keeping presentations simple.

The language of music

Easter break is over, that went fast... I spent the first day on the Kraftkällan Easter special four-hour Spinning session at the gym, a good example of how far will power will get you. The second half of the day was spent getting over it. The next day was sunny and I was out in the garden all day raking oak leaves, clearing borders, putting out the garden furniture (just asking for bad weather). Next day in Stockholm with a visit to the International Dog show, and yesterday indoors watching the snow fall most of the day, I knew that garden furniture was a bad idea. I got out eventually to massacre two enormous clematis plants but that didn't take long. So I hope you had a good easter, with lots of chocolate eggs and a break from work. I thought I'd kick off this short week with a wonderful video from TED.com that goes to the heart of what music means to us.