The many aspects of communication

Here's a whole story with emoticons. Another great Rives contribution, breaking down the barriers of communication.

Variation is the spice of... Presentations

Sitting in the audience (for a change - nice) and experiencing a principle cause of losing the audience (so now they're sitting writing blog posts..). Whatever you do too long is bad. Doesn't matter that it's OK in itself, in isolation. Same tone of voice. Same slide visible. You lose the audience. Those of you who are sitting here right now can probably figure out which occasion this is. Maybe you have a different opinion?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Have a little courage

Something I talked about at the recent breakfast and lunch meetings has stuck in my mind. After I've already said it, it occurs to me that it's really quite important. It's this: you need a bit of courage to give a good presentation. If you're going to stick out and be remembered then, by definition, you can't take the safe road all the time. But what do people do? Because they're worried about being seen as a fool, they fall back on the most predictable path possibe - if  I do things exactly the way everyone else does them, then they can't criticise me for it, can they? One thousand bad PowerPoint slides can't be wrong...

But the irony of the thing is that by doing what's predicted and expected you will fall into the white noise of the background, never to be noticed or remembered. And that might be fine with you most of the time, but some day it will be really important to make a mark, and then you don't dare, or don't know how, or it's too unnatural and falls flat.

I heard a story about someone who dared to step outside the accepted norm, was crticised by co-workers and boss but did it anyway, and went on to win a prize for best presentation. Later they went back to the standard presentation style, never to emerge again. So it's tough! But everyone appreciates someone who does things differently and relieves the tedious flow of endless bullet points and incomprehensible graphs. We know that we remember what sticks out, but we just don't dare to do it ourselves.

Take a deep breath... dare to stick out, at least one time. Give it a try today!