Look no further

You don't have to buy any more books on presentation technique, or search the web for information! It's all gonna be here! Well, quite a lot of it... 


I spend a great deal of my time, and have done so for years, in hunting for good books and surfing around for interesting titbits that tell me things that are not obvious. I go to a fair number of seminars and courses on all possible aspects of presentations every year and each one gives at least one useful insight. So I'm going to try my utmost to post the best of these and maybe develop a few more on the way. Help me gather the best of internet sites, books, other blogs and your own ideas.

Feel it or forget it

You know many people could dispense entirely with all the advice that's ever given on good presentation technique if they could just muster up some passion. Tell a story. With passion. Easy! Body language, voice, eye contact, all just falls into place.

Body language is all in your head

There's such a lot talked about body language for presenters, and quite frankly, most of it is rather superficial. Sure, if you're not doing it right it can be enough to think about where and how you stand and what you can do with your hands. What's more interesting I think, is how you can improve when you're fairly used to giving presentations and not doing much that's directly bad. This is where the fun starts!

Step 1 is what you have inside your head because your body is telling the whole world what you're thinking, your attitudes and feelings, and you may be the only one who isn't aware of this - scary isn't it :)

Reading Henrik Fexeus' book on mind reading is a good intro to this subject. "Konsten att Läsa Tankar". Reading about mirror neurones is another, for the scientifically inclined: see this book for example
All this tells us why your attitude is so important, why the speaker's own enthusiasm is their best tool for reaching the audience and indirectly why storytelling works so well.

Decoration or Communication?

Someone asked me recently why I combine graphic design and communication in one company - isn't it a disparate combination? Nope! They're the same thing to me. Design is about communication, not decoration. Designing is adding meaning, commentary, opinion. What's fascinating is the language of form and content together and what this signals to different people. Massive overlap. If you don't first decide precisely what you want to communicate, you can neither design nor hold a presentation properly. Do you really need to ask this question...?


So how do YOU choose illustrations for your Ppt slides?
Decoration or Communication...

Our limited, complicated perception of the world

Its Saturday, its yukky outside and I'm bored. So here's an interesting little (or maybe major) thought provoking article/happening: check out: http://bit.ly/9c2nFU
(The original web site crashes my IE every time, maybe you can get it to work). There's a YouTube video also, of course

Start right in the spotlight

You've maybe heard many times that the first moments, the first 30 seconds or so, of a presentation are the most important. Not too conceptually difficult to grasp one might think. But the question is HOW do you get over that threshold. What exactly do you do with that gift of a chance to win the audiences total attention for however long you want to keep it?
I love openings, 'cos they're so important. Its easy to know what I might dare to do, but harder to judge on other people's behalf. My ideas tend to freak out some people!  So here are some ideas, some tips and maybe I'll put up more later. Promises, promises...
Easy ones:
Just jump right in there, no intro, no "thanks for inviting me", just get to the subject itself. Introduce yourself later on
Ask a rhetorical question
Describe a surprising, interesting statistic: "did you know that XX people die every year from...?"
Do a demo
Tell a story
Takes some thought:
Think of a metaphor that's very visual and will take you through your whole talk. Start with a striking photo and a question: "what do you think of this?", "what does this remind you of?", "have you seen one of these?" Gettit?
Build up a mystery, via a story
Takes some guts and skill:
Tell a joke (i.e. don't do this unless you're very good)
Go out into the audience and interact
Ask people to come up and help you with a demo

A Place in Heaven

After this week in particular, and after all the years of listening to presentations, I can say that there is a special place in heaven for those that keep to their allotted time (or speak even shorter): heaven is not over-full.