A great site about professional presentation design is Garr Reynold’s blog Presentation Zen. He has a beautiful style, an Asian touch, which is elegant and powerful.
I subscribe to the blog and will refer to several of Garr’s blog posts in my Presentation category.
I have bought his book ‘Presentation Zen’ and will post a review on it once I have finished it.
Update.
My review is here: Presentation Zen is a great book.
I really like Olivia Mitchell’s site Speaking about Presenting which has this introduction: The aim of this blog is to help you with your next presentation. You find:
– Helpful articles to help you with every aspect of your next presentation
– Reviews of books and blogs on presentations and public speaking
– Analysis of great speeches and presentations.
I will refer to several of her blog posts in my own posts in the Presentation category.
I am scheduled to speak at Øredev 2009, an IT Conference for Sharing Knowledge.
Øredev is the premier conference in Europe focused on the software development process. Nearly 1000 programmers, developers, engineers, educators, testers and managers gather to share their knowledge and experience.
My presentation is scheduled on November 5 in the track Aspects of Leadership and is titled Project success by helping project members realize their full potential. I intend to talk about how coaching can be used to improve collaboration in projects. A rough outline is in the program:
• Introduction.
• Laying the foundation and ensuring common definitions.
• Coaching the PM to develop him professionally and as an individual.
• Coaching a project team as a group, as well as the individuals within the group.
• How the PM can develop coaching skills and use them in his work.
This is my first major public speech which is somewhat horrifying. My own learning process will result in blog posts about presentation in this blog.
Update November 8, 2009.
The presentation went well and I realized that I really like the role of speaker, talking about a subject that matters to me. I had the benefit of working with a speaker’s coach and mentor which helped a lot.
Update April 3, 2010.
You can now watch Speaker at Øredev 2009, the video
On Twitter I got a link to a great video by CreativityWorks, Busting the Mehrabian Myth (video is below). So, what is the Mehrabian Myth then? Olivia Mitchell writes about in Why the stickiest idea in presenting is just plain wrong:
The stickiest idea in presenting and public speaking is that the meaning of your message is communicated by:
* Your words 7%
* Your tone of voice 38%
* Your body language 55%.
These figures are based on a formula first proposed by Albert Mehrabian in 1967.
I think we have all heard these numbers in connections with presentations, that How (tone, body) is more important than What (words, content). But Albert Mehrabian makes a reservation:
Please note that this and other equations regarding relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e., like-dislike). Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable
Max Atkinson’s Blog: Body language and non-verbal communication has a great cartoon strip and raises these questions:
1. How come it’s much easier to have a conversation with a blind person than with someone who’s completely deaf?
2. How come we can have perfectly good conversations in the dark?
3. How come telephones and radio have been such spectacular successes?
4. How come we have to work so hard to learn foreign languages?
I had taken the formula more or less for granted (heard it often) and I am pleased to see that I was wrong. Words do matter!
Busting the Mehrabian Myth – video
Read more:
Albert Mehrabian’s studies in nonverbal communication : Speaking about Presenting
Create Your Communications Experience: The Visual Dominates – Mehrabian Revisited
Six Minutes – Best Public Speaking Tips and Techniques: Weekend Review [2009-06-06]
Albert Mehrabian – Wikipedia
YouTube – Mehrabian Myth! WORDS DO MATTER!
This was originally posted at Forty Plus Two, another blog of mine.
The post is also at my business site: Words Do Matter – Busting the Mehrabian Myth.
I got the CD Beyond from a close friend of mine. The website is at Beyond Singing – Buddhist and Christian Prayers. The main site is in German but there is an English version. The site has a Flash-player so you can listen to short pieces of the songs there.
The CD contains a spiritual message by Tina Turner (inspired by Deepak Chopra and RUMI), the full message can be read at her fansite BEYOND. Here is the beginning of Tina’s message:
Nothing lasts forever, nobody lives forever. The Flower dries and dies, the winter passes and spring comes. Embrace the circle of life: That is the greatest love. Go beyond the fear. Don’t give in to the insistence of fear, anger and vengeance and thou shall be beyond the fear, where love grows and thrives. To be liberated means to really feel yourself. Start each day like the birds singing. Singing helps you beyond, far, further, more and more.
It’s amazing how well the Buddhist and Christian prayers blend, it’s a real pleasure to listen to. Beyond creates a sense of peace and calm.
I am catching up with blog feeds and came across two DIY-projects at Lifehacker. One is an inverted bookshelf, the other is the invisible floating bookshelf. Both look odd and will confuse people.
Source for the invisible floating bookshelf is Apartment Therapy with the slogan “saving the world, one room at a time“, it’s an interesting site.
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