Presentation Tips

Garr Reynolds, Presentation Zen, has created a page with Presentation Tips on his own site. The tips are three main areas: Organization and Preparation, Delivery and Slides. There are also Samples and Tutorials.

Olivia Mitchell at Speaking about Presenting has created a collection of her Best Posts to help you with every aspect of your next presentation.

Presentation Skills has tips around
• Planning and writing the presentation
• Using visual aids effectively
• Overcoming presentation nerves
• Delivering the presentation confidently
• Answering questions competently

The quick and easy way to effective speaking

I have read The quick and easy way to effective speaking by Dale Carnegie. The book is outdated in examples, copyright is in 1962. Still, there are useful tips about public speaking in the book. Here are some of my notes based on the book.

Every talk has one of four major goals. Pick the one that suits you, the audience and the occasion.
1. To persuade or get action.
2. To inform.
3. To impress and convince.
4. To entertain.

Notes about preparation and delivery.
• Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident.
• Be sure you are excited about your subject.
• Be eager to share your talk with your listeners.
• The listeners shall feel that what you say is important to them.
• Talk in terms of your listeners’ interests.

Ask yourself how knowledge of your subject will help your audience solve their problems and achieve their goals. In other words, “What’s in it for them?” Then proceed to show them that, and you will have their full attention.

If the purpose of your talk is to inform then make the talk easy to listen to and easy to remember.

If your aim is to convince, remember that it is more effective to stir emotions than to arouse thoughts. Feelings are more powerful than cold ideas.

The book mentions the classic recipe for a talk: First tell them what you are going to tell them; then tell them; then tell them what you told them.

If you ever get to introduce a speaker, follow the T-I-S formula:
+ T stands for topic (of the speech).
+ I stands for importance, connect topic and audience.
+ S stands for speaker, introduce him/her.

Presentation Zen

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.

Speaking about Presenting

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.

Words Do Matter – Busting the Mehrabian Myth

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.

Making presentations in the TED style – The TED Commandments

I got a link in my Twitter stream pointing to The TED presentation commandments which is a great list of ten commandments in order to make a great presentation.

The TED Commandments

  1. Thou Shalt Not Simply Trot Out thy Usual Shtick.
  2. Thou Shalt Dream a Great Dream, or Show Forth a Wondrous New Thing, Or Share Something Thou Hast Never Shared Before.
  3. Thou Shalt Reveal thy Curiosity and Thy Passion.
  4. Thou Shalt Tell a Story.
  5. Thou Shalt Freely Comment on the Utterances of Other Speakers for the Sake of Blessed Connection and Exquisite Controversy.
  6. Thou Shalt Not Flaunt thine Ego. Be Thou Vulnerable. Speak of thy Failure as well as thy Success.
  7. Thou Shalt Not Sell from the Stage: Neither thy Company, thy Goods, thy Writings, nor thy Desperate need for Funding; Lest Thou be Cast Aside into Outer Darkness.
  8. Thou Shalt Remember all the while: Laughter is Good.
  9. Thou Shalt Not Read thy Speech.
  10. Thou Shalt Not Steal the Time of Them that Follow Thee.

Presentation Zen

That post lead me to Making presentations in the TED style at Presentation Zen. The TED commandments are here too but the best part is the reviews of some TED speakers. It says:

There is not one best way to speak at a TED conference, there are many different ways. But what the good presentations have in common is that they were created carefully and thoughtfully with the audience in mind and were delivered with passion, clarity, brevity, and always with “the story” of it (whatever it is) in mind. So let the list of 10 above be your general guide. In addition, take a look at some of the TED presentations below. They all follow a different style but were effective and memorable in their own way.

Go to Presentation Zen, read reviews and learn more about what works (and not).

My comments

The TED commandments are great and useful for any speaker. The presentations listed at Presentation Zen are great examples to learn from. In addition, take a look at some of my favourites:
Elizabeth Gilbert: A different way to think about creative genius.
Benjamin Zander on music and passion
Matthew Childs: Hang in there! 9 life lessons from rock climbing.

This was originally posted at Forty Plus Two, another blog of mine.