I do my best to make this blog a resource for presenters - not pro-speakers, but real people who need to make presentations as part of their 'day job'. If there's something you really want to know about, just email me and I'll see what I can do (no promises except that I'll read your email - use simon@ and you can guess the rest of my address. :) )
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We are pattern recognition machines. It’s how we out-survived everything else on the planet trying to eat us. If you’re not sure, take a look at the make of this care. I’m pretty sure that (a) you can read it as Dacia, and (b) those letters have almost no relationship at all to the shapes …
A friend of mine recently asked me for some advice about a podcast interview they were doing at the weekend. They’d not done one for a few years and wanted to be at their best. Below is the result. It was bashed out in a hurry to get it over to my friend so it’s …
How “big” should the stories be in our presentations? How “epic” and inspirational? The answer isn’t quite as spectacular as it might sound…
There’s a lot of tosh talked about body-language in presentations. To be honest, it’s not often something I get to work on with clients because there are so many things that are more important for “normal people” but one of the big observations about body language is that it’s not something you can “add on” to your …
I’m constantly asked how to “make my presentations interactive” because people “need to be more engaging”. Let’s set aside the fact that you don’t need to be interactive to be engaging for a moment, and look at how to be interactive – specifically being interactive by using questions – either digitally or physically. Something to think about …
I hate practicing my presentations. So does everyone else. Here I am arguing withe Sid The StoryParrot about putting it off until my wife’s gone out. Why? Because it’s embarrassing to get things wrong in front of people. In my defence, part of that is because the last time I did that for a Big …
The book “The Alter Ego Effect” by Todd Herman talks a lot about using an alter ego to get things done… that is, a “different version of you” that knows what it’s doing when you don’t etc. Psychologists and so on refer to the related issues as having a ‘social self’. Essentially this is the …
I recently spoke at the course creators engergize conference, hosted by Zenler giving tips on how to make your videos and presentations better for online courses. Why? Let’s face it, most of them are rubbish! 😉 In my presentation I made the observation that to make your videos really pop you should embed yourself as …
Storytelling is a big part of presenting… and frankly of our whole culture. When we go to the pub we don’t sit around in silence, and a lot of that time is filled with sharing stories. Gossip is a story after all. Back-in-the-old days is nothing but stories. When-I-was young… you get the idea. From …
Leading a team or doing your own marketing? Awesome! But not having the impact on the world you think you should? Less Awesome.
The StoryMaking Academy will be an answer to that problem and it opens after the summer. All you should do now is let me know you're interested and I'll keep you up to date. There's no commitment from you!
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