Welcome to the better presentations blog!
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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This was supposed to be a series of posts about the process of speaking at the summit that I could use for marketing. Marketing? Me? Just imagine! Instead it’s just one long unloading. Enjoy! If you’re not familiar with it, the Speaking Business Summit is Oscars of my industry – or at least that’s how …
Read more “Speaking at the Speaking Business Summit 2024”
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 …
Read more “Using Patterns in your Presentation”
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 …
Read more “Podcast interviews – some advice”
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 …
Read more “Me, Body Language and Italians”
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 …
Read more “Questions and interactivity in presentations”
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 …
Read more “How to practice a presentation”
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 …
Read more “Don’t be yourself when you present!”
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 …
Read more “Recording yourself in a PowerPoint slide”