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 month's most popular (and useful?) blog posts are:
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It’s pretty common to be afraid of presenting. Some surveys put it as the most common fear; others as the third most common. But whenever people are asked, presenting is somewhere up at the top, in the company of snakes, bugs, and heights. I spend a lot of time helping people deal with the fears …
There’s a quick thought about my favourite chapter in the book at the Presentation Genius Youtube channel (http://www.youtube.com/presentationgeniusinfo)
Forgive me – this post is a blatant plug… but I’m pretty excited about it! We’ve just launched our Presentation Genius Open Course programme! We’re starting in Newcastle, in the new year, in this lovely arts venue (the Biscuit Factory is a commercial gallery as well as a conference venue). We’ll be touring the courses over …
Let’s talk load – cognitive load. You can pick up the origins and history of the idea here, but for now, let’s concentrate on how it applies to making business presentations. The key concept is that the human brain has a limited capacity for processing information (while it’s listening to a presentation/communication such as teaching or …
Sex… Not during your presentation (obviously?) but before it. Back at the start of 2006, researcher Stuart Brody, a psychologist at the University of Paisley, reported his research into sex and stress. 24 women and 22 men kept a diary about their sex lives – how much and what kind – for two weeks. And at …
… and you can get yourself a copy here. Of course you can get it from your local bookshop or you can get it direct from Amazon, but if you make an extra click, I get an extra forty-something pence. Go on… do us both a favour! 😉 It’s been a fantastic, rollercoaster experience (so …
Read more “Well it’s finally here! Presentation Genius hits the shelves today….”
In the week that Presentation Genius finally hits the shelves, we’ve put out a set of videos to help with nerves – for presentations in particular, of course! 🙂 Here I am, interviewed by my mate Dave Algeo over Skype, with his editing available in a series of videos on the brand new Presentation Genius …
If you type proprioception into google you get the definition on the left. So what is it for? It allows you to know where you are so that you don’t need to look at your limbs to know what they’re doing. It’s what you’ve not got a lot of if you’re clumsy, perhaps – and it’s …
Read more “Proprioception – a missing book chapter? (Possibly!)”
It’s sad but true, if people can’t understand you, they tend to undervalue you. That’s the rather depressing evidence I’ve included in the book… The long and the short of it is that when people were given information by someone without an accent they valued that information more than when it was given by someone …
Leading a team or doing your own marketing? Awesome! But not having the impact on the world you think you should? Less Awesome.
StoryMaking is my new book that looks at how to tactically use stories in your presentations, your marketing and your sales. It's my usual light-weight style over heavy-weight research!
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The StoryMaking System is the result of reading (in mind-numbing detail) over 400 peer-reviewed research papers, dozens of books, thousands of ours of observational research and blood sweat and tears!
It's the framework for designing a presentation which gives you the fastest way to getting something is (almost) guaranteed to work. It gives your audience what they need - and only what they need - to be impacted.
The key elements are:
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