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 month's most popular (and useful?) blog posts are:
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What’s an identity variable? I self-identify as male. I self-identify as married. An identity variable is something that is you use to build your self image. If I looked in the mirror and found that instead of a six-feet-tall white man I could see a five foot tall woman I’d be very, very confused! Personal …
Read more “presentations and identity variables”
How your room is set up makes a huge difference to how well your presentation is likely to go. Lots of it is obvious but some not…
Just to be clear, I’m not talking about interacting with the slides themselves (that’s a different blog). I’m talking about interacting with your audience when your presentation uses slides. After all, one of the big things that Prezi claims is that it allows you to jump around your presentation in a non-linear way, making for …
Read more “interactivity in presentation slides”
I’ve talked before about one of the best ways to start your presentation, so here’s the other bookend – the close of a presentation. Let’s talk about questions and let’s talk about applause. Your audience expects one of these at the end of your presentation and you might hope for the other. So I’m going …
Read more “How to end your presentation”
Confession time: I’m an introvert. You’d not know it if you saw me on stage, of course, and I’ve recently been described as “a very social chatterbox, like me” but that misses the point of the real me… the me that my clients and audiences don’t see. My job pretty much requires me to be …
Read more “five tactics for introvert presenters”
How to sound interesting in presentations is one of the most common questions I get about training. Here’s possibly the most simple of all the tips for being more interesting
Appearances in presentations matter because of the Oppenheimer Effect. I’ve known of the Oppenheimer Effect for years – partially as a social phenomenon and partially from personal experience. When I was a researcher I was the best there was at what I did. (Don’t get too excited about that: after over two decades as a …
Read more “why appearances matter in presentations”
I’m a bit of a fan of the podcast You Are Not So Smart. It’s a classily understated podcast based on interviews and grown up conversations with experts. (Lots of people say they are experts, David McRaney talks to the best, trust me!) One recent episode, on something called “Pluralistic ignorance” really struck home for …
Read more “pluralistic ignorance”
Tips for better presentations are everywhere. What we need is a way to use those tips to make better presentations – a framework for presentations.