Tools for how to deliver your presentations better – the bits when the audience is in the room rather than the preparation.
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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Let’s face it, we’ve all been there – we want to make a good impression when we present. Maybe the boss is there, or maybe it’s our first presentation in a new job… perhaps it’s just that you want to give a strong impression to your audience… or whatever… but the need to be seen …
This is a bit of a personal-reaction blog, because a lot of people are asking me about how to make presentations or have meetings for that matter in rooms where there are lots of distractions. (Dedicated presentation-spaces are few and far between!) There are lots of things you can do and while some of them …
It’s a tricky thing. There are some huge advantages to using music, but some pretty significant pitfalls, too. So here’s your guide to using music well, and avoiding the things can can go wrong. Why use music? An overview Music is intended and designed to be an emotional phenomena. That means you can use it …
This post comes in two parts. Part one is about not starting with any “why” at all and the second part is about not starting your presentation with your “why”. The start of your presentation isn’t the right time to tell people ‘why’ they should be interested There’s a whole lot of tosh online about …
Read more “Presentations – don’t start with why! Simon sinek was sort of wrong!”
There’s something about being perfect that set’s people’s teeth on edge. Perhaps it’s the idea that if something is perfect it must be artificial – not authentic. It’s true both in presentation in real life. Let me give you a couple of examples. About a year ago, my Mum died. At her funeral, my younger …
I’m not a huge fan of “the X secrets to…” for anything. Inevitably the real world is more complicated than the blog post with that kind of title has suggested. Maybe it’s me, but it seems that posts like that always finish with an extra step of “realise you don’t know how to do it …
Before I was a presentation skills trainer – not quite in my youth – I spent about seven years touring as the technical director of a dance company. I learned a lot from them to do with discipline and hard work. I learned about focus and I learned what effort looks like. (I might even …
Once upon a time I was taking instruction on playing the piano with a view to becoming a professional pianist. I never got that far (I was never that good, not even close!) but it gave me an interesting perspective on how professional performers work. And it’s not like it’s portrayed in the movies. (C’mon, …
Read more “How to present better: Presentation stage management”
Your brain is a wonderful thing. Some brains are more wonderful than others, of course (such as my wife’s) And people have been researching how they work for a long time. Even before neuro-science became popular (or even possible!), people were looking our learning capacity… How does this research apply to presenting? Way back in …
Read more “How much can tell your audience in a presentation?”
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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