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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I’ve just spent some time working with some ‘early years’ researchers. Given that a research career last for a very long time (mine was quite short at 24 years!) in part because it takes a looooong time to get going (ten years in and you’re still just starting!). We were working on presentations to get …
Read more “Presentations for academics (and other hard core experts!)”
Here’s a rock ’n’ roll idea, though it’s only my opinion… The days of Death by PowerPoint are over. I’d like to pretend that’s because presentations have got better all over the world and that presenters are no longer attempting to kill their audiences by boring them to death. I’d like to but I can’t. …
I believe presentations should change something – otherwise they’re just a pastime. So, things that improve the likelihood of change are good (all other things being equal 😉 ). And targeting your presentation makes it more likely to do that. After all, shooing an arrow is more likely to hit the target if you aim, …
My voice went lower in Spain. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not ‘cos it was Spain, specifically, just that I was there for a week to do nothing. Just recharge. The toughest decision I’d have to make was either red wine or white? shall I do another few lengths of the pool to cool down? …
There’s a group on Facebook called Speakers’ Corner. In it there are some interesting conversations between professional speakers (and would-be professional speakers). Before you rush off there, let me warn you that there’s also sometimes a lot of fluff and tosh and and even some BadVice. 😉 One of the more interesting conversations recently was …
Put simply, the illusion of truth is that we (by which I mean people!) have a tendency to belief/trust those things which are familiar. It doesn’t have to be true for that to work, we just have to remember it. For example, I often say (and hear other people say even more!) “I can’t remember …
Maya Angelou is pretty much my favourite poet. Not quite, but close. But she did write what is probably my favourite poem (Like Dust I Rise). Amongst the many things she’s famous for are pithy bits of wisdom, almost perfectly designed for sharing online. Perhaps one of the most commonly reposted goes like this: People …
Read more “Presentation rehearsal – learning from Maya Angelou”
This one is personal. Unusual for me there isn’t a bunch of research papers behind it (as far as I know no one has written any!) but it’s based on ten years of being a presentations trainer – not a speaker trainer. Well yes, I train speakers, but I think of myself as a presentations …
Part one of a two part set about a huge presentation I did recently 🙂 In this part I’ll take you through the chronology of what I did to prepare and what happened. Part two will look at what I learned 🙂 The picture is me. I’m the one in the dark suit, pointing – …
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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