Techniques for designing better presentations (before you get to the delivery stage!)
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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Storytelling is a big part of presenting… and frankly of our whole culture. When we go to the pub we don’t sit around in silence, and a lot of that time is filled with sharing stories. Gossip is a story after all. Back-in-the-old days is nothing but stories. When-I-was young… you get the idea. From …
What should you put on your first slide? You know the one, the one that’s up there before your presentation. It might be there while your audience come in or just for a few minutes at the start of your turn, if there’s a speaker before you. Your mileage will vary of course because of …
Presentations are often thought of as being rubbish ways to get over lots of messy information – the complex and complicated. Here’s how to handle it.
I often get asked how to make ‘stand out’ moments in presentations. People want/need presentations to be memorable, and moments that make your audience go “Wow” are a great way of doing that. But there’s a problem. Presentations with stand-out (wow) moments mean that’s what people will remember! That’s true almost by definition. Why? Because …
“What do you want your presentation to do?” It’s not a hard question – well not any more than “What’s the meaning of life?”. 🙂 Typically, when I ask it, the answers I get are to do with process, not outcome – and that’s entirely naturally and normal. It’s my job to get past that …
Read more “designing your presentation with just one question… and then more questions”
Content and structure are the Cinderellas of presentations. Everyone fusses about Delivery but that’s not where the bread-and-butter of presenting happens. The real magic lies in knowing what to say and what order to say it in. So here’s a simple-but-powerful tool that’s going to make your presentation structure… well… better. It’s about a five minute …
There’s a lot of crap presentations training around at the moment saying “tell stories”… just “tell stores”. That’s about as much use as saying “be tall” to someone struggling because they can’t reach the top shelf. I used to have a problem with Nike’s slogan of “just do it” because I feared it encouraged people …
Read more “How to use stories in your presentations: a story matrix and using them the right way”
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 …
This one has been nagging at the back of my head for a long time and I might piss a few slick, professional presenters off. I’m braced… but it needs to be said for the sake of audiences and presenters. Here’s the big message – there’s a bit difference between what I’m going to call …
Are your presentations "okay on the day" but don't have an impact? Adding stories to your presentations will make the biggest difference, helping you really engage with your audience. But not sure how to get started?
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