Missing Link

In 5 years of speaking and 11 years of coaching this wee trick has pretty much never failed me – and it’s so stupidly simple.

Let’s say to prove a point you wanted to ask a group of small business owners if they find running their own business quite a lonely thing to do – it should be a homerun – everyone should agree. There’s two ways you could ask the audience:

The first, and most commonly used technique is to say, “By a show of hands, how many of you find running your own business a lonely affair?”.

You’ll get a scattering of hands raised which kinda takes the wind out of your sail. I see this frustrate presenters all the time.

Our method is to ask , “Hands up those of you that don’t find running your own business a lonely affair.” If you get one hand raised I’ll be surprised.

Basically, if people can avoid stepping out they will, and it’s amazing how often audiences lie by not raising their hands to obvious questions.

Avoid this by always asking questions where the answer you’re looking for relies on keeping your hands down.

I told you it was simple, but don’t take my word for it, ask your audience…!

More preso tips on twitter.

Over at his blog, Clive Simpkins offers some great advice on conducting conversations. As you can imagine, many of them are relevant in a presentation environment too. Here’s a few snippets:

Adage says: Shyness is ‘I’-ness. If you think everyone’s going to be focused on you and how you engage, you’re wrong. They’re typically quite focused on themselves!

A tense and anxious brain doesn’t work well. It causes your body to produce cortisol, which negatively affects short-term memory. Be prepared to be adventurous. Have fun.

Read the full list here…!

Howard Mann, one of my fav thinkers, referred me to this great piece entitled “Top 10 reasons why proposals fail“. It may be about proposals, but the logic applies equally well to presentations. If anything, I’d not bother with 9, “they’re missing a thank you” – sure thank them, just don’t add the stock-standard “thank you” slide to the end of your preso, it’s so expected it means nothing (most people just use it signify “the end”).

Well worth the 5 minutes it’ll take you to read it…!

Cliff Atkinsons finds a reference that a full sentence which talks to the purpose of the slide is more effective than a slide with a simple, truncated heading.

This makes sense when you consider that people receive information better when they’re talked to like people. I can see this working. How can we use this, not only in presentation, but also in video?

The other day I had a discussion with Toby Touby a freelancer where we both agreed that the keywords in her video needed more text to humanise the point and inevitably make more sense – not just an isolated phrase, but a sentence. Not just the word as it appears, but the interviewees key point in a nutshell. Overall, we found they were more digestible, as they were easier to identify with.

What do y’all think?

Given the rant in my last post, this image that Rob sent to me is pretty damn relevant.

You owe it to your message not to be one…!

This would be it.

Slideshare is a site where presenters can upload their slides for others to view. This angers me.

People, generally speaking if your audience can understand your slides without you present, the slides are over-populated (and you’re obsolete).

Slide shows with too much text are the killer of good presentations. If you want people to read, send them home with the book, you’ll be saving everyone time.

A video (or even audio) clip featuring the speaker is a far better idea, and If you really want to include your slides you could consider the c-box.

What worries me the most though is that intelligent people that I have the utmost respect for, think it’s a good idea.

Scary…!

From a source we don’t often hear a lot from. The military.

Approximately three days ago, I put together a PowerPoint briefing for my commander. It had the right info, but was not displayed in the proper manner. It’s a lesson I have learned on this staff, and over the last six years in general: How you present information is often just as important as the information you present. When it comes to this job, if your audience, be it your boss or soldiers under you, don’t understand the information you are trying to send across, they might make a decision based on the information they thought they heard, and it can cost lives.

In case you missed it:

How you present information is often just as important as the information you present.

There’s a joke in here about bullets, but I’m going to leave it for someone else.

Thanks VisualBeing.

I just wrote about the Lessig Method of presentation in a recent Liberty Life news post. The style makes use of a rapid fire visual component that works well both to keep the audience attentive, and the presenter on their toes.

This style is not for everyone, and probably not for all occasions, but is well worth looking into. Garr has a write-up here, and you can view samples of Lessig himself (well, his preso as an audio driven flash file) and Dick Hardt applying the method. I also had the pleasure of watching Seth Godin brilliantly applying the thinking (as I don’t think he knew about the method as such) at TED Global in Oxford last year.

It’s quite a leap from the traditional, but one we’d really like to help you take…!

Thanks to Rob Stokes for this gem. The Savage Chickens rock.

Thing is, and I say this a lot, blaming PowerPoint for the bad preso, is like blaming the pan for the shit food.

Learn to cook…!

Presentation Zen have a killer article on what to do/not to do with your slides when trying to present effectively. Who has he used for the comparison? Apple’s Steve Jobs and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

Professionally these two are very similar, but their understanding of presentation varies considerably. While Jobs will continue to be praised on his skills as a communicator, Gates has really dropped the ball. The point of his presentation? Who knows? The effect? Angry, confused, time-wasted audience (and bad web-reviews).

It looks like Gates and his staff did what many millions of other PowerPoint users do daily — they used PowerPoint in a way that did not help their message. In fact, their PowerPoint visuals probably hurt their message. If the visuals did not help, then they quite possibly got in the way of Gates making a meaningful, personal connection with the ninety or so people in the room.

In addition to not getting a message across, bad presentations can also have a very negative effect on the audience’s impression on your company. Especially when you’re compared (as you often will be) to the competitor. Go have a look at the pictures, and you’ll see what I mean.

The boss does not always know what he’s doing. That said, get them to call us!

Here’s a nice visual-aid tip from Doc Searls:

Think of your presentation as a series of newspaper stories, each the length of one slide. Without room for long copy, only three things matter. They’re the same three things you get from a 3-second read of the lead story in a newspaper: headline, picture and caption.

And that’s only if you’re feeling generous, often just a picture or headline alone is enough…!

I’ve recently become a huge fan of Garr Reynolds. His blog PresentationZen is very good reading, with tips for both the pro and the casual presenter.

As well as reading his blog, I’d strongly suggest you look at his sample presentation. He has a visual style very similar to ours, which makes sense, because we’re good looking and brilliant.

It there is one thing I disagree with him on is that he doesn’t seem to advocate post-Q&A conclusions, but I could be wrong.

Very good stuff, go read it…!

Update: I nearly forgot his top ten delivery tips.

Anyone that suggests that conferences are dull boring affairs, has never been to TED, no questions.

Anyone who says that PowerPoint is a shit tool, has never watched Seth Godin, Ze Frank, or Juan Enriquez work their magic.

People need to stop blaming the tools, the tools are working just fine thank you very much, it’s the daft fuckers that use them that’s the problem.

People kill people…!

Update: Read Seth’s TED accounts of Ze Frank, and Steven Levitt, both presos had me floored (oh, and the wee bald man himself delivered a three-minute mind-fuck that had me in absolute awe.)

Over at Johnnie Moore’s site, he’s posted a podcast conversation between himself, Chris Corrigan, and Rob Paterson that you should download and listen to, it’s about conferences and the fact that they’re largely boring and unhelpful.

It’s a good listen, and it’s hard to fault much of what they say, except for one key thing, they don’t mention content at all. Presentations are only as good as the content that’s in them, that’s a quite an omission.

Here’s a few tips for better conferences:

• Very specific speaker briefs
• Shorter presentations
• Tell the speakers that their slides will not be hand-outs, that way they wont need to clutter them.

Get the content right, then, and only then, do you start looking at the other stuff….!

I cant say that I agree with everything this guy says about presenting, but I do think this slide is relevant when you’re talking at a conference.

I’m off to TED next week, I’m hoping to learn lots, but I’ll be bloody pissed off if I’m not entertained a little too…!

WARNING. If you start reading Kathy Sierra’s stuff, you’ll be hooked for ever, so on that basis, go find out why she thinks you should stop your presentation before it kills again.

And hey, she mentions us…!

I found this great quote over at Tony’s PowerPoint Weblog:

Design your speech or presentation using the same criteria you use in buying a bathing suit,” write Joel Hochberger of Effective Presentations Inc. “First, it has to fit. Next, it has to reflect your personality. And finally, it should cover only the parts that are interesting!

Good one.

Damn good one actually…!

I’ve linked to this page in the news before, but it deserves a place here. Some killer PowerPoint resources.

Don’t forget though, there’s (lots) more to presentation than PowerPoint….!