- Making Your Presentation Change Behavior August 3, 2010
- Why We Give Presentations April 29, 2010
- Preparing Great PowerPoint Presentations (workshop) April 20, 2010
Google to Release Communication Platform
June 28, 2009
Google said it plans this year to release a real-time communication platform that allows people to collaborate on a project using a format called waves.
In Google Wave, you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. People on your wave can insert a reply or edit the wave directly.
It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. The company claims Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.
Google has yet to announce a release date of the platform. If you’d like to be notified when its launched to the public, you can sign up here.
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Top 5 iPhone Apps for Presenters
May 25, 2009
Tons of programs are being designed for the iPhone every day, and quite a few are making life easier for public speakers. In fact, the Top 10 most downloaded Business Apps (today, anyway, since this list may change tomorrow) includes four voice-recording programs.
Here are five iPhone apps you’ll probably find useful before your next public presentation:
Speakeasy Voice Recorder allows you to record and playback verbal notes and reminders from your iPhone’s built-in microphone. If you get a burst of inspiration for a future speech at an inconvenient time to write the speech, speak reminders into your phone.
This app sounds like the perfect program for anyone like Michael Keaton’s character in the 1982 comedy “Night Shift.” Keaton played a self-described “idea man,” who carried around a tape recorder so he could record his crackpot ideas, such as feeding mayonnaise to tuna-fish, or creating edible paper to eliminate garbage.
QuickVoice Recorder is another popular voice recorder for the iPhone, which includes a voice-to-text email feature.
Evernote allows you to capture information in a variety of environments using multiple devices or platforms (Mac, PC, etc.), and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from almost anywhere.
This program allows you to capture To-Do lists, notes and research, Web pages, twitter messages or snap photos of business cards/whiteboards/wine labels and more.
Remote Desktop, by MochaSoft, enables you to have secure access to your work computer through wifi or the phones network (EDGE). Using your iPhone, you can connect to your Windows work computer and see the files, programs, and resources exactly as you would if you were sitting at your desk… but of course, squinting on a far smaller screen.
Speech Timer: This program is designed with the Toastmaster Timer (or any longwinded public speaker) in mind. This timer app will make your iPhone vibrate or sound when the flag changes colors.
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Is Your Presentation Ready for VC’s?
May 5, 2009
If you’re an entrepreneur with that million dollar presentation ready to go, you have three days left to apply for one of the 30 slots at the 4th Annual Launch: Silicon Valley in front of the venture capital community.
Launch: Silicon Valley 2009 is designed to uncover and showcase products and services from some of the newest startups in information technology, mobility, security, digital media, next generation internet, life sciences and clean energy.
Startups interested in presenting their products at the June 9th event at Microsoft’s Mountain View, Calif. campus should send an executive summary of no more than 2 pages to Launchsv@svase.org by the deadline of May 8.
Companies with the top 30 proposals will be invited to leverage Launch: Silicon Valley 2009 as the springboard to launch their product or service, and to network with the audience of Silicon Valley’s top movers and shakers at the Pre-L:SV Event Party on June 8, as well as at the following day’s Launch event.
If you get selected to present, you may want to read How to Be a Demo God, a blog item a few years back by Guy Kawasaki, managing director of VC firm Garage Technology Ventures, and a co-creator of Launch: Silicon Valley.
In the blog item, Kawasaki outlines the top 11 things you need to do in order to be a Demo God.
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Preparing Your PowerPoint Presentation as a Leave-Behind
March 28, 2009
When presenters learn the importance of using PowerPoint only as a visual complement to their verbal presentation, they are often perplexed on what to leave behind for attendees to share with coworkers who were absent. Often visual slides don’t tell the whole story without the presenter’s narration.
Rick Altman, author of Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Suck, suggests preparing two presentations. But it’s not quite twice-as-much-work as it may sound.
“The one you leave behind is a printout from the Notes portion of PowerPoint,” Altman said, during a recent Presentation Camp workshop at the San Francisco office of Slideshare.net. “There’s no need to go into [MS] Word to create the document. You do it straight in PowerPoint.”
This is a very handy trick that many PowerPoint users don’t know.
In PowerPoint, click on the View menu, then click “Notes Master.” This will create two placeholders. The top one is a reduced visual of your PowerPoint slide. The bottom will be your notes, either describing the slide, or the narration of your speech that goes with that particular slide.
That’s what you print out as a leave behind.
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Side note: I have yet to read Altman’s book, Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Suck: And how you can make them better (Harvest Books, 2007), but I like the title of Chapter 6: Does PowerPoint Make You Stupid?
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How to Write Great Speech Openers
March 22, 2009
All public speakers should learn to grab their audiences’ attention within the first 30 seconds. One of the best ways to do that is to appeal to their emotions.
And you do this by building anticipation, said Carmen Taran, managing partner of Rexi Media, during a Presentation Camp workshop at the Slideshare.net San Francisco office yesterday.
“We love to anticipate the future,” Taran said, as she listed examples, such as things that are “new” and events that are full of “uncertainty.” As she echoed that word uncertainty, Taran flashed up a presentation slide of a tennis ball teetering on a net.
It’s hard to imagine a more effective visual.
She went on to discuss things to avoid in introductions. Things that can kill a speech opener include presenting a slide of bullet points (i.e. – agenda), lack of enthusiasm, showing a lack of preparation, and of course, self-indulgence.
“It’s much better to make (the opener) about your audience, rather than about you,” she said. “Get your audience involved early.”
Following an engaging 30 second opener, an audience’s attention will start to drift, unless the speaker shifts gears, or adds “variability,” Taran said. That’s because the audience will be craving closure, unless the story takes a turn. This closure (in psychology) is known as the Zeigarnik Effect.
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BTW: Taran is not only an engaging presentation coach and a former United Nations interpreter, but she is also a Phd candidate in psychology, according to her LinkedIn profile.
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The Creation Myth in Politics
March 5, 2009
Just like a CEO of a company getting a lot of press, politicians also have to be prepared to rattle off their Creation Myths.
Sometimes they are totally made up, like eBay’s launch myth. Sometimes, they are true stories, slightly exaggerated to add flare.
If you caught Morley Safer’s 60 Minute’s interview of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal last Sunday, the Republican party’s rising star echoed his own Creation Myth when asked about his Americanized name. He is of Indian descent and was born with the name Piyush.
So where did “Bobby” come from? He told Safer, “Everyday after school… I’d watch ‘The Brady Bunch, you know? He was about my age, and Bobby stuck.”
To be clear, this is not a political blog, but I’m simply pointing out the importance of trying to make your Creation Myth believable, at least a little.
Perhaps Jindal’s PR machine is not that savvy, I mean The Brady Bunch? That has got to be among the weakest fictionalized Creation Myths of all time. Let’s try to get beyond that it’s the Brady Bunch. In the first season, Bobby Brady was about nine, which would make him in the third grade, and we are led to believe this is when Piyush is telling his classmates to call him Bobby for now on, you know like Bobby Brady?
If this politically minded conservative kid is going to be influenced by a TV character, how come he’s not Gov. Alex P. Keaton of Louisiana?
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The Creation Myth – Branding Your Business
March 1, 2009
When you hear the Hewlett-Packard Story, the image that often comes to mind is that of a Palo Alto garage. When people think of the eBay Story, they think of the founder’s fiancée trading pez over the Internet (even though eBay acknowledged years later that that story was fictionalized).
Most well-branded companies have a creation myth, says Terry Gault, VP and managing partner of communications consulting firm The Henderson Group, based in San Francisco.
The Creation Myth was the title of a highly interactive workshop Gault led yesterday at Presentation Camp at Stanford University. He defined the Creation Myth as a unique quality of a company or person.
To illustrate this, Gault told two stories, or “myths” of the creation of two separate companies. One was how David Henderson decided to leave a lucrative law practice and take a chance on launching a communications consulting business, which eventually landed Oracle as a client.
The other story was about the launch of Cirque du Soleil, the wildly successful circus show. After a successful launch in Canada, bankrolled by the Quebec government, the founders took the show to L.A., with only enough money to fly the crew there. If it had failed, they were stuck. However, it not only succeeded, Cirque du Soleil has launched an unprecedented 15 spin-off shows without a single failure.
While the story behind corporate Creation Myths may be at least partially true to some extent, if not completely fabricated, they all have several elements in common.
1. Memorable characters: Characters need names, because audiences have a hard time rooting for a nameless protagonist.
2. Vulnerability: the protagonist must show a vulnerable side, because it makes your character human, and your audience can relate to that.
3. High stakes: for a story to be truly compelling, stakes have to be very high. For example, if Cirque du Soleil failed in L.A., then what?
4. Details: Providing details that make it easier for your audience to visualize the story is key. In fact, details are far more powerful than adjectives.
5. Be Selective in Details: How do you know what details to put in and what details to leave out? The answer: If the details don’t enhance the scene or contribute to the myth, they should be left out.
6. Dialogue: In describing a scene, give the characters first-person dialogue. Instead of saying, he was panicking, demonstrate it with visual details. His hand shook as he held the phone. Sweat poured down his face.
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Editing Images in Keynote '09
February 23, 2009
Editing images, photos or jpegs in Apple’s Keynote ’09 presentation software is an easy process, which no longer requires you to crop the photo or image in iPhoto. This is thanks to a new feature called “Mask.”
Simply place your photo on a Keynote slide, then click the Mask button, located slightly to the right of center in your browser. A square portion of your image will be zeroed in on, while the rest shades out. If you want to make the square portion smaller or bigger, you simply click on the edge of the image and drag it inward or outward until the mask is the size you want.
A mask slider will appear below the image, which allows you to zoom in or out on the image. If zooming in on the image moves the critical piece out of center, you can easily move the portion you want showing until it’s in the window.
Once you are done editing your photo, click “edit mask” again. The Mask portion of the image disappears, leaving you with a perfectly cropped image.
If you want to retouch your photo, there are several ways to do so. One is by doing it in iPhoto. For those who are willing to pay for a photo retouching software, Adobe Photoshop is considered the industry standard.
Another free alternative retouching tool is GIMP, which stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, which is similar to the MS Paint program PC users may be familiar with.
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Presentation Camp to Launch This Saturday
February 22, 2009
The first of a series of Presentation Camps kicks off this Saturday in Palo Alto, Calif. It’s an ad-hoc gathering of people passionate about presentations, created and hosted by Slideshare.net. Presentation Camp is a participatory conference, where those who plan to attend are free to submit their own ideas for a workshop to the organizers, then show up and share their best practices with their fellow attendees. In the BarCamp fashion, all who attend, are invited to host a session.
Proposed sessions so far include:
Time: Camp will run from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 pm, Saturday, Feb. 28. The agenda will be decided between 9:30 – 10 a.m. that day.
Location: Stanford University, Cordura Hall 100
Fee: Tickets are $10. You can register through TicketLeap.
Future Camps: Presentation Camp San Francisco is slated for March 21. Others are being planned for Seattle, New York, Washington DC, London and Kansas City.
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Converting a PowerPoint for Mac’s Keynote
February 15, 2009
Converting a PowerPoint presentation for a Mac so that you can take advantage of Apple’s sleek design and features of Keynote ’09 is easier than ever. All it takes is dragging and dropping the PowerPoint file onto the Keynote icon on your Mac desktop. The presentation file then opens in Keynote. (Keynote ’09, is an application that is part of iWork ’09, released last month.)
Conversely, if you’ve designed your slide deck in Keynote and will be one of a series of presenters (at a seminar, for example) who will all be using the same PC, no problem. It’s simple to convert your Keynote presentation into PowerPoint. The easiest of two ways to do this is by email. In the “Share” menu at the top of your Mac browser, select “Send via Mail,” then choose the format (Keynote, PowerPoint, or pdf). Keynote then launches the Mail program with the document already attached.
The second way is to go to the File menu in Keynote and select “Save As.” In the popup window that appears, check the box that says “Save Copy As,” then make sure “PowerPoint presentation” is selected. Then Click Save.
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