Outstanding Presentation Webinar Series
The Outstanding Presentations Webinars Begin September 15 Free eight-week series showcases a who’s who in the industry What’s the next best thing to a live conference? A free webinar series that features the best of the best. Get your questions answered from top presentation, PowerPoint, and speaking experts by joining on to the Outstanding Presentations […]
Sarah Palin Loses Herself in the Part
Here goes my perfect record: After more than 24 months of successful resistance, I’m going to write about Sarah Palin. In the cauldron of emotion that Palin evokes, I suspect I’m not alone in acknowledging that one of them is envy. I think it would be pretty cool to send out a tweet and be […]
When Slides Just Aren’t Right…
This from a recent attendee to a webinar: We give lots of presentations for small groups. Our primary audiences are financial institutions where our product would be a good fit for their customer base, and we are trying to convince them to partner with us to offer our products. In these meetings, we might be […]
Top Ten Reasons to Attend the Presentation Summit
With apologies to David Letterman, here is the Top Ten List of reasons to attend the 2010 Presentation Summit, the preeminent conference for presentation professionals, to be held Oct 17-20 in beautiful and sunny San Diego. 1. INCREDIBLE LEARNAGE: You can’t possibly imagine how much you’ll learn at this conference, with dedicated tracks of seminars […]
A Backlash against the Backchannel
My friend and colleague Dave Paradi wrote an incisive and thought-provoking post about the “backchannel” — social media’s contribution to audience interaction during a presentation. Dave makes the strong point that for a majority of presentations, using Twitter or FaceBook to communicate with a larger audience or with the presenter is not realistic. If you […]
Public speaking: just like American Idol?
Let’s start with full disclosure: our family watches American Idol regularly. I’m not terribly proud to report this; it is one of the more poorly-produced shows on television and many of its stars are self caricatures. But it is an opportunity for a family with two headstrong teenagers to actually engage in an activity together, […]
What Has Happened to Spontaneity?
I had mixed emotions while watching Tiger Woods’ mea culpa moment two weeks ago. Same with the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. And a recent presentation that a client gave. All of these events shared a common thread. Several dozen politicians could have learned from Tiger on how to issue a public apology, and the […]
Living with Bullet Points
This from one of our readers, Melanie Bozzelli of Twinsburg OH: I hope you can help settle a friendly debate we are having over the use of bullet points. In your book, you argue that bullet points should be displayed all at once on the slide, and then the presenter will discuss them with the […]
The Lunacy of the Leave Behind
I am a pragmatic being. At my core, I understand the values of efficiency and expedience. I embrace the art of compromise and understand that life often gets in the way of ideals and theories. Reality is often harsh and not adjusting to it often harsher. Yet there is one principle relevant to our community […]
Thriving with Animation
Animation might be single-handedly responsible for more PowerPoint annoyance than all the other annoyances combined. Between Edward Tufte and Dilbert creator Scott Adams, PowerPoint animation is publicly flogged more often than our politicians are. And at the same time, when done correctly, animation isn’t noticed at all. It’s not unlike being a major league baseball […]