The Latest from Speaking about Presenting

Friday, March 19, 2010
SXSW is a mega conference/festival for geeks in Austin, Texas, United States. Mega means over 10,000 attendees. I came here to see what’s happening at the geek edge of presenting. To observe the interface between presenting and technology.
 
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Most hecklers are made, not born. If people don’t feel listened to they will turn into hecklers. So the critical step to avoid making hecklers out of people in your audience is to listen. At the Presentation Camp in LA last year I facilitated a session on handling a heckler.
 
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
In my eBook How to present with a backchannel I recommend that the first time you present with a backchannel, you shouldn’t try and monitor or respond to feedback in real-time (the term backchannel refers to an online conversation taking place at the same time as people are talking live). I’ve ve changed
 

The Best from Speaking about Presenting

Presenting while people are tweeting is challenging – but also adds a new dimension to the presentation experience for your audience. Gradually tools are being developed to make it easier for you as the presenter to manage the backchannel. I
At last, we have some scientifically rigorous evidence to show that slides full of bullet-points don’t work. The research is the work of Chris Atherton , a cognitive psychologist. Chris recently delivered a presentation at the Technical Communication UK Conference and has put up her slides on slideshare .
Presenting with Twitter can be challenging. Just about every week a new story of a speaker getting roasted on Twitter makes waves in the blogosphere. I’ve written a free eBook “How to present with Twitter (and other backchannels)” to help you avoid that fate. There’s no sign up required.
In my post 10 tools for presenting with Twitter , I lamented that there was no easy-to-use way of posting tweets from within PowerPoint. Timo Elliott of SAPWeb2.0 has now created an add-in for PowerPoint 2004 and 2007 which does just that. It’s called AutoTweet .
The latest academic research on Twitter and conferences addresses the issue of “snarky tweets” during presentations. What should be the guidelines of what is acceptable and what is not? My own experience of tweeting during presentations at Presentation Camp LA highlighted for me the new challenges we face around Twitter etiquette at conferences.

The Latest from the Speaking Pro Central Community

Saturday, March 20, 2010
This is a great article …. The ideas are simple, but powerful, and they apply as much to public speaking as they do to conversation. Some of the headings are: Express your thoughts clearly: The effective communicator has empathy:
 
Friday, March 19, 2010
We Baby Boomers never envisioned aging.  0160; We also didn't anticipate hustling for work, selling ourselves when we were over-50.  0160; In this sensitive exclusive interview, Manhattan psychotherapist Will Meyerhofer LMSW JD shares information, insight, and inspiration.  0160; Here is that weekend read. ...Tags:
 
Friday, March 19, 2010
Maybe I hang in the wrong circles.  0160; For the past few months, including today, I have been hearing too much about suicide ideation.  0160; That's the kind of thought pattern which defaults in thoughts about suicide.  0160;
 

The Best from the Speaking Pro Central Community

TED has earned a lot of attention over the years for many reasons, including the nature and quality of its short-form conference presentations. All presenters lucky enough to be asked to speak at TED are given 18-minute slots maximum (some are for even less time such as 3- and 6-minute slots). Some who present at TED are not used to speaking on a large stage, or are at least not used to speaking on their topic with strict time restraints.
Exposing ourselves to traditional Japanese aesthetic ideas — notions that may seem quite foreign to most of us — is a good exercise in lateral thinking, a term coined by Edward de Bono in 1967. "Lateral Lateral Thinking is for changing concepts and perception," says de Bono. Beginning to think about design by exploring the tenets of the Zen aesthetic may not be an example of Lateral Thinking
Most people do not really think about design and designers, let alone think of themselves as designers. But what, if anything, can regular people — teachers, students, business people of all types — learn from designers and from thinking like a designer? And what of more specialized professions?
Presenting while people are tweeting is challenging – but also adds a new dimension to the presentation experience for your audience. Gradually tools are being developed to make it easier for you as the presenter to manage the backchannel. I
People often ask if technical or science-related presentations can be as compelling as presentations covering other less technical topics. Now, not every presentation has earth-shattering, Nobel-Prize winning significance, but I assume if you are talking about your research or current issues in your field, etc. that your words have a benefit for someone else.