Today, our current approach to PowerPoint is: - Overloading our audiences with too much information - Throwing in everything but the kitchen sink - Just doing a data dump - Usually not communicating a good story - Being too generic - one deck fits all - Not succeeding at helping an audience remember key messages - Creating decks that don't get used, or just one or two slides are pulled - Not producing a crisp communication package Where would we like to be is a place where we: - Find a better approach for internal and external presentations - Tell a clear story - Increase our audiences'

You've visualized yourself giving a successful presentation where the audience walks away feeling like they've received great value and they're motivated to do something 9. Cam Beck asked me this question the other day in response to my post about your worst public speaking fear coming true : "So how do you know the difference between preparing and over-preparing?" First of all, here's what it looks like to be unprepared . Also, here's a post I wrote about how I prepare for a presentation .

I've heard some speakers say that it's important to establish your credentials at the beginning of a presentation, so your audience knows that you're a credible expert. What the audience wants to know is what's in it for them? Put your bio into a handout and use your opening to engage your audience, to grab their attention and let them know you're there to serve them. I say, fuhgeddaboudit. You've already been invited.

Here's his take on storytelling: - Start with something you know your audience understands. Stories with conflict draw in kids and audiences, too. - Stock the story with obvious heroes and villains. In a speech, setting up heroes and villains not only entertains, it also helps to win the audience over to your point of view. - Don't forget the sticking point. How do you tell a story? That's especially important for speakers -- whether you're at a cocktail party, in a meeting, or in front of an auditorium full of listeners.

Someone yelled out that our scores were wrong, which prompted the audience to start yelling and booing us - things got out of control and I had to end the session early. Audience teaches me a lesson in front of 400 people ( San Francisco, 2007, @Etech ). spoke with a 2 second echo delay in my headset (required so 5 people could listen in remotely) the entire time, to an audience of maybe 15 people that One of the goals of the book is to talk about things going wrong in public speaking. Few books ever mention how often things go wrong, even for experienced speakers,

Rhett Laubach posted a nice overview of how to read your audience members and how best to connect with them, based on their motivations for being there. "Hostage Take a few minutes to check out Rhett's post, and see if you can't relate to his audience member profiles! ...Tags: Hostage Harriet" is particularly challenging; here's an excerpt: "I am here because I was forced to be here. I didn't have a choice.

You may have mad skills, you may have a great personality, you may be a snake charmer with the ability to hypnotically attract everyone in the audience to you. You're afraid the audience will see how nervous you are First of all, they won't. You are 100 times more aware of your own body and physical condition than your audience is. Let's talk about those things that hold many people back from enjoying public speaking. But those nagging fears still keep you up the night before your presentation and get in the way of truly enjoying the experience.

This can help you more fully engage your audience. What's Kitsch? Kitsch is a black velvet painting. Garden gnomes, lava lamps, troll dolls, flamingo lawn ornaments, dogs playing poker -- all are classic kitsch. Often of poor quality, kitsch is an object that appeals to lowbrow, popular, or tacky tastes.

Be sure to focus on the benefits to your audience, not just the features (what you know). Determine your target audience, and then figure out where you might find them. 40 to 45% of American adults make one or more resolutions each year. Are you one of them? Most New Year's resolutions are about health, fitness, money management,

DarrenBarefoot.com Contact Jobs Speaking About Home September 3rd, 2007 Filed under: Mixed Bag , Technology , The Arts 71 Comments » Everything I Know About Presentations, I Learned in Theatre School An Unlikely Education I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while, and was inspired to get it done by Merlin Mann’s recent piece about improving his use of PowerPoint. The beginning promises the audience