So, to take advantage of Michael’s comfortable, engaging speaking style, we built into the presentation some key moments, opportunities for Michael to really connect with the audience. Climate change, health statistics, and energy use are pretty abstract concepts. Michael set out to do the research, and we started thinking about the best way to make a statistic “stick” Duarte had the distinct pleasure of working with bestselling author Michael Pollan to turn his ideas about sustainability and food systems into a visual presentation for the PopTech conference last month.

Stating falsehoods as if they are absolutely true is another fun way to play with the audience during a public speaking engagement. Deadpan expression, or keeping a straight face, is a good technique to couple with fake facts and statistics. However, you must make the statements obviously false by your words and your facial expressions. When you use this technique in this fashion, you don't want to leave any doubt in the audience's mind whether you are being funny or not.

When put to the test, most statistics about public speaking are a Asking questions is an effective way to engage the minds of the individuals Before using a statistic in your speech, research the statistic yourself. There are a lot of myths disguised as statistics. Every year, I challenge myself on my birthday by doing consecutive push-ups push-ups to match the birthday I’m celebrating.

Thinking causes  engagement with your topic–exactly what you and the audience are hoping for. Refer to a shocking statistic Tags: Content Attention-getting presentation Presentation opening quotes statistics storie I get frustrated at presentation advice which says you have to do something clever or dramatic at the beginning of a presentation to grab your audience’s attention. That’s for three reasons:

You’ve read Presentation Zen and Slideology and you’re convinced about the benefits of using visually-engaging PowerPoint slides when you present. To change their minds you need to engage directly with their sticking point. For more details on this study including the “conditions” of the experiment and the statistical results see Michael Alley’s article ). But everyone else in your organization stubbornly sticks to the bullet-point slides. How can you persuade them to change their minds?

What it does mean is that with the right finessing, even incredibly complex data can be picked apart and rearranged in a simple and engaging way. “The 8220;The Power Gap” (a new animated infographic by Airslide) is a great example of making a complex story look effortless… “Demos came to us with an intensely detailed statistical study, which rated every single constituency in Britain according to a number of different social and economic aspects. Simplicity does not necessarily mean skimping out on the meat of your presentation. When handled

This is also effective for single numbers and statistics. This method asks the audience to do a little more work - that engages them. There’s a revolution in the design of PowerPoint slides, but not the delivery. Most speakers still rely on their slides to cue them. They click, they talk, click, talk, click, talk…

And we connect and engage. think most statistical research can be faulted in some way - and as Mark Twain said, " There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. " But what is the essence of the findings? There's been a lot of unfortunate controversy among communication professionals about Professor Albert Mehrabian's oft quoted research (below.) It's good to have discussion - his research has altered the communicating landscape to get people out of the 'curse of knowledge. '

7.1 - a statistically significant difference). Tags: Engaging the Audience Research Fun Stuf Download audio here. "You know you're bored when you start shading in the squares of your notebook. Apparently it's a habit that could be helping you to concentrate." In a recent article on the BPS Research Digest blog , a study is described in which subjects were asked

Many audiences will demand that the sources for a statistic appear on the slide itself, but at the very least you have to say what your source is before you show the data. Bill's delivery style below is not as engaging as some others, and I'd much prefer he had used a remote and moved away from the computer (and took a drink of water), but his content and stories very much connected with the live audience. When I was 17, before Macintosh was even invented, I gave my first multimedia presentation using two 35mm projectors. My topic concerned the environment and the dangers of air