At any conference, there are ten times more panelists than there are keynote speakers, so the odds are higher that you’re on a panel than giving a keynote speech. Therefore, rocking a panel is an important skill for evangelists, too. […]
My time-tested, battle-hardened best tips to help you create the best presentations possible. If you feel the need to be creative, do it in your product design, not your pitch. […]
Forget “I think, therefore I am.” For entrepreneurs, the operative phrase is, “I pitch, therefore I am.” Pitching isn’t only for raising money—it’s for reaching agreement, and agreement can yield many good outcomes including sales, partnerships, and new hires. Here are the key elements of a great pitch. […]
I am evangelizing the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a pitch should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points. This rule is applicable for any presentation to reach an agreement: for example, raising capital, making a sale, forming [...]
This is a guest post by Ben Parr, the author of Captivology. You probably deal with attention issues every day. How do I get the attention of new customers? How do I retain the attention of existing clients? How do I captivate my boss or my upcoming date? It’s a hard problem to solve, especially [...]
Over at the American Express Open Forum, I recently posted an article about the application of ten Japanese concepts to PowerPoint, Facebook, and Twitter. Check it out here if you want a conceptual framework to simplify your use of these tools.
A common assumption is that communicating face-to-face is more persuasive than email. That's not always true, according to a 2002 study. Researchers found that men are often more responsive to email because it downplays their competitive tendencies. On the other hand, women react better to in-person encounters because they are more relationship-oriented. These same researchers [...]
According to a series of psychological studies discussed on Psychology Today, research participants are able to successfully communicate sarcasm and humor in a mere 56 percent of emails—and most of the senders had no idea their attemps were so ineffective. How do you avoid this? The article gives some tips: Read your emails aloud and [...]
You can accuse me of many things but looking a gift horse in the mouth is not one of them. As a followup to yesterday's interview with Nancy Duarte, I asked her to work her magic on my PowerPoint presentation (which I consider already very good). First, take a look at my current presentation. Then, [...]
The four horsemen (horsepeople?) of presentation skills are Garr Reynolds, Nancy Duarte, Bert Decker, and Jerry Weisman. Over at the American Express Open Forum blog, I just published an interview with Nancy Duarte called "How to Captivate an Audience." In this interview she explains the "how" of making great presentations, so check it out.
These are the winners of the Slideshare World's Best Presentation Contest. Notice the use of pictures and graphics, big fonts, and minimal text. Check them out! First Prize THIRSTView SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: crisis design) Second Prize Foot NotesView SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: design inspirational) Third Prize Zimbabwe in [...]
Is your mantra, mission, and/or elevator pitch failing? Startups often have the problem that nobody can understand them. If this is you, George Lakoff may be your fix. Lakoff is a cognitive linguist who focuses on "the last smile" between message and recognition in brain. The Chronicle has a brief history of Lakoff's career (thanks [...]
In the venture capital business, many people think that a short pitch is thirty slides and a short business plan is fifty pages. My how they are mistaken. The more slides and pages that you need to explain your business, the less likely you will succeed. Truly, the best pitches and plans require nothing more [...]
| View | Upload your own Slideshare is running the "World's Best Presentation Contest" again. Entries are due by July 31st. I'm a judge again this year along with Bert Decker, Nancy Duarte, and Garr Reynolds. The prizes include a MacBook Air, Amazon Kindle, iPod Nano, iPod Touch, and copies of Presentation Zen. To learn [...]
Most people in the mid eighties used personal computers for three primary purposes: spreadsheets, databases, and wordprocessing. Thank God that Paul Brainerd came up with the idea of PageMaker and desktop publishing, or we'd all be listening to music on cassette tapes. The principle that I learned from Aldus is that ultimately customers decide how [...]
Just got back from Houston where I spoke for the Houston Technology Center. Houston has, by far, the funniest Web 2.0 babes in the world: Jenny Lawson of Good Mom/Bad Mom and The Bloggess; Laura Mayes of Digg for Chicks, aka Sk*rt; Erica O'Grady of Reinventing Erica; Tracey Lee Wallace of True Light Resources; and [...]
An email pitch from an entrepreneur named Sherry Couch of BizNiche brought a big smile to my face. First of all, how could I skip an email with a subject line like this one: “Everything you should know about me as an entrepreneur you could learn from my OB/GYN”? Sherry went on to write:I am [...]
All hail Garr Reynolds! He has written the definitive book about making great presentations: Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter). To give you a taste of his book (and increase my link count), here are ten questions (really thirteen) with Garr. Question: Who indexed your book? I know I’m [...]
Bert Decker, executive coach extraordinaire, announced the ten best and worst communicators of 2007. He named Mike Huckabee the best communicator and Alberto Gonzalez the worst one. Click through to see the other winners and losers. Even I made the list, but I won’t tell you if it is as a winner or a loser.
The recordings of the “A Brand You World - 2007 Global Telesummit” are now online as MP3s and iTunes Podcasts. It includes people like Jason Alba, Richard Bolles, and Andy Sernovitz. If you want to learn how to market yourself, check them out.