Monthly Archives: December 2013

Brain rules for presenters

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by Ninja

Summarizing the 12 brain rules below, you may want to check out brainrules.net for details

Brain rule 1 for presenters: Exercise boosts brain power.
1. Our brains were built for walking—12 miles a day!
2. To improve your thinking skills, move.
3. Exercise gets blood to your brain, bringing it glucose for energy and oxygen to soak up the toxic electrons that are left over. It also stimulates the protein that keeps neurons connecting.
4. Aerobic exercise just twice a week halves your risk of general dementia. It cuts your risk of Alzheimer’s by 60 percent.
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Tools for Making Effective Presentations and Keeping Your Audience Engaged

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By Hammad Siddiqui

Stage Fright is a common disease of our dynamic corporate world. Astonishingly, not many senior executives undergo a formal training in the art of public speaking or in making presentations. And only those senior executives who understand the importance of posture, pauses, blank spaces, facial expressions, flow and quality of words, variation of voice pitch and timings try to learn this art.

I take it as serious business.

After having attended a formal “Effective Speaking” training program in 1996 at the British Foreign Office training center in London, I was quite hopeful to develop my skills as an effective speaker and presenter. This three day program covered the above techniques in addition to a session on effective writing. I remember our facilitators kept repeating;

“There is only one tool that helps deliver good speeches or presentations – Practice, practice and more practice”.

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Tips and Tricks for Better Presentations

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 Overview

Now that you know the basics of using PowerPoint and making presentations, how can we leverage the advanced features of PowerPoint to make our presentations better? There are a variety of tips and tricks that we’ll share to give that presentation a little extra kick.
Precision Layouts

To make layouts more precise, you can use the arrow keys to move objects after selecting them by clicking on their border. This may seem agonizingly slow, but is actually very useful because it allows for precision movement, whereas the mouse tends to be too inexact for good layout. Remember that in order to move text items, you need to click on the border rather than inside the box, or else you’ll end up editing the text rather than moving the text item.

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Fantastic Forced Perspective Photographs by Michael Paul Smith

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“It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”~ John Wooden 

Michael Paul Smith has an eye for detail that’s for sure. These wonderful images are made using highly detailed models, a $250 point-and-shoot camera and a great eye for perspective.

For over 25 years Michael has been building delightfully detailed scenes of mid-20th century America using 1/24 models.

‘I’m creating a mood, something familiar in the viewer’s mind,’ Smith told the New York Times.
The reason a cheap and cheery point-and-shoot works well for forced perspective photography is because of the very small sensors cheaper compact cameras tend to have. The small sensor facilitates a much greater depth of field, much greater than that of a full

 

 

frame sensor. The smaller the sensor the easier to get everything in sharp focus.  So dust off your old point and shoot and give it a try!

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The Do’s and Don’ts of Smartphone Etiquette

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By Jennifer Chang

As someone who frequently writes and edits tech content for SUCCESS, I have a simple meter for how market domination works: if my mom uses or understands it, then it has a chance at becoming wildly successful. My 65-year-old mom became active on Facebook in 2009, around the same time it surpassed MySpace as the leading online social network in the United States. She also got an iPad right before Apple’s most successful selling period of the device, in the first quarter of 2013. Coincidence?

Of course, I’m (half-) joking, but smartphones and similar devices are certainly ubiquitous, even to my dear mother who used to have difficulty double-clicking. And while we have telephone etiquette and email etiquette, the parameters for social media or smartphone etiquette aren’t as clearly defined.

So as we approach the season of holiday parties and family gatherings, you might want to consider this infographic by eBay Deals on smartphone etiquette—what’s considered acceptable (or not acceptable), depending on age group, event and situation.

From unsurprising ambiguity on smartphone usage in the workplace to a surprisingly high percentage of people who approve of texting behind the wheel at the red light, the results are fascinating. I don’t know if I agree with all of the infographic’s findings, but I’m definitely introducing the phrase “phubbing” (short for phone-snubbing, or neglecting people in real life in favor of your smart phone) to my mom to see if it catches on.

What about you? Do you agree or disagree with the smartphone etiquette rules below?

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