Tag Archives: public speaking

What is an original way of making a mindblowing presentation for school?

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Deb Volberg Pagnotta, Founder of Interfacet.inc,
Communications consultant, professor, presenter, lawyer, storyteller

1. Choose a topic that relates to something or someone that you LOVE and that you LOVE talking about. If you don’t care about the subject, it’s much harder to get the audience to care. 

2. Make the topic (and speech) audience relevant upfront  – that is, let the audience know in your opening what their “takeway” will be. If it is a particular skill, zero in on HOW/WHEN the audience might be able to use that and why it will be incredibly useful! 

3. Use the “SUCCES” parameters suggested by Chip and Dan Heath in their great book “Made to Stick.” (That is NOT a typo!) Simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional story. Read chapter 1. It’s well worth it.
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How to Overcome Nervousness in Public Speaking

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author imageBrenda Scottsdale
Brenda Scottsdale is a licensed psychologist, a six sigma master black belt and a certified aerobics instructor. She has been writing professionally for more than 15 years in scientific journals, including the “Journal of Criminal Justice and Behavior” and various websites.

 

To some people, speaking in public is an exhilarating, satisfying experience. Others become nervous, nauseated and sweaty at just the thought of public speaking. While nervousness can help motivate and energize you, too much anxiety is counterproductive. Often our fears are overblown; an article on the Stanford University website recommends preparing for the worst possible scenario so anything that actually happens on speech day won’t seem so bad.

Preparation

Step 1

Speak about a topic you feel enthusiastic about, if you get to choose your topic. If your topic is assigned to you, identify an area within this subject area that you can get excited about. Your passion will be contagious and will transform your nervousness into excitement. According to the Dale Carnegie website, “If your attitude is good — your talk will be.”

Step 2

Give yourself weeks to prepare, so you can focus on the material, rather than your feelings of nervousness. Know much more about the topic than what you plan to cover during your speech.

Step 3

Rehearse until you are thoroughly familiar with your speech. Familiarize yourself with the room in which you’ll be speaking and, if possible, rehearse in that room so there won’t be any surprises on speech day.

Step 4

Warm up physically before you begin to speak. According to speech experts at Stanford University, physical movements, such as walking or arm circles, will help dissipate your nervous energy.

Step 5

Ensure you get enough sleep and eat nutritious meals in the days leading up to your speech. Taking care of yourself physically will help you be more resilient and feel less nervous.

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What is the craftiest way to dodge a question during a presentation?

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Robert Frost Robert Frost, engineer/instructor at NASA Here’s a little flowchart for how to handle questions during a presentation.

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You’re asking for a ‘crafty way to dodge a question’, but that really is one of the stupidest things a person can do.  Audiences can see right through it and will lose confidence in your qualification to be speaking to them and they will lose respect for you.  DON’T DO IT.

As the presenter, you are in control of the presentation and responsible for ensuring the presentation gets completed as planned and that the audience gets what they needed.  If the question is really getting outside of the objectives of the presentation, you should defer the question by saying you’ll talk to the individual after the presentation so as to not take up the time of the rest of the audience, because you know they don’t need that answer.
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10 things to keep in mind to give a good (PowerPoint) presentation

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main-thumb-2358338-50-qbncmyromlwwvsuopzudyuzkygeqassi[1]  Mira Zaslove

I’ve given many presentations and some have been more successful than others. Even when it’s the same material. And very similar audiences. Something that I’ve learned: it’s easy to overlook one of the most crucial elements of giving presentations– make sure that your audience can easily focus on you and your slides. 


Don’t be in competition with your powerpoint for attention. When giving a presentation, audience engagement is critical. When you are talking, you want the attention on your message and not on the mechanics of the presentation.

10 things to keep in mind to give a good (PowerPoint) presentation:

1. Arrive early
Don’t even think about arriving late or cutting it close. Audiences will lose patience quickly if you waste valuable time at the beginning of the presentation fiddling around. If you are delivering the presentation in a new environment for your audience, arrive even earlier. Get comfortable and familiar with the space. It will help minimize distractions if you can easily answer commonly asked questions, like where the bathrooms and power outlets are. 
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Public Speaking: What are great ways to perfect one’s presentation skills?

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by Edmond Lau

A great presentation consists of two important parts: well-structured content that empowers the idea that you’re trying to convey and an eloquent style of delivery that keeps your audience’s attention on your content.  Both parts aim to facilitate the communication of your idea to an audience.  Poor structure makes it more difficult for your audience to follow along and extract the salient points, and poor delivery detracts from the content.


An effective and general paradigm for structuring content that’s applicable to any presentation, essay, research paper, funding pitch, job application presentation, resume, or tech talk comes from what MIT Professor Patrick Winston — an AI veteran with a lecture series on How to Speak — calls VSNC. [1]  Based on this structure, any compelling presentation or paper builds upon the following four cornerstones:

  • a clearly defined vision statement,
  • an enumeration of concrete steps toward achieving the vision,
  • an articulation of salient news and results with clarifying details, and
  • a summary of contributions.

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How can I present myself for a job interview using PowerPoint?

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by Joanna Miller

It’s easier than you can think.
First of all if you are not perfect in PowerPoint presentations DO NOT EVEN TRY to present yourself by PowerPoint. :) 
If not, go to any PowerPoint templates sites to find an appropriate template which is perfect to describe your CV. 

For example, if you wanna be the snowplow operator find something like thisSnow Shovel PowerPoint Template

But not like this Curriculum Vitae PowerPoint Template or this Job Interview PowerPoint Template 
Try be as specific as possible.

Show all your achievements using multimedia options of PowerPoint: does your potential  employer is  interested in your song? Just insert media file with your perfect aria in a shower.

Does he need to get perfect decorator? Just show him a video with you in your inspirational pose.


Use all 100% of your potential and fantasy to represent the most valuable person on Earth: you! 

Have a nice day :)

The Art Of Making A Brilliant Presentation

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by Srininvasan R

You never get a second chance, to make a first impression! The same rings true for presentations. As a leader, you have to deliver your messages with laser guided precision. So how do you ensure that you

You never get a second chance, to make a first impression! The same rings true for presentations. As a leader, you have to deliver your messages with laser guided precision. So how do you ensure that you ace that presentation? Well, for starters, you leave nothing to chance. But, that’s perhaps, easier said than done. Here are a few key pointers that could help you make that brilliant presentation.

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Five Tips for Planning a Presentation

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Jill Robbins

Editor’s note: When teaching public speaking, Professor Charles Lebeau divides presentation into three aspects. The three aspects of a presentation are: the physical message, the visual message, and the story message. In this article, we will look at the visual and story messages.

English is the language of many international conferences.  Sometimes a speaker might use a kind of “World English” that audience members do not understand. This can be true even for listeners who are native speakers of English.

For this reason, Professor Charles Lebeau says the visual message is important. The visual message includes pictures, charts and other aids a speaker presents during the talk. A non-native speaker ofEnglish can understand a picture. It can help  carry the message when the presenter’s words are hard to understand.

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How to Make a Presentation that stands out?

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by Caya

There’s a lot going into creating a compelling presentation. From planning to creating and delivering, and you should tackle each process accordingly.

Planning your story

A good exercise is to sketch your story as a timeline. I’d say 99% of presentations tell a story, either if it’s a sales deck, a startup pitch, a business report or even a thesis; you are always walking your audience through a story.

Once you sit in front of your presentation software and start adding slides you will be terribly distracted from the story; this is why paper, I believe, works best. This is a great guide that you can follow, I often use it for my investor and sales decks.

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Notice how presentations can adapt to this structure easily. All throughout your deck you are building up to a climax, which is the moment when you can sell your product, say how much money you are raising, or do what I call ‘The Ask’, whatever that may be.

FIRST ACT: ORIGIN/PROBLEM

It all starts with connecting with your audience. Humans are emotional beings and empathy is a weapon(?) you should use to your advantage. Find that thing that you have in common, a pain point, a shared interest. If you don’t have anything in common (unlikely), then make sure that they can connect with you personally, that your passion for whatever what you are doing is reflected here. If you don’t empathize with your audience at this point, you probably won’t be able to do it later.

 
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How valid is Edward Tufte’s argument that PowerPoint is “evil”?

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By Robert Frost

It’s total nonsense.  Tufte has a bug up his butt about PowerPoint and can’t see straight where it is involved.  I found his negativity about the application to taint his seminar.

There used to be a video game called Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat.  In that game, audio recordings of Yeager were used to provide mission feedback.  A line he often said was “Remember, it’s the man, not the machine.”

I use that line, with my best Yeager impression, every time I teach lessons on effective presentations, because it is such an important point.  PowerPoint is not a poor tool.  People use PowerPoint poorly.  And it is an easy thing to fix.  PowerPoint is quite powerful and PowerPoint is easy to use to create effective visuals.

Tufte is old enough to remember the pre-PowerPoint days, when presenters often provided no visuals or if they did, they used horrible text-filled acetate overheads.  PowerPoint didn’t create bad presentations.  It did make them easier to produce, just as word processors have made it easier to write terrible books.

With each revision, Microsoft has improved their application.  SmartArt allows, with just a few clicks, a user to take a flat, contextless, near useless list of bullets and convert them to a graphic that has context, is more engaging, and easier to remember.
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