Presentation skills

Will Success Spoil Ted.com?

May 9, 2012

I’ve watched dozens of TED talks online and never seen a bad one. TED stands for Technology, Education, and Design. It started in 1984. Since 1990 it was located in a conference center outside of Monterrey CA. Since 2001 it’s been curated mainly by Chris Anderson. Most TED conferences were amazing. I’ve never been, but [...]

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1 Great Tip for Better Story Power for Business

November 2, 2011

Here’s a great tip for anybody presenting anything to an audience: Skip the boring preamble. Many times we feel like we have to do a lot of prefacing, but four minutes goes by quickly. If you spend two minutes on background, you’ve lost an opportunity to grab attention. Far better to leave the identifying bits [...]

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Do You Understand the Power of Instant Rejection?

October 28, 2011

A friend referred me to Vinod Khosla’s Five-Second Rule at Forbes.com. It’s about the slide decks we use for presenting, and its wisdom is a lot like what you get in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink or thousands of blog posts about the importance of headlines. Here’s the Vinod’s test for slide decks: he puts a slide [...]

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Stage Fright Can Be Good For Your Career

June 8, 2011

I’ve noticed a pattern with myself, public speaking, and fear of speaking. I wonder if this holds true with others. I think it was good for me that my job required a lot of speaking even when I was still pretty young. Before I was 25 I’d done radio and standup television for UPI out [...]

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Guy Kawasaki and the Zen of Not Zen

July 27, 2010

I admit it. I got really jealous of all the Zen of this and Zen of that writing, dating all the way back to the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I wanted to like, tried to like, but couldn’t. Yes, I gave into the horrible temptation, and even posted Zen and [...]

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What Do Teachers Make

May 1, 2009

You and I and a lot of students, parents, and teachers ought to thank my friend Matthew Scott for posting this on his Strategic Incubator blog. Do yourself and your kids and their teachers a favor, take five minutes, and look/listen to a great presentation. Matthew was making the point that all businesses are sometimes [...]

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