Tag Archives: public speaking

Powerful presentation

Presenting…has NOTHING to do with PowerPoint.

Oh the agonising sessions I’ve been to! I once had to sit through a presentation of 82 slides! 82! Madness. Boring and irritating.

I’m thinking about good old PowerPoint because of Cromley – who points out that people sometimes get PowerPoint confused with Word.

Well that would explain some of the text heavy slides I’ve seen in my time.

It seems to me that PowerPoint has made us lazy. We don’t have to learn our speeches off by heart any more. We don’t have to think of ways to “entertain” our audience.

And because speakers are so focussed on their slides they don’t see the eye rolls, the yawns, the snores… those glazed looks when people just have their eyes pointed in the right direction but are not actually seeing anything.

When Groover worked for GE Capital a hundred years ago, they had a corporate policy on PowerPoint: Only ONE slide per presentation. One!

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Maybe that’s a little extreme – but then, maybe the MD like me had been bored mental by Powerpoint presentations.

Personally I think if you are going to have slides they need to offer something that you can’t in your speech. A graph. An image. A video. A groovy animation – which PowerPoint is quite good at making.

One speaker I saw who used it very effectively had an automatic presentation with a soundscape running behind it. He used images which just smoothly changed from one to the other. At the most there was maybe three words, if any at all, on the slide. He just told his story and the slides ran in the background. He didn’t talk “to” his slides at all.

Do you use PowerPoint? How do you use it effectively?

Update:  If you enjoyed this article you might want to read my article on public speaking.

Creative Commons License photo credit: adactio

Six tips for great public speaking

Here’s what I learned from giving last night’s speech to 138 members of an exclusive men’s club. It was ladies night so I was speaking to the members and their wives. I was keen to do well as I was speaking in front of my parents and many of their close friends… not to mention Groover.

Ennuin Easter 2007

1. Choose your subject well

You are normally given a little leeway in what you can talk about – find out who your audience is. In my case it was an older audience – average age probably 65 – and I knew that most of them had grown up with my radio station so I went back and relived some of their history – and I tried to find links between the club and the story of the radio station.

2. Know your subject

Even though I didn’t write my speech till the night before I had been researching the topic for a while and knew the history well. This allowed me to tell the story without using notes… although it was helpful to write out the full speech to get a sense of how it might flow.

3. Test your equipment

I used archival audio pieces which enabled me to take a breath and re-group in my mind for the next section… but to do that the equipment had to work. First off I added about 4 minutes of blank sound after each piece – so that the tracks couldn’t run into each other. Secondly I went in early to test the equipment. Twice.

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4. Practice

I had several practices. One where I timed myself, and two others in front of two very supportive individuals – my boss and Groover. This helped me learn the material.

5. Trust yourself and have fun

Instead of reading word-for-word I just wrote a list of key memory-joggers for each paragraph – or section of my speech. Then I told stories around each key word. This helped to keep eye-contact with the audience and allowed me to ad-lib. And someone told me just before I started to enjoy it. Great advice! I was sad when it was over. 🙂 Warning – add about 5 minutes to your timed speech.

6. Have a clear end-point

You need to make sure your audience knows when you’re finished so they know when to clap. Make it easy for them with a good punch line and then a thank you.

I hope that helps you next time you have to give a speech or talk. It’s helpful to remember that the audience are willing you to do well – so use that energy!

More tips

How do you react to deadlines?

Me, I love deadlines – and a daily deadline is the best. Long term projects I end up doing at the last minute anyway so they feel like a daily deadline.

Freshwater Bay

Take this speech I am giving tomorrow night. I’ve known about it for weeks. And I’ve been gathering bits and pieces to put in it over that time and doing a lot of thinking but I’ve not been able to gear myself up to write it until tonight. Tonight. I am ashamed to write it down. But it is just the way I’ve always been.

The more nervous I am the harder I find it to get started. I’m a bit nervous. Public speaking is nothing like radio.

Interestingly it’s the opposite with Groover – the more nervous he is, the more he prepares until he over-prepares and (he says) loses all his spontaneity.

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Having said that, because I’ve lived with my topic for so long now and because I’m interested in it – I found it very easy to write and hopefully deliver tomorrow.

I was the same with exams – especially the big ones – and job interviews.

And I know I’m doing it! I just can’t seem to make myself change my behaviour.

So what about you? Are you a last-minute Laurissa or a pre-prepared Pete?