Presentation tips

I've just added Presentation Zen to the list of my regularly visited posts.
If you make presentations or pitches you'll find this site useful.

I remember being sent to my first presentation skills workshop when I worked for Rialto Advertising in the 80s. They flew a honcho down from New York and put us up in the Sheraton for a couple of days. It was fun. I learned a lot - especially that hoary old chestnut 'Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em…Tell 'em…then tell 'em what you told 'em'. Makes me laugh now to think that the more senior staffers who attended had an almost complete aversion to being told how to make presentations. After all they'd been doing it for years (never mind that they'd been doing it badly). One of the key ideas was that it takes practice and rehearsal to put a tight pitch together. I can recall more than one pitch where none of the agency's department's really knew what the other was going to say (or do).

If you're interested check out Presentation Zen.
Get a copy of Maggie Eyre's new edition of Speak Easy: The Essential Guide to Speaking in Public and Jon Steele's Perfect Pitch

Comments

Go figure

Took my daughter shopping tonight. We had dinner out. Got back home late. She laid her new clothes out in neat rows so she could choose what to wear for tomorrow. She's 5. I see her just every second weekend. How can such incredible errors of judgement (marrying my daughter's mother) result in such a wonderful little human being? Go figure

Why billboards must go.

The problem with billboards and advertising in public places is they are an invasion of privacy. Unlike magazine, tv, radio (etc) advertising you cannot choose to turn it off or avoid it. Nor does it offer anything in return. It is a medium that offers no benefit or advantage to the person it is inflicted on. At least television ads subsidise the programming. Without doubt some billboards are entertaining - I thought the anti GE poster for short lived MADGE activist group was particularly good. But most are rubbish. Literally. Badly executed. Nothing important to say. The debate has led to a great deal of hysteria - mostly from people with a vested interest in perpetuating the deployment of hoardings. Perhaps the idea that the issue at stake is 'property rights' is the creepiest. If you own a building you have every right to plaster anything you like on its external surfaces. Is that an antisocial point of view? I think so. In the UK you could have an ASBO slapped on you for si...

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St...

ThoughtSpurs

Search This Blog