Public Speaking for Geeks

Welcome back to Public Speaking for Geeks: Communication for Technical Presenters!

Recently I posted a call for new bloggers here at PublicSpeakingforGeeks.com. Hilari Weinstein was the first to answer the call. I am very pleased to announce I have a second victim blogger for the site.

Michael Keen is our newest blogger.

Michael Keen is the Director and Senior Solutions Architect in the Enterprise Architecture group at Alliance Technologies in Des Moines, Iowa.  He is an innovative, results-oriented architect and executive with over a ten years of experience using technology to reach business objectives and eliminate barriers to business growth.

Before his career in IT, Michael was a professional alpine climber.  He spent over seven years in the highest peaks of the world and was the deputy expedition leader for an expedition to the South Face of Annapurna in 1999.  He has learned what it takes to prepare oneself for large challenges and has taken those experiences and translated them into his successful career in IT.

Today, Michael spends most his time speaking in front of C-level executives and other business groups around the U.S. on the how to integrate IT and business.  He brings his experience in strategy and execution from alpine climbing to the world of strategic IT automation and execution using dynamic IT concepts and the Citrix Delivery Center products.

 

I am very pleased that Michael is joining the team here at PublicSpeakingforGeeks.com. Michael has a wide variety of experience in technology and blogs a great deal about the lessons he learns each day in the field. The technology experience and his extensive moutain climbing background make Michael a very interesting person to know.

I am looking forward to seeing Michael’s cotnributions to the site.

Last I week I put out a call for new bloggers. I am pleased to announce that Hilari Weinstein has answered that call.

Hilari Weinstein is President-Elect of the Arizona Chapter of the National Speakers Association.  She has a Masters Degree in Speech Communication from The University of Texas at Austin and is a two-time Collegiate National Speaking Champion.Over the past eighteen years, Hilari has spent thousands of hours speaking and coaching others to craft powerful content and connect more effectively with their audience.

You can learn more about Hilari’s coaching and services at HighImpactCommunication.com

If you would like to join Hilari and I as bloggers at PublicSpeakingforGeeks.com, please contact me.

Randy Pausch, well known for his "Last Lecture" he gave at Carnegie Mellon University after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, has died at age 47. My condolences to his family.

You can find the site for his new book "The Last Lecture" here.

"The Lact Lecture" presentation by Randy is one of the most moving, motivational, inspirational and powerful presentations I have ever seen.

You may have seen this already, or you may have missed this story completely as I did. My wife forwarded this video to me.  Randy Pausch is a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. You can read a short summary of his story on WikiPedia.

This is a powerful talk. It is also a fantastic example of how to use visuals (and PowerPoint) to support your message. This is a short 10 minute version of "The Last lecture".

I found the full version of  "The Last Lecture" on YouTube.

This message is not new, of course. The popularity and impact of the message to "really achieve your childhood dreams" is driven by more than the message.  The context and how Randy chose to deliver this message drives the impact deep inside the audience.

There are many lessons to learn from this talk of course.  Choose to be a Tigger instead of a Eeyore. Be humble even if you have won the Bronze Star.  Break through the brick walls in your life. People are much more important than things. Show gratitude. Don’t complain, just work harder. If you live properly, the dreams will come to you.

Great advice, and each had a relevant, moving story behind it supported by pictures and visuals. The stories and visuals hammer home the points in a very powerful way. There are many things to learn about life and speaking from Randy Pausch.

The next speaker in this series is another from TED, Hans Rosling. This is an absolutely amazing speech about STATISTICS. Yes, statistics, amazingly enough. Hans opens up with a great story about his students, chimpanzees and preconceived notions about data. Then he laucnhes into his presentation using the amazing GapMinder software . Watch this amazing speech below (about 20 minutes long) below -

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Hans made a return to TED in 2007.

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Hans is again in rare form (grandma statistics is classic).

Andrew Dlugan wrote a fantastic review of the 2006 talk on his Six Minutes blog. Here is a quote -

Rosling employs GapMinder to display his statistics. This is a wonderful software tool for displaying data, but the real magic of this presentation lies in the techniques demonstrated by Rosling. These techniques are easy to do, but I’ve rarely (if ever) seen them all demonstrated so well in a single talk. The techniques are:

1. Explain the data axes

2. Highlight subsets of data

3. Dig deeper to unwrap data

4. Place labels close to data points

5. Answer the “Why?” questions

6. Complement data with energetic delivery

 

 

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Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen gives a very detailed review of the 2007 TED Talk by Rosling -

 

Data and information are not boring. The key is to select the appropriate (and accurate) data to support your message.  But it also matters how you bring the data alive, giving it context and meaning. One of the masters of displaying data in live talks is Swedish doctor and researcher, Hans Rosling. (You may remember Hans Rosling’s 2006 TED talk which I posted here last year with some others.)

Hans wows the 2007 TED crowd
In this video below from TED 2007, the Zen master of statistics makes a simple point in a very visual and memorable way: "The seemingly impossible is possible. We can have a good world." Hans showed with stats what is possible in the world, then he closes with a big, unexpected, and memorable finish (I actually had a hard time watching the ending, but it was effective).

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Near the end he pauses and says: "But I have to get serious. And how do you get serious? You make a PowerPoint — you make bullets!" (audience laughs) The summary slide (which worked because he built it as he talked) was his "Homage to the Office package" he said.

 Hans’ demonstration at the end to prove his point that the "seemingly impossible is possible" is a fasntstic experitential metaphor and an incredibly memorable closing.

Rosling proves again that a presentation filled with numbers, statistics and data can be dynamic, engaging and very memorable when you use metaphor, vivid visuals, and relate the data to real life ("grandma statistics"). I highly recommend watching both of these talks when you have a chance.