Public Speaking for Geeks

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Ethos3, the winner of last year World’s best Presentation Contest on SlideShare.net and the driving force behind the recent Presentation Design Tennis, asked me last week to do a blog interview with them.

Here are the Seven Questions -

1.  What was the inspiration behind Public Speaking for Geeks?

2.  You obviously have done a lot of public speaking in your 15 years  in the technology field.  What is the greatest public speaking lesson  you have learned thus far?

3.  How important is story as it relates to the world of presentations?

4.  What is your definition of Presentation 2.0?

5.  Who is your favorite presenter?

6.  If you could offer one tip to a person who is opening PowerPoint  for the first time, what would it be?

7.  How important is right-brain thinking in your left-brain industry?

Follow this link to read "Seven Questions with Barry Flanagan".

Slideshare.net is running another "World’s Best Presentation Contest".

I am going through several of the entries and will post  reviews here on my blog. I was inspired to create my own entry to the contest. I love this story, so it was a natural choice for this contest. It was an interesting experiment to apply the Lessig method and use of visuals to this old zen tale. I am surprised I could not find any other visual examples of the ancient story.

The story is based on a Zen koan I read many years ago. It goes by many names, and there or many versions. If you like the presentation and the story, I appreciate a vote!

(Read the earlier posts in this series here, here, here , here and here.)

The next video on the memory palace technique comes from MemoryConsulting.com . In this short video, James Jorasch and Chris Harwood go through an example of using the memory palace technique to memorizing the key point of a speech on global warming. Chris and James use the name "Roman Room" instead of memory palace, an alternate name based on the popularity of this technique with ancient Roman orators.

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In the second video,James  and Chris review the link method. This is also good review of creating vivid, outrageous multi-sensory action scenes. I use this technique for memory points of a presentation as well, and sometimes combine the memory palace and link method together.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

(Read the earlier posts in this series here, here, here and here.)

Next up in this series are two videos with Andi Bell (three time World Memory Champion) from the BBC program "How to Improve Your Memory".

In this first video, Bell memorizes the order of 20 decks of cards in ten minutes. He then shows how he encodes the card by translating them into characters, then stores the images in a memory journey around London.

In this second video, Bell teaches the host of "How to Improve Your Memory" how to create his own memory palace out of his home.

This second video shows how really simple the technique of creating a memory palace out of home or memory journey out of a path through town is very simple to do. Remembering the locations is the easy part for most people. Learning to quickly create vivid, bizarre images can take a bit of practice.

Take a recent presentation you built. Write down the opening statement, the three main points ( and examples for each) and the closing statement. Now create a memory palace. For this exercise, I suggest using your home. Start your path in your bedroom, then work a path through the entire home until you have eight spots for your memory palace. Use halls, bathrooms and closets if necessary. For now, only store one vivid image scene in each location.

Next, work on creating a vivid, bizarre action scene for the opening and closing statement, and one for each of your three main points and three examples. Each of these colorful action scenes should include sounds and a  powerful smell or taste as well.

Try it out. Please post your results and thoughts on the experience in the comments.

More video examples to come…

Here are two powerful tips for making more effective use of PowerPoint when you use it to support your presentations -

1. Presenter’s View - PowerPoint has had a Presenter’s View for several years. The PowerPoint Development team has improved this tool a great deal in PowerPoint 2007. Here is how this feature is described at Office Online

 

You can use thumbnails to select slides out of sequence and create a customized presentation for your audience.

Preview text shows you what your next click will add to the screen, such as a new slide or the next bullet in a list.

Speaker’s notes are shown in large, clear type so that you can use them as a script for your presentation.

You can darken or lighten the screen during your presentation and then resume where you left off. For example, you might not want to display the slide content during a break or a question and answer (Q and A) period.

 



 

This can be a very useful feature. Many speakers swear by this feature. Despite the ability to see your slides notes and upcoming slides, it is very important that you do not use this feature to increase your dependency on PowerPoint as a crutch.

 

2.  ZoomIt -Zoomit is a fantastic tool for use with slide presentation, especially when you need to zoom into visuals, screen shots, videos, or demos. The developer, Mark Russinovich (of Sysinternals fame for those in the computer industry) describes ZoomIt like this -

ZoomIt is screen zoom and annotation tool for technical presentations that include application demonstrations. ZoomIt runs unobtrusively in the tray and activates with customizable hotkeys to zoom in on an area of the screen, move around while zoomed, and draw on the zoomed image. I wrote ZoomIt to fit my specific needs and use it in all my presentations.

ZoomIt works on all versions of Windows and you can use pen input for ZoomIt drawing on tablet PCs.

I found a great ZoomIt overview video on YouTube. This video is made by Alik Levin at PracticeThis.

If you have any great power tips for PowerPoint, please post them in the comments or sent me an email form the Contact page above.