I recently had the pleasure of delivering a 3 hour seminar on presentation skills to a group of continuing education students at a local college.  They were studying web development and would be graduating in the following year.

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I just read a blog post of an interview with TED curator Chris Anderson who reveals the secrets to a great TED talk.  If you have yet to experience the delight of a TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) talk then go to the TED website and knock yourself out.  In this interview, Mr. Anderson is asked, “What kills a presentation?”  His reply . . . . .

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Watch Out When Using Excel Content!

I just read a blog post on Presentation Magazine where they asked several people for their best presentation tips.  There are 37 in total and number 25 is from Max McConnell, Division Director of Prompt Communications.   Max talks about embedding your excel spreadsheets into PowerPoint and the dangers of just cutting and pasting it.  Max suggests the following procedure.Edit->Paste Special and choose ‘Picture (Enhanced Metafile).  This places the excel data as a picture.  Failing to do this will transfer all the excel support files and you may be giving way too much information away.  It reminded me of a a true story. (more…)

From all the responses I have received on what are the ingredients to a great elevator speech, I will conclude this series by highlighting two resources that in my opinion is worth looking into.

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Need an Elevator Speech . . . Going Up?

One of my recent posts, I discussed ways to use the introduction of the story format to be the basis for one’s elevator speech.  Being an member of LinkedIn, I thought I would pose the question, “In your opinion, what are the ingredients to a great elevator speech or 30 second info-mercial for a networking event?”

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Now that you have completed Act 1, you have identified the setting, the protagonist (who should be your audience), the pain the protagonist is experiencing, the desired outcome and the solution to get there.  You have established the tone and focus of your message.  You have established an emotional connection with your audience.

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Every story has three parts, a beginning, a middle and an end.  We can thank Aristotle for that concept.  As children we loved stories at bedtime and by the camp fire.  As adults, that love affair has not dwindled.  We love stories and it is an effective way of communication since humans have been using stories as a way of communicating for thousands of years.  Many people say that they can not tell good stories let alone write them.  This series of blogs on writing a script will be based on Cliff Atkinson’s “Beyond Bullet Points” book which I use with my work and think it is a very valuable tool for anyone who is serious about improving their presentation performance and effectiveness.  I strongly suggest you purchase the book and keep it close by as a reference tool. I will spend the next series of blog entries talking about the first part of the story telling process, the beginning.   The story script template can be found on Cliff’s blog.

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Olivia Mitchell posted a blog on June 2 titled,  “Why the stickiest idea in presenting is just plain wrong.” In this post she stated the following:

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There is a relatively new presentation tool out there called Prezi.  It is a different way of organizing your thoughts for presentations and presenting them in an interactive format.  While Prezi is cool because it is different, it is not the solution for bad presentations as some have made it out to be.  I have read some blog posts saying it is impossible to be boring with Prezi.  My answer to that is never underestimate the human potential.

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What are the top three mistakes made when someone tries to raise venture capital?  I had a chance to sit in on a blog radio show hosted by Daisy Wright who is a career coach.  She had as her guest, Business Consultant & Venture Capital Expert Prerna Chandak of Lemonade Capital.

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