notes and views on crm, social media, and the human side of information technology

If you can’t say it, say it with Toastmasters

On the podium, many people struggle: with their material, with themselves, and with the audience. Worse yet, they don’t know it. Since PowerPoint democratized public speaking, the bar has been gradually set so low are rarely surprised when given a boring presentation. It’s normal.

Companies do make half-hearted attempts at instilling some presentation culture by sending their employees to soft-skills seminars and such. But a 2-day training cannot substitute for what’s really necessary to develop your skills in this area (as in any other): practice, more practice, feedback, finding out what you can achieve if you persist.

Here is where Toastmasters can help you. You go through a very structured process of learning first the basics, then more advanced techniques of public speaking; you speak a lot, listen a lot, give feedback to others - in a group of your peers.

I’ve heard speakers there that would blow any conference-goer away. People who couldn’t introduce themselves when they joined giving polished speeches after only a couple of months. If this is possible, I can’t comprehend why we would settle for the normal.

Loads of blogs deal with PowerPoint and other paraphernalia. In Toastmasters, you don’t even use notes after a few speeches. You concentrate on the people and the message, which is what you should concentrate on.

Forget PowerPoint. If you’ve got anything to say and if you feel your delivery could improve, find a Toastmasters club near you. You’ll be surprised what you can do.

PS Full disclosure: I am an (unpaid) officer at Bohemian Toastmasters in Prague.

October 4, 2008 | Filed Under Presenting & Public Speaking | Leave a Comment 

Presentation Zen, not only for making presentations

I am reading devouring Garr Reynolds’s Presentation Zen, in that nostalgic way that comes with having read his blog for a long time and also seeing it having a definite impact on how people present. Yes, it’s that kind of book that is best enjoyed after you’ve joined the author’s camp.

Which is also why I won’t elaborate over the book’s contents. If you are unfamiliar with Garr’s approach, and perhaps keep spend too much time wondering whether six bullets is enough or not, you will be well advised to read Garr’s blog first. It will open your mind.

I believe you can use the book in different ways. Its main use case is, of course, to teach you a thing or two about presenting. The other, implicit use case, is to get you thinking about how you are presenting yourself in general.

That goes for individuals and organizations alike. In the world of Serious Business(TM), only facts are allowed. If the right brain is used at all, it produces clichés and stillborn imagery. Hence why clip art is included in office suites and everybody’s mission statement is full of crap-words like “strategic”, “customer-oriented” and “shareholder value”.

Garr’s approach recognizes that the audience, though a terrified speaker can see it only as a mass, is still composed of individual humans - who need to see, hear, touch and smell to understand. And I am looking forward to the day when organizations people inside organizations get that, too. And employ such communication strategies start talking like they want to get the attention of, well, humans.

March 12, 2008 | Filed Under CRM, Presenting & Public Speaking, Rants | Leave a Comment 

Quote of the day

[...] I will remember this important lesson by Bill Gates on leadership and communication: Take your message, your job, and your cause very seriously, but do not take yourself so seriously.

Garr Reynolds on Gates’s speech at CES.

Point to ponder: isn’t the opposite often the case - companies making half-hearted attempts at making their vision a reality, yet talking so stiff as if drowning in all their seriousness?

January 7, 2008 | Filed Under Presenting & Public Speaking | Leave a Comment 

Apropos Presently

I NEED TO ADD a few more comments to my earlier post, Presently Unimpressed.

The trend towards webbifying desktop apps is certainly there. I used Writely a couple of times and I could get the job done. In fact, if I really wanted to perform all my daily tasks in Firefox, I probably could. Why not?

I consider the act of creating a highly personal, even intimate, one. I need to be able to lay down on a couch with my laptop resting on my legs, unplug the LAN cable and shut down WiFi so that I can shield myself from interrupts. Some call it the Flow. I may need to share what I’ve done later but not before I am ready. For this very reason, I cannot live without desktop apps that don’t rely on the internet for functionality.

Writely and its ilk make me stay connected. You can suggest that I shut down Gaim and log off my email account but that’s not the same as being completely offline. The tempation to just check something up is there, luring in the background to cut into my Flow. Can’t have that.

So I am not modifying my earlier verdict; I am eager to see, however, what the business case for Google Apps is and whether there are uses I, a lone wolf, cannot see.

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March 3, 2007 | Filed Under Me & You, But Mostly Me, Presenting & Public Speaking, Software delivery | Leave a Comment 

Presently unimpressed

HERE’S A SCOOP on Google’s upcoming addition to their Apps portfolio:

I’m sure many people wondered if Google will release a presentation tool, after building Google Docs&Spreadsheets. Well, the answer is yes, and the code-name of the tool is Presently (a play on Writely, the name of the online word processor bought by Google).

I am not surprised - Google has the ball rolling pretty well - and at the same time, I feel conflicted as to what to think. Technological marvel? It may as well be. But is it a step in the right direction? Office apps have matured to such a degree than any effort to start over would be gargantuous. Aren’t there other goals worth pursuing than re-doing what already works? I would hope so!

(via Pivotal Public Speaking)

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February 25, 2007 | Filed Under Presenting & Public Speaking, Rants, Software delivery | Leave a Comment 

From “Beyond Bullets” To “Beyond Lame”

“BORING”, how often you’d whisper 5 minutes into a presentation. To avoid a similar fate when it’s me who is on stage, I fished for advice and ended up buying Cliff Atkinson’s Beyond Bullet Points. Here are my first impressions.

On the plus side:

  • thinking of my presentation as a story is helping me with organizing my thoughts. Once the ideas are in place, I am free to concentrate on supporting arguments and anecdotes knowing where they fit in the overall scheme of things
  • Mr Atkinson’s main point - the slides have a supporting not leading role in a presentation - makes me think more about what and how I am going to say (instead of show), and that’s crucial since it’s me who has a stake in it, not the slides
  • having read the book, I am good to go; it’s a clear and instructive text that doesn’t require a follow-up training

That said, I take issue with the following:

  • headlines in the case study that Mr Atkinson uses throughout the book use visual metaphors I find cheesy and cliché-ridden. “The pharmaceutical industry today is navigating a sea of change,” reads the very first one. A matter of taste, I admit; maybe even a cultural thing. I, for one, would fear being laughed out of the boardroom if I used such a phrase. We Czechs are known for our penchant for sarcasm and irony.
  • the book advocates the use of Microsoft Office clip-art. We have seen too much of that; mostly as a random decoration that unwittingly pokes fun at the argument instead of supporting it. I guess you can use it once you really know what you are doing; otherwise, there’s a risk you’ll end up looking lame, bullets or not.
  • the book is tightly coupled with one tool (MS PowerPoint) and bases much of its “science” on a single piece of research (cognitive theory of multimedia learning by Richard E. Mayer, PhD.). If pressed, I would probably concede that OO Impress isn’t going to be a serious competitor for some time. Still, the book assumes previous experience with presenting (would you feel the need to move beyond bullets if you haven’t a clue?), thus I find the detailed PowerPoint instructions a bit superfluous. As for the research, isn’t there more? Surely there most be other arguments that would put the book in context; now, it’s more like an island.

Again, these are my first impressions that are likely to change when I actually try to practice the book’s approach. Despite my reservations I voiced above, it deserves a serious attention and is likely to breath life into your slides.

February 20, 2007 | Filed Under Presenting & Public Speaking | Leave a Comment 

On Presenting Naked

Garr Reynolds gave an apparently wonderful presentation on Presenting Naked. Wish I could be there. Make sure to peruse the handout and photo gallery that accompany the post. I have browsed a number of inspiring blogs dedicated to presenting - as I am somehow lacking in this department - and his is incredibly useful and fun to read.

February 19, 2007 | Filed Under Links and Quotes, Presenting & Public Speaking | Leave a Comment