How to be a Presentation God E-Book

Scott Schwertly

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 263

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

How to build, design, and deliver a fire-breathing, wing-flapping, roar-bellowing behemoth of a presentation Unlike most presentation books that say the same things regarding presentation design and delivery (less is more, get rid of bullets and use images, emulate Steve Jobs, and so on), How to Be a Presentation God actually divulges step-by-step secrets for how to build, design, and deliver blockbuster presentations. By providing entertaining and clever presentation insights, veteran presenter Scott Schwertly gives you the in's and out's for presenting yourself, your business, and your cause with an easy-to-implement approach. * Focuses on content, design, and delivery * Author is a regular speaker at national and regional industry conferences such as PowerPoint Live and Presentation Camps, and is the founder of the award-winning Ethos3 Communications * Author is the creator of an app, Present, that landed in the top-20 iPhone apps in the Business category on iTunes How to be a Presentation God will ensure that your presentations reach a new level of effectiveness.

Leseprobe

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: A Killer in Our Midst

The New Era of Presentations

Chapter 2: Won’t “Good Enough” Do?

The Case for Excellence

A Lesson from Mr. Ron Burgundy

Chapter 3: Omniscient View

Expand Your Horizons

Be Flexible

Chapter 4: The Pantheon of Presentation Gods

Steve Jobs’ 1984 Introduction of Macintosh

Malcolm Gladwell’s 2005 Blink Presentation

Jesse Jackson’s 1984 David and Goliath Speech

Lawrence Lessig’s 2002 Free Culture Presentation

Lou Gehrig’s Farewell Speech

Abraham Lincoln, Presentation Coach

I Want to Join the Pantheon. Where Do I Sign?

Getting Down to Business

Content

Chapter 5: Don’t Ruin Their Day!

Clarify Your Objective

Brainstorming and Developing a Theme

Outline Your Content

Drill, Baby, Drill

Snapshot of a Presentation God: Bruce Lee

Chapter 6: You Matter

How to Build and Maintain Credibility

They’re Just Not That into You

Crack the Windows and Leave Your Ego in the Car

Genuine Authenticity

Don the White Coat

Chapter 7: They Matter Even More

Connecting with Millennials

Connecting With Generation X

Design

Chapter 8: Styles and Approaches

Shoptalk: Presentation Design Styles and Approaches

The Takeaway

Chapter 9: Real Simple

Less Really Is More

Chapter 10: Parting the Clouds

Enter SlideRocket

Get Out of Line

Decisions, Decisions

Delivery

Chapter 11: Buckets and Butterflies

Sensei Sensibility

Chapter 12: Chatterbox

Walking the Style Tightrope

Closing a Talk

Chapter 13: Spread the Love

Slidecasting: The How-To Guide

Twitter and Facebook

Twitter as a Backchannel

Change the World, Remember?

Engage

Chapter 14: 100 Percent All-Natural Passion

Resources

Index

Copyright © 2011 Scott Schwertly. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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ISBN 978-0-470-91584-4 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-01307-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-01308-3 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-01309-0 (ebk)

For Cara, you are my first fan and most important critic.

Foreword

Readers of my column and my blog know that the need to have regular human moments at work is similar to the need to stand up and stretch on an airplane: your well-being depends on it. On top of that, a workday with regular face-to-face contact is more energizing than a day full of contacts exclusively via computer and phone.

Working at the computer or talking on the phone for a long time is as exhausting as staring at the TV. The brain starts to crave rest from input overload and fuel from human contact.

So when you’re feeling tired at work, try creating a human moment for an energy boost. It doesn’t have to be earth-shattering and intimate. It can be short and professional. You just need to be paying attention.

Even better: use all those meetings you have every day to create your own opportunities for such human moments. Scott’s giving you the driver’s license crash course right here—he’ll show you how to speak like you want to change the world. He’s got monsters to fight, and you get to be the hero. Use what Scott explains so well to connect with just one person in the audience (maybe that attractive one from Accounting). Just look him or her in the eye, right? That’s the usual advice.

But it’s so hard to look someone in the eye. Especially if you don’t have confidence from knowing what you’re doing up there. And most public speakers are not particularly naturally engaging. That’s why going after just one person is a great way to test yourself—to see if you’re really connected—by forcing yourself to look at one single person while you make a point.

This is a way to know for sure if you are connecting with your audience when you talk. Sticking with one person for each point is painful and nearly impossible if you are not truly connecting your material to that person.

But what do you do when you see you aren’t connecting? Some people ignore it or trick themselves into thinking there is a connection: Think about all the deadly PowerPoint presentations you’ve sat through where the speaker was oblivious to boredom. Or just read on—Scott makes a great read out of all the time you’ve wasted on the bad presentations you’ve suffered through.

Comedian Esther Ku says the best thing to do when you can tell you’re not connected is to acknowledge it. “If a joke fails, I poke fun at myself so I show the audience that I’m aware of what’s going on.” The audience doesn’t need constant genius; the audience needs to know you are clued into how they are reacting.

After you’ve absorbed what Scott’s offering here, you’ll seem like a constant genius, a presentation god, ready to connect, because you’ll have stopped wasting the audience’s time. You’ll be focused on just one person and thereby connect with everyone. And most important, you’ll have learned to respect yourself and your audience. What more can you ask from such a human moment?

—Penelope Trunk

www.penelopetrunk.com

Founder of Brazen Careerist

Acknowledgments

A BIG THANK YOU!

I want to thank my family, my clients, Kristina Holmes (my agent), the great folks at Wiley (Lauren, thanks for the opportunity!), and everyone at Ethos3. I also want to give a special shout-out to Brandy Nicks, who designed all of the illustrations in this book. Brandy has been with Ethos3 almost since the beginning. Without her presentation design skills, Ethos3 wouldn’t be the great company it is today. Also, a big thanks to Josh Roberts, who helped me fine-tune my content. His contributions have been priceless. And most importantly, I want to thank you for taking the time to read this book. I hope it has empowered you to change the world with your next presentation!

Here’s a list of some of the people (dead and alive) who have inspired me along the way:

Steve Jobs

Guy Kawasaki

Garr Reynolds

Budd Hebert

Nancy Duarte

Dutch Hoggatt

Michael Hyatt

Steve Yzerman

Bert Decker

Austin Smith

Ms. Housley

Seth Godin

Harry Beckwith

Abraham Lincoln

Bruce Lee

Marcus Buckingham

Tony Robbins

Tony Horton

Cliff Atkinson

Hal Higdon

Harry Truman

Patrick Henry

Larry Lessig

Daniel Pink

Scott Bedbury

Emil Zatopek

Matt Bellamy

Dale Carnegie

Jerry Weissman

Napoleon Hill

Chapter 1

A Killer in Our Midst

French writer and Nobel Prize winner André Gide once said, “Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death.” Subtlety, thy name is PowerPoint.

What is it about bullet points that makes the human soul curl up into a ball of fetal terror? Why do fonts like Comic Sans and Papyrus sear the retinas so badly? How can so-called “experts” speak at length about the logistical applications of advanced financial modeling yet fail to zip up their pants?

Most importantly, when are we, the victims, going to work up the courage to stand up and walk out, taking as many reeling audience members with us as we can? We should be disturbed. No—we should be outraged. Time—both yours and mine—is being wasted.

As the CEO and founder of the presentation design and training firm Ethos3 Communications, I set out to answer questions like these some years ago. I want to make the unjust world of presentations just again. Here’s a staggering statistic: 30 million presentations are given daily in human society. . With that much hot air entering the atmosphere every day, we must either cap and trade public speakers or revolutionize the way presentations are given. Since we don’t have a way to safely store public speaker emissions yet, I vote for the revolution.