SpeakHQ Blog
A running joke in the world of presentations is: how short can they be? They used to be an hour. Then TED went to 20 minutes, Pecha Kucha to 6, and Ignite to 5. The trend of short presentations has been on the rise for years and one wonders where it will stop. But then…
Read MoreEveryone has fears about regular public speaking, but what if you have to present someone else’s slides? And see them for the first time as the audience does? And only have 5 minutes? And the slides auto-advance? I believe in the theory of trying something insanely hard to make normal work feel easier. As a public speaking…
Read MoreIgnite Seattle , an evening of fast presentations, runs like clockwork. We think of the evening as a show, and each of the 16 speakers we have at each events are the stars. We do all that we can to set the stage, the audience and the format to make it as easy as possible for…
Read MoreI recently wrote a harsh review of Prezi, focusing on how that tool makes it easy to make distracting, annoying presentations. On the other end of the spectrum is a new iPad app called Haiku Deck. Haiku Deck takes a radically simple approach. The tool has very few features. It lets you pick background images…
Read MoreOne of the many jokes about Powerpoint is how much time people who use it spend picking transitions between slides. They spend more time picking out animations and fonts than what their audience needs to learn and how best to convey those lessons. It’s like wanting to make a movie and spending all your budget just…
Read MoreI’m often baffled by which things online are popular, as it has little to do with what’s good. The most popular ignite talk seems to be How to Buy a Used Car, which is a good topic, but the talk itself disappoints. It’s not delivered well enough, nor the content good enough, to be worthy of its…
Read MoreYesterday I was interviewed on NPR about great commencement speeches, and presentations in general. They had me on for the hour and we talked about Steve Job’s Stanford speech, a diferent speech commonly called the worst of all time, as well as lots of general advice on all kinds of speaking. Thanks to the Regina…
Read MoreI’m being interviewed on Wed on NPR about commencement speeches. Update: I was interviewed yesterday on NPR about this. You can listen here. Commencement speeches are the ones given at graduations, usually in the summer and often outside, where the attention spans of young people are stretched to their limits. Most of my advice about commencement speeches is similar to advice I give…
Read MoreMany people attend lectures at events and think: “I could do better than that.” And they might be right. What they don’t realize is the ability to give a good presentation is different that earning the reputation required to be invited to give it. I write and speak for a living and get asked often…
Read MoreI get asked about this often. Most of the news here isn’t good. There is a stigma around the phrase “motivational speaker”. The stereotype is a preacher or a snake oil salesman, all promises and slickness, delivering little substance. Or infomercials that promise if you just read this book, or follow this program, you’ll get everything…
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