Yesterday, while pulling up my bank statement online to look at my balance, I noticed a recurring charge to a well known company who used to be huge in the movie rental business but who didn’t keep up with the move to digital. (I’ll let you guess which company it is.)
I know for a fact that I have never ever had a recurring account with said company, and realized someone had stolen my credit card number. Crap.
Upon going back through my statement, I noticed 3 …
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I used to say, that with presentations, it’s not about perfection…it’s about connection.
And the reason I said that was I believe that for a presenter to make a difference, the speaker has to connect with their audience. I still believe that.
I also believe you don’t need to be a perfect speaker — with perfect gestures and phraseology and vocal variety — to be effective and to make a connection.
Therefore I came to the conclusion that with presentations, it’s not about perfection… it’s about connection.
But now …
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I worry sometimes that I’m a one-upper… you know, that person that hears you tell a story, then tries to one-up you with a story of their own.
I don’t like to think of myself as a one-upper, but whenever I listen to a story, my mind instantly goes to work searching for something in my background that is similar to the circumstances that I’m hearing.
If you tell me the story of how you met your spouse, I immediately think of the great story about how my …
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You’ve seen slides of this ilk before.
The title on the slide said something like the 3 Most Important Points to Remember about XYZ.
That was followed by
1. Here’s the First Point
2. Here’s the Second Point
Then instead of the Third Point, the speaker had a cartoon pasted at the bottom of the slide.
It was a cleaver cartoon and the caption along the bottom made the speaker’s third point with brilliance and humor.
But here was the problem.
The cartoon was at the bottom of the slide. The caption …
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Many of you know that I’m an Apple convert. But I have to give props to Microsoft.
Today in Ellen Finkelstein’s newsletter she shared a link to her website where she talks about a series of 15-minute webinars that Microsoft has started. Thanks Ellen for sharing!!
I watched the first of the series called Working with photos in PowerPoint. About 8:30 into the webinar, the presenter actually recommends making the photograph bigger and even expanding it outside of the …
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One of the common challenges for conference presenters is that you have so much great content to share and a limited time in which to share it.
Whether you’re speaking for 15 minutes to 2 hours, if you’re struggling to have enough time to cover the important items and still leave time for Q&A, there is one place that you can begin that works like a charm — eliminate the Self-Discovery Monologue.
The Self-Discovery Monologue
I confess. I’ve been guilty of the Self-Discovery Monologue.
It sounds something like …
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At the age of 48 years and 11 months, I decided to take up the drums. Yes, under this nerdy exterior lurks the heart of a wannabe, uber-cool, rock-n-roll chick.
My son-in-law Eric is an amazing drummer who played professionally in a number of local Atlanta bands. He offered to give me lessons.
He originally had me pick out a few songs and we decided to start with Eric Clapton’s song Cocaine.
During the first lesson, Eric (the son-in-law, not Mr. Clapton) showed me some basic drum rhythms to …
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I did not watch the Oscars last night. My latent jealousy of never pursuing my promising yet totally imaginary acting career makes it too painful. But flipping back and forth between The Apprentice and the Oscars, I did pause to see Meryl Streep win for best actress and listen to her acceptance speech.
Watching her acceptance speech made me naturally draw comparisons between a great acceptance speech and a great presentations. Here’s what I observed from Meryl’s speech that translates to our …
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I saw the previews to Up All Night, a new sitcom on NBC, and thought to myself, “That show looks stupid. I’ll be skipping that one, thank you very much!”
But one night, shortly after it started, I couldn’t find anything else to watch during that particular 30 minute time slot so I grudgingly watched Up All Night. It was actually a much better show than I thought it would be. Now I regularly choose it over other shows.
(Yes, I watch too much …
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I never had a nick name as a kid. But if I did, it could easily have been “goody two shoes.”
I was by nature a rule follower. My mom used to joke that she could threaten to spank me and I’d be good for 3 months!
So I empathize with you if you’re that business professional who is thinking, “Gosh, Kelly. I don’t know that I want to be the first to step away from the ‘normal’ way of doing business presentations.”
Sure, it’s easier to …
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