Prof Gary Rolfe Rolfe – it’s a good name, eh? Firstly, it’ my middle name (yes, spelled with an ‘e’ on the end’) and it’s the name of Rolfe who devised the Rolfe Method (with […]
Posts By: Simon
There’s a power higher than the speaker, but below God. Just. I’m talking about the person who organises the event at which the speaker, well… speaks. Of course a lot of the time that’s the […]
Before you start, you should know that this is part of a paired blog, with my friend Lydia Bates, who’s just done her first Ignite presentation and who’s blogged about her first time. This blog […]
A quickie but a biggie! :) Tomorrow is H2L (http://www.h2leisure.co.uk/) a huge event for the hospitality and leisure industry up here in the north of England. Our own Simon Raybould is the closing speaker for […]
I spend some of my time training people in various things – mainly presentation skills of course! – and a concept I found myself explaining recently (rather to my surprise) was something called the ‘Urgent-vs-Important […]
As you’d expect, I’m associated with the Professional Speaking Association (of UK and Ireland). They have a reasonably active facebook group and there was a recent post about how even professionals get nervous when they […]
Faking it on stage that is… So if this post has turned up in your search and you’re disappointed ‘cos you were looking for something else… tough luck! :) A short while ago a friendly […]
Our client base ranges from one-man-band start-ups to multi-national corporations. I’m not saying that the one-man-bands are better at making presentations than the corporates – they’re just bad in different ways! Here’s our experience of […]
Okay, here – as they say – is your starter for ten. Try and interpret this picture. Without the context, it’s more less impossible (congratulations to you if you’re one of those odd people who […]
…I’d cry. Why? Because (as I’ll explain in another blog) most art of his time/culture leaves me cold. The exception to that rule, however is this Pieta of Michelangelo’s in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, in Florence. […]
Last month (July 2013) Casio produced a fascinating research paper about presentations and how important they are… Okay, so they’re going to have a vested interest but it makes for interesting reading never the less. […]
No one likes being talked “at”. Most people like being talked “to”. Even if you, as the speaker, do all the speaking, your audience should be in an interactive relationship with you. They might not […]
In my last post, I talked about times when you should use a microphone. I mentioned – in passing – that our default is not to use a mic, all other things being equal. Of […]