Derren Brown and presentation skills

I’m a fan. (Of Derren Brown, that is.)

Okay, I know he can come across as a complete twat occasionally but can’t we all – and besides, that’s part of his act. I’ve been reading one of is books recently, in which he explains one of his skills… the amazing memory stuff that he does. Having explained how he uses vivid visual images to chain the impression of objects together he goes on to say how the same technique can be used to lean play-scripts or what you’re going to say in a presentation.

I’m sure he’s right, but so what?

Let’s face it, a play-script and a presentation are not randomly collected objects (or facts) thrown together. The whole point of Brown’s tricks is that he remembers the apparently non-memorable (that is, unconnected) objects.

What I’m saying here is that if you need to resort to this kind of trick – or any kind of trick! – to remember what you need to say next in your presentation, you’ve written a bad presentation!

What do I mean by that?

Well, Presentations are stories. Sure they have facts, figures and opinions but basically, structurally, they are stories with a logical sequence of events. The very act of speaking one paragraph out loud to your audience should bring to mind the next thing you want to say. If it doesn’t, you have to ask yourself why not – what’s wrong with your presentation’s structure that it doesn’t flow like it “should”?

Think of a child’s bedtime story, such as anything from the Thomas the Tank Engine series. If you turned over the page and found that the author was suddenly talking about the adventures of an invisible drummer-girl called Angela you’d have a hard time memorizing the story. You might get lucky and remember poor Angela precisely because she was a non sequitur but certainly not if you had to do it every paragraph!

Like an old friend of mine once said (she was a choreographer talking to dancers about how easy it looks on stage): “If it looks like you’re working hard, you’re not working hard enough.” If you’re having trouble memorizing your presentation, you’ve not worked hard enough in your presentation’s design!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: designing your presentation properly is one of the most fundamental of presentation skills