We tweet.  (@presentations if you want to find us)  And so far we’ve gathered a little over a thousand followers (not sure how!).  Some of them are superstars, such as Nancy Duarte, others are normal people like the rest of us  :)
We check everyone who follows us and see about following back and so we obviously find out about a lot of new stuff that way. Â One such item that’s come across our radar like this is @speechyou. Â Speech You is a way of getting some online training about your presentations. Â Only it’s not.
Actually it’s a way of videoing yourself reading text of the screen – which is hardly the same thing.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favour of anything which helps people get their presentations in order and I like the idea of this on principle… but let’s face it, sitting in front of your computer reading something word-for-word is a poor, poor substitute for the real thing. Â Or for some real training and feedback.
Don’t worry, though, because for $29.95 a month and then $19.95 each review, you can get professional reviews of your uploaded recordings. I haven’t done one of these, so I can’t say they’re not good, brilliant even.. and I’m sure the reviewers are cool (they’ve certainly got good credentials!)…. my gripe (so to speak’ is that I’m not sure that sitting in front of a computer and reading a script into a webcam can tell a reviewer very much about how you’ll make presentations in the real world. (I should add at this point that I’ve not paid the money for a review so I don’t know how good they are – I’ve no reason to think they’re anything other than excellent reviews of what you give them.)
We use video feedback in our training, occasionally – and unless we’re very careful it’s more or less inevitable that people’s behaviour changes in the presence of a camera. Â Imagine how much it might change in the presence of a camera only… I like playing tennis on the Wii, but it doesn’t make me a better grass-court player! Â :)
You can get face to fact training from SpeechYou, too, of course – if you decide that your computer’s not going to give you what you need (and if you happen to live in the right part of the USA).
I also use video feedback for our presentation courses. You are absolutely right about behavioural changes. So our solution is to inform attendees in the literature that there will be video feedback and then say nothing about it on the day.
Each student has to stand up and introduce themselves at the beginning and it is that that we video. then at the end of the course we do the same thing. Students have often forgotten that they are being videoed and they are often surprised at the difference after the course.
But for me this method is invaluable because I often have to demonstrate how with just a few little changes their English begins to sound much more professional.
NB: We are dealing with attendees who do not speak English as a native language.
Hi Carl.
I think your clients are a little different from mine – the best tool I’ve found to do video feedback is a brilliant member of staff who holds the camera with such skill that they talk to her, forgetting there’s a camera there at all. She’s an absolute genius.