{"id":1011,"date":"2011-04-27T08:42:19","date_gmt":"2011-04-27T07:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elementally.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/?p=1011"},"modified":"2011-04-27T08:42:19","modified_gmt":"2011-04-27T07:42:19","slug":"notes-for-presentations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/notes-for-presentations\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes for presentations"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"autocue

An autocue taking text from an iPhone!<\/p><\/div>\n

Hubert Schlafly Jr died recently. It’s worth noting this with a brief, perhaps silent gesture because Schlafly is credited with being the inventer of the teleprompter or autocue. \u00c2\u00a0He invented it to help actors in soap operas but it became a staple tool of politicians pretty quickly: after\u00c2\u00a0former US President Herbert Hoover used it in a convention in 1952 every Presidential candidate has used it. Over here in Britain it’s often the source of comment when a politician gives a major speech without one, so ubiquitous has the device become!<\/p>\n

And yet there’s a bit of me which argues that they’re not necessary – or at least shouldn’t be.<\/p>\n

There’s the speech-writer bit of me which says that if your presentation isn’t well enough structured to flow naturally and easily from one point to the next (after a few rehearsals at least) then your presentation isn’t well enough structured, full stop! \u00c2\u00a0(Such flow makes a presentation easier to memorise and so if you’re having trouble memorising it, perhaps it’s because the structure isn’t right.)<\/p>\n

Maybe I’m being too much of a purist, and I can see that for really high-stake presentations, when every word has to be exactly right, when every slip of the tongue can lead to an international crisis and where losing your train of thought can result in stocks\/shares being sold at an alarming rate…. well perhaps you need one there.<\/p>\n

But how many of us give that kind of presentation?<\/p>\n

President Obama? Steve Jobs?<\/p>\n

Okay, that’s a bit of a rant, I know, but stay with me here! \u00c2\u00a0;) \u00c2\u00a0 I’m often asked by clients to show them how to memorise their speech. \u00c2\u00a0They give me several sides of A4 paper, typed in 10 point type, single space and expect me to work some kind of miracle. \u00c2\u00a0Sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t – and the difference between the two outcomes has a lot to do with the quality of the words themselves.<\/p>\n

The best analogy I can give you is this: if what they’ve put on the page reads like a report there’s less chance of it being memorisable. If it reads like a speech there’s more chance. Yes, I know that’s flipping obvious!<\/p>\n

… but you’d be amazed at how often people simply write a report and expect to be able to read it (or deliver it from memory) and somehow expect it to turn into a good speech.<\/p>\n

The thing is, we speak differently to how we write – or at least if we don’t, we’re going to sound ‘odd’! And a presentation needs to sound authentic, not stilted. So it comes back to being natural which in turn leads us back to ‘flow’… a presentation has to flow.<\/p>\n

If it flows, it’ll move seamlessly from one point to the next. If you’ve got to crowbar your next point in, your presentation won’t flow, won’t sound realistic and won’t be easy to memorise<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

There are lots of tips and tricks I can teach you about how to memorise your presentation but the first one, the biggest one (and the one that most people don’t want to hear, sadly!) is that if you’re having trouble memorising it, there’s probably a good reason for that…<\/p>\n

…and you should address that problem before you try and memorise anything more. The problem, frankly, is usually that it’s just not a very good presentation in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hubert Schlafly Jr died recently. It’s worth noting this with a brief, perhaps silent gesture because Schlafly is credited with being the inventer of the teleprompter or autocue. \u00c2\u00a0He invented it to help actors in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-rant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}