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More Public Speaking Tips and Suggestions

More Public Speaking Tips and Suggestions | CenterNetworks

From Allen Stern of CenterNetworks: James Duncan Davidson has a lengthy post coming from his experience at eComm 2009 last week. His tips include:

* Please deliver your speech to the crowd, not the screen
* Please take off your name tag
* When on a panel, don't look at your shoes. Try to look at who’s talking. Otherwise, you look bored, even if you're not.
* Don't pace aimlessly

Chris DiBona has a follow-along to Davidson's post with a good number of tips including:

* Practice
* Don't lie
* Don't speak so damn fast
* Take questions at the end. During the speech, any questions should be short and the answers shorter. Long q&a belongs at the end. Most people are coming to hear you speak, not the audience. Some are coming to give you crap, they can wait. Some have good questions, find them!

Charlie O'Donnell shares 10 ways to improve your startup pitches. The tips include:

* Be confident and realize that you are pitching at all times
* Appreciate the feedback
* Tell me something you learned about the market or your users--shows you are adaptable

Some Presentation Tips

Some presentation tips from Jeff Bonforte, posted on a blog called "Yet Another VC Blog":

1. Use lots of screenshots or images of your product or service (or team)
2. Reisist slide animations. Use the “dissolve” transition between slides.
3. Shorter presos are better. 5-8 slides is ideal. 10-20 for longer or more detailed presos.
4. Limit or eliminate text. You are there to speak. They are there to interact and listen, not read.
5. Send PDFs of your presentation, not PPTs as followup.
6. Tell a story. Every presentation needs a plot (1-3 underlying points). For Al Gore, it was “The planet is in trouble, and it’s worse than you thought” and “We are to blame, but if we now we can also be the solution.” The rest of his amazing presentation were just supporting elements to that plot line of his story.
7. Reduce the size of everything. As a default PowerPoint (and Keynote even) make everything too big. White space is your friend.
8. Don’t pass out your slides (unless they are for a board meeting). Don’t send your presentation in advance (there are exceptions to this rule).
9. Make your own color palette and stick with it for the entire presentation. Generally, you should only use 1-2 colors (plus black and grays).
10. White backgrounds are best. Don’t use backgrounds other than solid colors of very subtle gradients.
11. Charts: Reduce categories. Don’t use legends. Reduce font sizes. Reduce guide lines. Use one color with multiple shades. Eliminate or reduce line weights.

Harvard Business School's "BS" Competition Winner

This is a clip from the Harvard Business School's first annual B.S. Contest: Participants give a live, 7-minute pitch tied to a Powerpoint presentation that they have never seen before. The competition is run by the HBS Public Speaking Club.

Eric Schmidt's Public Speaking Class... and Transformation

Amazing to see Google CEO Eric Schmidt's public speaking transformation. From the older video here, of Schmidt in a speaking class, to his more confident public presentation below.

Tipsheet for Preparing a Presentation

Public Speaking - Get more Business Plans

Larry Lessig's Unique PowerPoint Technique

Here's a video that highlights Larry Lessig's brilliant way of using slides to punctuate his message, to help develop his narrative, and to wow his audience:

Presentations 2009...

You - 10 reasons why Presentations are going to make it big in 2009

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: your design)

Welcome to the CBS Public Speaking Association's new blog!

We'll use this blog to post our schedule, as well as some tipsheets, video clips, and summaries of our guest speaker presentations.