FREE! E-Newsletter Presentations Points is a free short monthly bulletin sent out by Claudyne Wilder. Every bulletin discusses two ideas for presenters and one for designers. There's also a monthly challenge for presenters and designers. Subscribe Now May 2003 Your Presentation Success Is Our Passion Present It Right...The First Time! TWO WINNING PRESENTATIONS PUBLIC SEMINARS Goal: Learn how to develop, design and deliver a persuasive, results-oriented presentation. In the last public seminar, three people created real-work presentations the first day, and presented with their slides the second day. This is a real opportunity to take your presentations to the next level of professionalism. Dates: May 28 and 29 or August 5 and 6, 2003 Location: Boston area Time: 9 to 5 Cost: $650, with a money-back guarantee For an outline click here or e-mail me at claudyne@wilderpresentations.com For a referral of someone who comes to my seminar, I'll give you a free book or CD. If you have those, some formats and designs you can use. FOR PRESENTERS: STEP 10: TAKE THE LEAP BE YOURSELF (From the book Presentations Kit: 10 Steps for Selling Your Ideas) You have read all the books. You know how to make eye contact. You have excellent slides. What's next for personal development? Take stock of yourself. Then be the best you can in your body, with your style and your background. I'm an Argentine tango dancer. I often look at certain dancers and wish I had their way of moving. But I don't. I have my way of moving, based on my background of training in ballet, capoeira, yoga, and Pilates. The question for me is: What can I do as a dancer with the body I have? That's the same type of question you can ask yourself: based on your personality, your business background, and your hobbies outside of work. "How can I use all that when I am speaking?" For example, Sue has coached children's basketball in her spare time. She knows how to listen, how to yell at the right moments, how to praise, and how to be quiet when necessary. She can take all those skills and apply them when standing in front of a group. She can apply them by her voice tone, the pacing of the talk, and the content of her presentation. Jim is an avid golfer. He takes his clubs when he travels. He has learned how to concentrate and how to apply what he has been taught. He can use those skills as a presenter. When he wants to really make a point, he can remember how he feels when his game is going well. When he wants to remain silent and let the audience digest his point, he can remember how he concentrates before he takes the swing. Take stock of your skills in life. Apply them to your presentation delivery. Use all of you when you are in front of an audience. Don't limit yourself to being just the "business" person when speaking. FOR PRESENTERS: PROGRESS REPORT You have been asked to give an update on a project you've been working on. You know they don't want to hear the details of what you have done. Upper management just wants to know you are on track to complete it by the deadline. Here's a way to organize that project update. Progress report: project update Give a short background. List key work completed. List outstanding tasks for the future. State issues that need discussion during your presentation. State the next steps with deadlines for key tasks. HERE'S AN EXAMPLE Short background: We are redesigning the company web site. We need a more up-to-date and interactive site. Work completed: Picked colors to be used. Arranged for photographer to take the pictures we need. Designed one customer quiz. Edited content.   Outstanding tasks: Set up the navigation. Create pages with photos. Choose which flash animation to use.   Discussion issues: Do we want one or two customer quizzes? Shall we do the product pages or hire a company to do it?   Next steps: Assign tasks to project members. Interview an outside vendor to help with product pages. Test whole site in a month. DESIGNERS: CARTOON IDEAS One of my clients decided she wanted to use a cartoon to help make the key point of her talk. So I started looking around. Here are a couple sites that will sell you cartoons. If any of you have a favorite business cartoon site, please let me know. Although it may be tempting to put cartoons throughout your talk, just use one. www.glasbergen.com/cat.html has very funny ones, even some ones about PowerPoint presentations. I laughed out loud at a couple of them. www.bizpresenter.com has New Yorker cartoons as well as photos and illustrations. MONTHLY CHALLENGE Presenters: Be more of all of you in front of an audience. Designers: Use a cartoon once in a while to change the pace of your talk.   HERE'S A BEFORE AND AFTER EXAMPLE From my interactive CD-ROM "SLIDES THAT WIN!" ARTICLE IN THE MASS HIGH TECH Click here to see an article I just wrote for the Mass High Tech on Handling Questions. Presentation Points may be forwarded via e-mail, printed for circulation, and quoted FREE of charge. No permission is required, but please mention where you got this information. It’s also perfectly acceptable to post Presentation Points on your company’s Intranet. To subscribe to Presentation Points or visit my home page, go to www.wilderpresentations.com.