There are a dozen stories in that picture of one of my design students talking about color management. Just pick the one you like best. 

[Thx Ann, for letting me use it here.]

Another Say No To PowerPoint Week almost over. For a few years now, the week before Valentine’s Day goes slideless. Everyone should go slideless, now and then.

As will you.

When you attend one of my presentation classes or workshops next term, as every term, we will start from scratch.

No slides. Just you. And the audience.

Learning how to present well is like making risotto, I find. Quite a stirring process, and you add the ingredients one by one. Slides are the parmigiano on top. Added last. Or left away altogether. Why don’t you try some fresh herbs instead?

Last Christmas.  A fancy Italian restaurant known for its great food; somewhere in the South of Germany.

We had to wait a while to place our orders, and an even longer while for our food to arrive, but we were entertained by a posh and lovey-dovey elderly couple next to us who managed to set their tablecloth on fire.

When the food arrived, things turned sour. I wanted a large Pizza but got a small salad. Apparently, there had been a mix up with our orders. All the very fancy waiter had to say, though, was: You ordered the wrong food..., and he said it as if he meant it.

I still haven’t forgiven him, as you can see. Pizza is very serious business to me.

In presenting, we often behave like Mr. Fancy Waiter when we do not like a question or a comment from our audience, and we communicate how we feel with every look and fiber:

• You asked the wrong question.
• You show the wrong reactions.
• You are the wrong audience.
• You don’t deserve me.

Hating your customers won’t help your business.

If you feel you were born to be a star, go and be a star: sing opera, save the world or save hyper space, but do not choose to be a waiter (or a speaker). Pizza (and good talks) need to be prepared and served with a loving hand.

This Christmas, we checked the restaurant again; Mr Fancy Waiter is still there, and he has not improved much.

But the food is still delicious and so is the wine. I suggest you try the 2007 Sicilian merlot, a dish of Bruscietta, the walnut pesto pasta, the pizza with Parma ham, and all of the desserts. After that, it is very hard to hate anyone, especially during Christmas.

Lisa Braithwaite has a related post on the idea of presenting as customer service.

Waiting for drawings and a first copy edit of my 13 Near Misses. To pass the time, I opened a new blog for the Misses.

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Apart from that: work. Full stop.

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The first round of (very successfull) exams this term included topics that ranged from stuttering to ergonomics and back to language development in children.

The all women rhetoric weekend seminar consisted mainly of social workers and ergo-, logo- and physiotherapists plus an engineer and two students from our Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage department. Interesting mix.

Same fears, different approaches. In the beginning, all 13 Near Misses were very present: from Miss Muffler to Miss What’s-the-Point. I am glad to see all of them have found a way around their very personal presenting demons.

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Loved a recent post by Lisa Braithwaite on being more humble as a speaker (lecturer/teacher/you name it).

Without our audiences, we are nothing.

Lisa from Speak Schmeak had an interesting post yesterday on physical comfort and dressing for public speaking.

Lisa talks about dressing appropriately. That pretty much says it all. She also talks about shoes :)

When dressing for public speaking, usually other things matter than when you are dressing for a night out.

This is especially true when it comes to shoes. You need to be well balanced in order to give a good talk. And some shoes simply work better than others.

You may think you are cool and comfortable on high heels, but they stress your muscles and knee caps and that stress moves all the way through your body until it reaches your vocal cords. Wearing the wrong shoes may result in that high pitched, tense, stressed voice we all feel so uncomfortable with.

Read the rest of this post »

All illustrations in this post copyright © Janika Kefel. All rights reserved.

Perfection is overrated, I keep saying.

This photo project presentation from one of my students back in 2009 proved the point so well that I remember it as if it was yesterday.

Anyone who is new to photography or has ever tried to take decent wild life images will find much that resonates. And there is an awful lot in that lesson for anyone interested in public speaking and presenting, too.

JK had her problems with talking freely like the rest of my class of young designers, but she was great at drawing, and for her final talk we had discussed how she could best use her specific skill set in order to make her feel as much at home as possible.

JK’s talk was great visual story telling and comic relief all rolled into one, but it was more than that; it was great content, and great delivery, and it wowed us all to see how she had overcome her difficulties as a speaker and a budding photographer within one and the same project.

 

 

So how did she do it?

• JK took us along for the ride. She showed us how she had prepared for her very first photo project at our design department (shot at Hanover Sealife aquarium)
• She showed us how being prepared is everything and being overprepared is nothing and how there is always something you did not expect.
• She showed us how difficult it is to take photographs of moving animals, even more so in an articifial environment: a starfish was the only object she managed to »get«.
• She showed and talked us through her learning experience with time and available light, and we felt with her, and we laughed with her.
• She also showed us how, after tons of useless images, she came to realize that she had set her goals all wrong and she changed direction in mid flight: Instead of trying to avoid motion blur, she went after it, she hunted it down, and the results speak for themselves.

As for content, the only thing missing were some »hard facts«, some guidelines as to aperture and shutter speed, something on settings. But then JK’s talk was not about hard facts (which can easily go into a separate hand-out), quite the opposite. And that is exactly why it worked so well for everyone in the room.

Thanks for letting me use your story here!