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Powerful Presentations. For about 25 years I've been in tech support, customer support and sales support roles, where I became kind of the "go to" guy for giving product demos.

Powerful Presentations

They came to me because I was able to take very complex subjects and make them fun and light and people would buy. And so for the last five years, I've been traveling all over the world working with people like yourselves to help you get your message to a point where investors will actually want to take action. And with that I've helped companies raise big rounds of $19 million for Wii video, $4.5 million for Glue Networks up in Sacramento. So I either help people win awards, raise money or captivate audiences of all sizes and shapes. I'm Nathan Gold, Chief Coach, at The Demo Coach.

Forbes Welcome. How to Use the "Rule of Three" to Create Engaging Content. The Curse of Knowledge. Executive Summary Reprint: F0612A Impenetrable strategy statements can’t unite employees behind an organization’s goals, but concrete language and stories can.

The Curse of Knowledge

Many sensible strategies fail to drive action because executives formulate them in sweeping, general language. “Achieving customer delight!” “Becoming the most efficient manufacturer!” Before public speaking… 6 Tips for Writing a Persuasive Speech (On Any Topic) Adam Frankel was Special Assistant and Senior Speechwriter to President Barack Obama.

6 Tips for Writing a Persuasive Speech (On Any Topic)

Effective Learning Strategies. How we encode information in our mind is important.

Effective Learning Strategies

There are many ways information can be encoded but these methods generally rely on either visualizations — remembering information as images, or verbalization — remembering information as words. Being aware of how we encode information allows us to take advantage of different memory techniques depending on the kind of information we are trying to learn. It also allows us to refine our techniques for encoding information and creating systems that allow us to remember much more information than we otherwise could. Visualization — using images Research has shown that we remember visual images much easier and better than words.

Resonate. Duarte. Presentation Challenges. A dozen challenges for presenters. A few years ago I developed a workshop based on Garr Reynolds’ book, Presentation Zen.

A dozen challenges for presenters

One of my handouts is a set of challenges aimed at helping faculty break the “Death by PowerPoint” mold. I presented the session yesterday and decided to share part of it here. The ideas are intended as goals, not absolute rules. Focus on one thing – concentrate on your learning goals – what you want students to remember most.Tell a story - it can provide added meaning and give context. How To Give A Great Presentation (Seriously) You're doing it wrong.

How To Give A Great Presentation (Seriously)

GyroVoice: Five Ways to Avoid a Michael Bay Meltdown. I can hear it now: “Wow, I almost did a Michael Bay in there!”

gyroVoice: Five Ways to Avoid a Michael Bay Meltdown

It’s too bad that the exceptionally talented movie director Bay got caught in the social media blender with his Jan. 7 on-stage freeze-up at the Consumer Electronics Show when his TelePrompTer failed. He is likely to be forever associated with presentation paralysis. In reality, it’s just a blip for him. Michael Bay's Meltdown and How fo Overcome Fear 

By now you've probably seen Academy Award-winning director Michael Bay's most uncomfortable meltdown at the recent Consumer Electronics Show.

Michael Bay's Meltdown and How fo Overcome Fear 

And if you watch ABC News you may also have seen their piece on people who are crippled by stage fright. Not a pretty sight. There aren't too many of us who don't get some level of debilitating schpilkis when asked to talk in front of people. It can be truly unsettling. But the reality is, in business -- as in relationships -- HOW you say things is more impactful than WHAT you say. The name of the game here is CONTROL -- control over the three components that make up public speaking: WHO, YOU and the WORDS. The storytelling imperative: Make them care! Pixar Studios filmmaker Andrew Stanton gave a good TED talk about a year ago where he states that one of the key aims of any good story is that it must make the audience care.

The storytelling imperative: Make them care!

"Make me care," he says. If you research the advice of famous directors and screenwriters of today and of years gone by you will find this is a common refrain: You have go to make the audience care. Presentations in all their many forms are never just about transferring information alone. We are emotional beings, like it or not, and to connect and engage people to the degree that they will care enough to listen to you, you have to evoke in them some kind of emotion. The TED talk below is well worth watching; the storytelling lessons in this short talk are many. Visual presentation lessons from Alfred Hitchcock. The secret to storytelling is in the editing. How to Present to Senior Executives - Nancy Duarte.

By Nancy Duarte | 11:00 AM October 4, 2012.

How to Present to Senior Executives - Nancy Duarte

Really Bad Powerpoint. I wrote this about four years ago, originally as an ebook. I figured the idea might spread and then the problem would go away--we'd no longer see thousands of hours wasted, every single day, by boring PowerPoint presentations filled with bullets. For Presentations, Half As Long Is Twice As Good. Here’s a New Year’s resolution that’s a lot easier than losing 10 pounds--and with the tough marketplace we face in 2013, it will make your business more competitive. Are you a team manager or a sales director responsible for delivering weekly presentations to your teams? Do you lead conference calls with hundreds of employees listening in? Are you the CEO? If so, resolve to limit your presentations to no longer than 15 minutes--including Q&A. It’s not hard. Most business presentations stink. Half as long is twice as good. Today’s attention spans are shorter.

About the only place where audiences of any kind sit in one place for more than an hour is the movie theater. Structure Your Presentation Like a Story - Nancy Duarte. By Nancy Duarte | 8:00 AM October 31, 2012 After studying hundreds of speeches, I’ve found that the most effective presenters use the same techniques as great storytellers: By reminding people of the status quo and then revealing the path to a better way, they set up a conflict that needs to be resolved.