10 non-standard tips for public speaking!

 

I teach a full-day Presentation Skills course for the British Library, among others, and I recently sought feedback on it from someone I trust. The thing he wanted more on - and it was one of those 'it's obvious now they say it' moments - was presenting itself, the process of it, rather than just preparing the materials. There was indeed a section on this in the training but it wasn't very long, so in order to improve the course I've read up on it a bit more; I learned a lot of useful things (and had others I already knew better articulated to me) so I thought I'd share some of them here.

Preparation

1. It's better to know the subject than the presentation. Learning anything from memory is really hard. But so is looking at notes, or reading presentations out from a script. If I try and learn a presentation I get worried - I'm aiming for something so specific, there's a feeling of pressure around getting it right, and a feeling that if I forget something the whole house of cards will fall apart. I prefer to only speak about stuff I know a bit about, and just use the slides to reinforce key points and basically prompt me to talk about certain aspects of a topic, as appropriate to that particular audience. This is much more relaxing than worrying about remembering particular phrases etc. It also means you're more flexible - things can even be tackled in a different order based on what the audience wants, for example.

In short, you can't be derailed because you're not on rails. That's a very reassuring feeling.

2. Imagine your audience leaving the room (after your talk!). It's often very hard to know where to start when creating a presentation - the default position is 'what do I know about this subject?' but actually that's the wrong way around most of the time. The more pertinent question is 'What do the audience want from this subject?' - if you imagine your audience leaving the room after you've spoken, what have they learned, what do they know now, what did they get out of it? Think about what is important to them in that moment, and build the presentation from there - if necessary going and doing more research beforehand, so you can talk more authoritatively about what matters to them.

3. The rule of three - there might be something in it... I've heard many times now that we remember things most easily in groups of three. There's a lot of it about - 3 act plays, stories with a beginning, a middle and an end etc. Presentations-wise, it's relevant because the audience will likely only remember 3 things from your presentation, so you need to make sure these are the most important three! If you're completely stuck for a structure, try the 3:3:3 method - three main parts of your presentation, each divided into three sub-sections, and if necessary each of those subsections divided into three as well.

4. Store your presentation in the cloud. Of course every presenter takes their presentation along on a USB stick but USB sticks do break sometimes, and they're small and easily lost. So a sensible back-up plan is to store your presentation in the Cloud, and of course the easiest way to store your presentation in the cloud is to email it to yourself. (Then it's backed up twice! Once in your inbox, once in your sent box. :) )

5. Have a one-page cheat sheet. Part of presenting well is being relaxed, and a lot of being relaxed (for me, certainly) is knowing exactly what your doing with the logistics of the day. So make a one page document with EVERYTHING you need to know in it: presentation start time, room number, directions to the venue, contact name and details, train self-ticket machine reference number, etc - print it out and carry it with you, and email it to yourself so you can check it on your phone. You're much more likely to arrive relaxed, on time, and focused.

Delivery

6. Look everyone in the eye, then pick your favourites to come back to... This is particularly useful for nervous speakers. Public speaking is about communication, and communication is better with eye contact. So I will try to literally look every member of the audience in the eye at least once, at least as far as I reasonably can. (After 5 rows or so, it's hard to be specific.) During this time, I'll notice a few people who are particularly receptive - they're nodding emphatically, or smiling at what I'm saying - and I'll come back to them throughout the talk, as a form of encouragement... I don't get nervous anymore, but even as a non-nervous person I like to see people on my side. (The flip-side of this idea is to work on the more indifferent members of the audience - or even hostile, but that doesn't come up too often in our industry, thankfully - by focusing more explicitly on them.)

7. Remember if people are looking down at a screen and typing, it's a compliment. I can imagine that it can be disconcerting if you're not a Twitter user, and you see people looking down at their phones rather than up at you. It must feel like kids ignorning what you're saying and texting their friends. But it's a good thing! They're sufficiently invested in what you're saying that they want to broadcast it to their network on Twitter - it's also a way for them to make notes at the same time. And of course, that means your words are reaching a bigger audience, which is excellent.

8. Have a Plan B for your intro and your outro. It sounds obvious but knowing what your opening line is going to be is quite important. Sometimes people decide to with something like 'Hello everyone, my name is Ned, I'm from York' but then the person introducing them says 'This is Ned, he's from York' so you really can't use that one... So know what you'll say if your planned opener is ruled out for whatever reason. The same goes with the closer - if it's covered in the questions for example, or if you finish surprisingly early and need some more material to call upon, have a relevant topic in mind in advance.

9. Listen very carefully, an introvert will say this only once... Lots of people reading this will be introverts; I'm one, certainly. A characteristic we share is only saying stuff once - if it's said, it's done with, we don't want to say it again. I feel embarrassed telling a story to someone if I know I've told it to someone else, even if the two people are completely unconnected! But in presentations we have to fight that instinct, and make sure we say the really important stuff (main arguments, big statements, statistics, quotes) at least twice; perhaps in different ways but at least twice nevertheless.

10. Think in tweetbites. You thought it was enough to think in memorable soundbites! Not anymore. For the maximum impact, your most important statements needs to be tweetable so that your presentation is amplified beyond the walls of the room you're in. You've put hours of work into it, so why not double, triple or otherwise exponentially increase the audience for your key messages? Think in quotable, tweetable chunks (as long as that's not actually to the detriment of your presentation, of course...).

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Is there anything else you'd add? I've love to hear from you in the comments so this post becomes more useful over time.

More tips

You can find all sorts of presentation tips online - the following three articles were particularly useful in assembling the list above: 30 quick tips for speakers; Compulsive obsessive details will save your neck; and the Introverts Guide to presenting.

As the title suggests, these are non-standard tips for public speaking - which is to say, beyond the obvious ones everyone knows such as not facing away from the audience etc: for more 'nuts-and-bolts of presenting' advice, and more on creating materials, check out these previous posts:

Good presentations matter from Ned Potter

Stop Breaking The Basic Rules of Presenting from Ned Potter

Plus there's also this early blog post on: tips for first time speakers.

Good luck!

Work-life balance - it's a fluid concept

 

Recently I've read a good few posts about work / life balance. I also get asked about it sometimes.

This post has turned out quite long, so here's a one sentence version for those whose work / life balance doesn't give them enough time to read the whole thing... The balance changes over time, which is fine, and so is having bursts of intense work activity balanced out by longer periods of 'life', but you need to keep a hold of what you're doing this for and where it's taking you.

Anyway, for what it's worth, here's what I think:

1) Whatever the balance is like now, it needs to be FOR something. If you feel that you're working too hard, it had better be because this is helping you achieve something - in other words, it has to be a means to an end not an end in itself. Personally I like to be either happy with the balance (with 'life' very much in the ascendancy) or comfortable in the knowledge that if the balance is wrong, it's getting me somewhere I specifically want to go, after which I can relax again.

2) Work / life balance isn't static over time. I wonder if people look at everyone else and just assume their balance is a permanent one? As in, person X is at SO many events, they must be 'always on', or person Y really seems to spend a lot of time with their family, how do they do it? But presumably we're just seeing a snapshot of a particular time. Good work / life balance is fluid.

In my view, it should be as in favour of 'work' as it will ever be, at the start of your career. The period on which an info pro is defined as a 'new professional' is often said to be the first 5 years, and that's a nice marker. You do a LOT of work in those five years, in order to expand your horizons, add to your CV, find out what you really like, and get noticed, get into the kind of job you want. Then after that, the balance can shift much more towards 'life' because you've put in the hard work to build some kind of platform, and then you're on the platform.

If you're a new professional reading this (see this, also; it might be useful) and you're thinking 'all the papers I'm writing and conferences I'm helping to organise, and presentations I'm giving - this isn't sustainable' then that's probably fine - it doesn't have to be sustainable. Just make sure at some point you do actually cut down or stop. Which leads me to...

3) Sometimes it's okay temporarily putting the balance out if it's going to be worth it in the long term. So sometimes, you can take on a really big project that you know will make things difficult, as long as you know when the end of the project is and that things will become a lot easier as a result. The key things here are taking things on which actually have an end! And not just chain-smoking right onto the next big thing when they do end. It's fine to stop. I know people (you know who you are!) who simply don't stop, even though they know they should... (This is, as you can imagine, a self-perpetuating cycle. Librarian Z takes on lots of things, so a: becomes expert in a lot of fields and b: gets a reputation as being helpful and receptive to being asked to do stuff, and so gets asked to do ever more stuff, etc etc, forever.)

4) Saying no is excellent. In my experience it feels good to say no when it's the right thing to do. Obviously it's better for the person asking if you can recommend someone alternative to do whatever it is instead. But the key thing is, once you've got yourself into a position where you're asked to do things, saying no doesn't mean you get asked any less in future. (Sometimes people feel like they ought to grab every opportunity, even not overly suitable ones, in case eschewing results in the opportunities drying up. But this isn't the case in most people's' experience.)

5) There are two types of balance - short-term and long-term. The day-to-day stuff is the detail level - doing that talk or not doing it, getting a sponsored place at that event which involves writing a report afterwards, or not. That can be managed, and can be fluid.

But then there's the long-term which is basically your job, which is a little harder to be in control of after a certain point. Some types of job really DEMAND an enormous amount of work hours. This post from the always honest and readable Jenica Rogers literally made me not want to be successful. So you have to think about where you're going, about what all your hard work is ultimately for.

I used to do a LOT more stuff in my own time (see 1, 2 and 3 above) because it would help me get a job where the same stuff was relevant to my work, so I wouldn't have to do it in my own time anymore. I'd use annual leave to speak at a conference. I wouldn't do that now - I did it then because it was a short-term thing and it was worth it.

The job it all resulted in is not the kind of job where you have to work 50 hour weeks, and nor would I want one of those (even for twice the salary). Also, I have to work where I live, because my work / life balance approach is that you live where you want to and then find work there - as opposed to going where the work is. So if someone says 'I'll give you £150k a year to do your ideal job in London' I say no without hesitation. That's the long-term balance.

6) You don't have to the best that you can be. I've said this before and I'll keep saying it to anyone who'll listen. If being 80% (or whatever) of who you could be makes you HAPPY,  that's what you should be aiming for. Society is blindly accepting of the notion that doing one's best is the be all and end all, but it's only worth it if that'll make you happy!

7) Focus on things you're naturally good at so you can make more progress in a shorter time. You can make more time for life if the work comes easy to you, so as much as it's nourishing to challenge yourself, don't take that idea so far that you always have to work doubly hard on everything because everything you take on is out of your comfort zone.

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Everyone is different, but the above is what works for me. I'm really happy with the balance I have, I'd recommend it - but to people who are a bit like me, not to everyone... A lot of people have a lot more drive than I do, and this approach probably wouldn't suit them and their own quest for happiness and contentment.

When I wrote the book, the balance was wrong. I was working on weekends, I had a young child, and it felt awful. I felt like I'd done the wrong thing. In fact, I probably HAD done the wrong thing - I certainly wouldn't recommend it. (Again, that's just me - Beth did much the same thing at much the same time and coped a lot better than I did.) But I can't regret it now because we got through it and I am where I want to be, doing freelance work for the BL among others, as well as the job I love. I do freelance training about areas I already know about and have a natural affinity for, so I don't have to spend much of my free time preparing them. I obey number 7, above - if someone came to me and said 'could you run a workshop  for us, on managing change' I'd say no, call Lisa Jeskins. It would take me too long to put together the materials to keep my work / life balance as I'd want it be (but Lisa's done such a course before, and in any case is a full-time trainer). I obey number 4 too - of all the interesting offers I had in 2012 to do stuff at conferences, I didn't do 13 of them, even though I really wanted to. People often say 'it's the things you don't do that you regret' and I understand that, but actually I don't regret saying no to anything, even if, at the time, it was really hard to do.

I am a very reflective person; I spend lots of time analysing stuff, processing stuff. So I am very aware of what works for me and what doesn't, which is how I've arrived at the above, which is basically a description of my life as much as it is advice to anyone else. I think the key thing is to do your own analysis of where you are, what you're doing, and where you're going, as objectively as possible, without reference to your peers or accepted norms. It's easy to be influenced by what librarian X is doing, or to feel we 'should' be more like Y. But actually that's not relevant, it's all about you and only you.

What is going to make you happy?

P.S [added the next day]: I meant to say, all the extra stuff we take on should be so fun it doesn't feel like work anyway. (This partly why it's easy to get overwhelmed by it and out of balance, because it's enjoyable.) If you're taking things on which feel like work, or things which were previously fun start to feel like work, that's a sign that it's time to cut down - either getting rid of some long-standing responsibilities, or saying 'no' for a long period of time, or both.

The message is (and this post is aimed primarily at information professionals - this may not be true in other industries, I don't know) - there should be enough relevant and interesting opportunities out there for you never to have to feel like all this stuff is a drag. Seek out the good stuff. :)

Digital Marketing Toolkit - workshop December 5th

A brief post to let anyone interested know that I'm running a one-day workshop, at York St John University on the 5th of December, on behalf of UKeIG. It's all about marketing with new technologies. Moving beyond the social network basics, this course will look at how to identify which technologies will be useful for marketing your organisation, how to use them effectively, and tips, tricks and general best-practice for marketing online. Topics will include marketing with video, viral marketing, mastering geolocation (such as FourSquare), mobile apps, publishing online, getting the most out of QR Codes, and taking social media marketing to the next level.

I'm also keen to accomdodate any other apsect of digital marketing that people would like to cover - if you're already booked on the course then let me know what you'd like to cover (and if you're not attending, I'd still be interested in the kinds of things you'd like to see covered on a course like this...).

Details of the event (including a booking form) are on the UKeIG website.

Hope to see you there!

- thewikiman

A book about Prezi

 

Mastering Prezi for Business Presentations, by Russell Anderson-Williams, has just been released by Packt Publishing.

I have an interest in this, because I served as one of the two Technical Reviewers for the book. Check it out, I even get a little bio in there!

About the book

As the name suggests the book is aimed at people giving business presentations - but basically all of it is applicable to anyone wishing to progress their Prezi skills to the next level. What I really like about it is it's written by someone from a proper design background, so there's a lot of technical stuff which is really handy if, like me, you quite like designing multimedia things but have no real idea what you're doing. The sections on using audio and video are really good, and Russell certainly knows a lot of tips and tricks which were new to me. He really gets to grips with the potential of the software, and it's very engagingly written.

About being a technical reviewer

The way the process works with this particular publisher, is that they send you each chapter basically as soon as it has been written. You're encouraged to use the comments facility of Word to go into as much detail as you can, suggesting changes and improvements or highlighting the bits you think work really well. There's also a questionnaire for each chapter, which includes questions like 'what do you think the next chapter should be' and so on. You send back the chapter and the questionnaire, they pass it on to the author along with the other reviewer's comments, and then you get sent the next one or two chapters once they're done.

It's an odd process because you want to be doing a good job as a reviewer and actually making constructive suggestions, so you want to add as many comments as possible - but at the same time you don't want to be finding fault where there is none, and the fewer comments you make the more complete the chapter is already, which is a good thing. So the balance is a hard one to find.

I was doing this around the same time I was finishing off my own book, and I have to say I would have found it very difficult to work like this - showing people what I'd done as I went along. I'm the kind of person who likes to have anything creative more or less complete before showing anyone - and that includes having all the chapters drafted, for context! Facet asked for one chapter early on in the writing process (to check I could actually write) but then let me get on with it thereafter till it was a completed draft. At this point they said they could send it off for proofing, indexing etc - or they could get it reviewed. I asked for it to be reviewed, and specifically asked if Antony Brewerton could review it; I'm really glad I did as the extremely helpful comments he came back with led me to actually restructure the book quite significantly, moving content around and adding some stuff in.

All in all reviewing this Prezi book was enjoyable. Sometimes I found it hard to turn around the work in the time the publisher wanted, and I never really had a sense if what I was doing was actually useful - I asked for feedback but I was told they'd be in touch if there were any problems, so hopefully that means there weren't any. The best part of it was definitely getting to read a great book! There are loads of really useful tips I've adopted, and my recent Prezis are much better than my earlier ones because of it.

One thing is certain - I much prefer this kind of reviewing than critical reviewing for publication, and when I get asked to do that I always suggest someone else to take it on. Knowing what goes into writing a book means I could never really criticise anyone else's knowing they might read that criticism, so a review from me is of no use to anyone...

Good presentations matter

Last week I was involved in a CPD session at our staff festival, aimed at people interested in presenting at events and writing for publication. My colleague Julie Allinson did the publications part - she recommended Mike Ashby's guide to writing a paper (PDF). I did the presentations bit, and it was based on a mixture of a recent LibMarketing slideshow on making good PowerPoints, and advice about public speaking that I'd previously written or read. It's worth a look particularly if you haven't already seen 'Good Slides Matter', because it refers to some research behind what works and what doesn't in multimedia learning, and advises how to build presentations accordingly. There's also some SUPER-ADVANCED MEGA TIPS at the end... :)

Good presentations matter from Ned Potter

Thanks to @girlinthe for drawing my attention to the multicolor search engine - a brilliant tool! Try experimenting with putting in the two main colours of your library brand - you can then do away with templates entirely.

- thewikiman