TEASE ‘em: 5 Ways to Start Your Speech

by Peter Jeff

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Ban the banalities that bog down most speech openings.

Defer the customary “nice-to-be-here” platitudes.

Direct your audience more into fawning than yawning over your speech opening. How?

Start your speech better by diving in! Instead of gingerly dipping your toes into the proverbial speaking pool, open with a splash! Pattern your platform performance after the TEASE opening which Saturday Night Live has made famous for more than 25 years.

Via Six Minutes. Follow the link for the whole story.

Your Next Presentation Should Borrow from Broadway

Here's how to keep a business presentation as entertaining and memorable as a great theatrical production

By Carmine Gallo

On a recent trip to New York City, I was walking down Broadway just as thousands of people were pouring out of the theaters. They were smiling, laughing, and talking about what they had just experienced. Theater moves people. Why can't a business presentation do the same? I believe it can, and one way to improve the chances it does is to make them more like theatrical experiences. Here are five ways to stage your next presentation.

1. Start and end with a bang.

Unexpected because it comes from BusinessWeek and because it uses Broadway musicals as a model for presentations. Looks like BusinessWeek has a communications section I should be checking regularly. Follow the link to read all five of Gallo's points. Via Twitter User @SlideRocket.

How to Deliver a Killer Technical Presentation

It’s presentation season – time when we start crafting our slide decks for the PASS Summit, the SSWUG Virtual Conference, SQLBits, SQL Connections, the QuestConnect Virtual Conference, you name it.  Today, I’m passing along my presentation tips, and starting at the end….

How to End a Presentation

Call to Action

Marketing gurus say that in order for audiences to really respond to your message, you have to finish up with a call to action: a specific thing you want your audience to go do.  At the end of a successful presentation, your attendees will want to act on your words, but they’ll need your words, your sample scripts, and your recommended reading links in order to do it.

Don’t make the audience scribble down a dozen long links and bullet points. 

Some valuable insight on technical presentations from Brent Ozar, who has the credentials of a technical wizard. Follow the link for the whole article.

Making it stick: Be unexpected

This is Part 3 of a seven-part series on making speeches and presentations memorable.  It is based on the book “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath.

One of the reasons most of us love surprises - I mean good ones – is that we do not expect them.  Whether it is a surprise gift or a chance meeting or good movie, it is the unexpected that intrigues us.

Photo courtesy of Denise Bouton-Dechellis

In fact, when you think of a movie that people do not like, one of the main complaints is that it was so predictable.  There was no mystery at all.  On the other hand, if someone says “I never saw that coming!”, chances are that person enjoyed the show.

The same holds true for public speaking.  Being unexpected is the second indicia of stickiness in Chip and Dan Heath’s book, “Made to Stick”.

John Zimmer is up to the third post in his series on "Making Your Presentations Stick." Along with the content he has good, interesting video illustrations--Daniel Pink and John Wooden so far.