It’s a trick I learned when studying how movies and TV shows are written. You don’t do a flash back, you do a flash present. For presentations, that means that you don’t tell the story as something that is over; that makes the audience passive. Instead, you bring the scene from the past into the present, or you bring the audience to the past, and tell it as if it is happening right now.
This March Andrea Pacini joined Ideas on Stage as UK Presentation Director, meaning that Ideas on Stage now has a direct presence in France, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom - and we serve the rest of the world from these four locations. We sat down with Andrea for a short interview. Q: What is your background? A: I am Italian, and I studied in Italy and Ireland. I then did an internship in Cambridge, where I fell in love with the UK and decided to stay there.
The best presentations have three stakes, three reasons “why” they are important: The first stake is about you: why is the topic important for you? This is the reason you, and not somebody else, is on stage to deliver the presentation. The second stake is about your audience: why is it important for them? This is the reason why your audience is there to listen to you instead of doing something else.
“Don’t worry, I’m experienced, I speak at conferences all the time!” How many times have we heard that sentence from speakers who never did a TEDx style talk, yet think that, because of experience, they can just wing it? For us, it’s not reassuring. Quite the opposite, it’s a clear warning sign that the speaker doesn’t really know what is expected of him. Here are five warning signs that give you clues that your speaker may not be ready to give a TEDx style talk.
If you’re a Startup founder, you’ve heard this all before. “Your elevator pitch should be able to convince anyone in 30 seconds in an elevator”. Hold on hold on hold on! Let’s pause for a few seconds. Imagine that the roles are reversed. You’re in the elevator, lost in your thoughts, minding your own business. There is one other person in it, who you don’t know, and that person is looking intensely at you.
Last week we saw how presentation vultures can destroy your confidence and ability to present in front of an audience. We saw that the best way to fend them off is to strengthen your vital space anchor. But how can you do that? If your presentation has an objective, a clear message, it is much easier to use it as an anchor. Let’s imagine for example that the key message is that your presentation is about a new software service that offers necessary services to protect your IT systems.
Maybe you feel that your last presentation was a complete failure. You didn’t manage to shake off your nerves. You became confused. The client or your boss criticized you. Maybe you’ve been caught in a downward spiral for some time, each criticism making you lose confidence, and making the next presentation worse. I have good news for you: no matter what your situation is, this vicious circle can be broken, and you gain the necessary confidence to enjoy presenting.
A few weeks ago, Ideas on Stage had the privilege of organizing a sales presentation training for Krauthammer at Dolce La Hulpe, close to Brussels in Belgium. For us, delivering a training for dozens of senior people at Krauthammer, one of the world’s most respected sales and management training companies, felt like designing something for Jonathan Ive, Apple’s legendary designer: a bit intimidating but incredibly exciting. The training met with great success, and it was fantastic to work with such talented people, but what I will remember most are two presentations.