Dahle Communication

Articles you should have read

Instead of delving into something new today, I wanted to highlight some of the great posts and articles that I have found over the past couple of weeks that I felt needed to be discussed more. With so many posts out there, it is sometimes hard to find the good articles and a lot of times someone will post a great blog and for whatever reason, it is just missed. I'm not saying this happened with these posts, I just wanted to highlight a few of those that I really enjoyed and want people to check out.

1. Audience on the Stage - Duarte Blog

Chris Iufer of the Duarte Blog talks about getting the audience to participate and helping Nancy Duarte prepare for the Web 2.0 Expo. They wanted people at the expo to be able to answer questions without having to shout out the answers. They looked at Twitter, SMS Polls and a Chat room. Its an interesting discussion looking at the feasibility of using Twitter in your presentations.

2. Lessons for 6th Graders (and us) - The You Blog

John Windsor has a great article about working with 6th graders and giving them advice on how to prepare slides for their presentations on the Incas, Mayans and Aztecs. If you have ever had to give a presentation to middle schoolers you will relate to John's post - and even if you haven't, you should still read this. 

3. 1. Experience the world instead of talking about experienceing the world - The first of 21 Principles from Metacool

Diego Rodriguez is putting together quite a series on his blog Metacool. He is going through 21 principles that you should follow. The link above will take you to the first one and as of this post he was on number 9. These are not just one or two sentences of advice either. He goes into a lot of detail to talk about them.

4. 27 Visualizations and Infographics to Understand the Financial Crisis - Flowing Data

If you have never read Nathan's blog Flowing Data, this is the perfect post to start reading. I like statistics and numbers, but being able to see those numbers placed visually and in a compelling manner is even better. If you have had a hard time putting your numbers into a presentation in a compelling way, take some tips from Nathan and attempt to do what he does.

5. PowerPoint make-over artist tricks for newbies - Slides that stick

One thing I love about this blog is that it is usually concise and is updated almost everyday. This means that I will usually learn something or have something make me think on a daily basis. This post is really good if you are just getting started with presentations.

6. Ashton Kutcher, CNN and the Twitter Celebrity Effect - Marketing In Progress

Brett Duncan has some great thoughts on Twitter and its impact as of lately. He also adds some great points in the comments section about the future of Twitter. A great start to a blog that will have you looking at marketing in a new way (and yes I stole this idea of putting together a few of my favorite links from him...thanks Brett for the idea).

Don't Wait to Improve Yourself - A lesson in trackbacking

Over the past couple of months I have gotten into blogging quite a bit. During that time I have learned a lot about the blogging world and what I need to do. For example, you want to blog on a regular basis: once a week, twice a week - whatever your schedule, try to keep it consistent. It's hard to get people to come back to your blog if they have no idea when you're going to post again. Tools such as linking to other sites, adding images and videos are useful as well. One key tool that can be very useful is the TrackBack. Referencing someone else's blog and having it posted on their site is a great way to increase traffic. I knew that this was a good thing to do, but I had yet to use it -- that was until Monday. On Monday I posted an article on Twitter vs. Facebook and had it trackbacked to a post from Seth Godin on his blog about what makes things better. Doing this increased traffic on my blog by a significant amount!

I knew something like this would help me, but since I had not used it, I was just putting it off. Now that I have seen how beneficial it can be, I will use it again and not just to help myself, but to hopefully increase traffic on someone else's site as well.

Communication can do the same thing for you. Being able to effectively communicate will increase your business prospects as much as trackbacking can help your blog. It is a tool that you need to use if you want to be successful. But don't do what I did with trackbacking and wait. Putting things off will only delay the inevitable. Unfortunately, we are creatures of habit and we don't like to change. Why should you get a speech coach or work on your presentations if you haven't in the past? The reason is that it will only help you. In this time of economic turmoil and businesses struggling and unemployment rising, you need to be able to take your speeches and presentations to the next level. Don't wait like I did - you'll only wish you would have started earlier.

Travis

Are things like Twitter, Texting, Facebook and Blogging hurting communication?

That is the question that I have been asking myself lately.  For people under a certain age, we are growing up with technology.  I'm 32 and didn't have access to the Internet until I went to college.  I didn't have a phone that texted until I was 30 (and didn't even text much until I was 31) and didn't start blogging or using twitter until I was 32.  People younger than me are growing up with it in middle school!  I am not someone who is opposed to technology and thinks it is all evil and kids are dumber because of it.  I mean, I love technology (the iPod has been one of the greatest inventions ever!) and I am by no means saying we are worse off than before.  What I am concerned about is the human-to-human interaction that we seem to be losing because of the increased use of technology.  I almost feel like we are moving towards a Johnny Mnemonic type of life (or for your RPG people, Shadowrun) where we start becoming part computer/part human.

Blogging is a great example.  While blogging itself is quite harmless, the comments on blogs or videos posted on youtube, etc. can become a diatribe of name-calling idiocy.  Everyone knows what I am talking about here.  You can go to any political article or blog and you will find under the comments section (if it is open and not monitored) comments to people that would never be said in a face-to-face conversation.  The reason for this is simply the fact that we have lost the human interaction of communication.  When people put things on-line they don't put as much thought into the process and put up something that is either degrading to the author of the blog or another commenter.  

This problem goes beyond comments on blogs though.  When people send e-mails and texts, they don't put as much thought into the process (in fact, gmail now has an option that you can cancel your sent message after a few seconds if you 'accidentally' hit the send button) and end up sending something that they regret later.  There is also the issue of context.  When you talk to someone face to face, you can read their body language and voice to see if they are serious or joking.  In an e-mail or text, that is very hard to do.  A lot of research has shown that the majority of our communication is actually non-verbal (body language, gestures, voice characteristics, etc) and we don't get that over e-mail and text.

While there are other problems, there is an easy solution: make communication more human.  Think about what you are going to say when you type up an e-mail or a text.  Think about what comments you are putting down on someones blog.  Try to meet with people and talk with them and listen to them (listening is another problem all together).  Try to make communication more human.

Travis

White Noise - are you adding to it?

Today I had a chance to do a lot of searching on the web and catch up to the blogs that I like to follow, got an Alltop page (now you can make your own personal Alltop page), caught up on some news, tweeted a few times, responded to some e-mails, listened to some NPR on the way to work...and still tried to get some work done.  What I realized is that there is a TON of information out there for us to process.  So the question I have for people who are speaking and presenting is simply this:  Are you adding to the white noise that so many of us deal with on a day-to-day basis or are you giving speeches and presentations that are leaving a mark with the audience?

Let's say you WANT to leave a mark with the audience...how do you do that is the next question.  If you want to truly be successful there is a lot of things that you need to do, but here are a couple of suggestions to help you get started.

1.  Set yourself apart with good design for your speeches.

You can do this in several ways.  First off, pick up Garr Reynolds book Presentation Zen or any of the books that are listed on this blog.  All of them contain some great tips on presentation ideas and how you can incorporate great design ideas into your presentations instead of the typical bullet-point presentations that are out there.  Secondly, read some blogs on good design.  There are a lot out there and my blogroll contains quite a few of them, but I would suggest Ethos3 as a good starting point.

2.  Be different

Does this mean wearing a clown suit?  No.  What it does mean is find something that you can do to set yourself apart from the pack.  One suggestion that I have is to use something other than PowerPoint if you are going to give a presentation.  A great new software called Prezi is in the beta phase right now and has great potential to overturn how people present.  If you can get started early using the software before everyone else, you can set yourself apart and be one of the fore-runners in this new technology.

3.  Engage People

This is done on a couple of levels.  First off, when you are presenting you need to engage your audience by talking to them instead of at them.  You can do this by working on your eye contact with the audience and making sure to pay attention to them and not your images behind you.  Additionally, engage them with on-line mediums such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.  Brett Duncan wrote a good blog about this titled "Exploiting vs. Exploring."  Don't exploit the use of these services just to build a name for yourself, but engage people with them.

Those are three simple things you can do to start setting yourself apart from all of the white noise out there: Have good design, be different and engage people.  While there is quite a bit more to it than that, this is at least a start.  

Twitter - Using it effectively versus ignoring it

Twitter is fast becoming a huge trend - when you get talked about in a mocking manner by the Daily Show, you know you've made it!  As speakers though, twitter brings up a lot of questions.  First off, if people are checking their blackberries or iphones and twittering during your speech, they are not going to be listening as intently if they were paying attention to you.  

So, you have two choices as a speaker in regards to twitter:

1.  Be like Jon Stewart in the video below where he is the "Old Man Stewart shakes his fist at Twitter." 

or

2.  Embrace Twitter as a means to improve communication with your audience.

The first option will only make you upset with people and make you feel powerless as your audience members drift off and check their twitter status.  However, embracing Twitter will allow you to improve your presentations -- if you do it in an effective manner.

Olivia Mitchell posted a guest blog on Chris Spagnuolo's Edgehopper blog on 7 ways to use twitter during your presentations.  I really liked some of the suggestions and think it is a great way for you to engage your audience.  Some of the suggestions include polling your audience, asking questions during the presentation, getting input on your ideas and having evaluations done.  One of the biggest benefits of using twitter for all of these is that the audiences responses have to be 140 characters or less!  Believe me, that is not a lot of words, so people have to condense their ideas to their core.

One catch to some of her suggestions:  you need to get onto twitter and get used to it!  For some of us, this is a big step.  I have only recently gotten onto twitter and I didn't quite get it at first, but do see the potential.  So, in order to effectively use Twitter during your speeches and use it to your advantage, you have to be used to it.  You don't want to step in front of an audience and try to use twitter for the first time...you will not look good!

So, you have a choice: use Twitter to your advantage or to your disadvantage.  To me the choice is an easy one.  

- Travis

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Twitter Frenzy

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Best of FlowingData - How to use charts

One of the biggest problems with presentations is how people use charts and graphs.  People have a tendency to put too much information on a screen or the information is so incomprehensible that no one knows what the presenter is trying to get across.  Unfortunately what is lost is the fact that graphs and data can be an extremely powerful tool in your presentations -- if done correctly!

FlowingData, a blog that "explores how designers, statisticians, and computer scientists are using data to understand ourselves better - mainly through data visualization" is a site that you should check out if you want to see how effective data and graphs can be.  The recently put together a Best of Flowing Data for January that you can check out as a starting point.  It is a great blog and one that I check regularly because of the quirkiness of it, the effectiveness of the data and the great designs that go into the presentations.

Travis

Does Design Matter? Speaking About Presenting Organizes a Debate

Olivia Mitchell at Speaking About Presenting decided to undertake a big project over the christmas break.  She wanted to get a lot of different experts in the presentation world together to discuss what they wanted to see in 2009 in regards to presentations.  It was quite the project and her post on design matters has some good debate on it and it has links to the rest of the collaborators and their thoughts.  Check it out, there are some great discussions going on and a lot of intelligent people (including Guy Kawasaki and Seth Godin) giving their thoughts on presentations and where they should go in 2009.  There is a lot there, but it is worth the read if you have the time.

Travis

Lesson # 1 -- Goal Setting

I know it sounds a little cliché, but I am not talking about personal or business goals.  What I am talking about is starting your presentation with a goal.  This is a great idea, and unfortunately it is not mine.  John Windsor at The YouBlog gave me this idea in his blog post Improving Your Presentations in 2009.  John states:

'Make your first slide a "goal" slide, not a title slide'

I love this idea.  Most people begin each presentation with a title that does nothing to pique the interests of the audience.  The title page is usually the same tile page design that is used in almost every one of the 30 million powerpoint presentations given daily -- we've all seen it before.  You have a big title followed by either your name or a sub-title.  This is boring -- we've all seen it before and what it tells us is that this is going to be another boring, bullet-point driven, a chance to catch up on my sleep presentation.  As John states: it will give them something to focus on and look for in the next slides.  If people know what the goal of this presentation is off the bat, they will look for clues and ideas that are helping them get towards that goal.

So, assignment number 1 is simply this:  if you are giving any presentations over the next few weeks -- and if you do nothing else -- start out with your goal instead of ending with it.  By the end a lot of people have left your presentation and are either day-dreaming or sleeping and dreaming: don't let them get there!  Engage them from the start with what you are expecting out of them and out of yourself.  This will instantly give you a leg up in your presentations and hopefully lead to more success!

Travis

Tickled by Life -- Avoiding Death by Powerpoint!

If you haven't checked out the blog 'Tickled by Life' you should.  It's an interesting site that talks about everything from presentations to just living a better, healthier life.  In their post 'Avoiding Death by PowerPoint!' they make a lot of good arguments.  What I like best is that they say there are no rules to presentations, and I can't agree with them more.  Too many people think there has to be certain rules you have to follow in order to be a successful presenter -- they are wrong.  Having a solid set of rules when giving a presentation is a sure fire way to make your presentations stale, boring and will lead to death!

However, they sort of break their own rules by giving you 12 guidelines to follow.  There are some good tips there and if you have the time check it out, but remember, you don't have to follow all of them...they're more like guidelines than actual rules.

Travis