Posts tagged as:

audience first

Confidence, Fear, Likeability

July 6, 2007

Link roundup: podcast on confident speaking; blogs entry on fear and likeability… Blogging and Beyond: Public Speaking with Confidence Patsi and Denise interview Guest Expert: Dr. Larina Kase, co-author of The Confident Speaker. LOVE Larina’s points about being good at your own individual style of speaking, and agree strongly with the myths she busts. But? [...]

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It’s the network, silly

July 6, 2007

“Networking” Presentations. Whatever your role, building and maintaining an effective network matters. You do this through lots of little routine, everyday “presentations” to the people you meet/know/knew/used to work with/etc. You do not do this by asking big favors or playing remora. You do this by focusing on (together now) your audience and your business [...]

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Contribute. Matter. [oops]

June 20, 2007

Instant classic. Garr distills out two essential questions every presenter must be able to answer. He connects Marty Neumeir’s Brand Gap work to presentations through one of my pet concepts: We can, more or less, read about what you do and who you are, but why it matters? Why we should care? That’s going to [...]

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The truth about Ventures and Capitalists

June 9, 2007

Starting a business? Go subscribe to Marc Andreessen’s feed. Now. So, you’re an entrepreneur. And you think you want Venture Capital. Because, you’re a venture. And you need capital. Right? Marc Andreessen, stepping profoundly onto the blogging stage just this past week, has written an eloquent pair of posts on the truth about venture capitalists. [...]

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Save 4 million babies a year.

June 7, 2007

While you have their attention, get to the point. The “ah-ha” moment. Connect them with what you’re doing and why it matters, preferably on an emotional or visceral level.The winner of a May Entrepreneur Idol pitching contest at Stanford swats it out of the park: Linus Liang, 25, a first-year graduate student in computer science, [...]

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Great Meetings Mean Business

May 30, 2007

Top meeting frustration? Keep motormouths idle (print subscription required). Boston Business Journal reports Opinion Research USA’s findings about what makes meetings suck: disorganized, rambling meetings interruptions cell phones BBJ readers express peeves from motormouths to disorganized meeting leaders, all amounting to “wasted time”. Every word you speak in a meeting is a presentation. The art [...]

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Kick it, don’t kiss it.

May 23, 2007

Read this blog and you’ll see a lot about audience + objective = message, what that means, and why it’s important for ALL presentations (from an outgoing voice message to a giant keynote). This post is about what that focus on the audience doesn’t mean. Putting the audience “first” is not pandering. You’re not up [...]

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Startup Your Life

May 21, 2007

Check out Ben Casnocha’s new book, My Startup Life. The more I read Ben’s ideas and see what he puts into things, the more I believe Chris Sacca’s (Google) blurb for the book — that sooner or later we’re all going to work for Ben. This book will be big. Be the first in your [...]

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Presentations: whose time is it anyways?

May 17, 2007

Ben Casnocha book excerpt on your personal brand: I once spent two hours strategizing with my friend Tim over my one-minute introduction at a big meeting. We analyzed what I wanted to communicate, the dynamics of the room, the needs of the other people, and so forth. Tim and I knew this one minute would [...]

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The Presentation is NOT The Meeting

March 16, 2007

How many meetings consist mostly of lengthy (or if you’re really unlucky, multiple lengthy) presentations that end with mere summary points and the great relief of the audience, who then dashes for the door? For gods’ sakes, why? Your presentation is a LEAD-IN to an effective meeting. End by jump-starting one. The more important the [...]

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