April 22, 2008

Every week, the Sapling Foundation posts fresh TEDTalks on its Web site TED.com, bringing inspiration, innovation and new perspectives to the world. The talks include highlights from recent TED Conferences as well as videos from its archives dating back to 1984. (More details about the conference can be found here.)

Here are some of my favorite presentations from the TED archives:

Jeff Skoll
Jeff Skoll, the first president of eBay, talks about driving social change with his movie company called Participant Productions, which has produced Syriana, Good Night and Good Luck, Murderball and An Inconvenient Truth.

Besides being a very captivating story, Skoll’s speech demonstrates how to use visual slides, humor and pacing.

Some interesting concepts he talks about include “closing the opportunity gap” and “betting on good people doing good things.” The latter, which is a reference to a John Gardner (“The Great Society”) quote, refers to people using business skills to solve social problems.

Richard St. John
Marketing guru Richard St. John outlines the 8 Secret to Success in a three minute speech. He grabs the audience’s attention at the start with a compelling story about a teenage girl from a poor family who wanted to “make something of her life.” She asked St. John: what leads to success?

Although St. John’s slides have too much text, he uses good humor throughout the speech.

Patrick Awuah
Patrick Awuah, who left a comfortable life in Seattle and job at Microsoft, talks about his drive to return to his native country of Ghana to educate the next generation of African leaders through a liberal arts college he co-founded.

April 20, 2008

Making a speech or a core message of a speech stick in people’s mind can be challenging for many people. However, Dan and Chip Heath have simplified techniques for doing just that in their New York Times bestselling book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. (I blogged about one tidbit from the book in March).

The Heath brothers found that sticky, compelling, and memorable messages and ideas share six common attributes: Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotions, and Stories. The acronym is SUCCES(s). Pretty clever.

Simplicity: How do you strip an idea to its core without turning it into a silly soundbite?

Unexpectedness: How do you capture people’s attention… and hold it?

Concreteness: How do you help people understand your idea and remember it much later?

Credibility: How do you get people to believe your idea?

Emotional: How do you get people to care about your idea?

Stories: How do you get people to act on your idea?

April 15, 2008

Dick Cavett, the pioneering former talk show host with a conversational-style, gave free speech coaching advice to our presidential candidates in a March 28 New York Times article titled: Candidate, Improve Your Appearance! Since it’s a lengthy article, here are some golden nuggets.

He noted the value of hiring a comedy writer or acting coach. This very idea did wonders for Dwight D. Eisenhower, when he hired gifted film actor Robert Montgomery to help soften the president’s stiff appearance.

First, [Montgomery] hauled the president out from behind the massive presidential desk from which it was hard not to appear ponderous and had him stand in front of it. Shirtsleeves; no jacket. To cure the rigid, military upright look of a general, he had his illustrious client lean back slightly against the desk (without sitting on it) and cross his arms casually. The actor in Montgomery knew how important stance is to the way you talk.

The success of these seemingly minor adjustments was instant. Suddenly, turgid old President Eisenhower became “Ike.” A genial, avuncular fellow you might like to have over.

Further down in the article, Cavett listed three speech coaching tips to our Presidential candidates:

Tip #1. Change all “I wills” and “I shalls” from the speech to “I’ll’; Also, “I haves” and “I ams” to “I’ve” and “I’m,” etc. You’d be surprised how much this cuts down on the oratory tone.

Tip #2. Pretend you are speaking to one person. One single person. Because that’s what everybody is. No one watching or sitting in the audience is an “all of you” or an “everyone” or a “those of you” or a “Hi, everybody,” and no one is a “ladies and gentlemen.” You, out there, are a “you.” So, speaker, think of yourself as being viewed by only two eyes. (Presumably on the same person.) The most magical word you can use, short of a person’s name, is “you.”

Tip #3. I feel almost silly when I do this one, but it works. Grab a bunch of words off the prompter and, instead of staring straight ahead, glance down and to one side as you do — in real life — when thinking just what to say next. Then look back and deliver those snatched-up words to the camera. It works like a charm. (As a beloved childhood magic catalogue of mine used to say — with unintended ambiguity — “We cannot recommend this trick too highly.”)

If I were [John] McCain’s adviser I would shock everyone by having him come out carrying his script, and saying — not “ladies and gentlemen,” as we just learned, but launch right into, “You know, I don’t use these teleprompters very well. I guess I’m just not one of those people who can fool you into thinking I’m making it up as I go along . . . which these things are supposed to do. I don’t even fool myself. I cringe when I watch myself trying to bring off that ‘electronic deception,’ you might call it . . . Anyway, here’s my speech [shows it] and I’m going to read the damn thing to you. Surely I can’t make even that look phony. [slight pause] Can I?” [laughter]

April 12, 2008

If you are starting the preparation of a presentation in PowerPoint, or Apple’s Keynote, you are making the creative process far more challenging than it needs to be. Many business people and college students make this mistake.

Presentation design guru Garr Reynolds says that most professional designers – even those who have grown up on computers – do much of their planning and brainstorming on paper first.

In Reynolds’ new book Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, he notes that he spends a lot of time working out of his office in coffee shops, on park benches and on trains. Even though, he has a laptop with him nearly all the time, he prefers to use a pen and paper to privately brainstorm, explore ideas, make lists and sketch out his ideas.

“I could use the computer, but I find – as many do – that the act of holding a pen in my hand to sketch out ideas seems to have a greater, more natural connection to my right brain and allows for a spontaneous flow and rhythm for visualizing and recording ideas,” Reynolds writes.

If he’s in his office, he sketches his ideas on a whiteboard, because it allows him to freely brainstorm on a large scale. This allows him to step back and imagine how it might flow logically when slides are added later.

He says the advantage of a whiteboard or chalkboard is that it allows you to use small groups to record concepts and direction. As he jots down key points and assembles and outline and structure, he can draw quick ideas for visuals, like charts or photos, that will later appear in the slide.

He says this saves time compared to going straight into PowerPoint. That’s because if he started in PowerPoint, he would have to constantly switch from normal view to slide sorter view to see the whole picture. And by doing that, it would disrupt his natural flow of creativity in simplifying his message in his head.