Whenever you hear someone describe Apple CEO Steve Jobs, they often use words like “charismatic,” “showmanship” “electrifying presenter.” His presentations look so effortlessly that people often believe it’s innate.

But that’s hardly the case. Steve Jobs is no doubt one of the world’s best presenters, but that’s because he is relentless at rehearsing and refining his presentation until every aspect shines.

BusinessWeek columnist Carmine Gallo examines many aspects of Jobs’ presentation techniques as well as his tireless preparation in his new book, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience.

Gallo analyzed dozens, if not hundreds, of Steve Jobs’ keynotes and other presentations, which resulted in Gallo crafting a playbook, per se, on how you can learn similar techniques to electrify an audience.

Most speeches fall into four categories: informative, inspirational, persuasive or to entertain. Gallo notes that Jobs aims to cover at least three in every speech.

“Steve Jobs presentation is very much like a dramatic play – a finely crafted, well-rehearsed performance that informs, entertains and inspires,” Gallo writes.

Aside from delivery and preparation techniques, Gallo also covers how Jobs uses storytelling to grip his audiences as well as prepare outstanding visual slides to complement each story. No bullet points.

Related Article:
7 Tips to Sell Ideas The Steve Jobs Way

If you struggle with time management, perhaps a presentation I recently developed for a variety of audiences will be useful to you. It focuses on Goal-Oriented Time Management, and the method can be used to make your busy life more manageable, to jumpstart a career move (change) or even to develop a talent.

Zurich-based software engineer Henrico Dolfing created this very entertaining slide deck on “24 Reasons Why Twitter Sucks!” It earned first place in the Technology category of the World’s Best Presentation Contest ’09, sponsored by Slideshare.net, which ended Sept. 9. You can view all the winners in a variety of categories here.

Presentation design expert Garr Reynolds posted a fascinating blog item today about the kaizen approach to improve, or ways to continuously strive to improve your presentation skills. (BTW – many of the 15 tips can be applied in other areas of your life or career beyond public speaking.)

In his lengthy blog item, he stresses the importance of daily, continuous steps toward a goal are far more valuable than most people think.

“Tiny improvements are o.k.,” he writes. “Over the long-term, these add up to great improvements.”

Reynolds is a former Apple Computer manager, author of Presentation Zen and a marketing professor at Kansai Gaidai University in Japan. As a result, his design methods are often heavily influenced by the Japanese culture.

If you ever wondered why some presentations and keynote speakers really connect with you, it’s often because they use the power of storytelling and great images (rather than bulletpoints) that help their audiences to visualize their message.

In this fascinating Ted Talk recently posted online, information designer Tom Wujec discusses why animation, graphics and illustrations are powerful ways to create meaning for audiences emotionally.

One of the key points that drives home Tom’s message is in a slide shown half way through the talk about the fact that we make meaning by seeing. If you consider that for the next time you prepare a slide deck, remember Tom’s three points:

1. Use images to help clarify what we are trying to communicate.
2. Make the images interactive so we engage more fully
3. Augment your memory by creating a visual persistence

Google said it plans this year to release a real-time communication platform that allows people to collaborate on a project using a format called waves.

In Google Wave, you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. People on your wave can insert a reply or edit the wave directly.

It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. The company claims Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

Google has yet to announce a release date of the platform. If you’d like to be notified when its launched to the public, you can sign up here.

Tons of programs are being designed for the iPhone every day, and quite a few are making life easier for public speakers. In fact, the Top 10 most downloaded Business Apps (today, anyway, since this list may change tomorrow) includes four voice-recording programs.

Here are five iPhone apps you’ll probably find useful before your next public presentation:

Speakeasy Voice Recorder allows you to record and playback verbal notes and reminders from your iPhone’s built-in microphone. If you get a burst of inspiration for a future speech at an inconvenient time to write the speech, speak reminders into your phone.

This app sounds like the perfect program for anyone like Michael Keaton’s character in the 1982 comedy “Night Shift.” Keaton played a self-described “idea man,” who carried around a tape recorder so he could record his crackpot ideas, such as feeding mayonnaise to tuna-fish, or creating edible paper to eliminate garbage.

QuickVoice Recorder is another popular voice recorder for the iPhone, which includes a voice-to-text email feature.

Evernote allows you to capture information in a variety of environments using multiple devices or platforms (Mac, PC, etc.), and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from almost anywhere.

This program allows you to capture To-Do lists, notes and research, Web pages, twitter messages or snap photos of business cards/whiteboards/wine labels and more.

Remote Desktop, by MochaSoft, enables you to have secure access to your work computer through wifi or the phones network (EDGE). Using your iPhone, you can connect to your Windows work computer and see the files, programs, and resources exactly as you would if you were sitting at your desk… but of course, squinting on a far smaller screen.

Speech Timer: This program is designed with the Toastmaster Timer (or any longwinded public speaker) in mind. This timer app will make your iPhone vibrate or sound when the flag changes colors.

If you’re an entrepreneur with that million dollar presentation ready to go, you have three days left to apply for one of the 30 slots at the 4th Annual Launch: Silicon Valley in front of the venture capital community.

Launch: Silicon Valley 2009 is designed to uncover and showcase products and services from some of the newest startups in information technology, mobility, security, digital media, next generation internet, life sciences and clean energy.

Startups interested in presenting their products at the June 9th event at Microsoft’s Mountain View, Calif. campus should send an executive summary of no more than 2 pages to Launchsv@svase.org by the deadline of May 8.

Companies with the top 30 proposals will be invited to leverage Launch: Silicon Valley 2009 as the springboard to launch their product or service, and to network with the audience of Silicon Valley’s top movers and shakers at the Pre-L:SV Event Party on June 8, as well as at the following day’s Launch event.

If you get selected to present, you may want to read How to Be a Demo God, a blog item a few years back by Guy Kawasaki, managing director of VC firm Garage Technology Ventures, and a co-creator of Launch: Silicon Valley.

In the blog item, Kawasaki outlines the top 11 things you need to do in order to be a Demo God.

When presenters learn the importance of using PowerPoint only as a visual complement to their verbal presentation, they are often perplexed on what to leave behind for attendees to share with coworkers who were absent. Often visual slides don’t tell the whole story without the presenter’s narration.

Rick Altman, author of Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Suck, suggests preparing two presentations. But it’s not quite twice-as-much-work as it may sound.

“The one you leave behind is a printout from the Notes portion of PowerPoint,” Altman said, during a recent Presentation Camp workshop at the San Francisco office of Slideshare.net. “There’s no need to go into [MS] Word to create the document. You do it straight in PowerPoint.”

This is a very handy trick that many PowerPoint users don’t know.

In PowerPoint, click on the View menu, then click “Notes Master.” This will create two placeholders. The top one is a reduced visual of your PowerPoint slide. The bottom will be your notes, either describing the slide, or the narration of your speech that goes with that particular slide.

That’s what you print out as a leave behind.
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Side note: I have yet to read Altman’s book, Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Suck: And how you can make them better (Harvest Books, 2007), but I like the title of Chapter 6: Does PowerPoint Make You Stupid?

All public speakers should learn to grab their audiences’ attention within the first 30 seconds. One of the best ways to do that is to appeal to their emotions.

And you do this by building anticipation, said Carmen Taran, managing partner of Rexi Media, during a Presentation Camp workshop at the Slideshare.net San Francisco office yesterday.

“We love to anticipate the future,” Taran said, as she listed examples, such as things that are “new” and events that are full of “uncertainty.” As she echoed that word uncertainty, Taran flashed up a presentation slide of a tennis ball teetering on a net.

It’s hard to imagine a more effective visual.

She went on to discuss things to avoid in introductions. Things that can kill a speech opener include presenting a slide of bullet points (i.e. – agenda), lack of enthusiasm, showing a lack of preparation, and of course, self-indulgence.

“It’s much better to make (the opener) about your audience, rather than about you,” she said. “Get your audience involved early.”

Following an engaging 30 second opener, an audience’s attention will start to drift, unless the speaker shifts gears, or adds “variability,” Taran said. That’s because the audience will be craving closure, unless the story takes a turn. This closure (in psychology) is known as the Zeigarnik Effect.
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BTW: Taran is not only an engaging presentation coach and a former United Nations interpreter, but she is also a Phd candidate in psychology, according to her LinkedIn profile.