If you want your presentation skills to shine and your message to stick with your audience, you have to tell a compelling and memorable story. It also helps greatly to present it with minimal delivery or technical glitches. Here are some devices that professional speakers should carry with them to minimize these potential problems.

1. Remote Control: Using a handheld remote control to advance your slides during a presentation is important, because it allows you to move away from the podium and focus on your audience. It’s very difficult to connect with your audience if your attention is on your slides.

2. Thumb Drive, also known as a flash drive, is a thumb-size portable memory storage device. Even if you are bringing your own laptop to a presentation, it’s good to have a backup copy of your PowerPoint in your pocket and able to be plugged into someone else’s computer if and when yours crashes.

3. Wraparound (or a lapel) Mike: When speakers use a handheld mike, their gestures are often awkward, because they are using only one hand. Clipping a mike to your lapel or using a headset wraparound mike will prevent your gestures from being half-hazard.

4. Passion: This is most important, but listed last because it’s a bit abstract for a briefcase: You always need to bring your passion for the topic to the presentation. If you show that you don’t care much for the topic, why should your audience care?

1. In February, the annual TED Conference turns a quarter of a century old, and will be celebrating its 25th in its new digs in Long Beach, Calif. TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) has apparently outgrown the Monterey Convention Center – even though the conference remains by invitation-only, and the world’s mover’s and shakers hope each year they get an invite. This year’s conference will be held Feb. 3-7. Many of its best speeches can be found at Ted.com.

TED’s mission is “to spread ideas that change attitudes, lives, and ultimately the world.” Those who are asked to speak are challenged to give “the talk of his/her life” in 18 minutes.

In past posts, I’ve written about some that I have found most fascinating, such as those by storyteller Carmen Agra Deedy, former eBay president Jeff Skoll and Comedian Julia Sweeney. But it’s hard to keep up, because the conference organizers pull from their archives and post (not so) new ones online nearly every week. Well, they speeches are new to the public anyway.

2. Ignite Portland: If you had five minutes on stage, what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically rotated after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers. Ignite Portland 5 will be held on Feb. 19, 2009.

3. In August, ten Toastmaster International contestants from different parts of the world will compete for the title of World Champion of Public Speaking after surviving a six-month long process of six elimination rounds. Since 1924, Toastmasters International has grown to become a world leader in helping people become more competent and comfortable in front of an audience. The nonprofit organization has nearly 235,000 members in 11,700 local clubs in 92 countries, offering a proven way to practice and hone communication and leadership skills on a monthly, bi-monthly or evenly weekly basis.

This year’s four-day convention will be held from Aug. 12-15, in Mashantucket, Connecticut.

4. In October, Pop!Tech brings together 500 visionary thinkers in the sciences, technology, business, design, the arts, education, government and culture. It’s a three-day summit held in Camden, Maine. Famous musical conductor and renowned keynote speaker Benjamin Zander’s speech on the Art of Possibility from last year is very interesting. You can watch it here on Pop!Tech’s site or below.

Virgin empire founder Richard Branson suffers from it. So does Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers. As does Paul Orfalea, founder of the Kinko’s chain. Charles Schwab, too. And what that is, is dyslexia.

If you wonder how some entrepreneurs who struggle at reading and writing not only succeed, but thrive, it’s often the result of developing superior public speaking skills (as well as social and problem solving skills). This is one aspect outlined in a fascinating New Yorker article by Tipping Point author Malcom Gladwell published last week titled: The Uses of Adversity: Can underprivileged outsiders have an advantage?

Gladwell suggests it’s fair to compare people who rise to the top in their field while battling disabilities, like dyslexia, to those who seem often to amaze us for success after being reared in poverty, or lacking the social connections affluent families can provide.

Gladwell points to a study that found 35 percent of small business owners suffered from dyslexia, surveyed by business school professor Julie Logan.

“That’s a remarkable statistic,” Gladwell writes. “Dyslexia affects the very skills that lie at the center of an individual’s ability to manage the modern world. Yet Schwab and Orfalea… and Branson seem to have made up for their disabilities in the same way that the poor, in [Dale] Carnegie’s view, can make up for their poverty.”

Another fascinating stat Gladwell points to came out of a study conducted in Britain. It found that 80 percent of dyslexic entrepreneurs had held the position of captain of a high school sport, versus 27 percent of non-dyslexic entrepreneurs.

“They compensated for their academic shortcomings, by developing superior social skills, and when they reached the workplace, those compensatory skills gave them an enormous head start,” Gladwell writes.

Gladwell’s New Yorker article comes on the heels of his new book, Outliers: The Story of Success, which hits bookstores today.

More about Malcom Gladwell and his books:

The Malcom Gladwell Effect, from the New York Times, Feb. 5. 2006

Secrets of Their Success: Fortune Magazine’s Q & A with Malcom Gladwell, Nov. 18, 2008

Gladwell TV Interview on The Colbert Report, Nov., 17, 2008

I recently stumbled upon a Michael Jordan Nike ad that tells a story with a powerful punch line using similar techniques speechwriters use to inspire an audience. Watch the video below (or here). Below the video, I break down the technique.

About the message: Of course, the story here is that persistence and perseverance eventually pays off if you never quit. If you quit after a disastrous first public speaking engagement, you will never succeed.

About the technique: After stating three examples of failures (9,000 missed shots, 300 lost games & missing 26 game-winning shots), the message is accentuated by the pause just before Jordan says: “And that’s why I succeed.”

If a speech with that type of punch line is delivered correctly, the most powerful part of the speech is not actually any part during the speech, but rather the moment after: when the audience is silently sitting there contemplating what they had just heard.

Speechwriters can learn a lot from the ad industry.

We’ve all done it. Been reviewing a handout during a presentation, and missed a punch line that led to a roaring laughter. “What did he say?” you had to ask someone next you.

Your goal as the presenter should be to engage each and every member of your audience, not just a certain percentage, but all of them. And it’s nearly impossible to do that with audience members who are multi-tasking.

Just because you may see some presenters distribute handouts at the start, doesn’t mean it’s a Best Practice. Some may think they are doing their audiences a favor, so the audience doesn’t have to take as many notes.

But here’s a better solution: Tip them off early in the talk by saying: “Not to worry, there will be handouts distributed after the presentation. Therefore, you don’t have to take any notes. So just relax and listen. The handout will include my email, in case you have further questions that aren’t addressed in the handout.”

As this NBC News segment reports regarding the “myth of multi-tasking,” the human brain can only do so much.

If you use one, you know how simple and so discreet it is. If you don’t, your audience notices how indiscreet it is. They may even shift their focus to check their watch as you fumble through to the next slide. And of course, that’s the last thing you want to have happen.

Purchasing a handheld remote to advance slides during a presentation is money well spent. It allows you to move away from the podium and keep your eyes where they should be – connecting with your audience.

It also makes you look far more professional.

Children’s book author and storyteller Carmen Agra Deedy defines great storytelling as “the art of letting go.” That element is pertinent to any public speaker, whether you are a keynoter, CEO leading an All Hands corporate meeting or a salesperson giving a PowerPoint presentation.

Storytelling engages an audience. In fact, in Deedy’s very funny TED Conference speech about connecting with her Cuban mother, she precedes the talk by pointing out that when Lexis wants to sell you a car, it engages you by telling a story in its commercials.

As you’ll see in this TED.com video below, Deedy is a vivid storyteller. It’s not only because she’s a talented writer, but she’s also very effective in using techniques that great speakers use to add power to their speeches, such as vocal variety and energetic body language. She doesn’t just tell the story. She relives the story by breaking into character dialogue.

It’s often quite noticeable when someone did all the preparation of a PowerPoint presentation in PowerPoint, rather than outlining the main points offline first in storyboard fashion. The problem with starting in PowerPoint (as demonstrated in the first slide) is that it often hinders our ability to think visually (like in slide or picture #2), to see the big picture and design a story that flows from one key point to the next.

Marketing guru Seth Godin noted in his blog yesterday the importance of not getting hung up on the small things, (i.e. – typeface or typos), at least not until you’ve challenged yourself to reinvent the project.

Read the post here.

When you see a standup comic, such as Robin Williams, rattle off hundreds of one-liners in the course of a 30-60 minute performance, you often leave the show thinking that was hilarious, but I don’t remember any of the jokes.

If you are a public speaker, that’s not what you want your audience thinking as they leave your presentation (maybe the “hilarious” part, but of course, you want them remembering at least parts of your speech).

A friend of mine recently gave a speech loaded with great examples to illustrate his speech premise. In fact, in the course of his seven-minute speech, he used so many examples (5, 6, maybe even 10), I lost track. Not only that, I hardly remembered any of them.

To make your speech memorable, it’s best to wrap a story around your key points. People remember stories, but bullet points are often lost on them moments after the speech ends, if not sooner.

If you have multiple examples to illustrate a key point, choose the most powerful example and run it through the Sinatra Test, a phrase that comes from the book, Made to Stick (which I wrote about here).

Stories stick in people’s minds. And best of all, stories can have the power to make people act.

Speechwriters and those who give presentations strive, or at least should strive, to help their audiences visualize a story or concept. If you’ve seen bad PowerPoint presentations, the speaker did not have that in mind when s/he flashed up slide after slide of mind-numbingly boring text. As I’ve written several times before, if slides are used in a speech, they should aim to only compliment the speech by providing visuals and only minimal text.

This concept is well illustrated in Dan Roam’s new book, The Back of the Napkin. In it, he argues that a simple drawing can be more powerful than any excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation.

Below is a video that outlines the concept further.