Have you ever had to introduce a speaker? Or have you ever been introduced to an audience by someone else?

If so, you’ll know that some intros are good, some are not so good, and some are cringe-making. But what lies behind this little-understood art? Let’s look at some different approaches.

Just as short farewells are said to be the best, the brief introduction is usually a smart move. For one thing, it avoids the pitfalls the longer ones can fall into. A simple, “This is Joe Bloggs, he is the CEO of Blogs-R-Us and he’s going to talk to us about how to write a successful blog” really does what it needs to do, without taking all day about it.

But some people can’t resist trying to improve on perfection, so let’s look at the other options.

The slightly extended intro can work reasonably well: talking a little about the speaker’s career, perhaps. As long as you keep it fairly short, this approach will be fine, and some of the audience may welcome the additional information.

The long player is the hallmark of someone who has researched the speaker in great depth – and can’t bear to leave any of it out. This sort of thing may be interesting to the person delivering it, but seldom is to the audience. It’s even less so to the speaker. If you’re listening to a long preamble about yourself, what do you do during that time? Should you look interested, humble, flattered? Holding any of those expressions for over a minute is a real strain.

The epic gives every detail of the speaker’s life – or so it can seem to the listeners. This vast list of information is, frankly, a bore. It’s also hard to recapture the audience’s attention after all that stodge. With this intro, and the long player, the phrase “less is more” is always worth bearing in mind (at the planning stage).

The accolade is prone to build up expectations, almost always in an unrealistic way unless you are a Nobel laureate or someone at the peak of your profession – as well as being a riveting orator. Following that with anything short of the “I have a dream” speech or the Gettysburg Address can quickly deflate the audience – and the speaker. Furthermore, accolades are often epics as well: a double whammy.

The superlative should be left well alone. Some introducers feel obliged to say (or imply) that the speaker is the best in his or her field. Again, this usually sets up expectations that will not be fulfilled. If the speaker really is the best, everyone in the audience will know this anyway. Would you introduce Bill Gates as “the best-known name in computing”? I thought not.

Misplaced humour. A touch of fun can lighten up an intro, but it needs to be really humorous, not just something the introducer thinks is. As always, testing it out on someone beforehand is a wise move. Anything insulting, coarse, overly personal or crude is likely to offend far more people than it amuses.

Avoiding the worst of these blunders will make for happier audiences. After all, they didn’t come to hear the introduction, but the talk itself.

By David Vickery

It is set up as one page per month and each box has enough room for you to write in your own events.

You could even print a copy off and use it as a family organiser.

Look out for more versions of our calendars and diaries in the coming weeks….

Listed below is a complete set of all the regular polygons.  We have also included the technical name (based on Greek numbers) for each one.

Triangle – 3 sides
Square – 4 sides
Pentagon – 5 sides
Hexagon – 6 sides
Heptagon – 7 sides
Octagon – 8 sides
Nonagon – 9 sides
Decagon – 10 sides
Hendecagon – 11 sides
Dodecagon – 12 sides
Tridecagon – 13 sides
Tetradecagon – 14 sides
Pentadecagon – 15 sides
Hexadecagon – 16 sides
Heptadecagon – 17 sides
Octadecagon – 18 sides
Enneadecagon – 19 sides
Icosagon – 20 sides
Unknown – 24 sides

These could be used to teach children about mathematical or geometric shapes, polygons, or could simply be used as shapes to cut out.  This is the perfect accompaniment to our set of stars.

At first sight, not much.  But an article I read recently posed the question, “Does ‘Tiger’ Woods wait for the day of the golfing tournament to begin practising?”

Obviously not.  This man is the epitome of practising.  Mr Woods, currently ranked no.1 in the world, has won 14 major golf championships.  He’s had more career major wins and career PGA Tour wins than any other golfer playing today.  He was the youngest ever player to achieve the career Grand Slam.  He was the highest-paid professional athlete in the world last year.

The list goes on. But what’s the message behind it?

The message is that preparation is vital.

Yes, obviously, “Tiger” Woods has talent.  Bucketloads of it.  He would never have become a great player without it. But talent alone is not enough.  Preparation is essential to hone that ability and ensure it performs on the day.

That’s a salient point for presentations.  Many of them might have lots of bright ideas behind them: but if they’re not sufficiently prepared for, they’re apt to fall flat.

There are traps waiting at every curve for the unprepared preparation.  For one thing, it’s likely that the presentation won’t be as good as you think it is.  Preparation allows you to smooth out the bumps and creases, improve the flow, add to the variety and pacing of it.

Again, not preparing properly may lead you to over-emphasise content and focus less on delivery.  Many, many presenters fall into this one: they’re still working on what to put in or what to leave out at the last minute.  Leaving no time to practise how they’re going to say it.  That means no thought for using props, moving around the room, body language, engaging the audience, asking questions to provoke response, and so on.

Good preparation also gives time for feedback.  Is the presentation really on the ball, or could it be tightened up in places?  Recording yourself and playing it back is a good strategy, as is delivering it to a friend and asking for comments.  A fresh mind is likely to spot things you’ve missed or just aren’t aware of.  And if you do that before the day, you’ll still have time to change it.

Perhaps some people feel that preparation is somehow going to stifle creativity, the adrenalin flow of brilliance.  I don’t agree. It’s a lot easier to be brilliant when you’ve prepared for it.

As with a lot of old proverbs, the phrase “practice makes perfect” has a lot of truth in it.

But let’s leave the last word to Mr Woods.  As he rightly says, “You can always become better.”

By David Vickery

It includes four men, three women and two children.  You could use them for mug shots, or an identity parade.  They could be used as placeholders for winners of a competition.

Keywords – Backlit, Head Shape, Human Head, Mug Shot, outline, People, Silhouette, Unrecognisable Person, clip art

Jes Breslaw, EMEA Marketing at Workshare, discusses why his company is delighted but unsurprised at the appreciation PowerPoint users are expressing on the launch of its new Comparison product, aptly named Compare for PowerPoint.

Last month’s launch of Windows 7 should remind us all of the ongoing ubiquity and power of Microsoft and just how much it has become an integral part of our working lives. Office 2010 is the next big release from Microsoft and will do things its Office ancestors could only have dreamed of. One change, unlike previous releases, is that PowerPoint is set to play more of a starring role. This is not surprising, given that these days it is used by many enterprises, organisations and even consumers, not just as a core presentation aid but as the means to create, distribute and share information. Yet even with all the fabulous new features Office 2010 will bring, one of the biggest bugbears with PowerPoint will remain – the editing and review process.

Word has been able to track changes for years and has a whole category of supporting products like our own Workshare Professional that enable efficient and detailed comparison between document versions. PowerPoint has never been able to offer its users this level of management control and productivity gains. The danger of missing changes and the time it takes to decipher comments and amendments seriously weakens one of our most useful and trusted tools.

Collaboration or contamination?

One MD of a London-based marketing services agency has first-hand experience of this. Over 90 per cent of his initial contact with clients involves the use of some sort of presentation or slide deck.  He recalls an occasion where a mismanaged approach to revisions made on his presentation caused him significant problems.

“I remember one example where I was pitching to a new prospect, and was totally thrown by two changes made by a member of my team that I didn’t see when I was doing a final review,” he recalls.   “We didn’t win that contract – and I still wonder if that’s because we let ourselves down with what they must have seen as a lack of professionalism.”

Maintaining integrity, improving productivity

If we have mechanisms in place to keep on top of changes in our word-processing work, should we not give the same courtesy to our presentations? Many organisations frown on allowing multiple instances of fiscal spreadsheets to float around. Yet until now we have been unable to take the same precautions with PowerPoint when communicating our expertise, value proposition, arguments and teaching.

To make the process of collaboration much more watertight without being overly time consuming, we need a better way of comparing and validating the work we do with other people’s content.

Co-authoring and collaboration tools such as Microsoft SharePoint can provide some capabilities for working on documents collectively within a group, but for situations where a document has to be reviewed by many, where greater control is a requirement or specific ownership needs to be applied to the review process, a different approach is called for.

This is particularly the case for the many users of PowerPoint in professional services, sales and marketing, or management positions, where maintaining ownership over authored documents is important for a whole host of reasons.  Audit trails may be a strict business requirement or part of a necessary compliance process.  Content being incorporated is also more likely to be of a confidential nature.  In these cases, ensuring data integrity is protected and that content remains accurate is important throughout the review process, as are stringent checks that the correct people have vetted any changes made to the document.

It is this requirement for greater control and management over document revisions that drove the development of Compare for PowerPoint. Where this differs from some of the other collaborative software solutions available is that it effectively treats collaboration as a workflow process rather than a free-for-all opportunity to participate in a working presentation.  As a result, authors have the ability to manage sequential versions and can compare changes that have been made and finalise amendments in a more structured fashion. The emphasis is on driving efficiency and making the process of document assessment as easy and as streamlined as possible.

By streamlining the review, check and comment procedures, those participating in the presentation review process can save considerable time.  This is especially beneficial where there are multi-party review cycles.  As a result the team operates more effectively and productivity is increased, proposals can be completed in faster time, the business can be more responsive to third parties and the time required by individuals to check documents can be significantly lowered.

By applying a more structured approach, businesses can alleviate risk by catching inaccuracies in presentations and can maintain quality control.  This provides additional protection over compliance responsibilities and safeguards the presentation of sensitive information, which is critical to business reputation and professionalism.

In short, we can finally apply the experience and best practice learned from Word comparison to PowerPoint. By adopting an automated way of managing changes in PowerPoint we can spend less time manually comparing presentations and focus more on the content. Move over Word and Excel – PowerPoint is finally standing up for its rights!

Isn’t it funny how technology can seem state-of-the-art one minute and clunky the next?

Anyone old enough to remember the original mobile phones will know what I mean. They were bulky, awkward to handle, the size of a brick and almost as heavy; a far cry from today’s streamlined dreams.

Videotapes seemed pretty cool when they first came out. But then there were DVDs, allowing you to go instantly to the precise scene you wanted, without laboriously winding or rewinding tape. They also never spilled their guts out or got caught in the machine.

The same evolution can be seen in presentations. First there was the blackboard, then the flipchart, then the overhead projector. (That probably seemed cool when it first came out, but it really wasn’t – especially if you were standing next to it.)

Next came PowerPoint, which was of course a mighty leap forward compared to all that stuff.

But there’s never a final word in technology. There’s always something else waiting in the wings. And in today’s world, it usually doesn’t have to wait long.

There’s a new piece of kit on the market called Prezi, which describes itself as the zooming presentation tool. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s worth checking out at www.prezi.com.

Harvard Business called it “Insanely great” (which I think is a compliment), while Technology Madness described it as “a wow” (which definitely is).

This raises two questions. What’s different about it? And will it make other presentation tools look as outdated as top-loading VCRs?

The first question is easy to answer. Prezi is a nonlinear tool that allows you to create presentations in a more interesting way. Instead of building up through slides, Prezi allows you to present an overview, go down to features and then further down to focus on details, all on one big ‘canvas’. And it can also let you publish your presentation on the web.

Link to http://prezi.com/oezslt5tzqub/

As to the second question, that’s much more difficult. We all know that the history of technology is littered with numerous electronic equivalents of the dodo. Some of these ideas looked good at the time, like Betamax video, for example. But for one reason or another, they ended up in the elephant’s graveyard.

Will Prezi be fit enough to survive, and even displace rivals like PowerPoint? It does have a lot going for it: in the hands of a boring presenter, PowerPoint’s linear approach, all boxes and straight lines, can be a turn-off. Prezi is eye-catching, and some students and audiences have really taken to it.

On the negative side, its controls are different, and although they can be learned in ten minutes, according to the makers, they do take some getting used to. And the way it whizzes around the screen could be distracting rather than enhancing for some messages.

Link to http://prezi.com/gxnef5on5xzr/

I don’t think Prezi will be consigning PowerPoint to history; PowerPoint is too useful for that, and in the right hands, certainly not boring. But Prezi does offer some interesting approaches that might be worth trying out.

In the end, of course, the users will decide. So why not check it out today and see what you think?

Thanks to Kevin McAllister at the University of Washington, Seattle who brought this to our attention.

By David Vickery

Perfect for your Halloween and Bonfire Night parties!

José A Bowen, a dean at Southern Methodist University near Dallas, Texas, found himself in the news in July when he challenged his colleagues to present ”naked”.

This might seem an unlikely cause for an academic to espouse (especially a Methodist).

It turns out, however, that he was merely calling for technology – laptops, handhelds and particularly PowerPoint – to be taken out of the lecture room. Such things are distracting, said Bowen, and get in the way of the message the teacher is trying to put across.

This idea has since gathered support, particularly in America. Bowen claimed that many professors were using PowerPoint as a crutch rather than as a creative tool. It was also discouraging debate and interaction in the lecture room.

Is Bowen right? And if so, should his prescription apply to business presentations too?

There’s no doubt that presentations can be dull. The chances are that you’ve sat through one of them in the not too distant past. But I don’t think it’s the fault of PowerPoint.

There’s an old adage in my profession that seems apt. It says that there are no boring subjects – only boring writers. In the same way, I’d claim that there are no boring presentations, only boring presenters.

PowerPoint is a fantastic and powerful presentation tool, and ejecting it from meetings really would seem to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. After all, if someone was playing the piano in a boring way, you wouldn’t ban pianos. But you might suggest that person could learn to play the piano better.

I think that’s the key. PowerPoint is a great tool, but nothing more than a tool. It won’t make boring presentations interesting. The answer is to use it more creatively.

For instance, some people have complained that they can’t see the faces of their audience when PowerPoint is running. Well, there’s no rule that says you can’t turn it off now and then, is there?

In the same way, it’s perfectly possible to move away from the screen, engage with the audience, ask them questions, have debates, and all the other things Bowen was advocating. These things will help make your presentation better – and so can PowerPoint.

PowerPoint can do things that older technologies couldn’t imagine. You only have to think of chalk boards or overhead projectors to appreciate that.

Perhaps the answer, then, is to keep PowerPoint but liven up the presentation in other ways. To use it as it was intended: as an aid, not a crutch.

In other words, maybe presenting “half naked” would be a better idea.

By David Vickery

Here is a selection of stars in clip art format.  They are all vector images, so they can be stretched and magnified.  They can also be coloured in.  We have some with rounded corners and some that are also 3d.  There is a Star of David clip art as well.

We have included at the end some large shapes so that you can get the kids to cut them out.  You could print them on coloured card and use them as star decorations.