Let me thank the panelists from last week’s Women and Marketing event at TECHColumbus :Joan Manter,Nancy Bohman,Amy Marshall and Padma Sastry. I won’t repeat the content of the panel discussion since Nancy has a wonderful recap on her blog. LXLMS But what I do want to explore for a moment is the notion of the panel […]
The problem with the panel Read More »
Great critical thinking, provocative storytelling, clear governing thought and memorable supporting points. All in 60 seconds. It can be done!! How so? Listen here (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/412/million-dollar-idea?act=1) to a compelling story on the ultimate 60-second elevator pitch contest that aired on This American Life last Sunday. It may make you re-think your next pitch. And email. And voicemail. And
Elevators rarely get stuck. Read More »
A year ago TED unveiled a new corporate program where “private” TEDx licenses could enable corporations to host their own internal TEDx events. The guidelines are similar to a regular TEDx event with two primary caveats- only employees can attend the live event and the videos cannot be posted to a public site. A few
Stale corporate events, no more! Read More »
Late last year when we started paying close attention to good opening hooks, we started noting those TED talks that had particularly good ones. In this 3 minute video we produced below, we’ve spliced out 6 really notable ones, and what we consider a represenative sample of the different types of hooks you can deploy. From self-deprecating
A client engaged us recently to architect a brand-new signature presentation. So we got out our very sophisticated tools: some markers, flip charts and a whole bucket of post it notes. But we find the questions we ask at every step aren’t so simple: What insight can you reveal? So what? Why will your audience
The heavy lifting is yours Read More »
Everyone has their pet peeves. I have my pet loves. Among them, really awesome opening hooks. As in, how do you grab your audience from the first words out of your mouth. That means, ‘Thank you for having me,” or, “I’m here to discuss an idea…” are no where to be heard. This week at TEDGlobal, among
Last week during one of our Influential Storytelling trainings, a participant was proud of herself for using an analogy to get a point across to the COO of her company. It was the week the Mavericks beat the Heat, and if you aren’t into sports, that meant that the basketball season was over and LeBron lost. Just
You sure you got the right analogy? Read More »
Make no mistake about it, presentations and public speaking is in my blood. I’ll just caption these two images to demonstrate my point. Exactly 100 years ago, a local club was founded – inspired by a simliar club in England founded in the 1700s. Part literary society, part salon, part bonding just for the
One of my clients called me yesterday to share how her recent presentation went. We’d spent about 6 hours together reviewing, practicing, taping, testing, editing and more. It was a 45 minute talk to a consequential group in her industry. She couldn’t retain her excitement. “So I started with that story we practiced – where
What it takes to be successfull Read More »
I was at a meeting recently with a local township official, and when I asked about what highlights we should know about his community, he left the room. He quickly and enthusiastically returned with a huge power point deck titled “State of the Township.” All I could see was page after page of bullet points.
Bullets are for guns. Read More »
