I posted the book review of How to deliver a TED talk recently. While the book review talked about the book in general, in this post I share with you five lessons from the book. These five things will help you improve your next speech/presentation. #1 Choosing a topic for your talk You have been asked to give a speech or make a presentation. You have to choose one topic and give a 10 minute talk. What do you speak about? You want to inspire your audience and want to share a story. Which story will you share? Don't ask yourself 'What is the most amazing story I can tell?' Ask yourself 'What is the greatest lesson I have learned?' or 'What is the greatest joy/misery I have experienced?' This will guide you a much better topic to speak on. Once you have found it out, encapsulate the topic into one core message. The crux of what you will speak about. Once you have a single message, build a story around it. #2 Connecting with your audience You want your...

I received a free copy of this book 'How to deliver a TED talk' from Jeremey Donovan and finished it super fast. The best part about the book is that it has got only 107 pages. So if you have to deliver a talk in a few days time, just pick up a copy of the book and within hours you will get lots of ideas to improve your talk. In this review I cover the contents of the book, who is this book for, how good is the book and what are its drawbacks. I recommend the book for speakers who are preparing for their first TED talk or any other short speech or talk . If you are a veteran speaker, skip this one. Contents of the book 1. How to choose a topic? 2. How to make it memorable? 3. How to get introduced? 4. How to open your talk? 5. How to construct the body of your talk? 6. How to conclude your talk? 7. How to tell stories? 8. How to verbally deliver your talk? 9. How to add humour? 10. How to deliver your talk (gesture & body language)? 11. How to create visu...

Why do stories appeal to us? Stories are how we experience life and how we store the experiences. Yesterday is a story. Tomorrow is a story. Stories are how we connect with ourselves, with the world and with life itself. There is therefore an intrinsic appeal in sharing stories. The medium of sharing varies. Sometimes it is print (books) sometimes multi-media (movies) and sometimes sheer oral medium.  Oral storytelling invites you to journey through time and space simply using the power of the listener’s mind to creatively visualize and craft almost-real experiences. It is such a fascinating and magical trip that it becomes infectiously engaging. Experts say we should say stories in our presentations to engage people. But most people don’t know how? Communication experts the world-over wholeheartedly advocate employing the potential of storytelling in all rungs of the corporate ladder. What is being recommended is not just including ‘stories’ but imbibing ‘telling……storytelli...

Icon Finder is a easy to use website where you can get good quality icons for your presentations. The user interface is simple (like Google). Click here to visit the website. Type in the keyword (search term). You get a list of icons from which you can choose. Few years back I made a presentation for a technology company and needed small icons of computers. Let's say if I needed it today. I can go to icon finder, type in computer and I can choose from various images. What about license? We can filter these images and choose 'Allowed for commercial use (No link required)' . You can now use these images and don't have to provide a link as well. You can also forget about any license infringement. However, I suggest providing a link wherever possible to promote a site which gives you cool stuff for free. To filter by license, look at the drop down menu at the top right corner of the page. We can also filter images by size and background colour . These options ...

In his popular book The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs , Carmine Gallo shares techniques which made Steve Jobs a great presenter. The Steven Spielberg of presentations is what Gallo calls Steve Jobs. So what made Steve Jobs great? The answer is simple. While most other professionals share information in their presentation, Jobs created an experience. An experience which left his audience informed, entertained and thrilled. You too can rise above the ordinary and present much better if you follow what Steve used to do. The book is divided into three parts; Create your story , Deliver the experience and Refine & Rehearse . I have carefully chosen 15 things which you can start doing immediately. If you are excited by what you read next, go ahead and buy the book. It's worth it. I give it 5 stars out of 5 because the book is full of practical ideas which can be used by any one of us. 1. Plan in analog: Steve Jobs never started with the software and neither should we. St...

Sometime back I received an email from a reader Renee . She wanted a ready-made Sponsorship Proposal Template something which can help her make proposal quickly and ensure she is not missing out on anything important. Since I did not have one already and could not find anything fast on Google, I decided to make one. This one is a basic template which ensures you cover all that is important in your sponsorship proposal presentation.  You can view it below and download (for free) this template from slideshare . Sponsorship Proposal Template View more documents from Vivek Singh Here are the headers for your ready reference. Your sponsorship proposal presentation must cover the following: 1. Basic information about the event (what/when/where) 2. About the organiser and their credential (and experience) 3. Who is the target audience (who is going to attend the event)? 4. How will you market the event so as to ensure the target audience comes? 5. What are the benefits...

We all know we should not be verbose. We should be able to say 'more' using 'less' words. But what if you are by nature verbose? I am actually a person who tends to speak more. I use more words in my day to day conversations (at times I repeat myself as well :-). I write so much in my diary that I need many diaries in one year. Luckily I am not verbose with my slides because I know that doesn't work. If you are verbose by nature and you are giving a speech, you will always end up speaking more. That's your nature and its tough to change yourself overnight. When you speak more, you will speak many not-so-important stuff. How can you then cut down the number of words you use in your speech? There is one technique I know of and its simple. The trick is to condition yourself over time. Force yourself to use less words. Example, If you use a big size notebook or diary, buy a smaller size diary. Something very small like size A6 (around 6 inch by 4 inch)....

Few weeks back I attended three back to back presentations. Three different agencies were pitching for our business. This post of mine is about 'how much time should you talk about your company in a pitch presentation?' It is applicable  to all sorts of presentations. These agencies could have been advertising agencies, social media marketing agencies, outdoor agencies or any other agency. Whenever you are pitching for someone's business you will have to share something about your own company. How much to talk about your company? Talk only what is important and relevant in the presentation and give a small handout about your company for anyone who wants to know more. Share what is important and puts your organisation in the right light. In this case, the agency could talk about: Basic information about the company (one slide) - offices, services, started in... What's special about the company (one slide) - what makes you special and desirable? Top clients (...

Slidevana is a collection of 140+ ready-made slides which aims to make life easy for presenters. I received a free copy of Slidevana sometime back and was asked to review it. So here is my take on this rather new stuff. My initial reaction to Slidevana was "will people pay for this"? Slidevana costs $69 (Rs. 3650). Not a very hefty amount. But that's not the point. You have some ready-made slides and you can copy paste them onto a new slide deck and start editing them. Kind of saves your time preparing and designing slides. Overall I am a bit sceptical. Unless you are poor at PowerPoint you should not be needing such a product. Just take out some time and design your own slides. But then I know of many people (mostly senior in age) who are not good at PowerPoint and might want to check this product out. What does Slidevana contain? Slidevana comes in two themes; Light background and Dark background. Both have the same set of slides but only the colour varies. ...