Last two months have been great. The blog has added many new readers and the total count of readers now stands at more than 1300 (RSS Feed + Email subscribers). Since many of you are new to the blog, it is only fair on my part to introduce the blog to you. Here are 5 things you should know. 1. What is my blog about? This blog is about everything related to making presentations. While I do write about PowerPoint tips once in a while, the scope of this blog is much more. I talk about presentations in general. How to plan your content, how to design the slides and how to deliver a presentation confidently. I cover all of these. 2. Who am I? My name is Vivek Singh and I am a marketer by profession. I live in Hyderabad in India. Blogging is my hobby. It is my passion to make presentations. I also keenly observe how others present and communicate. Hence a lot of posts are inspired by real life. 3. Why do I blog? My love for presentations began in IIM Ahmedabad; the place where I di...

What do most people do when asked to make a presentation. They open PowerPoint and then start thinking what to write. Even I have been a culprit of this in my early days as a presenter. Next time you have a presentation, before opening PowerPoint, make a note of these 9 things. You will do a much better job. 1. Are you spending more time on slide designing and less on thinking about what you have to say? Put substance before style. Prepare your content first. Have total clarity about what to say and how. Slide design, images, animations and templates are secondary and can be done later. 2. Your success depends on how well you think and not how well you speak . If you think well and know what to say and how to justify your arguments, most of your job is done. To do well, you need to think well. You are not bad at speaking. You speak all the time! 3. Have a goal for every speech/presentation. Why is the audience here? Have they come to learn, to be inspired or to be entertained? ...

In my last post I reviewed the book 'Confessions of a Public Speaker' . In this book, the author Scott Berkun has talked mostly about how to deliver a presentation well. In this post I share  12 lessons from his book which will help you deliver a presentation or speech better than what you do right now. 1. Do not try to be perfect on stage. You will make mistakes. Accept them, learn from them and move on. 2. No one cares about your mistakes . Audience will not even notice many of your mistakes. So you should stop worrying about your mistakes while presenting. 3. If you are giving a 10 minute talk, prepare for 8 to 9 minutes. You will take more time when you are on stage. 4. Stage fright  (fear of public speaking) is natural and every speaker faces it everyday. Use this fear to do well. When you leave a job and start a business, you are scared. You can fail. This fear propels you to do well in your business. Fear is necessary for success. 5. Practice y...

Confessions of a Public Speaker is a book on public speaking by Scott Berkun . This book comes out of the tremendous experience which Scott has gained over the years from giving hundreds of speeches and presentations. I loved reading this book as it is a fast read and full of 'practical' tips. It is highly recommended. What this books talks about? This is a book about public speaking. It does not contain tips on how to design slides. It is completely focussed on planning and delivering a speech. This book will help you overcome the fear of public speaking. It contains tips which ensure you never go completely blank in front of your audience. It also covers how to tackle a tough audience and take charge of the room. It covers the topic of audience attention and tells us when and how to capture our audience's attention. It also contains tips on how to engage an audience. This is not it. This book is based on the authors personal experience of public speaking and han...

This is the second post about the book Brain Rules by John Medina . In the last post I talked about what John Medina has to say about 'Attention' and what it means for presenters. In this post I will cover his tenth rule; 'Vision' . Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses What the book says: 1. Vision dominates all other senses. 2. Vision is the best tool to learn anything. John Medina says, "The more visual the input becomes, the more likely it is to be recognized - and recalled." This phenomenon is called the pictoral superiority effect (PSE). 3. We pay a lot of attention to moving objects. 4. We see with our brains. We see what our brain thinks is out there. The reality can be slightly different. What this means for presenters: Make our presentations more visual: John Medina clearly says that vision dominates all other senses. There are three ways our audience takes in information during our presentation; they listen , they read a...