Speaking up without freaking out is a special book for presenters. It talks about only one thing; how to reduce your anxiety (nervousness) before a presentation and while presenting. I received a free review copy of the book from Matt Abrahams (the author). Matt Abrahams shares 35 techniques to help reduce your nervousness. Why so many? The assumption being you can pick up techniques which you feel apply to you. What's inside? The book is divided into 5 chapters. 1) What is speaking anxiety? 2) Why we feel anxious before a presentation and how to deal with it? 3) How to better remember your presentation content? 4) How to stop some self-defeating beliefs which increase your anxiety? 5) How to put all this learning together? There is an interesting thing about the source of anxiety in this book. If you are anxious about making a presentation, it can be due to many reasons. One, you do not have the skill. Two, you have come to associate public speaking as something ...

My last post was about how to go about making a company profile presentation. We have to start with our goal and write everything that can be shared about the company. We then eliminated not to important stuff and designed the final slides. What I did not cover in the post are the most common mistakes I have come across in most profile presentations. #1 Focus too much on the company and too less on the audience While it is true that the corporate profile presentation is meant to talk about the company, it does not mean you talk stuff which makes no sense to your audience. Your audience is asking itself; 'What's in it for me?'. Every slide in your presentation needs to be of use and interest to the audience. Why should they know this about you? It is a common practice to have 'Mission, Vision and Values' in corporate profile presentations. 99% of the companies in the world have nothing unique to say here. It's all the same stuff. Every company's purpo...

A company profile presentation is an introductory presentation about your company. These PPTs are generally found on company websites and are shared with prospective customers, new joinees, etc. This post describes how to make a corporate profile presentation for your company. I developed this technique recently when I was making a corporate profile presentation. Step - 1: What is your goal and who is your audience ? Step - 2: Write down all the topics  you can talk about? Step - 3: Write down everything you want to say under each topic. Step - 4: Group common topics together Step - 5: Prioritise (Eliminate not-so-important topics and  content under each topic) Step - 6: Organise the flow of topics Step - 7: Design the slides Step - 1: Your objective & your audience The first step in making our corporate profile presentation is to understand why we are making it. What do we want to achieve and for whom are we making it. If you want to ma...

Last week I did something for the first time in my life. I was the master of ceremony at a press conference. The master of ceremony (also called emcee ) is the host. The person who welcomes everyone at the start and calls upon people to speak. This post is basically how I felt being the emcee and how I prepared for the new role. The Preparation Though an emcee is not a speaker at the press conference, he/she still does a lot of speaking. That is why it becomes necessary to prepare. It is the emcee who holds the entire event together and it important that the role is carried out well. Step - 1 Flow of Events The first thing I did was to decide the flow of events at the press conference. The flow of events was made and shared with everyone concerned. The speakers and the people backstage need to know what happens when. This is how the flow looked like: Welcome all -> Invite the three speakers on the dais -> Introduce the speakers one by one and call them to speak...

I am a regular reader of Trak.in . It is an excellent website to keep track of all business and technology news in India. They have carried this news today: Google beats Microsoft to Become World's 2nd Most Valued Tech Company . If you read the news you will come across a chart. A simple bar graph which compares the market valuation of these two companies. At first, I did not see it coming. Then something stuck me. Looking at the chart, it really looks like Google has surged ahead. You see the gap between the height of Google's bar versus Microsoft's bar. Now read the figures. Google is 249.13 and Microsoft is 247.23. Just a difference of 2 points on the chart. What is happening here? You would have seen by now that the vertical Y-axis starts at 246. Hence the difference is so sharp. If you make the chart again and start the Y-axis from 0, here is what you get: No fun any more, right? What is right? As a rule, the axis must start from zero. Otherwise, y...