On July 23rd 2014 at 4:00 p.m. the remains of victims of the Malaysian Airline Flight 17 disaster began arriving in Eindhoven in the Netherlands. It is suspected that the flight was shot down by a surface to air missile while flying over the Ukraine. The majority of the victims were from the Netherlands, many from the Eindhoven area. At that time, that day, I was in the middle of giving a presentation design workshop in Eindhoven. The day of the workshop I got a ride with Leon (the host and organizer) to the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven (the High Tech Campus is sometimes called the Silicon Valley of… Read More
Continue ReadingMind the Gap
Those first few moments of your presentation are critical. Gaps/delays between speakers, or a gap between your introduction and the start of your presentation can result in the audience’s attention wandering. I was at a conference recently in which there was a delay between the speaker introduction and the beginning of the presentation … for every lecture! Following the introduction, the presenter had to wait for the first slide, or find their own presentation on the computer desktop and open the PowerPoint file. It was like the curtain going up and having no one on stage. One thing that a speaker can do in this situation is to make sure the… Read More
Continue ReadingIs this thing on?
Have you ever been to a presentation in which the presenter struggled with using a microphone? Maybe their voice faded in and out, or there was background noise, or maybe you were distracted by the presenter’s own discomfort? Here is some helpful tips so that you can avoid some of the mic pitfalls. As a presenter there are generally three microphone (mic) types that you may encounter: the podium mic, the handheld mic, and the wireless lapel mic (sometimes referred to a lavalier mic). The least favorable type from an audience engagement perspective is the podium (lectern) mic. The podium is a visual/physiological barrier between you and your audience and… Read More
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