I must admit that we have recorded webinars that used more than one of these presentation tricks. That can result in ‘Death by Webinar!’

Life After Death with PowerPoint By Don McMillan

Tags: effective presentations, funny, PowerPoint, Web Seminars.

This post is in response to a few questions that came up offline related to GTD and how we implemented this approach.

For the past decade I have primarily used Outlook to manage my activities. However, when I reached 1000 emails in my inbox, some of which were 12 months old, I knew I had to change. My organization system was failing me.

There are a wealth of resources and fans of the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology online. (For the uninitiated, visit Wikipedia for a good overview.)

I’m convinced that the developers at Google had GTD in mind when they designed Gmail.  We use Google Apps for email and I don’t miss Outlook at all. We also selected a web-based tool, Nozbe, that implements this methodology and gives us access to tasks and projects from any computer, anytime. It works on our iPhones too. I highly recommend it.

GTD and these tools make us better event managers and presenters.

Here are some good resources and blogs that go further on this topic:

David Allen’s Official GTD Blog

Merlin Mann’s 43Folders

Zen Habits GTD Resource List

Nozbe

Happy browsing!

Bill

Tags: business practice, event management, GTD.

The quote ‘Make it easy for people to talk about you’ says it all.

I had the opportunity last year to meet Andy Sernovitz when he spoke at the Silicon Valley AMA. (Coreography recorded this event for the SVAMA and you can view it online – jump to slide 78 in the index. Guy Kawasaki gives his typically entertaining presentation right after.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: event recordings, Marketing, Promotion, replays, word of mouth marketing.

If your like me, your first response to the use of storytelling in your presentations is to roll your eyes.

You got facts, figures and bullet points to share. You don’t have time for stories.

Well, after listening, producing and delivering hundreds of presentations, I can confidently state that the best presenters always use stories to make their point.

Still not convinced?  Listen to a pro…

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: effective presentations, storytelling.

eMarketer just reported that experienced Internet users give more weight to the information they find on the web than that shared by personal contacts.

What are the implications?

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Tags: Marketing, On-Demand, screencast, trends, Video, web demonstration.

While learning about ‘Getting Things Done’ I discovered this great blog – Merlin Mann’s 43Folders.

He has been blogging for a long time and 43Folders started out focused on productivity solutions like GTD.  Although his focus has changed, his blog is still a good read.

He uses a presentation style that we also are putting into practice.

What’s really exciting is that this presentation works so well both for the live audience and the video webcast – the slides add to his message without taking your focus away from him as the speaker and what he is saying.  And from a technical perspective, the slide imagery avoids small text fonts that video does a poor job of broadcasting.

Take a look at this video of his final presentation: Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: effective presentations, GTD, live event recordings, Video, video webcasts, Webcasts.

David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) is a must-read for anyone who has that nagging feeling at the end of the workday that they forgot something.  GTD is an organization system that helps you better manage your time and increase your productivity.

Are you wondering just how this is going to improve your webinars and presentations?

One of the services we offer is professional management of web seminars. As part of our service, we provide a practice session and make time for the event coordinators and panelists to rehearse.

We see two things happen -

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Tags: Business, event management, GTD, practice, Web Seminars.

As part of our effort to bring a repeatable, scientific methodology to our web seminars we have been reading alot of literature on presentation development .

Currently I’m reading Doug Stevenson’s Story Theater Method; Strategic Storytelling in Business. This is a guidebook that shows how to mine your own life stories to help you connect with an audience.

Right away, Doug makes this point:

The key to becoming an effective speaker is to be authentic. The goal is not to change who you are, it’s to remain true to who you are. To do otherwise is to lose your power. Your power lies in your unique personality and style.

Doug goes on to talk about how actors connect IN to connect OUT to an audience. They go inward to pull from their own reservoir of emotions and experiences. If they do this well, they bring the character to life and the audience connects to them.

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Tags: authenticity, presentations, storytelling, Web Seminars.

Running any business has its challenges, but perhaps the number one challenge is time.   That’s been my reason for not blogging.

We have been active in our local organizations, like our local chapter of the American Marketing Association,  and have built a good local business because of it.   Yet increasingly all the best conversations are happening online, and its about time we participated.

So with this quick post we have started. No buzz or whistles on this blog,  but I hope to add a common-sense voice, a few fresh ideas, and practical knowledge of the audio-video-presentation space to the online marketing conversation.

Best wishes,

Bill

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