Speakr » Story

Webcast: How-to be an Epic Storyteller

Speakr — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:01:53 +0000

Join me this morning for a great event with

Alltop helps sort out Web Conferencing

Speakr — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:58:42 +0000

For those that pay attention to webconferencing, Alltop has recently dedicated some space to the topic. A good aggregate of sites: http://webconferencing.alltop.com/

Visual Thinking with Images

Speakr — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:12:39 +0000

In Dan Roam’s recent book, Back of the Napkin, he discusses solving problems and selling ideas with pictures. It’s a great book that helps any non-artist understand the value of using self-created pictures during brainstorming and into delivery. It’s also a lesson of editing an idea down to the core message.

New Page: Presentation Resources

Speakr — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:37:00 +0000

Concrete Stickiness at… Walmart?

Speakr — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 14:49:17 +0000

In Chip & Dan Heath’s book,

Story development begins at Setting

Speakr — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:48:24 +0000

In well crafted story development, often lacking in many presentations, start by establishing your setting.

Robert McKee, the well-known screenwriting teacher and author of Story, will advise you that setting is four dimensional and includes: period, duration, location, and level of conflict. In fictional story your imagination is tempted to run wild but must still remain within the realism of your audience. In presentations, and especially non-fiction sales presentations, it’s important to establish the real-world setting for your audience. They need to know which way is up & down and how far you plan to extend left & right.

The major culprit I find is within mid-to-large organizations where the Marketing department is often tasked with developing a sales deck. Your marketing department may be wizards at overseeing the organizational brand and communicating memorable sound bites, but this doesn’t always translate well into a sales presentation. Your organization may be cursed by their knowledge of the product or service and shortchange the required investment of full story development.

In a sales presentation, the setting will require the same steps used by many credible screenwriters:

Period is your story’s place in time. Is your story going to begin with the past history of your organization or the problem currently being solved? Are a start-up tackling a new problem that will communicate a hypothetical future?

A stale domain

Speakr — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:37:34 +0000

Not long ago, I decided to start a site about story development, presentation design, and delivery. After designing and/or delivering over 300 presentations (from awful to more effective over time) in the last 13 years, it’s time to share nuggets of lessons learned.

One hard lesson is the time and frustration of establishing a story. In the case of this site, the story has a particular audience that search out tips for improving presentations and would require a web domain that resonates with that group. It wasn’t until I realized my access to this domain that I understand the crime of stale domains.

In this (sometimes cruel) web world – a stale domain never develops into a white sandy beach. It rots until you give up the real estate or lose interest paying the yearly property taxes. This site has sat idol for quite some time awaiting it’s deck chairs and cabanas. It’s a loss because during that time it could have been developed into something special, or at least more than a landing page.

In an effort of property development, this space will now serve stories about a passion: The Art of Presentation. Crafting the stories, visuals, and delivery that inspires, informs, or persuades your audience. In a way, it was the original focus on this domain, albeit on a different scale. Regardless, let’s settle in and swap some stories.