Make it Ted.com!
A repository of amazing talks – there are some real inspirational gems on there.
An interesting part of this is also looking at why the talks are so good – a lot of this is the speakers, but I also found out (via Presentation Zen and Tim Longhurst’s blog) the Ten Commandments of Ted speaking….
1. Thou Shalt Not Simply Trot Out thy Usual Shtick
2. Thou Shalt Dream a Great Dream, or Show Forth a Wondrous New Thing, Or Share Something Thou Hast Never Shared Before
3. Thou Shalt Reveal thy Curiosity and Thy Passion
4. Thou Shalt Tell a Story
5. Thou Shalt Freely Comment on the Utterances of Other Speakers for the Skae of Blessed Connection and Exquisite Controversy
6. Thou Shalt Not Flaunt thine Ego. Be Thou Vulnerable. Speak of thy Failure as well as thy Success.
7. Thou Shalt Not Sell from the Stage: Neither thy Company, thy Goods, thy Writings, nor thy Desparate need for Funding; Lest Thou be Cast Aside into Outer Darkness.
8. Thou Shalt Remember all the while: Laughter is Good.
9. Thou Shalt Not Read thy Speech.
10. Thou Shalt Not Steal the Time of Them that Follow Thee
Good things to think about when presenting. I did a presentation recently at a conference on specifying composites in construction (you can find it on my slideshare site if you feel the urge!).
No, don’t fall asleep yet…..
As part of the presentation I put in some slides on my company – I tried to avoid the standard ’sales pitch’ at the start, but it still felt a bit awkward in there. Perhaps I should have considered commandment 7. In future I will consider my talks to present our expertise on their own – a couple of slides as a sales pitch is not necessary, and in fact having a sales pitch in there really just destroys the story.
