In 1968, Douglas Engelbart gave what should have been the technology breakthrough presentation of that time. Did you hear about it? Instead, if fell into oblivion. Why? How to avoid the same destiny for your presentations?

In the 60’s, computer where big. They didn’t have graphic interface or mouse, and only a few people had the ability the work with them.

Although, an interactive computer with a mouse was a huge revolution. A step into the future. Remember, this is almost 20 years before the Macintosh*.

Unfortunately, this presentation didn’t win his place in history. For many reasons. One of them : it is boring. Go ahead. Try to watch it t’ill the end.  I didn’t succeed.

Doug Engelbart 1968 Demonstration from Nathan Garrett on Vimeo.

One of the keys of a successful presentation is to capture and maintain people interest. If you don’t, their minds will wander, they won’t get your message,and you’ll fall into oblivion.

Compare this presentation with the launch of the Macintosh by Steve Jobs in 1984. Same kinds of technology, but a radically different presentation. This is not boring at all…..and it made history.

The complete presentation is available on YouTube ( 44 minutes ) :

Now it’s your turn. Be passionate, be interesting, leave your footprint in history.

Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment.

Posted by Denis François Gravel

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* The Apple Lisa was the first personal computer available to public, but it’s another story.

Denis Francois Gravel

Denis François Gravel aide les organisations à performer en contexte de présentation pour que leurs prestations donnent les résultats souhaités. Il les accompagne dans l’acquisition de meilleures pratiques et dans le développement des habiletés de leur équipe.

Il est le fondateur de PRÉSENTabilité, le cofondateur de TEDxQuébec et a été l’hôte de PechaKucha Québec. (2)

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Ever been impressed by the speaking ability of a kid? Then, watch this TED Talks video of Thomas Suarez, a 12 year old iPhone apps programmer.

TEDxManhattanBeach, Filmed Oct 2011; Posted Nov 2011

via Thomas Suarez: A 12-year-old app developer | Video on TED.com.

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Denis Francois Gravel

Denis François Gravel aide les organisations à performer en contexte de présentation pour que leurs prestations donnent les résultats souhaités. Il les accompagne dans l’acquisition de meilleures pratiques et dans le développement des habiletés de leur équipe.

Il est le fondateur de PRÉSENTabilité, le cofondateur de TEDxQuébec et a été l’hôte de PechaKucha Québec. (2)

presentability.com

The post 12-year-old Thomas Suarez gives us speaking lesson appeared first on Denis Francois Gravel | PRESENTability.

Presentations power is only limited by our imagination. Here’s the story of a woman who believe that a presentation can change her life (and it did).

The story of Hanna Phan is a story of creativity and determination. She was looking for a job. Not any job. She was looking for her dream job. She decided to use an online presentation and social media to reach the CEO of the company.

The result? She got a call the same day from the CEO and she now works for SlideRocket. The beautiful part of the story…it was her birthday.

I was charmed by her use of a presentation, I ask her for an interview.

1. Why did you use a slideshow for curriculum vitae?

I decided to use SlideRocket to make my Présumé (“presentation resume”) for two reasons:

First of all, I was frustrated that the traditional resume could not showcase who I really was, including: my personality, creativity, energy and passion for presentations. Resumes are one-dimensional and really only allow for a one-way conversation—there’s no engagement or connection you can build with the reader or audience.

Secondly, I wanted to demonstrate my proficiency and creativity in using their product.

2. What was the thinking, the structure, the logic behind your slides?

Originally, it began as a “love letter” directed at Chuck Dietrich, CEO of SlideRocket.  I knew that he’s a busy man, so I thought to myself, if I had 30 seconds with him, what would I say? I had to get straight to the point and relay the message of why SlideRocket needed me as an employee, and why I wanted to work with their company specifically.

I wanted the design to portray who I was right from the beginning, so I kept it clean and upscale—black and white with splashes of color.  After I had the story down, I added some music (light and cheery) as a final touch. I also utilized SlideRocket’s auto-advance feature in an attempt to keep Chuck engaged longer than 30 seconds—I didn’t want any opportunities for interruption.

3. When did you post your CV?

I actually never formally posted my CV, although I was later asked for it as a formality when going through the hiring process with SlideRocket. (I’m not sure if anyone actually looked it though.)

If you’re referring to when I posted my Présumé, I actually tweeted Chuck directly by responding to his “SlideRocket is hiring” tweet and included the link to my Présumé—it was August 1, my birthday.

4. What happened after you post your CV on SlideRocket?

A few hours after I tweeted Chuck, I received a tweet back from him (see image), followed by a phone call. I found out after the fact that he had viewed my Présumé from 30,000 feet in the air, on an airplane en route to New York.

5. What advice could you give to people doing presentations?

Advice for Job Seekers:

1. Stay very focused on your target; otherwise, your passion may not shine through in your communications with them.
2. Research the company extensively. I know we’ve all heard this before, but it’s really true—Google them, watch them on YouTube or Vimeo, follow them on Twitter, like/friend their fan pages on Facebook, check out their blog, subscribe to their newsletters, read their press releases, etc. You can gain a lot of insight into their work culture and what the company stands for if you do that extra research.  On the other hand, if you’re unable to find any information about them online, that also speaks volumes about their culture. Ask yourself: do I still want to work for them?
3. Be prepared to fail. The worst that can happen is that they say no. Get up, learn from it and try again.
4. Here’s the confidence-booster you should start with: They need you, they just don’t know it yet—let them know what they’re missing if they don’t hire you.

Advice for Creating Presentations:

1. Know your audience. Do your research and find out everything you possibly can about them. (See #2 above.)

2.   Don’t get too fancy. Keep it simple so your message does not get lost to unnecessary distractions.  Decorations are simply distracters.

6. Here’s the chance to plug your employer. Why did you chose SlideRocket and why should we use it?

I chose SlideRocket as an employer for many reasons. Here are my top two:

1.  Their start-up culture. After doing my in-depth research, I felt like they would be a great fit and a company where I truly wanted to grow.

2. SlideRocket is a game-changing product that I believe in. I knew I could get excited about this product every day. I wanted to help make it even better with my skills and experience.

You should use SlideRocket if:

a) You want to stand out.

b) You’ve just had it up to here with using PowerPoint.

SlideRocket makes it easy to create powerful presentations in very little time. You can integrate dynamic features (YouTube videos, surveys/polls, twitter feeds, etc.) directly into your presentation without worrying whether it will work when you have to deliver it live, or when you send the link to someone. The fact that SlideRocket lives online in the cloud, means that you don’t need to worry if someone has the wrong software or uses an incompatible browser. SlideRocket is just so dead simple to share—it’s just a link!

This leads me to my absolute favorite features of SlideRocket:

1. When you discover a mistake in your presentation after sending out your link, you don’t need to hit the dreaded “Recall” button in your email (which doesn’t actually work anyway)—just make the edit and save, that’s it! The link you sent will automatically be your most updated presentation. It actually happened to me! I spelled “SlideRocketeers” incorrectly, but fortunately, no one knew because I had caught my typo quickly enough and changed the presentation. SlideRocket’s automatic update saved me from any embarrassment! Phew!
2. I also love the analytics features, which meant that I knew right away when Chuck actually viewed my presentation!  So while I was waiting nervously to see if he would respond, I could continue on with my day and just wait for an email notification for when my Présumé was viewed. As I’ve received over 10,000 views of my Présumé around the world, I eventually turned that notification off. 🙂

Conclusion

Presentations can have a dramatic effect on our lives and on lives of others when it’s well done. Hanna Phan is an inspiration for all of us who are doing presentations.

Thanks Hanna for accepting to share your story.

Original « Présumé » on SlideRocket.

Posted by Denis François Gravel

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Denis Francois Gravel

Denis François Gravel aide les organisations à performer en contexte de présentation pour que leurs prestations donnent les résultats souhaités. Il les accompagne dans l’acquisition de meilleures pratiques et dans le développement des habiletés de leur équipe.

Il est le fondateur de PRÉSENTabilité, le cofondateur de TEDxQuébec et a été l’hôte de PechaKucha Québec. (2)

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The post Do you underestimate the power of presentations? appeared first on Denis Francois Gravel | PRESENTability.

For those of you who thinks that you don’t need to improve your presentation skills, think again and watch this short presentation by Jeanne Trojan.

She explains why presentations matter and why you should be outstanding.

I like the fifth one.

Source: Presentation Gurus! group on LinkedIn

Share with me: Do you agree with the 5 reasons why presentations matter? What other reasons can you think of?

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Denis Francois Gravel

Denis François Gravel aide les organisations à performer en contexte de présentation pour que leurs prestations donnent les résultats souhaités. Il les accompagne dans l’acquisition de meilleures pratiques et dans le développement des habiletés de leur équipe.

Il est le fondateur de PRÉSENTabilité, le cofondateur de TEDxQuébec et a été l’hôte de PechaKucha Québec. (2)

presentability.com

The post Five Reasons Why Presentations Matter appeared first on Denis Francois Gravel | PRESENTability.

New stunning campaign from Citrix for is GoToMeeting solution. A true eyes catching ad, with an intriguing message.

How can you be naked to present to the board or to collaborate with coworkers? (see picture beside from Los Angeles Airport).

You have to use GoToMeeting. It is a solution for online meeting.

The message is simple: you can do your meeting from the comfort of your home without the office dressing code (or naked if you prefer).

Citrix targets a growing trend in business. Telecommuting (not nakedness!).

Pure effectiveness. I like that campaign.

Really naked

Is there people participating to online meeting naked? According to a recent study, yes (CNBC).

About one in five UK participants in conference calls have called in while naked. Almost half have worn only their underwear while 68 percent have only worn pajamas, a survey by BT Conferencing showed Wednesday.

Is it the start of a new trend?

How would you feel to really present naked?

In 2005 Garr Reynolds post a brilliant article: Make your next presentation naked. It is not about removing clothes, but removing everything that is not contributing to the message.

Being naked involves stripping away all that is unnecessary to get at the essence of your message. The naked presenter approaches the presentation task embracing the ideas of simplicity, clarity, honesty, integrity, and passion.

According to this post, you should “Present naked to the board of directors”.

Twitter campaign

To my knowledge, Citrix is one of the first to use a Twitter hashtag in a billboard campaign (Twitter is a social media and a hashtag is a keyword helping people categorize the information. The # symbol is preceding the keyword.)

For the campaign,  Citrix have chosen the hashtag #getnaked and they are suggesting people to publish their story on Twitter.

You can search Twitter with the hashtag and see the contributions of the users.

The campaign is not targeting the technological challenged people. It is targeting those who use and understand those technologies.

Citrix is innovating with this campaign in leveraging the social media. Good move.

We will see more and more of this kind of campaign

Some fun

On the lighter side, here are some of the gems I found searching Twitter with the #getnaked hashtag.

Share with me: What do you think of this Citrix campaign?

Related posts:

• How to use Twitter for local news
• iPod ad brilliantly piggybacked
• 3 Mind-blowing ads using technology

Posted by: Denis Francois Gravel

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Denis Francois Gravel

Denis François Gravel aide les organisations à performer en contexte de présentation pour que leurs prestations donnent les résultats souhaités. Il les accompagne dans l’acquisition de meilleures pratiques et dans le développement des habiletés de leur équipe.

Il est le fondateur de PRÉSENTabilité, le cofondateur de TEDxQuébec et a été l’hôte de PechaKucha Québec. (2)

presentability.com

The post I Present Naked to the Board of Directors appeared first on Denis Francois Gravel | PRESENTability.