If it can happen to Steve Jobs, it can happen to you. Deal with it.

Technical demos are always fraught with the danger that something can go wrong. Even if you are one of the slickest and most prepared presenters around, things will go wrong. The lesson here, though, is not that you shouldn’t use technical elements for a talk or demo, but that you should take control of the situation and act decisively:

Note how that Steve Jobs gives the audience the choice – or an ultimatum – about how the talk can continue.

Take control of your audience – they will respect you for it.

 

Novel Presentation Styles: Clifford Stoll

I would normally advocate a well structured, well thought out, and linear approach to presenting. This helps an audience build a train of thought and it will give them a fighting chance of remembering your main points.

Of course, sometimes you can get by on pure enthusiasm…

 

Novel Presentation Styles: Bobby McFerrin

Not quite a ‘talk’, but a great delivery that captures the audience and makes it’s point. Sometimes it helps if you happen to be an entertainer by profession!

 

Novel Presentation Styles : Dick Hardt

Here is a nice talk on the subject of “Identity 2.0″. The speaker, Dick Hardt, has a great narrative style of talk – subverting the traditional bullet point slides. Not an easy thing to do, but effective…

 

Welcome!

Hi, my name is John Bush

I am a research fellow at the Univeristy of Strathclyde in Glasgow. My technical expertise covers areas ranging from wireless technologies (cellular, broadcast, WLAN, and PANs) to mobile device interactions and multimedia services.

This site is a wall for me to throw various posts on two passions of mine: telecommunications, and personal communications skills.

“Proper” blogs require considerable time  invested – I can’t promise that, but we’ll see…