This is a great month for creative inspiration with the Sydney Festival taking place until end of January. Here at Presentation Studio we are particularly excited about seeing the Bright Club sessions at The Famous Spiegeltent.

Hosted by comedian and public speaker, James O’Loghlin and showing late on Wednesday nights, the Bright Club presents an impressive line-up of lecturers and researchers from the University of Sydney as they turn their academic minds to comedy. Each speaker has just 8-minutes to present their area of academic speciality in a comedy stand-up routine.

Most of us have had to present at some point in our lives, many of us do it every day but just imagine how nerve wracking it must be when your main aim is to make your audience laugh.

However as with any type of presentation, preparation is the key to help conquering those nerves. So if you are taking the plunge into stand-up comedy or just need to present at the next board meeting, keep these top presentation tips in mind:

Engage your Audience
Stand-up comedy routines actively engage the audience. Comedians interact with the crowd and ask them questions which help to set up their next joke. In business presentations, rather than having your audience sit for an hour whilst you present your PowerPoint slides, make time in your presentation to interact with them. This can be as simple as asking for a ‘show of hands’ to a question or if you have a larger group you could use live sms polling or voting technologies.

Stick to Time
The speakers at Bright Club have only 8-minutes to present their routine. Whatever your timings make sure that your structure your presentation with a clear flow: beginning, middle and end and when rehearsing your timings allow for unexpected interruptions such as questions (or heckling!) so that you won’t feel flustered if they arise.

A fantastic tip from Nancy Duarte is to prepare two possible natural endings to your presentation, so if you do find yourself running out of time you can relax knowing that you have a safety net and your audience won’t know the difference!

Bright Club is showing at The Spiegeltent for only three weeks and kicks off tonight, Wednesday 11th January.

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Great stories share these key components that you, as an author/speaker, must be sure to incorporate in your presentations:
It’s as simple as 1-2-3. Every story must have three basic parts — a beginning, middle, and end. Together, these three parts form the skeleton of your story, the fundamental framework required to create a memorable, actionable experience for your audience.

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Remember that images can be subject to copyright so make sure you check this before you use them.

Powerpoint Tips and Tricks

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Insert a full bleed image as the slide background and overlay this with a coloured shape set to 45% opacity.

This will allow your title to be easily seen when placed on the image.

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Animations should enhance your slides not distract the audience. Keep them subtle.

Not every object on a slide needs to be animated and not every slide needs animations!

Carefully choose the few objects in your presentation that deserve to be animated and let them spice up your PowerPoint!

Unless it is a beautiful Chritmas card of course, like the one we sent last year

Have you already seen it?

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Our inspiring speaking coach, Dr. Louise Mahler will be in Sydney in a few weeks for our upcoming event ‘Presentation Insights from the Experts‘. Below she shares her top tips for presenting without speaker notes…

In one of my many weird and wonderful incoming emails I read of a hypnosis download called ‘Speak without notes. Have confidence in your ability’. But, is it really that easy?

The title of the hypnosis download read ‘Speak without notes. Have confidence in your ability‘ and I thought ‘how wonderful’. I am a proponent of speaking without notes and think hypnosis is brilliant. On the other hand, can it be THAT brilliant?

In my 1/2 day Vocal Intelligence and Presentation workshops, one of the most recurring feedbacks I get is how pleased people are to have things to do, concrete things they can work on and solid feedback. Maybe it is the control freak in us, but then they say ‘Thank God it was not just another be confident workshop’, because just ‘being confident’ does not seem to feel like enough.

Seriously, ‘speaking without notes’ is the go and having the confidence to do so is a big issue. The satisfying solution, however, involves more. I would suggest if speaking without notes is your goal, and an admirable one it is, you may benefit from working on the following:

• Have a solid message around which all material will focus
• Have a clear and simple structure
• Use props to help you remember
• Architecturally design your presentation through movement and anchor sections of your presentation in certain areas of the room (again this helps you remember)
• Anchor (psychologically) some information on parts of your body (again this helps your remember)
• DO NOT attempt to memorize words
• Use hypnosis (see link above) to back up all of the above

Louise will be sharing more top tips for Public Speaking on Wednesday 23 November at The ArtHouse Sydney. For more information on the event and to book your ticket CLICK HERE

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1/2 Day Speaker Training Workshop with Dr Louise Mahler.

This workshop will transform the way you present, communicate and feel about yourself whilst engaging with your audience. You will learn through a series of fun and interactive exercises, how to develop presentations that will engage and inspire your audience.

Download this PDF for more information.

You can checkout Dr Louise Mahler in <ACTION> at Ignite Sydney.

Date: Monday 23rd November 2011

Time: 9:00am – 1:00pm

Cost: $750 + GST per person

Call now on 1300 699 609 to book your place or email workshop@presentationstudio.com.au

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It is an important area of design that allows the eye to focus.

White space is not blank space.

Remember that PowerPoint is a visual medium!

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Don’t forget that you have an audience!

Move from the mindset of a report to a visual presentation that your speaker can add to and your audience can engage with.
Use the speaker notes and presenter view to simplify and reduce text on your slides.
Supply additional information to your audience as a PDF or handouts at the end of your presentation.

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