Follow up from ASTD presentation

The ASTD presentation last month was a blast — at least for me. The audience seemed to be very engaged and we got very good reviews for the meeting. Unfortunately, I ran out of time before I ran out of material, so I had to cut off part of the presentation. Oh well, I guess it’s better to have too much material than not enough.

Here are some photos from the evening.

Keeping with the “Hooray for Hollywood!” theme, the tables were decorated with movie items.

 

We had a very good crowd that evening, with lots of participation. Notice that everyone is facing the speaker and nobody is asleep. I take that as a good sign 🙂

 

Yours truly (above and below)

 

I’m presenting at ASTD this month

I will be leading the Dallas Chapter – ASTD meeting this month, doing a presentation called “Hooray for Hollywood!” We will be exploring ways that training can incorporate film and video into their training to make the presentations more engaging and effective. This will be a very interactive presentation — I’ve got a few surprises up my sleeve, so it should be fun.

If you’re in the Dallas area, please join us.

• Thursday, May 17
• 6:00 pm
• Wyndham Dallas North Hotel

Google to release slideshow application

Google CEO Eric Schmidt confirmed at the Web 2.0 Expo yesterday that Google will soon release a slideshow application for Google Apps. The slideshow application is viewed as the “missing link” in Google’s office productivity suite (which currently includes Docs and Spreadsheets) and allows it to compete more effectively with Microsoft Office.

Schmidt downplayed the competition with Microsoft, however, saying

“I don’t think we compete with them. We’re not as fully functional as MS Office — we’re more in line with how people use the web than how they use the desktop.”

But he later conceded that Google Apps is a viable alternative to Microsoft Office for people who “use the web a lot.”

Oh… thooose people.

LinkedIn presentation at ASTD

Someone once told me that an expert is someone who knows just a little more about a topic than you. In that spirit (I’ve been actively using LinkedIn only since December), I have been tapped as the local LinkedIn expert at the ASTD JobNet group, and will be presenting a LinkedIn overview at our next meeting on April 19.

If you are in the Dallas area, please join us.

• Thursday, April 19

• 4:30 pm

• Wyndham Dallas North Hotel

First things first… and last

Your audience is most likely to remember what you say first, and what you say last.

Learning how to communicate effectively is essential for your career growth. What good are your ideas if you can’t communicate them? Whether it’s your presentation to the to the executive board, your two-minute elevator pitch, or an interview.

In her research on short-term memory, Elizableth Hilton observed

“A person has a tendency to remember the first and last few items being presented because the brain will start to rehearse the information that was presented first and last, and have an inclination to forget the middle items.”

Don’t bury your ideas in the middle of a your presentation. If you want people to remember them, state your ideas clearly at the beginning, and repeat them at the end.