… yes it’s my handwriting, but turned into a font. If you’ve got a printer and scanner you can do the same for free at YourFonts.com. (Or a steady hand and a graphics tablet.) Not sure where I’ll use it, but I can see it lending more of the personal touch to a presentation sooner or later …

To improve my speaking and preaching, I’ve recently read four books on Public Speaking or use of Powerpoint.

Garr Reynold’s book Presentation Zen
is wonderful to look at, and makes a persuasive case to ditch most of the words in our slidesets. Cliff Atkinson’s book Beyond Bullet Points
makes much the same point, and particularly when trying to ’sell’ something shows how to use the techniques of Hollywood storytelling married to image-heavy-word-light slide decks.

But with both I’ve been left partially unsatisfied, because sometimes there is detail that needs to be presented, particularly for scientists or engineers. I’m glad to find that Nancy Duarte makes the same point in her recent blog post, and predicts that 2009 will be the year when

The rise of new visual benchmarks for solving complex communication problems … Large photos and sparse text are quickly being adopted, which is great. But they only work for keynotes and marketing. So what about the physicians, scientists, and engineers? Best practices for these folks should arrive on the scene in 2009.

(Incidentally, I’m still hoping to get and read a copy of her new book, slide:ology
.)

So I found a copy of A Handbook of Public Speaking for Scientists and Engineers
in the library at work, hoping that it might help. Written over 25 years ago I wasn’t hopeful. And it does show its age, for example with

The overhead projector has become very popular in recent years

[Meaning OHPs with acetates, not our ubiquitous video or data projectors]

But he does have a few good tips:

• start with something like ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ – this gives you and the audience and a chance to adjust to the level of the microphone, and hear the acoustic. Then take a breath or two before your first sentence.
• memorise the first few sentences, and make them punchy. Don’t thank the introducer (yet) or give excuses for anything. Instead, set up a question, or propose something bold, or use an appropriate but dramatic quote (eg, “In the beginning, God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light. The development of the electric light bulb wasn’t so simple.”)
• avoid weak phrases like “this reminds me of …” or “I’ll cover this in more detail later …”
• make sure the text on any screen is readable from the back (and because he’s an engineer he gives some formulae for how to work them out!)

He spends a little time on importance of getting pauses right in and between phrases, and shows how good punctuation of the text can help. He asks how the extreme example could be punctuated to make sense:

John whereas Jim had had had had had had had had had had had the teacher’s approval.

Even when you see the answer, it’s still a good challenge to speak the sentence in a way that makes sense to listeners. Go on, try it …

John, whereas Jim had had “had had”, had had “had”. “Had had” had had the teacher’s approval.

I also got 101 Secrets of Highly Effective Speakers: Controlling Fear, Commanding Attention
out of the library, despite the title. Anything with 101, 99, 60, 9, or 7 in the title is going to be padded out, and it’ll only be more disappointing when the ’secrets’ don’t materialise. But anyway I thought I’d try it. It’s probably a useful book if you’ve not done any speaking before, and it should be encouraging to those particularly who are nervous about trying. But I think I’ve got beyond that point, and it couldn’t help me improve construction or style.

So, I suppose I’m still in the market for good books on advanced public speaking – particularly when dealing with technical material. Can anyone help?

From Digital Nomads And The New Workforce:

[Inspired by reading The Economist - The New Oases - Nomadism changes buildings, cities and traffic.]

We have all become Digital Nomads. Able to work wherever we’re feeling most inspired (as long as there is wi-fi). I wonder how the masses will deal with this? Is it possible to just show up and grab any desk in an office building and log on (there are many companies that have this as part of their corporate culture already)? How will in-person, team collaboration dynamics be affected? What about the overall dynamics and vibe we get from going to our offices?

I saw this on holiday, having saved up about 500 blog posts to read. None of us are working in the normal sense, though Emma is closest revising for her A2s. So many times already we could have used WiFi, and it feels like being on a fast not having any internet access. To the point that we’re heading to a nearby hotspot later today, primarily so Emma can send/receive emails from her teachers about her revision. I’ll also use the opportunity to look up details to help me with some designs I have in mind, as well as following the links on some of the 50 or so blog posts that sufficiently caught my eye to check out properly.

If this is what we feel like on holiday, how much more so must it be for knowledge workers? If I was mobile much more, then I could see myself getting mobile broadband, even at the lowest possible rate.

(Via Six Pixels of Separation – Marketing and Communications Insights Blog and Podcast – By Mitch Joel at Twist Image.)

I prefer emails over traditional letters (or txt msgs, or twitter or IM), and sometimes I feel in a minority for doing so. For example, my church leaders request people don’t send emails, preferring letters or face-to-face meetings.

Happily, I’m not alone in favouring emails: is a short blog post from the CEO of an American Publishing company that made me nod and laugh.

But I think we’re both implying emails that follow the standard etiquette. I’m offline right now so I can’t link to any well-written summaries of this. But my list would include:

• being aware that things can be taken the wrong way, as there’s no tone or body language — so, use emoticons or other ways to make sure people know you’re making a joke, teasing them or being ironic
• writing when calm, not angry or upset
• where there are many different points, use interleaving for your response, leaving a blank line before and after
• for threads about only a few points, respect the top- or bottom-posting before you
• writing in normal sentence case, not in ALL CAPITALS
• using a subject line that does summarise the email — and change it if you’re starting a significantly new idea
• using BCC to send something to me and to a large list of other people, to keep my address private

So, if you are writing to complain about something that upset you, then bashing out a revengeful note is definitely off-limits. It’s a sad commentary on the state of the Christians in our churches if they get enough of these to comment publicly that emails are a bad idea.

On a related note, I’ve just read about some email pages that can help email recipients quickly help emailers with poor etiquette:

• Thanks, No turns down unwanted email
• five sentences explains why his email messages are so short
• BCC please asks that bulk senders use the BCC field to hide your address

Don’t know! But I liked [Maggi Dawn's view](http://maggidawn.typepad.com/maggidawn/2007/10/writers-readers.html) on the relationship between writers, readers, conversations and blogs. She reported:
> I’ve read a bit lately that some Emerging Church bloggers (especially of the persuasion) have become disillusioned with blogging on the basis that it is not truly conversational. I am kind of surprised to read this in a way, because I never thought it was. Did you, honestly?

and then concluded that
> If you’re a blogger because you are a writer, you’ll write anyway.

I wouldn’t have said I was a writer, but I think this blog will be more about my need for expression than my need to be read. But we’ll see!

> “Death by powerpoint”

It’s a phrase that’s become a cliche. But we know what it’s like. Long screeds of bullets on a background that’s chosen to be _interesting_, in text that’s a bit too small to be read from where we’re sat near the back.

For many years I’ve tried to find training on how to make PPT-based presentations alive again – whether in work or church. (This isn’t the post to get into the discussion about place of sermons; for now it’s enough to say that as more preachers are using powerpoint to supplement their words, there’s more opportunity to see poor examples of the art.) I first tried to find a course to go on that was more than either a standard presentation course, or a “How to use PPT” course. And failed.

My first real lead was hearing about Cliff Atkinson’s book **[Beyond Bullet Points](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735620520/ref=nosim/librarythin08-20)**. What he said really resonated with what I’d been suspecting – use fewer words, and more pictures. But I wasn’t prepared for his major theme: you need to **tell a story** in each presentation, and to do so with some passion. To do this well, borrow from Hollywood: you need a setting, protagonists, an imbalance, the balance, and the solution. Since reading it I’ve tried to follow his suggestions, though I’ve had rather few presentations to do recently. Were they better as a result? I think so, though I’m not the best judge. But if nothing else I spent more time preparing them, and more time trying to work out what I felt about the topic, not just the facts of the case, in order to find the story.

Mike Workman helped me after a recent sermon by saying that I needed to put “more of myself” and “more passion” into it, which backs up part of this.

The **[Presentation Zen](http://presentationzen.blogs.com/)** blog has also helped me more recently. Garr posts examples of good and bad presentations he’s found, and gives some analysis, plus plugs for good books. The latest one of his recommendations I’ve started reading is **[Clear and to the Point: 8 Psychological Principles for Compelling Powerpoint Presentations](http://www.librarything.com/work/3793272&book=21861009)**. Its more technical and detailed, and isn’t really to do with Powerpoint at all: what he says should apply to any visual medium you’re using. There’s lots of stuff that’s new to me, mostly related to the psychology, such as why a blue background is better for text than a red background. Half is focussed on graphs and other complex graphics, which I guess isn’t relevant for most people. Interesting, but my recommendation is for **Beyond Bullet Points** if you can only read one book. But do read [Garr's post summarising the 8 principles](http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2007/08/i-spent-the-wee.html) as well.