Six Minutes has a great summary of the Democratic Convention speeches – videos of the main players and quotes from various critics were looking at the technical aspects of the speeches rather than the politics.

Report Card

Writing: C+
Clarity: C
Efficiency: C+
Elegance: B-

Delivery: A-
Pacing: B-
Intonation: B+
Body Language: A
Passion: A

There’s been a lot of praise for Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic Convention, with commentators like Andrew Sullivan calling it “a deeply substantive speech,” and celebrities like Oprah describing the night as “something that was transcendent.”
UPDATE: Gallup Poll of Aug. 30: [...]

Want a visual way of analyzing word usage in your presentations? Then you’ll love Wordle.net. It creates a word cloud of your most commonly-used words, and gives you a lot of control over what it looks like.
I entered the text of Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention last night, and you’ll [...]

Dear Screaming Crowds:
Please let your speaker get on with their speech.
Sincerely,
Your Speaker
Last night, it took 1:59 for the crowds at the Democratic Convention to let Barack Obama begin his speech. For those who were counting, he did 32 “thank yous” in an attempt to get them to stop. Adulation is one thing, but [...]

Story-telling played a major role in Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver last night – from the introductory video to the numerous references throughout the speech both to his own story and those of ordinary Americans. One particularly effective use of story came when he drew parallels between the stories of others and his [...]

It’s the line everyone’s talking about from Bill Clinton’s speech to the Democratic Convention last night, and a very powerful aphorism it is:
People around the world have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.
It’s simple, easy to remember, and nicely encapsulates what Clinton wanted to [...]

Bill Clinton’s speech to the Democratic Convention last night was a good example of “tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you’ve told them.” And with that structure, he clearly set up an agenda for Barak Obama (presumably the agenda Obama wants…). Here’s how it played [...]

Saw this great spelling error the other day on a blog: attention spam. I say ‘great’ because it created an expression that captures a concept I’ve been thinking about for a long time: there’s so much information and just plain stimuli bombarding our brains each day that we’re suffering from attention spam.
Whenever [...]

Great metaphor about the role of storytelling by social media strategist Dave Delaney, in an interview by Presentation Revolution:
6. You have given your fair share of presentations. How important is story as it relates to the world of presentations?
The story is the bun. The content is the meat (or vegetarian patty if you [...]

Found this great list of all-time best presentations as picked by KnowHR – with links to video so you can decide if you agree. They also have a follow-up top 10 from their readers.