If you’re ever stuck thinking of ways to communicate information visually, then bookmark the Periodic Table of Visualization Methods. All you do is mouse-over one of the squares on the table and you’re presented with a visual sample of how you can organize materials.

And because the table is from the Visual Literacy group, it’s [...]

I was at a presentation recently where the amount of material on the slides and the paucity of information in the presentation itself were such that the person was nothing more than a narrator for the slide show.
Slides and multimedia are there to enhance your information. If everything you have to say is up [...]

Report Card

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

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

The praise for Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s delivery of her speech has been nothing short of amazing – even MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann admitted that Palin “clearly gives a great speech.” Even the content drew praise from Democrats to the extent that they [...]

Michael Long over at Ragan.com has a nice piece on the technical aspects of Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. He hits the nail on the head when he says:
the language and content overall were remarkably unsophisticated for such an auspicious evening. This was of a piece with a serious language problem.
And he had an example [...]

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: [...]

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 [...]