The Mobile Presenter

The best way to learn something is to teach it. This paraphrased quote, attributed to Seneca, also applies to presenting, as you've probably experienced yourself.

When trying to explain something to someone who's not familiar with the topic, you often stumble upon gaps in your own knowledge. Things you took for granted are suddenly questioned; "Why, exactly, do we do this thing in this way anyway?"

I attended TEDxZurich recently; a very well-organised event, quite a bit bigger than our own TEDxStuttgart. Having Swiss television as your sponsor does help, I guess. Especially if they provide you with a TV studio and real cameras.

There was one small thing that irked me, though.

The other aspect I was talking about at my presentation session at Barcamp Stuttgart recently was why visuals, specifically photos, work in presentations. I.e. how they help your audience to process and remember the content.

This, again, draws heavily from Dr. Medina's book Brain Rules, specifically from Rule 10: Vision trumps all other senses.

At Barcamp Stuttgart last weekend, I gave one of my now-traditional sessions about better presentations. This time, I concentrated on the human brain and how we need to take some of its limitations into consideration for our presentations. Specifically, I talked about the prefrontal cortex and the short-term memory (and visuals).

You've probably heard this before: The human short-term memory can only keep track of a certain amount of things at the same time. Seven is the number usually given. You also hear "Seven plus or minus two" sometimes.

In an article for The Next Web, author Boris has a list of 10 things you should never say during presentations. I agree with most of them, including (especially, actually) his bonus tip about not going over time.

And then there's the one that I initially wasn't so sure about: