The Mobile Presenter

How to Get People to Do Stuff: Master the Art and Science of Persuasion and Motivation by Susan Weinschenk

The somewhat tongue-in-cheek title neatly summarizes what the book is all about. Unlike Dan Pink's "To sell is Human", which I read just before this, Susan Weinschenk doesn't focus on "selling" (even by Dan Pink's wide definition); the book is really about what motivates people and how you can use these drivers, as she calls them, to get people to, well, "do stuff".

It has become a familiar sight for those who know me: When I'm busy sticking Post-it notes on my desk or whiteboard, I must be working on a presentation. I found that Post-its have two main uses in preparing a talk: For brainstorming and as early drafts of my slides.

Day Camp for Developers (or DC4D for short) is a series of online conferences for software developers and people from related fields. The motto of the series is Invest a day in your career. The idea is that you get to learn from fellow geeks in a series of 4 or 5 talks about a specific topic. Previous Day Camps were about Soft Skills and Project Management, for example.

The fifth instance had a topic that's relevant to this blog: Public Speaking. So I was curious to hear what fellow geeks had to say on the topic.

At a conference, your audience will usually sit for most of the day. So, understandably, they may become sleepy and have trouble following your talk. Have you considered adding some short physical exercise to your presentation, to make them wake up?

Interacting with your audience can mean a lot of different things. You could ask them a question and to shout out the answer or to use hand signs. Or you can make them do short exercises, in groups or on their own. But all of those interactions are usually done sitting down. Consider an activity where they have to stand up and move.

Why should someone who's giving presentation courses take a presentation course? Well, I believe in the idea of lifelong learning (or Continuous Improvement or Kaizen). Knowledge isn't static, and neither is mastery. There is always new information and research coming out and you can always get better at something - if you really care about it.

So when I had the opportunity to take a 2-day presentation course with friends and fellow presentation coaches, organised by Ideas on Stage in Paris - I took it.