The Mobile Presenter

Props are great to liven up a presentation and make things more tangible for your audience; even if they can't actually touch the props you bring. If you are doing a product introduction or demo of sorts, I strongly recommend to bring your product with you, if it fits on the stage somehow. Seeing a real person interacting with it, holding it, or simply standing next to it (if it's really big) will give your audience a much better idea of the size and use than any product photo on a slide could do. So if the goal of your presentation is to introduce and eventually sell a product, this should be a no-brainer.

If you still need convincing, watch Steve Jobs introduce the MacBook Air (remember the manila envelope?) or, a personal favourite of mine, the iPod nano: Ever wondered what this pocket is for?

It's not really a statistically relevant sample, but over the years, I've seen quite a few lawyers speak. And I have to say that pretty much all of them are still using text-heavy slides and not a lot of visuals. Yet at the same time, these talks are often pretty good; they're informative and even entertaining. Why is that so?

The very first slide of your presentation is what is called the welcome slide; the one with the topic of your talk and your name on it. I've written a bit about it in Presenting for Geeks, but presenters are doing it right most of the time automatically. Except, maybe, for one little detail ...

Panel discussion - the word alone instills dread and fear, mostly in the audience but also, I'd bet, in the hearts of the participants. There's a lot that could be said about them. In short, I have a theory that they just don't work but are often used as a "cheap" and simple measure to spruce up an event. What could be more exciting and valuable than getting insights from a group of experts on a topic, all at once?

In practice, as we all know, this simply doesn't work. The participants are often unprepared or simply not the type to make spontaneous insightful statements. So some panel discussions are scripted, at least partially, which only makes things more cringe-worthy. And in the rare case that something interesting is being said, the host has to cut the ensuing discussion short to make sure that each participant gets equal speaking time.

For my second ebook, Brainstorming Your Presentation, I was looking into the various smart pens (or digital pens) that are available on the market to see if they could help me with the problem of taking my presentation drafts with me.

I tried out quite a few of these pens - with varying degrees of success - but in the end decided to cut most of the details out of the book again, as they were distracting from the book's focus. Since the information could be of interest to potential buyers of these pens, I'd like to publish it here instead.