The Mobile Presenter

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.

A common myth seems to be that speakers are afraid of questions during their presentations. At least that is what I take from the fact that a lot of books and articles on presentations encourage speakers to accept questions. But then again, I've never seen a talk that didn't end with the ritual question from the speaker to the audience: Any questions?

So where does this supposed fear of questions come from?

The use of humour in presentations is, ironically, a common source of fear and loathing. This is mainly because people confuse humour with telling jokes. From experience, jokes told during presentations are usually not very funny at all and cause more of a collective groan than laughter. Also, the use of humour is often seen as unprofessional, especially in more business-oriented surroundings. But humour, laughter, and an element of play are natural parts of being human, so why should they be banned from presentations?

One of the simplest definitions of what a story is (which is going back to the greek philosopher Aristotle) is that it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. As Kendall Haven points out, though, that definition doesn't really help. Otherwise,

John went to the grocery store. He bought some milk, then drank it.

would be a story.

The Mystery of Picasso is a 1956 movie that lets us watch Picasso painting. Nothing else - it's not a documentary in the usual sense, it's really only showing how one of the most popular and influential painters of the 20th century works. Which makes for a fascinating film.

During the 78 minutes of the film, we can see Picasso working on a wide variety of paintings - from very abstract to more realistic ones. He's also using various different techniques. But there's a common theme: