Tag Archive for: Communication and Presentation techie tips

Did you know? Live illustrations

Live illustrations (or visual recording) are a great way to capture people’s quotes, conversations and feelings during meetings, presentations or workshops by creating a visual report (instead of boring ‘meeting minutes’ with only text, text and text …). All you do is hire an external illustrator (I know a good one …) who joins your meeting on-site and who co-signs live all conversations, decisions, energy and flow.

The illustrator (also called Graphic Recording Artist) will be doing their best to wow the audience, to entertain, educate and inform – all of which is better than participants staring at their smart phone. The outcome is a visualized poster of the meeting, which stimulates the creativity of all attendees during and after the meeting, as they will be looking at the drawing and receive information in different way.

Especially in times of change, a good image gives gestalt to feelings, strengthens the dialog and provides new insights.

Did you know? Rhetorical devices

As a trained linguist (I originally studied English and Spanish philology before I ended up in internal communications 25 years ago …) I’ve always found rhetorical devices the goldmine for creating emotional connection in my communication.

Using rhetorical techniques are a powerful and manipulative strategy that can benefit your speech big time. They convey meaning, provoke a response or persuade in a debate. You’ve probably used some of them before without ever thinking about it.

The rhetorical question is a good example:

“Are we doing the right thing?”
”Can you imagine that?”
“Isn’t that incredible?”
“Want to see that again?”
“Pretty cool, huh?”

Often asked to an audience in order to get them thinking seriously about the question and its implications – but without expecting an answer. The goal is to facilitate a discussion.

Here are my 10 favorite rhetorical devices. Don’t just read the article – try inserting a few of them in your next speech!

1. Alliteration
Repeating the initial letter of a word:
“They are part of the finest fighting force that the world has ever known. They have served tour after tour of duty in distant, different, and difficult places” – Barack Obama

2. Amplification
Building on a word, phrase or sentence, evoking a sense of urgency and intensity:
“They want a perfect house in a perfect neighborhood”

3. Anaphora
Words repeating at the beginning of successive phrases or sentences:
“As you know, we’ve got the iPod, best music player in the world. We’ve got the iPod Nanos, brand new models, colors are back. We’ve got the amazing new iPod Shuffle” – Steve Jobs

4. Assonance
Repeating a vowel sound in a sentence:
“I feel the need, the need for speed” – Tom Cruise in ‘Top Gun’

5. Chiasmus
Reversing the word order in the second of two parallel phrases or sentences to invoke powerful emotion:
“Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country” – John F. Kennedy

6. Euphemism
Substituting an unpleasant phrase with a more pleasant one to make it sound nicer (or not hurt somebody’s feelings):
“I’m not bossy – I’m outspoken!”

7. Hyperbole
Exaggerating a description for emphasis:
“Red Bull gives you wings” – Red Bull advertising slogan

8. Onomatopoeia
Imitating the natural sounds of a thing. The mimicking sound effect makes the description more expressive and interesting:
“The gun went bang!”

9. Simile
Explicitly comparing two (unalike) things, usually using “as” or “like”:
“You’re as cold as ice” – Foreigner

10. Metaphor
Comparing two things that aren’t alike but do have something in common. Unlike a simile, where two things are compared directly, a metaphor’s comparison is more indirect, usually made by stating something is something else. A metaphor is not meant to be taken literally. You’ll have to find the deeper meaning of it:
“Love is a battlefield” – Pat Benatar

Did you know: Speech map

You have a looming speech ahead and no idea where to begin. Commencing work on a new presentation usually means lots of ideas spinning in your head and not knowing how to sort them.

The solution is a speech map. It’s a simple mind map (yes, really drawn on a physical piece of paper), on which you outline your talk. The speech map (or speech diagram) shows your ideas linked to and arranged radially around your central key topic. Drawing the map makes your ideas graphic, prioritizes your thoughts and shows connections between information. So, basically, you ‘sort your brain’.

Here is the danibu speech map template you can use for the preparation of your next public speech. Simply edit it by changing and including the topics that you are going to deliver:

1. Crystallize the subject of attention in a central theme. This is your headline
2. Define – ideally 3 – key points, radiating as branches from your headline
3. Add another level of 3 supporting points (details) from your key points

Did you know: Pocket

Find now – read later. In the meantime: Just put it in Pocket.

I love it – especially before leaving on vacation. I simply save any “googled” article, video or pretty much any web page directly from the browser (or from apps like Twitter) to pocket’s remote servers for later offline reading at my own convenience: If it’s in Pocket, it’s on your phone, tablet or computer. You don’t even need an Internet connection. Enjoy reading or watching – wherever you are on business or leisure travel!

Where to source free images?

“Where can I get good, free stock photos to strengthen my presentation or campaign with strong imagery?” I get this question all the time …

Well, when it comes to sourcing great visuals, be aware of potential copyright infringement and don’t just pick from internet without consideration about who owns the photo rights.

Apart from doing your own photo shoot (which I do a lot for danibu purposes), there are a variety of websites with great, free quality imagery. I always pull out these two:

PEXELS and UNSPLASH.

Both websites help beefing up your next presentation, website or social media channels, so it’s really worth checking them out and saving them in your favorites. My tip is to improve your presentations visually, but to see images as an investment: Be creative and surprising: Google image and clipart are a no go!

Did you know: SmallPDF

Are you sometimes fed up with files too large to email? Are you in need to convert files into small-size pdfs? Then SmallPDF is the solution. I use it a lot. It’s super useful, and free!

Basically, it’s an online pdf compressor with which you can reduce the size of your documents and images and still maintain good quality.

Did you know: WeCompress

You visit a website, click to download a file and end up waiting endlessly because the online document unnecessarily packs a huge amount of bytes. Or, you want to email a document and get stuck because your attachment exceeds 10 MB.

The solution is: Compressing the documents and files using an awesome free online tool I discovered lately: WeCompress.

I also use a similar application – SmallPDF, see respective blog item on this page -, but it’s good to have an alternative great option.

WeCompress compresses all sorts of documents: PDF, Microsoft PowerPoint, MS office docs or image files (PNG and JPEG). Using WeCompress is a breeze – all you have to do is check the WeCompress website, click the Add File button and it will instantly optimize the file. After a few seconds of compression, you will be shown a Download button so that you can download the compressed file. Along with this download link, it also shows how much the file has been compressed. Voilà!