The Extreme Presentation(tm) Method

Upcoming: Live, In-person Workshop

Hello, Friends and Colleagues,

We hope all is well.  Most of our workshops are for specific companies, so when we offer an Open Cohort, we like to let you know - to invite everyone.   Many of you have asked us to offer a live, in-person, open version of our Extreme Presentation workshop - and we are providing that.  Please see details below.  Reserve your spot here.  Express interest here.  Not sure, or have a question?  Ask us!

 

Details:

• Perhaps you have always wanted to take the workshop - now is your chance.
• Perhaps you attended the workshop, but would like to recommend it to a friend - feel free to introduce them to us.
• Rather than a full day - this live, in-person training will occur in a five-hour session - to make it easier for you to attend (see details above). 

Limited space available - first come, first served - we are intentionally capping the size of the workshop to ensure an interactive and integrated experience for you.
See the brochure and video here.

Download Extreme Presentation "Live, In-Person Open Cohort Workshop" Flyer

Our first ever Extreme Presentation workshop that is open to the public! In conjunction with PMRG, the premiere global community for healthcare marketing research professionals, we will be offering the day long Extreme Presentation workshop on October 23 in Jersey City, immediately after the 2013 PMRG Institute. 

All are welcome. Capacity is limited. Details here. I look forward to meeting you there. 

Teaching Presentation Design in College

I have heard from a number of faculty members recently that they are adopting Advanced Presentations by Design for use in college level presentation courses.  Dr. Carolyn Bailey Lewis, of the Scripps College of Communication's School of Communication Studies, has kindly shared the syllabus for her COMS 403 Advanced Presentations course, which you can download here. If anyone else has syllabi to share, please forward them to me and I'd be happy to post them. 

Presentations for Teaching

A viewer of this blog ("RP") recently asked the following question in a comment, and I promised to respond:

I've read and loved both of your books ("[Advanced Presentations by Design]" & "The Presentation"). I am struggling with one thing though, how to make informative presentations? I'm a physician in an academic center and our culture is rife with bad presentations, violating all the rules you set forth. I've read books by others suggesting to have no words, only pictures, etc and this will not be accepted in medicine. We need the data and the sources. This is what appealed to me about your approach. I understand how to use your approach for a persuasive presentation, but what about one to teach? And one to teach complicated material? Right now we rely on bullet points (and it barely does works). Do you have any advice? Thanks!

Thanks for the question, RP.  In my workshop I make the point that you will be a more effective presenter if you convince yourself that every presentation is an attempt to persuade. Sounds radical, but it's a useful attitude to have.  If you think of every presentation you make as having to persuade someone to think or do something differently, your communication will have much more impact.  This is because you are forced to think through what the implications are for your audience: why do they need your information, how does it change their world, why should they care?

It's useful to think of this in terms of the Problem you are helping your audience solve (Step 3 in the Extreme Presentation method). Ask yourself "What could go wrong in your audience's life if they didn't have the information I am trying to present/teach?"  Whatever that answer is, that's the problem you are helping them solve.

You mentioned that you are a physician, so I presume that you are teaching medical students or colleagues.  Here's a suggestion: begin your presentation by noting what could go wrong if someone were unaware of the information you are about to give them.  Perhaps even share a grisly anecdote about an incident that happened because someone didn't have this information.  Now you've got their attention, and you can proceed to share the information (always following the S.Co.R.E. method, of course) because now you have persuaded them why they need the information. 

For some more on this, take a look at pages 32-33 in Advanced Presentations by Design, under the heading "The Curse of the Update Presentation," and also my blog post Presenting to Physicians, Scientists, Engineers... and Marketers.

Feel free to comment below with any followup questions.  

 

Extreme Presentation workshop at Microsoft on June 9

I will be teaching the Advanced Presentation Design (Extreme Presentation) workshop at Microsoft's Redmond, Wa. campus on Wednesday, June 9.  The workshop is one day long and open to all Microsoft employees, who can register here.

Registration is recommended before this Friday, May 7. 

Extreme Presentation workshop in Melbourne, Australia

I am pleased to announce that the first Australian  Extreme Presentation Method public workshop will be held in Melbourne on April 20^th 2010. The workshop will be presented by the High Performance People Group (HPPG)'s Justin O'Brien, a trained Extreme Presentation facilitator. 

The initial response to this program has been outstanding, with half the seats sold in the first week. This is perhaps not surprising, given the response to Justin's first workshop, held in January of this year.  One participant at that workshop wrote:

Having worked in the learning and development field for over 15 years, I would like to consider myself experienced and well versed in presentation design and development, however the Extreme Presentation was a real eye opener for me!  The Extreme Presentation method is the perfect antidote to the ever growing PowerPoint obsession and encourages you to focus on the real purpose of your presentation - providing a solution to a problem. With its 10 steps, the Extreme Presentation technique is an accessible discipline for anyone whose work involves presentations

As a result of completing the Extreme Presentation workshop, I have profoundly changed the way I go about putting a presentation or other documents together. I would recommend this workshop to anyone who is involved in the design and development of presentations and other documents.

Dan Casey
Senior Learning & Organisation Development Consultant
Medibank Private

 

If you don’t make it onto this program HPPG will be conducting other public workshops in June, August and November.

For registration details please click here.  

Presentations that Drive Action: Webinar

I will be giving a webinar for Adobe on various aspects of the Extreme Presentation method on Wednesday, March 17 (St. Patrick's Day!) at 10 a.m. Pacific Time. More details here.

Classroom technology

There is a thoughtful column - a report from the front lines, as it were - by Ry Rivard in the Daily Athenium, a WVU paper, about the use, or abuse, of classroom presentation technology.