Have you heard of Prezi? Sometimes called the ‘zooming’ presentation software, Prezi is an online program you can use to create presentations that are considered more dynamic than PowerPoint because of its Zooming User Interface. What does that mean? The presentation or story is laid out on a virtual canvas and the scale of the viewed area More…
A short speech – create a 3 minute speech that rocks
I’m in the Charles Pearson Theatre at the University of Melbourne, watching 12 short speeches. It’s a 3 minute speech competition called the 3 minute Thesis. These annual, 3 minute speech competitions challenge Ph.D and Masters students to effectively communicate 3-1/2 years’ of technical research into a short speech. Their task is to convey only the most important More…
Team building and team motivation with vivid messages
Team building can be achieved by developing focused, inspirational messages. It’s amazing how much impact these words can have on team motivation. I’ve written before about the importance of strong leadership messages when speaking a in corporate or presentation environment, and great leaders know that effective team building happens when your team is driven by a More…
How to be persuasive when speaking
The origin of the word hints at how to be persuasive. The latin ‘persuasivus‘ is about being ‘convinced by reasoning’. So even though emotion plays an important part, our focus should be on a compelling argument and reasoning to back it up. You don’t need to employ manipulative tricks to be persuasive, the core skill More…
How to END a speech with power and impact
The universe has no end. Doesn’t that blow your mind a little? When you look up in the sky, it doesn’t end. Ever. This is difficult for humans to fathom. Our brain can’t process things that don’t end. It causes overwhelm, which shuts down our processing and recall faculties. This, however, creates a unique opportunity. More…
Public Speaking Simplified
The Vivid Method simplifies Public Speaking and helps you be more persuasive in: Speeches, Presentations, Media conversations. How? It shows you how to eliminate the interference caused by normal speaking nerves and information overload. On top of that it provides tools to structure information to bring it to life. This helps you think clearly – More…
Speech outline example: Steve Jobs Stanford address
How does Steve Jobs plan a speech? The structure of Steve Jobs speeches varied depending on his goals for the communication event. But he always had 2 things; a clear take-home message and an engaging structure. For example, this speech tells an amazing story and shares unique life lessons, but it’s also a wonderful example of More…
4 ways to start a speech strongly
The most important thing when starting a speech or presentation is to make it clear to the audience where you are taking them. Think about a typical person in your audience. Their mind is full of to-do lists and daydreams; and you walk on stage. They’ve sat through boring presentations in the past and More…
Communication Coaching: Using standup comedy for book publicity
Amy Doering is releasing a book and wanted book publicity and media promotion. We decided on a unique approach; we would create a 5 minute standup comedy routine using the stories in the book. Here’s Amy talking about the Coaching Project; how she was able to control nerves by refining the material and using a More…
Instructions for VividOutline iPhone App.
First, create your speech Outlines at SpeechOutline.com (See bottom of page for a refresher on how to do this). Step 1, open the iPhone app! Type in your Username and Password. Or simply use the ‘Demo Account’ which has 4 Outlines to play with. Scroll through your List of Outlines (they are automatically downloaded from More…
