While strolling through an art museum one day I overheard a guide commenting on the work of old Dutch masters. She said they tended to place the scene in the lower third of the canvas and then fill the upper two-thirds with sky. Looking at the results, it struck me that their paintings would make great slide backgrounds.

However, rather than purchase a painting by a Dutch master (a bit beyond my budget), I decided to test the idea with my camera. Now, whenever I travel, I compose some of my photos to include mostly sky with the scenery or activity confined in a narrow band along the bottom of the frame. The result? A photo that makes a great slide background.

For example: One of my presentation-writing workshops is built around a road trip theme. (I tell students that when they give a presentation, in a sense they take the audience on a journey, so the road trip analogy works well.) I’m always on the lookout for road trip imagery. So I was pretty happy to get a few good shots while travelling through the American Southwest. The result? Background photos I can use to make even boring bullet or chart slides interesting to look at.



While the bullet list or chart appears in the sky, the scene along the bottom keeps the theme alive in the minds of my students.

Wendy Cherwinski
words@echeloncomm.ca

Tags: Tips

As practiced musicians point out: some of the music is between the notes. The same idea applies to speeches. Saying nothing here and there actually engages listener attention. It follows, then, that if you want your listeners to really hear your ideas and enjoy the experience, you should make it a habit to work in pauses.

Both speaker and listener benefit from pauses. The speaker gets a chance to rest and to look around the room to gauge attention and interest. The audience gets a chance to rest too, as well as a moment to reflect on and absorb what the speaker has to say. 

Speakers who try to cram every second with words risk coming across as anxious. That anxiety can be a distraction for listeners who may start to focus more on the speaker’s discomfort than on their ideas and opinions.

And, let’s face it: a relentless, rapid-fire delivery is hard for anyone to put up with for any length of time. Confronted with a wall of sound, even the most interested listeners will be tempted to leave, if not in body then at least in thought.

In the glare of the spotlight, it’s easy to forget to pause. So prompt yourself (or the speaker you support). Write the instruction [Pause] into the script wherever needed.

Places to pause include:

• Before you change topics
• After you ask a question
• Before you make a critical point
• After you make a critical point
• Whenever you say something that might get a laugh

Wendy Cherwinski
words@echeloncomm.ca

Tags: Tips

People have a limited capacity for listening to and absorbing information presented orally, even with the help of visual support. Keep this fact in mind when you choose the arguments to highlight in the middle of your presentation. As a rule, plan to support your main argument with three to five major points. (Never go beyond seven points. After that number, research shows that all listeners hear is blah, blah, blah...)

Another effective way to organize your supporting arguments is in radiating groups of three. This is what I call the Russian doll approach. Start with three major points. Then expand each one with three sub-points. You can repeat this design ad infinitum, keeping in mind that each level you add will greatly lengthen the time required to deliver your presentation. To shorten the presentation, just eliminate levels of sub-points and hide the slides that illustrate them. In other words, pop smaller dolls back into larger dolls.

Following this method will allow you to deliver the same presentation whether you have 5 minutes or an hour and 15 minutes to fill.

Wendy Cherwinski
words@echeloncomm.ca

Tags: Tips

Here is one of the mysteries of the universe: why are so many meeting rooms so badly designed? It often seems as if no one really had any idea how the room was going to be used.

Let’s start with the one of the most common problems: too few electrical outlets. To plug in a computer, a projector and a set of speakers, you need three plugs. Yet so often there is only a single two-plug outlet available. Then there is the placement of the screen. More often than not it’s plunked down in the middle of the room, restricting the space available for the presenter to move around. And, why is it so often a struggle to find surface space for both the projector and a computer?

Here are a few suggestions on how to cope with meeting room design disasters.

• Anticipate challenges. For example: pack a roll of duct tape and a powerbar - with a long cord.
• Go early and inspect the room. Stand at the back and at the front. Scout out the electrical outlets, the arrangements for the projector and computer, the placement of the screen and flip charts. Take note if there are cords on the floor that you could trip over.
• Check the lights. Find out where the controls are and how to use them to dim or brighten the room.
• Pay close attention to how much space you have to move in. When the projector is running, you may find yourself restricted. Determine your ‘arc of fire’ to avoid casting shadows on the screen. Finally, always carry a remote control so you’re prepared to operate at a distance from your computer.

Wendy Cherwinski
words@echeloncomm.ca

Tags: Tips

No one ever said speechwriting is easy; but sometimes it’s harder than it has to be. Consider this scenario: you start on a speech and quickly find yourself spinning your wheels. You simply don't have a good enough grasp of the subject to make any headway. Meanwhile, the clock keeps ticking…

You could wait for elves to come by in the night to finish the job. Then again, you could avoid this situation altogether. Before you begin a major speech, take the time to put together together a solid set of questions and answers (Q&As). 

Preparing a Q&A package is worth the effort for a number of reasons. The exercise lets you concentrate on and become familiar with each topic in isolation. When you really know your material well, it’s much easier to weave the ideas together in a narrative. And, if you run the Q&As by the client, you could get approval for much of your content long before your first speech draft is a fait accompli.

Here's benefit to prepping Q&As: you can often take the answers and plug them into the speech verbatim. (Even the questions can be reused in the speech as transitions. Asking a question is a great way to move from one subject to another.)

The trick, then, is to ‘pre-fab’ your answers to make them easy to insert into the speech. Begin each answer with an overarching statement or thesis. Then provide a sentence or two of background. Follow up with some proof: a fact, statistic, quote, anecdote etc. If possible, end the answer by explaining why this particular point represents a benefit or opportunity to the audience.

Once the speech is finished, don’t throw away those Q&As. They may come in handy for your next assignment.

Wendy Cherwinski
words@echeloncomm.ca

Tags: Tips