In my line of work, It’s very common for me to be asked to give a number of presentations a day and even some externally. I am by no means an expert but I really look up to and respect one of my previous managers Jeff Veen. He wrote a great post on some tricks to better presentations.

Here they are:
Seven Steps to Better Presentations

“I’ve noticed a lot of talk about Powerpoint lately. About how it’s so terrible and how it enables awful presentations. But the problem isn’t Powerpoint, of course. The problem is bad content delivered poorly.

I speak for a living, and hear lots and lots of presentations at the conferences I attend. Here are some notes I wrote up for someone who is about to give his first ever public presentation.”

1. Tell stories. Seriously. People could care less about the five ways some XML vocabulary will enable enterprise whatever. Rather, put a screenshot of your project up, tell people what you learned while doing it, then give them a slide that reiterates those ideas in easy to digest bullets. That’s interesting. Even more interesting are before-and-after screenshots. Better yet: a step-by-step evolution. Just do not go from bullet-point slide to bullet-point slide trying to tell people what to think.

2. Show pictures. Got a good metaphor? Use it. “The Web is like a school of fish.” But go to images.google.com and type in “sardines” or “school of fish” or whatever. Make it a slide. Then say the Web is like that. Much more powerful and memorable.

3. Don’t apologize. Ever. If something is out of order, or if something occurs to you as a mistake during the presentation, keep it to yourself. They’ll never know. Besides, nobody cares about the presentation itself. This is really hard, because you know the whole backstory, and you’ll be tempted to explain why something isn’t quite perfect. Skip it. Also, you don’t need to apologize about the color on the projector, or the fact that your mic just popped off your lapel, or that a staff person spilled a pitcher of water. Commiserating is fine, however. “If it gets another 5 degrees colder in here, I’ll be able to see my breath!”

4. Start strong. I can’t believe how many presenters forget this. Do not get up there and say, “Um, well, I guess we should probably get started.” Instead, say, “Hi, I’m Jeff. It’s really great to be here, and thank you so much for coming to my session. Today, we’re going to talk about….” Make sure those are the absolute first words you say out loud. No need for a joke or an opening or any of that. Just start strong and confident.

5. End strong too. “…so that’s why I like social software. I appreciate your attention today. Thank you.” Then stand there and wait. Everyone will clap, because you just told them you were done. When they’ve finished, ask them if they have any questions. If nobody asks anything, break the uncomfortable silence with “Well, I guess I told you everything you need to know then. [heh heh] I’ll be around after if you think of anything. Thanks again!” and start packing up your stuff.

6. Stand. Away from the podium. Out from behind the presenter table. Keep your hands out of your pockets. Take off your conference badge (the lights will catch it and be distracting). I pace a little bit around the stage, timed with my points, saying one thing from over here, and another from over there. But don’t move too much.

7. Pause. When you say something important, leave a gap after it. Let it hang there for a few seconds. Try it when talking to your friends. “You know what I think? (pause…two…three…four…) I think Bush is bankrupting this country for the next twenty years. (pause…two…three…four…) Here’s why…”

Last week I flew to London for the UX London conference at The Great Cumberland Hotel. It was an inspiring 3-day conference that consisted of a few well-known guest speakers and a few days of intensive workshops.

While I learned a lot from each speaker, I think the one that had the most meaningful impact on me was Don Norman’s talk titled “In Favor of Complexity”. While this spans many fields, on the web we see designers today trying to make things as simple as possible which may not always be the right solution. Norman argues that because life and people are complex, the tools we use or the things we interact with must (but not always) be complex as well. He gave a few examples that covered devices like an Italian espresso machine to Al Gore’s messy desk. In the desk example, just because I can’t go into Mr. Gore’s office and understand where things are doesn’t mean it isn’t an efficient/productive workspace environment for him. My take away from Don’s talk is that intuitive designs come are based on understanding and providing tools to afford more complex inputs might not be such a bad idea.

As someone that sits at a computer all day, this was helpful to me:

I found out today that my blog was being hacked ( People were injecting links into the comments they left causing traffic I didn’t want). I took this as a sign that I should probably update so here we go.

Here are 10 highlights over the past year (in no particular order):

I Built a house

Noelle Graduated

From Noelle's Graduation

My good friend Tushar left to Singapore for a year

From Tushar's Goodbye

I went to Paris

From Paris 2008

… Twice

From Valeo UX visit

My Best friend got Married …

From Sean & Kristen's Wedding

… And gave me the honor of being his best man.

From Sean & Kristen's Wedding

I treated my kids to a college tour of Portland State

From Portland 2009

I did a 40 mile hike through the Gila National Wilderness with close friends.

From MBT 2008

I went to Hip Hop Internationals (no I didn’t compete)

From sort

Yea there is a bunch more that happened but we all know how awesome I am at blogging. Maybe i’ll write more frequently? Probably not =p

On Thursday I leave to Paris for 2 weeks to visit Noelle. It’s been a few months since she’s left and while I’m surviving, this will be a good fix for the remaining time she’s there. So what’s new … I FINALLY closed escrow on my land!! The pending item securing the permit with the city and that just happened Wednesday. Now the real fun of building begins. I still haven’t secured a builder but am in the process of interviewing.

I moved into a new apartment in Sunnyvale with my buddy Eric from college. The last apartment I had raised the rent about 45% on me in two months (no there is no rent control) so I figured that if I was going to be paying that much for rent I might as well move away from the train tracks . In the process of the move, I lost my point and shoot camera which is why you haven’t seen many picture updates from me. I have a new camera on rush for my trip to Paris. Hopefully I’ll get to post while I’m there (or at least sometime in the next 2 weeks as opposed to 2 months)