Nano, by Saad

Previously, I pointed you to what Steve Jobs does in making awesome presentations.  As I’ve read more on presentations using visual aids, I’ve come across a couple blogs on how to get the most out of Powerpoint for your talks.  I point you to a couple example posts on each blog.

“Takahashi method” – on Presentation Zen

“What’s wrong with templates?” – Presentation Advisors (impressively, only one guy)

There are countless ways to incorporate PPT in a presentation, and the optimal way will vary with the nature of the presentation.  These blogs have so many ideas, I will definitely have fun trying to work different elements into my talks, which will be a challenge since science talks are usually so data/visual-heavy.

On “How I Met Your Mother” the character Robin, anchor of an early-morning talk show, thinks her show is doing really well because a lot of people watch it, including students of her friend Ted.  In actuality…

College kids: “We watch it for the drinking game.  You have to drink every time she says But, um…“

I never thought verbal tics and filler words could be the subject of sitcom tv, but they do a pretty good job with it.  Link to episode; start watching around the 9-minute mark.

(My filler word is like but I’ve gotten better at using it less, thanks to the Ah-Counter at our toastmasters meetings pointing out how often I’m using it.)

Go here to see a slideshow on “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience.”  Then try to incorporate some of those tips the next time you give a presentation, especially if its a powerpoint.

(H/T Harman.)

Spurred by the news that former President Bush will be the featured speaker at a motivational seminar next week, Slate published a collection of public speaking advice for Bush from different motivational speakers (which was a moderately interesting read).  But it got me thinking…

Opinions of political leaders span the entire spectrum between loved and hated, but most people would agree that President Obama has public speaking skills superior to Bush’s.  Now, imagine if Bush were as eloquent as Obama.  Depending on your opinion of Bush, you might ask:

• What else could he have persuaded America and its allies to stick their noses into, that he couldn’t do with fear mongering alone?  Or…
• What other greatness could he have achieved by motivating people to action by appealing to their aspirations, rather than their (there it is, again) fears?

Fyi, the Slate article containing the public speaking advice is here.

Poor guy.  Seriously, though, this is a FAIL on the part of the team’s media relations director for allowing the player to end up in this situation.

What is Toastmasters?  Find out here.

Very few things in life are as satisfying as a highly appropriate and effectively deployed metaphor.  Last month, with the start of the school year, our Materials Science program had its kickoff lunch to welcome the new students.  The centerpiece of this gathering is the Sales Pitch Contest, in which current students have three minutes to inform the judges (the new students) of their research and how awesome it is.

My friend Joy Garnett, starting her second year, works on linking together nanoparticles.  The motivation for this research is to have the nanoparticles serve as a conduit for light.  Without getting into hardcore condensed matter physics… the discussion of periodic structures—structures with a building block that is repeated with equal spacing, such as crystal lattices or photonic crystals—is nearly ubiquitous in materials science.  Unsurprisingly, Joy’s goal is to make her nanoparticles equally spaced apart and control the spacing between them.

In the three minutes allocated for her Sales Pitch, Joy did not explain the intricacies of why light behaves specially in periodic structures.  (Wise move, as new students haven’t taken condensed matter class yet.)  Instead, she told us about the classic video game, Super Mario Brothers. Read the rest of this entry »