Throughout school and my professional career, I’ve given a metric butt-ton of speeches and presentations. Some casual and low-key to 3 or 4 people. Some scientific presentations to a room full of PhD’s. Some in front of 200+ strangers while wearing an extremely tight wetsuit. I wouldn’t call myself a presentation “expert” by any means. Nonetheless, here are a few public speaking tricks and tips I’ve picked up to avoid Fruit of the Loom brownies.
Tell A Story
Legit. You are the J.R.R. Tolkien of this presentation. People often overlook this but it’s key. Good presentations, like good stories, have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Don’t just sit there spewing out random facts like a damn verbiage volcano. Set the scene and give them the big scope, highlight the key points and go into detail, charts and graphs and charts and graphs and some PICTURES (please don’t just word vomit all over a Powerpoint slide… it’s the woooooorst) and then wrap it up with some ‘key-takeaways’, ‘proposed next steps’ and other office-life buzz words that are sure to bring your boss from six to midnight.
LEARN Your Story aka Do Some Damn Prep Work
Unless you're a bird, you probably shouldn't wing it. Know what the fudge you’re going to say BEFORE you give your presentation. Make flash cards. Type up outlines. Do whatever you have to do to avoid reading verbatim from a script or slides. No one likes an orator who sounds like a robot literally reading word for word off the monitor. Ron Burgundy over here... Familiarize yourself with the information you're about to present as much as possible. I always find myself googling terms or words or techniques I come across that I’m unfamiliar with. And don’t put anything in your presentation that you wouldn’t feel comfortable answering in-depth questions about. Someone is bound to grill you when you seem unsure. Like sharks circling a wounded walrus… waiting… hoping… OMNOMNOMNOMNOM.
Dress To Impress
PRO TIP!!!! If you want to feel empowered and confident, make sure you look good. It starts with YOU! If I know I’m about to blow the minds of scientists and research technicians with some siqqqqqq Western Blot images and killer chromatography data… I’m going to dress the part. Pick an outfit that’s classy, and something you know you look good in. You’ll feel that much more confident while delivering your presentation. I would avoid the Batman mask unless it's Halloween. Realistic example for me: Nice pair of gray or blue slacks, some clean-ass tan Cole Haans with belt to match, a nice slim-fit button up shirt from Le Republique de Banane, a minimalistic watch from MVMT, and a fresh haircut a la Julien Edelman. BOOM! You’re feeling damn confident now aren’t you, you sexy bitch. If you’re in the situation like I am at the aquarium and don’t have control over your outfit (i.e. I’m wearing a NEAQ wetsuit standing in 55-degree water) at least make sure you brush your teeth and maybe do your hair. Facial hair too dudes… trim that chin bush. I like to make a joke about wearing a wetsuit during my penguin presentations which always lightens the mood. Something like “You’ll see I’m wearing this nice thick wetsuit, which isn’t as easy to get into after binge watching ‘Breaking Bad’ and slaying an entire Hawaiian pizza”.
Tortoise And The Hare
Pace pace pace. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Go slow. Articulate. Project your voice. BREATHE. I’ll even pre-plan a few pauses in my speech. They'll give me a chance to gather my thoughts AND give the audience a chance to digest everything. And here’s a trick if you ever get stuck… just say “Before I move on, does anyone else have any questions?” A solid 80% of the time no actually one does or they're too shy to ask, so you can pretend you’re looking around to see raised hands when the inside of your brain is like “OH SHIT WHAT”S NEXT?!?!”
Eye-Eye Captain
Eye contact is important. It’s the sign of someone who is focused and paying the utmost attention to you. But GAHD DAMN is it AWKWARD! Especially when you hit like the 5+ second mark of solid eye contact. It’s like the Millenium Falcon getting sucked into the Death Star via tractor beam. Nothing you can do once you’re caught in the vortex. Here’s a way to maintain the illusion of eye contact while simultaneously not making eye contact. Straight David Blaine shit. Ready for this?!?! Stare at people’s foreheads. Mind blown or what?! If you stare at their eyebrows/forehead, it looks like you’re beaming right into their eyes… but you’re NOT. And the farther away you are the better. Closer up in like interviews and stuff you’re kind of screwed… But in auditoriums, meeting rooms, 150,000 gallon pools filled with salt-water and flightless birds, you’re golden.
“I Don’t Know” Is An Acceptable Answer
You’re going to do your prep work. You’ll know the answer to 99% of the questions thrown at you. But once in a blue moon you’ll be asked a question that would confuse Einstein. Real life example: *Victor giving penguin presentation* Does anyone have any questions? Yes, I do. Go ahead. Do people eat penguins? Well honestly I don’t know. You might want to ask one of the staff on exhibit if they know the answer to that. Now people eating penguins is a sensitive subject… and I honestly had no idea what the answer was. Even if I did know I probably wouldn’t answer since I’m sure someone would get offended and sue me. I’m sure there’s a random tribe somewhere that eats penguins. Key takeaway: It’s OK to say ‘I don’t know’ if you truly don’t know. All the better if you can point them in the right direction of someone who might know the answer. It's preferable to flat-out lying and a) getting called out by someone or b) starting with one lie that leads to a cascade/web of lies that comes back to bite you in the ass two months down the road during your mid-year performance review when your boss references some ‘facts’ you mentioned during your presentation…Not that that’s happened to me or anything.
Step Away From The Podium
It’s OK you can do it. There you go… Theeeeree you go. Now the other hand. Nice! See? Not so bad. Unless you’re the President of the United States or some other useless government agent there’s no need for you to be glued to a podium or stuck to your desk while presenting information. Get up and walk around a bit. I’m not saying parkour across the meeting table, but take a few steps every so often… and leave the podium behind. No hiding behind it. By being up and out in the open and moving around, you’ll project confidence and energy that the crowd will pick up on. “Hey look at me I’m out the open and totally vulnerable! But I give ZERO shits!” They’ll dig that. Plus, it allows you to convey yourself through gestures and motion clearly, resulting in a more dynamic presentation. Do a cartwheel at the end, I don’t care.
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Aaaaand we’re back.
I’m sure you are wondering where in the absolute cluster-fudge I’ve been the past two months. Well it went down something like this… July 12th, 2016 – Thanks to ‘Brexit’ (I think… political advisors/economists please confirm) I was laid off from my job along with 30ish other people at our quaint little bio-lab in Boston. The company was U.K. based, soooo all of our equipment and robots and such is being shipped to the U.K. site by the end of 2016. Needless to say the human beings are not making the trip. Minor setback. Not my fault a bunch of Brits want to separate from a union of countries. Heck, we ‘Mericans did it to them. Classic case of penis envy. To Scotland: You’re more than welcome to join us as the 51st state.
Rest of July – Impromptu vacation. The first week of “fun-employment” was chock full of video games, farting, eating, farting some more, hitting the gym, wearing nothing but tank tops and gym shorts, iced coffee milk-only, and more eating/farting. Thanks to a modest severance package, I had me a little stay-cation.
August 1 - 24, 2016 – Ok, time to get serious. Shiny,new, updated resume in hand it was now time to whore myself out to the Greater Boston biotech community. I was one of the hottest free agents in the streets. We're talking LeBron's "The Decision" hot. Fresh pancake hot. Eliza Dushku clothes shopping scene in "The New Guy" hot. Had about 4 or 5 interviews with various companies doing various bio-techy things. Some I liked, some I didn’t. Some called with an offer to which I declined, and some never called back like 99% of the girls I meet. Alas, I ended up with a new gig that turns out to be a stone’s throw from my apartment. Siqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq. Actual footage of my first day entrance...
August 24 - Present Day – I'm a scientist again! YAY! The new lab is pretty rad. Doing some vaccine work and supporting the team by running various bio-assays. Big boy stuff. Pays better than the old gig, and the commute is about 6 minutes. Go figure.
Bottom line: Your boy is back. Now that I’m somewhat settled into the new 9-5, hopefully I can get back to writing. I’d like to personally thank the 4 of you that were reading my blog consistently back in the spring/early summer. Everyone else… buckle up. ‘Bout to get re-lit in hurrrrr.
I'll be the first one to admit this: I was a Pokémon kid (insert "I'm not surprised" comment here). We’re talking original Pokémon Red and Blue when there were only 150 of the suckers. Waaaaayyy before Leaf Green and Silver and Platinum, Ruby and Goldust. And yes I chose Bulbasaur because my favorite dinosaur is Stegosaurus and he kind of looked like one. Come at me. Boy did I stick it to Misty with that green little bastard... Unless you live under a rock-type Pokémon, you've probably heard of ‘Pokémon Go’ by now. If not… well it's a Pokémon game that essentially forces you to get off your lazy ass and literally walk around town looking for Pokémon through your phone. Now I'm not here to tell you that you should or shouldn't be playing it, but if you DO decide to play… keep your head on a swivel. There's some crazy Poké-shit going down out there… A Chick in Wyoming Found A Dead Body (http://www.ktvq.com/story/32403198/wyoming-teen-playing-new-pokemon-game-on-phone-discovers-body/) A teenager in a small Wyoming town stumbled across a dead body in search of the mighty Wigglytuff. Gross. It's cool if you're not freaked out by these kinds of things. Maybe cops should just play P-Go all day instead of waiting for me and my expired inspection sticker to drive by. Anything that increases my chance of finding a dead body normally isn't something I want to participate in. That inner-monologue always fires up when you're the first to discover a dead dude... “Do I just pretend I never saw it? What if someone saw me see it?! Do I report it? If I do report it, what if they think I did it? Did I do it?!? OH SHIT DID I DO IT?!” Not worth the stress IMO. People are getting Poke-mugged (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/robbery-suspects-using-pokemon-go-to-target-victims-police-say) In this game you are allowed to drop 'lures' in certain spots, which makes actual real-world locations turn into Pokémon ‘hotspots’. Ok, awesome. Well guess which group of people figured this out and started placing their own lures around town. Robbers, thieves and potential murderers. It’s genius really. What a great way to bring a bunch of unsuspecting and easily rob-able nerds who more than likely haven’t done a single push up their entire lives to one spot! "Hey dude, sorry there’s no Squirtle here. But how about the rare 'Shotguninyourface-mon'? It evolves into Gimmeallyourmoney!" It happened just outside St. Louis, Missouri...and I have a feeling that won't be the only incident. Maybe don’t play at night and avoid hotspots near graveyards, random dead-end alleyways and windowless vans. Your Pikachu can’t actually protect you, so maybe bring a knife or a crowbar or something. Be smart about it. Gotta' mug em all. A teenager was shot and killed while trespassing on the hunt for a rare Pokémon (http://nationalreport.net/teen-killed-trespassing-while-playing-pokemon-go/) I know Zapdos is one of those ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ Pokémon prizes…but it’s not worth breaking into the bedroom of a complete stranger’s house. Aaaaaaaaaaaand that’s exactly what happened. A teenager in South Carolina had the bright idea of breaking into a 67-year-old neighbor’s house at 1:00am because a rare Pokémon showed up in there. Turns out people’s homes can become hot spots. He didn’t catch any Pokémon, but he did catch a 9mm handgun bullet to the chest. Cheers to Pokémon Go for helping clean up the gene pool. Traffic is now WORSE somehow, and parked cars aren’t even safe (http://jalopnik.com/pokemon-go-makes-driving-a-lot-more-dangerous-1783377760). Great. Just when traffic couldn’t get any worse. Now you have morons like the guy in this article stopping his truck in the middle of the road, BLOCKING TRAFFIC, to make a Poke-pit-stop. I swear if I ever see this I’m throwing all of the pennies in my cup-holder at them. And you thought you were safe in a parked car? Nope. How about walking in the crosswalk? More dangerous than ever. Check out these tweets… First person to get flattened in the middle of the road looking for an Onyx by someone in a truck also looking for an Onyx is going to be laugh out loud funny. Especially when the first responders who arrive on scene are also looking for said Onyx. Injuries galore! (https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2016/07/10/pokemon-unexpected-side-effect-injuries/c1TTglDH4A5Oc1KgjlqRbJ/story.html) Kids falling in ditches and breaking bones. Dudes wiping out on skateboards. Bruised shins, cuts, and scrapes. One kid even had the balls to complain that his legs hurt from all the walking. This made me laugh out loud… (http://www.whec.com/news/people-hurt-playing-pokemon-go/4194089/) Kyrie Tompkins, a 22-year-old freelance web designer, fell on the sidewalk and twisted her ankle while wandering in downtown Waterville, Maine, on Thursday night. "It vibrated to let me know there was something nearby and I looked up and just fell in a hole," she says. Her parents had to drive her and her fiancé home. Dear future Mr. Kyrie Tompkins. Are you sure about this chick? The words 'freelance' and 'web designer' in the same sentence are never a good sign. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU!
(http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/11/pokemon-go-is-a-hacker-s-dream.html) As the title of the article clearly and beautifully articulates… “Pokémon Go is a hackers dream”. Granted the government or hacker group X most likely has 99% of your personal shit on file already… if they don’t they do now! An “internal Google spin-off company” (note the air quotes… if that doesn’t sound fishy to you there's something wrong) is collecting all sorts of information on you through the Pokémon Go app. I mean the game is about to surpass the TOTAL number of Twitter users in LESS THAN A WEEK! We’re talking access to your camera, contacts, GPS location, SD card contents, birthdate… and check this out. The company can legally hand over any information it finds to law enforcement, sell it or share it with third parties… basically do whatever they want with it! ...'Merica!!! If you truly want to be the very best. Like no one ever was. Catching them is your real test... training them the cause...You won't let a few pesky government agencies get in the way of that right?
To be honest, I was busy as hell this week. That plus the fact Monday was a holiday and new Star Wars Battlefront DLC came out on Tuesday means I didn't have too much time to write stupid articles for you sexy bastards.
So here are a bunch of funny .gif files for you to enjoy. Happy Friday and I'll see you next Monday with more "real" insight.
Doorbells
It’s 2016. If I’m expecting you just call/text me so I can let you in. Why you ask??? 1) Doorbells don’t work 95.5% of the time. Even if they do work you can’t hear that it’s working so you end up jamming the button 100000 times and annoying the ever-loving-shit out of everyone inside the house. God forbid it’s a multi-family house and you end up smashing the wrong doorbell. Awkward city. 2) When a doorbell rings I automatically assume the worst…. It’s a police officer looking to arrest me. It’s a murderer. It’s one of those dressy religious guys with a briefcase who wants me to join a cult. It’s a detective coming to tell me everyone I know is dead. It’s a group of 13 year old boys lighting dog shit on fire and leaving it on my porch. It’s the UPS guy with my package who rings the doorbell, leaves the package, and zips away in his truck before I get down to the door so now I think that the package is a bomb/anthrax. I can’t be the only one who freaks out when the doorbell rings. Heck even most pizza guys give you a courtesy call nowadays. Do yourself a favor and avoid any accidental maiming by just calling me when you show up.
People who carry out conversations in the worst possible location.
We’ve all seen them. A group of 5 business suit guys walking arm to arm talking up the whole sidewalk as they chat about stocks and bonds and 401k. The lady who has to have an intimate conversation with a friend at the bottom of an escalator. The parents who have to discipline their children in the entranceway of Target. The bros who decide to recreate a recent frat party in the middle of a squat rack during gym rush hour. LITERALLY ANYWHERE ELSE would be fine to have a conversation. I’m at the point in my life where I’ll straight Red Rover through a group of people clogging up a doorway or aisle. Unless your dad is James T. Sidewalk or Harry S. Doorway, you don’t own that shit. MOOOOOOVE BITCH, GET OUT THE WAY
99% of House Stark (Game of Thrones Spoilers Ahead)
Are the Starks the most overrated medieval-fantasy family in history or what? Let’s break down the tape… Ned Stark – Executed, dead. Catelyn Stark – Tricked, murdered, dead. Robb Stark – Tricked, murdered, dead. Benjen Stark – Weird pasty-white half-zombie guy with terrible skin. Rickon Stark – Did not zigzag, dead. Bran Stark – Crippled, did not listen to his mom, got several people killed including a giant mentally handicapped guy, ugly. Arya Stark – Quit her assassin training because she let her emotions get in the way. Soft. Also ugly. Jon Snow – Technically died. Handsome dude but not really even a Stark. Hair not as good in a man-bun. Sansa Stark – The only hope for this bloodline. House Stark: You either die or you’re ugly. #PrayForSansa
Anti-Brexit Protests
“You can’t triple stamp a double stamp!” - Harry Dunne I can’t stand sore losers. Look, you already voted to bail from the EU. No do-overs. If we start handing out mulligans to the U.K. we’re gunna have to start handing them out to everyone else. Do we really want Trump to invoke his “Do-Over Clause” if he loses this upcoming election? Terrorist Group A just launched a bunch of missiles at us, but they handed in their re-do card so it’s cool. Yeah, no.
Slow/Dumb People in Line at the Grocery Stores, Target etc.
A quick true story… I was in line at a CVS picking up a few minor things. Pretty sure it was just a bottle of water and some toothpaste. The woman in front of me trying to make a purchase at the register could not understand why the final price of her purchase was more than the price of the items she had. It was the sales tax. The guy at the counter tried explaining it to her for about 5 minutes and 36 different ways, but she kept yelling at him and asking for the manager because she thought she was the victim of some government conspiracy. Now granted she might been from a state/country where there is no sales tax, but this is Tax-achusetts for crying out loud. After a solid 6-7 minutes standing in line behind this dumbass (with NO ONE ELSE OPENING UP A REGISTER) I had reached my boiling point. I said out loud “F*CK THIS SHIT”, walked up to the counter, slammed a $10 dollar bill down and walked out the door with my stuff. No one stopped me. There’s a special place in hell for people like tax lady. And don’t even get me started with coupon people. #DONE |
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