I just ran across this – brilliant, hot off the presses, from TEDxEast in New York last November: presentation designer Nancy Duarte (@NancyDuarte) puts together just about everything I know about how to do a talk and a lot more. A comprehensive model of how great talks are structured – using “I Have a Dream” and Jobs’ iPhone launch talk as examples.
This is your training kit; if you want to change the world, master this!
Danish friend Katrine Kirk posted this addition, on the SPM member listserv:
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Adding to the TED presentation Dave linked to, I can highly recommend Nancy Duarte’s two books: “Slide:ology” and “Resonate”. In the latter, she delves deeply into the structure of great presentations. She’s made a huge difference in my approach to presentations, and while I used to feel like a very competent speaker, I’m somewhat humbled to find that there is so much more to learn and improve. But it’s an exciting venture.
As a side note, I find that viewing many different talks on ted.com is not only educational for their subject matter, but also highly inspirational in terms of getting to grips with presentation technique. One of my absolute favorites is Hans Rosling (a statistician) talking about global population growth, using amazing visuals from cheap plastic beach sandals and toy cars to extremely advanced statistics presented in an easily accessible way: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.html
I love achieving impact on an audience – and it does take some work on the presentation technique, not just on the content.