Posts Tagged ‘passion’

While attending an academic conference held at Waseda University, the importance of good communication and presentation seemed to have been totally forgotten. I listened to speech after speech of people who are extremely knowledgeable in their field, but don’t know how to make a point let alone excite the audience.

In his book, Presentation Zen, Garr Reynolds talks about “death by powerpoint.”I think educators take this to an extreme. Writing paragraphs of data and literally reading from a manuscript. The point it is, if you can’t interest of excite your audience, whatever product you are trying to sell or idea you are trying to spread just won’t matter. They will never hear you.

Related Links

• Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger » Blog Archive Presentation Zen … – Presentation Zen says “just talk to me”. This is an honor. Presentation Zen, er, Garr Reynolds, gives the good and bad of corporate presentations he’s seen and then gives me a compliment (while teaching us how to do better business …
• comment on every small business needs a little presentation zen by … – if a slide or printed piece does not tell a useful part of the story, dig it out and throw it away. ditto for the spoken portion of the presentation. as a teacher, i did a lot of ‘chalk talks’. that required minimal graphics, …

I was recently turned on to the website TED Talks and realize that every time I watch it I come away inspired. The site is basically some of the worlds smartest and most talented people talking about the cutting edge work they are doing in their fields. From technology, education, dance, astronomy, biology, and just about anything else. So I have been thinking about what inspires me about all of these presentations. Many of the speakers aren’t really good presenters, and there are a number of topics I don’t have interest in. So why is it that they all seem to have such a presence? I believe it’s passion. They all love what they are doing and can’t think of anything more important. It drives them to be the best at whatever it is they are doing, and that is inspiring.

Watch the following video and see if you agree. There is really nothing amazing about the following presentation, but it is inspiring. Why? Because he has passion. He truly cares about what he is doing. Find your own inspiration and inspire others.

Other Helpful links

• Comment on Inspiration by Inspiration | mere funde – [...] I came to know about this person through Dcubed’s blog. Then again through Scoble. [...]
• 64 Ultimate Design Inspiration Resources – Over the past years website design has become more and more beautiful. You can find thousands of inspirations online – Logos, Icons, Websites, Colorschemes… I have carried together the best and largest sites. So sit back, relax and let …
• The Library in Verse – (I have written about such inspiration before.) It is, after all, one of the great buildings at the heart of one of the great institutions of the world. But what wasn’t expected was that a visitor would be inspired to set his …