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January 29, 2010 by Jerry
In anticipation of Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address, a conservative website posted a table with 36 phrases they expected him to use. After the speech, we checked the transcript and tallied the results. Clear evidence of the risk of forecasting.
January 27, 2010 by Jerry
As a footnote to Monday’s post about Scott Brown’s upset victory in the Massachusetts senate race and his now-famous statement, “With all due respect. It’s not the Kennedy seat, and it’s not the Democrat’s seat. It’s the People’s seat,” this week, the New York Times reported about an election campaign in Illinois, in which one candidate is deploying Senator Brown’s formula, Representative Mark Steven Kirk, the front-runner in the Republican primary for the Senate seat once held by President Obama, has even taken
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January 25, 2010 by Jerry
Pundits have been analyzing the political factors in last week’s come-from-behind victory by Republican Scott Brown in the special election for Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts senate seat, but the presentation factors—as they invariably do—played an equally important role. Ever since 1960, when John F. Kennedy’s patrician poise stood in sharp contrast to Richard Nixon’s stiff discomfort, candidates have had to pay close attention to their personal images. Scott Brown had a distinct advantage with the image factor, having been named “America’s Sexiest Man,” by Cosmopolitan magazine in 1982 when he was a 22-year old law student. Mr. Brown accommodated the
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January 22, 2010 by Jerry
A recent article in the New York Times reported on a study of several hundred British dairies that found that cows that are addressed by name make more milk—about 6 percent in a given year—than anonymous ones. The rationale: “Named cows are more often treated nicely, and well-treated, calm and happy cows make more milk.” The lesson for presenters is to address members of their audiences directly by name, and to do so several times, throughout any presentation. This means that presenters have to make an effort to acquire the names of the persons they don’t know from the
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January 18, 2010 by Jerry
Today marks the national Federal holiday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the great civil rights leader. It also marks a Day of Service organized in his honor to encourage volunteering. Dr. King was one of the most noted public speakers in American history. His speeches roused audiences to powerful responses. His rhetorical reach extends back to the Greek orators and forward to Barack Obama. The Greeks used a technique called anaphora, or the repetition of the first word or set of words at the beginning of successive sentences or phrases. In Dr. King’s famous “I Have
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January 13, 2010 by Jerry
Titian (1490-1576), the influential Italian Renaissance artist, painted a portrait of Pope Paul III that established a point-of-view technique used by today’s photographers and cinematographers; a technique that presenters would do well to heed. In the portrait, currently on display at the Louvre museum in Paris, Titian, the painter—and therefore the viewer—is looking up at the pope, emphasizing his high social status. Conversely, the pope is looking down at the painter/viewer. The audio guide to the exhibit calls this position the “Sociological Role” because the angle reinforces the pope’s exalted position. To prove the point, the guide goes on
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January 11, 2010 by Pearl
Teenagers and young adults are constantly caught in a whirlwind of socializing via mobile phones, instant messages, online video games and social-networking websites. In my previous blog, you read about the decline of nonverbal communication among Gen-Y today. Further on this subject, Jeffrey Zaslow of the Wall Street Journal suggests that “there are a host of new questions that need to be addressed in schools, in the workplace and at home.” Among these new questions is, “how much work can ‘hyper-socializing’ students or employees really accomplish if they are holding multiple conversations with friends via text-messaging, or are obsessively
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January 6, 2010 by Jerry
In the previous blog, you read about an article in the Wall Street Journal on the creative processes of novelists that provided two valuable pieces of advice for presenters: • Begin with your goal or objective in mind • Write, rewrite and rewrite That same article provided two more pieces of advice from one of the novelists interviewed, Edwidge Danticat, the author of Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah’s Book Club selection. The first: Before she begins a novel, Edwidge Danticat creates
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January 4, 2010 by Jerry
The Wall Street Journal recently asked several novelists to discuss their creative processes. Their methods were as varied as their literary styles, ranging from preferred writing materials to favorite venues and even to the most productive times of day. But all of the writers shared one common technique: they all compose many drafts of their work. One of the foremost proponents of rewriting is John Irving, the author of the bestselling novel, The World According to Garp, and 14 other novels, including his most recent, Last Night in Twisted River. Although Irving was not among those interviewed for the
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December 21, 2009 by Jerry
“Brevity is the soul of wit,” said Polonius, the sage royal advisor in Hamlet, in response to the king’s request for his opinion. William Shakespeare had his 17th Century character use “wit” to mean intelligence rather than its current usage to mean clever humor. But just as the definition of wit has shifted over time, so has the definition of brevity. There are far too many presentations—and even more conversations—that go on and on and on, warranting the impatient accusation, “Tell me the time, not how to build a clock!” In presentations, nowhere is verbosity more frequently perpetrated than
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