Maggie Summers

For a lot of people, one of the most difficult aspects of creating a presentation is finding the right flow with your content. And to make matters worse, it’s one of the very first things you must tackle in the process before moving on. There’s nothing like staring at a huge stack of information, or at a deck made up of 75 unorganized slides, to make your heart drop right into your stomach. Alas, here are three steps to steer you in the right direction. (more…)

John F. Kennedy famously said,

“The only reason to give a speech is to change the world.”

We like to ascribe that aphorism to presentations, too. Why give a presentation if it’s not meant to change something, however small or large? Why spend time delivering a presentation that’s not meant to incite action?

In order to motivate change with our presentations, we must deliver our message as clear as possible to the audience. And that means boiling down the complicated until it turns simple. Simplicity is key in presentations, and with the help of a few quotes from celebrated gentlemen, here’s why. (more…)

It’s a question for the ages: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

A myriad of philosophers have mused over the question’s implications regarding meaning, observation, and reality, but Scientific American, true to form, answered it neatly sans philosophical concerns: “The falling of the tree or any other disturbance will produce the vibration of the air. If there be no ears to hear, there will be no sound.” (more…)

There’s this movie called Up in the Air. Maybe you’ve seen it. It came out in 2009, and it’s about a guy– played by the perpetually dashing George Clooney– whose job is to fire people. He gives advice to a new, much younger colleague on how to do the job right, and along the way doles out some advice about life, too:

“How much does your life weigh?

Imagine for a second that you’re carrying a backpack. I want you to pack it with all the stuff that you have in your life… you start with the little things. The shelves, the drawers, the knickknacks, then you start adding larger stuff… the backpack should be getting pretty heavy now. You go bigger. Your couch, your car, your home… I want you to stuff it all into that backpack. Now I want you to fill it with people. (more…)

This is a guest post by Maggie Summers, a content writer and blogger at Ethos3 – a leader in presentation design. Also read her recent post on presentation storytelling.

Most of us have experienced it acutely at the doctor’s office. A hurried, borderline frenetic, doctor bursts through the door and starts blathering on about your test results. He speaks quickly with lots of dense medical jargon; you stop tracking with him about 30 seconds after he starts. When he mercifully finishes, you have no idea what your test results say. Your doctor is suffering from the Curse of Knowledge, and you were just an unwitting victim.

The villainous Curse of Knowledge occurs when a person becomes knowledgeable about something and from then on is unable to imagine what it’s like to lack that knowledge. (more…)

This is a guest post by Maggie Summers, a content writer and blogger at Ethos3 – a leader in presentation design and training, and a friend of SlideRocket. She takes pride in empowering presenters through her knowledge and passion for presentations and powerful storytelling.

Stories can be the quickest way to be transported someplace far away. Don’t feel like being at home this afternoon? If you’d like to venture through the streets of St. Petersburg, Russia, pick up Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, or if you want to experience Paris and London during the French Revolution, grab Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Stories establish immediate familiarity and trust between storyteller and listener, they explain and nuance our complicated lives, and they offer a genuine glimpse at who we are. Presentations are enriched (more…)