Roman's miles

Presentation killer - monotonous speaking

I'm sure each of us has attended a really bad presentation at least once . If I'm asked to accuse the most bitter and relentless presentation killer I'd point to the lack of vocal variety. Monotonous speaking is an indispensable component of every bad presentation. A great flow, interesting content, appealing examples, expressive body language, eye contact - everything can be in a speaker's arsenal. But if a modem can  beat her at the vocal variety the odds that the audience will listen to her, focus on the topic, and remember anything the next while after the presentation ends are none.

Convincing speaking voice is a trump in a speaker's pack of means to positively influence her audience. Unintelligible words, squeaky or too loud voice can distract the listeners from the message one is bearing. But if the right pronunciation or an efficient tone of the voice is a flaw relatively easy to rectify, perfecting vocal variety is something one needs to sweat for.

The theory says we have three "sliders" to tune and vary our voice: volume, pitch, and rate. Think on where to speed up and slow down your voice, where to speak up or rather whisper, where to go up or down. All these colors are available on the palette of a speaker and without them the picture will be primitive, gray, and boring.

Rate. Too slow pace will lull the audience and too fast will waste its attention on unnecessary word parsing and buffering. You should find a pace when you express yourself with clear articulation, normal breath, and acceptable volume. Typically a low-pace speaker says 120 words a minute and a fast speaker shoots about 180 at the same time. Your rate depends on your character - there is no golden means - and the key here is rate variety. There is no hard rule on the use of timing but it's accepted to express sad feeling (solemnity, depression, sadness, frustration, etc.) at a lower rate than the regular speech. On the contrary, exciting parts of the message should be delivered with a higher speed. You may want to make short pauses before or after words that you want to attract additional portion of attention to; this also makes easier for the audience to catch unusual or new words if they're preceded by a short pause.

Volume. Moderate loudness is acceptable for the majority of the speech - you don't need to whisper or boom your speech at the audience to keep its attention grabbed all the time. It's trivial, though, to use both extremes to emphasize special messages and have dramatic impact. Heightened emotions are conveyed with a loud voice whereas depressed feelings pass through with subdued voice. In business presentations tough and challenging questions can be asked in a lower voice to set up dramatic and vital scene. Accomplishments, motivation, requests, or anger - these feelings can be expressed through increased volume.

Pitch. A thin, a cartoon-personage's voice lacks authority and may block up the message completely. We need to cultivate deeper tones but going to the bottom level of the pitch scale may result in rumbling and indistinct speech. Playing with this parameter of the vocal variety aims the same target - emphasize certain words, sentences, or ideas in the speech. Heightened emotions go together with a higher pitch whereas depressed feelings or provoking statements reach the audience better by a low pitch.

The theory is great and if you have a speech trainer undoubtedly she'll be spending on that a good chunk of the lessons. But how to improve and polish it you there is no speech coach? I found it efficient to practice self-coaching: you record your speech (better on video, to practice body language as well), analyze weak spots,  make remarks in the speech for vocal variations and do another iteration. Try to think about the three parameters every time you talk and not only during formal public presentations. Listen to great talkers and check how they use the "sliders" of rate, volume, and pitch to deliver their point in a variety of tints. Vocal variety is the hardest skill to train and consummate but if recognizing a problem is the first step to its solution, knowing a solution is the second step, then the third one is to realize it and it all depends only on us.

Technorati tags: presentations, vocal variety, public speaking

How bad images can discredit your point

Whether you present in person, illustrate a web-cast, or post a blog visual aids (in these cases - images) should be used cautiously. Similarly to spices that can add poignancy to a dish bad images can damage it if used improperly.

The school of the presentation arts in the net is a blog where many of people I pointed to have commented as "it has great images". The sharp, focused, and concurring with the content images make themselves the facade of the blog. The images (and only then the content) make an unforgettable impression on the readers, booking permanent room in the readers' mind for the content.

Kathy Sierra is another author whose images (drawn by the team most of all, but even accompanying "3d-party" too) is a great example of using visual aids with care and sense. The style and coherence of images with the content enforces the idea and brand the blog as a very unique.

Unfortunately not always when we use images we achieve the desire effect - enforce the point by visual aids. Sometimes the effect is just the very opposite. James McGovern ran recently into a similar problem when some of his readers complained on the images that James uses and missed the point James was trying to bring. It was not about the style or quality of the images but the coherence. The readers were so surprised by the pictures (read - distracted) that they simply didn't see the forest for the trees.

James is a very respectful architect and his book (check his site) is one of the best on the IT architecture, he's also a very vocal presenter and an active bloger and I, personally, highly respect his opinion. But doesn't it amplify the point? The readers' perception simply proved that the images didn't achived their mission. They confused and disctructed instead of enfoced and accentuated.

At the end a piece of advice on image usage:

• Don't put images which relevance demands a long chain of analogies and concatenation. The linkage between the point and the picture must be obvious (look at Guy Kawasaki's presentation as the best example on that);
• Don't use images potentially offending the audience (unless you do it on purpose);
• Crop and resize images so they don't hinder the reading process. In e-published matertials pictures, surrounded by text (as opposite to ones taking half a page), work just fine and if a bigger image is needed open it in a separate window;
• Use images of acceptable quality (both composition and sharpness). Check here on where to take good pictures;
• Check copyrights before publishing;

Technorati tags: presentation, image, blog