knowledge-base

Presenting Ideas & Talks (TED)

TED is about sharing ideas in an interconnected world. Ideas worth sharing. Ideas that connect.

• Many of the general tips, process and structure of Explanatory writing are applicable.
• As with many things, test your talks
• Talk styles to avoid:
  • The sales pitch
  • Ramble/Complain/Rant and being under prepared
  • The org bore: No one cares about your org unless you work there
  • Inspiration Performance: Only present because of ego and to “inspire”, inspiration is a byproduct of a great presentation.

Did you know about communication: 7% is words, 38% Tone, 55% body.

Talk Tools

Body Language / Tone

Personas

You can use this personas to switch between or stick to, they come with their own tone and body language.

• 1 Word At a time: Say more with less, say a single word and give is space and time.
• Preacher: High energy, you ask engagement of the audience (can I get a hell yeah? Might even push for it.) Exaggerated body language, very energized. You keep building up energy.
• Cowboy: Confident stand and language, stand even on both legs, shoulders up. Calm talk, but a bit cheeky of subtle jokes to avoid becoming arrogant. Needs a gentle play.

Connection

• Make eye contact
• Show vulnerability
• Make em laugh - but not squirm
• Park your ego
• Tell a story
• Avoid politics

Narration

• Use story telling instead of just summarizing facts, we do this as a species for thousands of years, you love it. It helps you connect.
• Tips
  • Built it on a character your audience can empathize with.
  • Built tension through curiosity, social intrigue or actual danger.
  • Offer right level of detail. Too little and it’s not vivid, too much and it gets bogged down.
  • End with satisfying resolution, being funny, moving or revealing.
  • Execution matters
  • It has to be true
  • Don’t overshare, if you share intimately, have worked through it
  • Parables are nice

Explanation

• Example of a good explanation
  • Step 1: Start right where you are, ground it… Make it relevant to us,…
  • Step 2: Create curiosity
  • Step 3: Introduce concepts on by one
  • Step 4: Use metaphors
  • Step 5: Use examples
• Explanations should be linear, built up, and if possible, use a structure that invites the receiver to become curious.
• Be weary of “curse of knowledge”, make sure you don’t over or under assume what the audience knows. Don’t want to offend their intelligence, but neither intimidate them with expecting they know everything you talk about.
• Consider making clear what your idea “isn’t” which can manage expectations and clarify already things. (e.g. mindful eating does not require you to learn meditation.)
• If you explain well, you can generate also excitement about your idea.

Persuasion

• Short
  • Persuasion is the act of replacing someone’s worldview with something better.
  • And at its hears is the power of reason, capable of long-term impact.
  • Reason is best accompanied by intuiting pumps, detective stories, or other plausibility-priming devices.
• Means convincing the audience that they way they currently see the world isn’t quite right.
  • First: Take down the parts that aren’t working well
  • Second: Rebuild something better
  • Last: An upbeat statement or some conclusion of sorts?
  • Example: People on a social media diet assumes the world is full of constant violence. This is wrong, shows data on that violence only has been decreasing. Then remind how cruel history was and some of the ages. Then, show how modern media has incentive to lead with stories of drama, regardless if they’re representative or not. Showing how we might overestimate the levels of violence. And create perceptive, the total number is not relevant, but the CHANCE you experience violence. And then ending with “Don’t just ask what we do wrong? But also, what are we doing right?”
  • Based on “The better angels of our nature” by Steven Pinker and his TED talk.
• Priming is important. Don’t start with the end conclusion, which can sound so unlikley and a far reach. Follow the above steps and prime the audience. On step at a time, go through the journey and prime the idea.
• Use Intuition Pumps
  • Example through story the audience’s intuition can “tell” where the story is going to (remember the TED talk about too much choice makes you unhappier, as he tels about the experience of buying a jeans)
  • Often instead of using (only) reasoned arguments, intuition pumps are more powerful, that’s very common in philosophy. We nudge the audience in our direction.
  • Reasoned arguments in itself are also good tools
• Reasoned Arguments
  • IF/THEN: If X is true, then clearly Y follows (Because X implies a Y)
  • Break down into small steps, thought steps, and then apply the IF/THEN approach to build buy in and agreement from the audience along the journey, with each small step.
    • See TED Talk Dan Pallota
  • Reductio ad absurdum](https://iep.utm.edu/reductio/):
  • a mode of argumentation that seeks to establish a contention by deriving an absurdity from its denial
  • Take the “counter position” to what you’re arguing and showing that it leads to contradiction. If that counter position is “false” it strengthens your position.
  • Example on how we frown on high salaries for nonprofit leaders: “You want to make 50M selling violent video games to kids, got for it, we’ll put you on Wired, but you want to make 0.5M trying to cure kids of malaria, you’re considered a parasite yourself”
    • See TED Talk Dan Pallota
  • Effective, but handle with care, use it on issues, not people or opponents.
• Detective Story:
  • Structure:
  • The big mystery
  • Travel the world for ideas in search of possible solutions
  • Rule then out one by one
  • Until one viable solution survives
• More than logic: Logic is a big part, but make it more human, there are some tools:
  • Inject some humor early one
  • Add an anecdote
  • Offer vivid examples
  • Recruit 3th party validation
  • Use powerful visuals

Revelation

• Most direct way of gifting an idea to an audience ? Simply show it to them.
• Examples:
  • show series of images of art project and talk through it
  • demo product you invented
  • Describe vision of self-sustaining city
  • Show stunning photos from recent trip to Amazon jungle
• 3 Broad Categories of ways of showing things
  • The wonder Walk: Succession of of images or “wonder moments”, you walk people through your journey.
    • Each step is simple, from one piece to another with a sense of “wonder”
    • Examples/tips:
      • Artist doing a studio tour with revealing insights into each artwork
      • As guide you go through a Hike in a dramatic terrain
      • “If you liked that… just wait till you see this!”
      • “This next project took that idea and dialed it up by an order of magnitude” (instead of “Now we’ll turn to my next project)
    • Typical For: Artists, Designers, photographers, architects, nature… basically if its very visually driven (can be even science)
  • The dynamic demo: It’s not just visual, one needs to see it working.
    • A good structure:
      • An initial tease
      • Necessary background, context and/or the invention story.
      • The demo itself (the more visual and dramatic the better, so as long you are not faking it)
      • The implications of this technology
  • The dreamscape:
    • Share a future vision/dream
    • The more actionable, the better. It can incentivize the audience.
• Mix & match from all categories if you want!

Preparation

Visuals

You might not use any visuals or slides at all. That’s ok based on the content type.

• Consider a black empty slide, when you want to draw attention back to you till next slide is ready to show.
• Key elements for strong visuals fall into these categories:
  • Revelation
    • Images/visuals
    • Consider silence for people to take it in
    • Fill screen
    • You can prime the audience before showing, but you can be also a bit more dramatic if it makes sense to do so.
  • Explanatory Power
    • Sometimes best to tell is to show
    • Limit slide to a single core idea
    • Caution to put too much in a single slide/visual when explaining
    • Consider to build up, or visually filter/hide things, so the focus of the audience is guided and focused and doesn’t need to “process” a visual to catch up.
    • Example: A chart, highlight the data points that are relevant, grey out the other less relevant ones or such.
  • Aesthetic Appeal
• Key Elements
  • Software
    • PowerPoint (Microsoft)
    • Keynote (Mac)
    • Prezi
    • Make sure your software can be used on the presentation.
  • Fonts
    • One typeface per presentation
    • Recommendation: Medium-weight sans-serif fonts (e.g. Helvetica or Arial)
      • Thin fonts are hard to read, especially on black backgrounds
    • Size: Use 24 points or larger.
      • Max 3 sizes (Title, main idea, supporting ideas)
    • Background: Use a background if you put font on a photo
    • Color: Simple and contrast!
      • One color per presentation (unless for surprise or emphasize)
      • Never use light color on light color background
      • Never use dark color on dark color background
  • Legibility
    • Test on a screen from a distance on how legible fonts and images are
  • What not to do
    • Bullet points
    • Dashes
    • Underlining and italics, bold is OK
    • Drop shadows
    • Multiple effects in single line
  • Explanations and diagrams: Keep it simple and give time to take it in
  • Photos
    • Full screen
    • Black background
    • Consider using “bleed” option to fit images
  • Photo Credits:
    • If necessary, top right corner horizontal if possible of the image
    • Can also just mention once at the start “All rights to… Photos courtesy of …” to avoid repetition
    • Keep the names short, no need to mention department or whatever.
    • No more than 10 points
  • Pictures of you & team
    • Don’t
  • Videos
    • High quality
    • Make sure sound is tested
  • Transitions
    • None > Announces next topic/idea
    • Dissolve > Within a topic/idea
    • Keep it to minimum
  • Rights/license: Make sure all licenses are in place
  • Testing : Test
  • Transport: Always take copy on USB stick, good exporting.

Scripting

Everyone has their flavour

• Scripted Talk: Write out the talk in full as a complete script (to be read, memorized or both)
  • Risk: Audience feels “being read to”
  • Remember: You are writing for “spoken language”
  • Process:
    • First you will sound convincing, unstructured as you rehearse
    • Secondly you start to know the whole talk but sound more robotically (uncanny valley)
    • Third (if you keep going) You really start to know the talk and you can inject your liveliness in again.
    • Takes a process of a week-ish
  • Avoid reading the script unless you only caption images or your are such a writer everyone is expecting this.
• Unscripted Talk: Have a clearly worked-out structure and speak in the moment to each of your points
  • Risk: Blabbering, unstructured, unfocussed
    • Suddenly can’t find the right words in the moment
    • You leave out something crucial
    • You overrun your time slot
  • Rehearse well!

Rehearse

Rehearse is a must and works well. Notice, by rehearsing from day one, you can follow the Iterative Thought Process of pruning, refining, improving your talk.

Opening & Closing

• Start Strong
  • Deliver a dose of drama
    • Your first words really do matter.
    • “Sadly, in the next 18 minutes … 4 Americans that are alive will be dead … through the food that they eat”.
    • “I am not drunk … but the doctor who delivered me was” (Zayid who has cerebral palsy die to botched medical procedure at birth)
  • Ignite Curiosity
    • A talk on parasites might sound dull, but you can lead with curiosity:

    • A heard of wildebeest, a shoal of fish, a flock of birds. Many animals are in large groups that are among the most wonderful spectacles in the natural world. But why do these groups form? The common answers include things like seeking safety in numbers or hunting in packs or gathering to mate or breed, and all of these explanations, while often true, make a huge assumption about animal behavior, that the animal are in control of their own actions, that they are in charge of their bodies. And that is often not the case.

    • How did this fourteen-year-old girl, with less than $200 in her ban account, give her whole town a giant leap into the future?’

    • Create questions that create a knowledge gap that the brain fights to close. And they can to that only by listening hard to what you have to say.
  • Show a compelling slide, video, or object
    • Something impactful or intriguing
  • Tease, but don’t give away

    • Over the next few minutes I plan to reveal what I believe is the key to success as an entrepreneur, and how anyone can cultivate it. You’ll find clues to it in the story I’m about to tell”

• End Strong
  • Don’t:
    • “Well, that’s my time gone, so I’ll wrap up here”
      • Didn’t manage to prepare well enough? There is more ?
    • “Finally, I just want to thank …”
    • “So, given the importance of this issue, I hope we can start a new conversation about it together”
    • “The future is full of challenges and opportunities, Everyone here has it in their heart to make a difference. Let’s dream together. Let’s be the change we want to see in the world
      • Too broad and cliche
    • “I’’ close with this video.. “
      • No, end with YOU not a video
    • So that concludes… any questions ?
      • You preempt your own applause
    • “I’m sorry I haven’t had the time to “
      • Thank you for not planning and preparing
    • “In closing, I should point out that my organization could probably solve this”
      • This was a sales talk?
    • “Thank you for such an amazing audience, and way to much thank you’s!”
      • “Thank you” is just fine
  • Consider:
    • Camera pull-back
      • Show the bigger picture of what you idea fitted in
    • call to action
    • personal commitment
    • Values and vision
    • Satisfying encapsulation
      • Reframe your idea that you have been making

      • I think people have obsessed with the wrong question, which is “How do we make people pay for music?” What if we started asking, “How do we let people pay for music?”

    • Narrative symmetry
      • If you have been telling a story throughout, or just started with one, go full circle.

On Stage

Wardrobe

• Like the slides, simple and contrast, understand the setting you will be presenting in.
• Something you feel comfortable in
• Well fit, not too loose or baggy

Nerves

• Drink water
• Avoid empty stomach
• Remember the power of vulnerability
• Find “friends” in the audience
  • People who look warm in the audience, make often eye contact with them
• Have a backup plan (notes, cards, …)
  • Even when not using them, knowing its there… sooths

Setup

• Comfort backup: Full notes or script, out of sight
• Slides as guides: But don’t dump your text on it
• Hand Held Note cards
• Smartphone or tablet: The touchy stuff is dangerous to accidentally loose where you were
• Confidence monitors: Current slide, next slide, slide notes.
  • Next slide and slide notes might confuse you or distract you
• Teleprompter can feel “being read to”
• Unobtrusive lectern

Voice and Presence

• Give you words the life they deserve
• Speak with meaning
• Body can be station on legs but loose upper body, you can also walk, just don’t pace annoyingly. Gentle pace and speed.
• Body posture !

Format Innovation

• Be open to innovate with the format, as long it delivers the idea, and doesn’t distract.

General Tips

• Throughline: same as a lead? At least the tips of a good throughline should be listed as good tips.
• Prune tip “plan your talk, cut 50%, once you’ve grieved the loss of half your talk, cut it another 50 percent”
• Old formula used by sir ken robinson “a good essay answers 3 questions: what? So what? Now what?”.
• An idea based talk starts with curiosity, a issue based talk starts with morality, and that can cause morality fatigue
• Most speakers are used to talking for 30 or 40 minutes or longer. They find it literally hard to imagine giving a proper talk in such a short period of time. Hear we see the recurring team and need to write and think clear. Pruning clutter.

Example of engaging writing

… instead of listing boring facts about yourself

I want you to come with me to student’s room at Oxford university in 1977. You open the door, and at first it seems like there’s nobody there. But wait, Over in the corner, there’s a boy lying on the floor, face up, staring at the ceiling. He’s been like that for more than 90 minutes. That’s me, 27 year old me. I’m thinking. Hard. I am trying… please don’t laugh… I am trying to solve the problem of free will. That deep mystery that has stumped the world’s philosophers for at least 2 millennia? Yp, I’m taking it on. Anyone looking objectively at the scene would have concluded that this biy was some weird combination of arrogant, deluded, or perhaps just socially awkward and lonely, proffering the company of ideas to people. But my own narrative? I’m a dreamer. I’ve always been obsessed by the power of ideas. And I’m pretty sure it’s that inward focus that helped me survive growing up in a boarding schools in India and England, away from my missionary parents, and that gave me confidence to try build a media company. Certainly it was the dreamer in me that fell in love so deeply with TED.

Generic Quotes of book

• The secret of happening is: find something more important than you are, and dedicate your life to it.
• We’re strange creatures, we humans. At one level, we just want to eat, drink, play, and acquire stuff. But life on the hedonic treadmill is ultimately dissatisfying. A beautiful remedy is to hope of by pursuing an idea that’s bigger than you are.
• 2 things will happen
  • You’ll find a meaningful form of happiness.
  • You’ll discover something that matters far more than any piece of advice in this book: You’ll discover something worth saying.
• Imagine 2 political leaders, one of whom appels only to the interests of one race, while the other reaches out to all members of humanity. Be reasonable, look at the issue from a broader perspective. The later may have their moments of power, but it is the former who will win in the end.

Insights

• How does the POWER work as intro maybe?
  • How does a good start of a talk compare to a power statement? Seems different, one seeks to intrigue, create curiosity, and the other purpose and planning. Makes sense, based on the activities
• About Rehearsal: I see the parallel here of, by trying, rehearsing, you see that works, you refine the message, we see again the iterative process of pruning, rewriting, refining, rethinking, am i saying the right thing? Does de build up make sense? Am i telling this linearly? Is every sentence setting up for the next, as you rehearse, you get more clarity, which allows you to then own it and do the talk efficiently, cause you have matured and clarified what you want to say, and the structure is sound.
• Minimize in going “META” , JUST DO IT
  • Today I will…. NO … “Let me show you something”
  • Here is my opening slide … NO … just show it or lead with curiosity.

Resources

• TED: Julian Treasure on how to speak