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Public Speaking: Use Props to Make Your Presentation Memorable

Author: Keith Longmire

Most of us are familiar with using visual aids in our public speaking. Even if you are not an active public speaker yourself it is pretty certain that you have suffered from the odd day or two of ‘death by PowerPoint’. There are alternatives.

One of the most memorable presentations I ever saw used a child’s toy as a prop. Jon was a project team leader. He had to give an update on his project to a group of team leaders, project managers and support staff. An audience of twenty five to thirty in all.

On the face of it his subject matter was not that great. He was responsible for the implementation of a payroll outsourcing service. The client was a pubic service works company. They were particularly well known as refuse collectors in the London area though the services they offered were much more wide ranging.

All in all, the client employed around 20,000 monthly paid staff and almost 10,000 weekly paid workers. At $2.00 a payslip this deal was worth just short of $1.5m per year. No small matter for a relatively junior project leader.

I was a bit surprised that Jon didn’t prepare any slides. Instead he turned up with a large plastic supermarket bag. When it came to his turn to present Jon stood up with his bag in his hand. He outlined the basic details above. And then reached into his bag and pulled out a pretty well used and abused child’s toy. It was a battered refuse truck.

Jon then proceeded to use features of the toy to illustrate his project.

To start with Jon pointed out that the two characters in the cab of the truck were not looking at each other. He used this to describe the relationship between the client’s project manager and their existing payroll manager. They didn’t get on, weren’t communicating with each other or him.

He then spun one of the wheels – it was distinctly wonky (does that translate in American?). When pushed the truck moved reluctantly and erratically. Again Jon used this to describe the difficulties in maintaining progress, directions and momentum.

The presentation continued in this vein for some time. Each quirk of the truck was used to illustrate some feature of the project. All delivered with wit and controlled humour.

Once we understood the difficulties Jon then explained what he had done to correct each problem. The wheels were aligned and balanced, the headlight fixed, the suspension greased.

At the end Jon pulled out a new toy refuse truck. It was bright and shiny and in the client’s corporate colours. Jon then removed the 2 figures from the cab of the first toy and placed them in the cab of the new one. Both figures were still rigidly facing in opposite directions. It seems he had fixed all he could but he couldn’t get these two protagonists talking.

Now, I can’t remember all the points that Jon made – it was more than five years ago. The fact that I remember the presentation at all is truly remarkable. How much of your public speaking is as memorable?

Next time you are tempted to base your public speaking on a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation you might just consider if you could use a prop instead.

Source: ArticlesBase.com

Bye-bye Plastic: Grocery Bags Get Greener

Copyright (c) 2008 Karen Talavera

It’s a small thing for each of us, but a huge thing when you add us all up. I refer to the impending departure of plastic bags from your local grocery, drug, and/or convenience store. At last, the day has come, and for me that day is today.

I just made my weekly pilgrimage to the local Publix, the dominant grocery chain in my neck of the woods (which happens to be Florida) to be greeted by – at long last – reusable fabric grocery bags for sale at a mere 99 cents each. I selected four bags and put them in my empty cart. They were not only incredibly roomy, but well constructed and even fairly attractive. It was such a small act, but it felt like deliverance.

You see, my husband’s been complaining about plastic grocery bags for years now. He’s become more vocal about it since the EU and later San Francisco banned them last year. He works for a French company and travels to Europe several times a year. After every trip to the home office I have to hear about our wasteful American ways, and the inevitable commentary on all those plastic grocery bags we use comes up. Despite the fact that most grocery stores offer plastic bag recycling bins, and that we use them, he remains on his soap box. But not for long.

I agree with him, and have long contemplated pulling out the seemingly self-propagating pile of canvas promotional bags and beach tote bags we’ve accumulated over the years and bringing those with me on my weekly grocery shopping trips. Yet I inevitably forget. Or the bags aren’t wide enough. Or some other lame excuse. Unlike fashionable celebrities, we’re not in the income bracket to afford $300 Coach or $1,000 Hermes bags (nor are we supportive of raising and killing more cows to produce them). So I’ve been patiently waiting for someone to corner the market on reusable shopping bags.

Apparently they have. The tiny tags on the bags I purchased from Publix say they’re from www.greenbags.info. The Green Bag company is literally in good company, with other firms like Sage Green (www.environmentbags.com) creating mass market solutions for the cost-conscious and lazy of us. I applaud them. Make it effortless and practically free to ditch the petroleum based, sea turtle-suffocating plastic bags we mindlessly use and who wouldn’t switch?

Lest you’ve read this far and are still not convinced to switch, let me share my astonishment at how my four new reusable fabric bags somehow held the same amount of groceries normally contained in nine or ten plastic bags. Even heavy juice bottles, glass wine bottles, cans and cleaning products fit nicely and safely into the new bags. Perhaps the most pleasant surprise came when I quickly realized how much easier it was to carry four – heavy through they were – rather than ten bags from the car into the house. Finally, somehow with fewer bags the groceries seemed to put themselves away faster as well. Who would have guessed?

Last week I was on my way out of a Midwestern city waiting for my flight in a quiet airport terminal when my snack bar neighbor, with whom I enjoyed a meager airport dinner, pointed to the bar TV. The channel was airing a news story about the harm plastic bags do to our oceans and sea creatures. I mentioned most of Europe and now China – yes, even those environmental despoilers – had just banned them. I cited the facts my husband had oft-quoted, that in the United States (which has less than one-quarter of China’s 1.3 billion people,) the Sierra Club estimates almost 100 billion plastic bags are thrown out each year. That if just every one of New York City’s 8 million people used one less grocery bag per year, it would reduce waste by about 5 million pounds.

“What the hell is our problem then?” she asked. I had no answer, but she had a great idea. To all of you sales and marketing types out there like me, stop ordering your usual imprinted trade show tote bags and order re-usable grocery bags as promotional give-aways instead. Then we’ll really be making some progress.

Like I said, I bought four re-usable fabric shopping bags today for a grand total of $3.96 plus tax. It was a pittance to pay for an earth-conscious decision that will reap dividends for years to come and furthermore had me thinking about bringing my own shopping bags with me anywhere I go. It was a small thing, in so many ways, but it felt amazingly grand. It was something anyone could do, anywhere in this country, right now. It was something that very soon, we can ALL do. And that we all should.

Tomorrow when I take my morning walk on the beach maybe I’ll see one less plastic bag sailing in the wind. At least I’ll know now that day is a realistic possibility. Won’t you join me?

Source: ArticlesBase.com