Effective Presentations — More Than One Way to Impress an Audience: Kathy Sierra’s post on how to start a presentation or novel is inspired, but it’s not for everyone. As I mentioned in my last post, people read, listen and pay attention for two reasons: to be informed, or to be entertained. If you can do both, you’re laughing (and more talented than I am). What’s important is that you do at least one of the two: inform, or entertain.
Kathy’s six elements of an entertaining presentation, book, film or story are right on: provoke, empathize, amuse, surprise, suspend, and engage the emotions. This is especially true for fiction, but it also works for non-fiction. The most successful business gurus do more than inform — they rock the room. Love him or hate him, Michael Moore entertains an audience while he informs them. So does Jon Stewart.
But suppose you’re Al Gore rather than Jon Stewart — what do you do? If you’re wise, you do three things:…
(Via How to Save the World.)
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