Power Presentations

Campaign Coaching II

In the previous post, you read that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg poured $90 million of his own money into his re-election campaign but, leaving no stone unturned, he also made three significant changes in his presentation style to overcome a reputation that the New York Times described as ...

Campaign Coaching

Last week, billionaire Michael Bloomberg won his campaign for a third term as the Mayor of New York City, but only by a surprisingly close margin. According to the report of his victory in the New York Times, “Published polls in the days leading up to the election suggested that ...

Presentation Advice from Painter Norman Rockwell

One of the Wall Street Journal’s most interesting features is their weekly “Anatomy of a Masterpiece,” where noted authorities analyze classic works in their fields: literature, architecture, music, and art. Recent offerings have focused respectively on Samuel Johnson’s 1759 novel Rasselas, St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, Dmitri Shostakovich’s “24 ...

Silicom Ventures Boot Camp

On October 28, Jerry Weissman was coached an encore session for the Entrepreneur Boot Camp: Build your Business in a Slow Growth Economy, hosted by Silicom Ventures. Jerry coached a group of 40+ entreprenuers on How to capture Your Audience Immediately. This hour long Boot Camp included several interactive excercises. One of his most well received ...

Hi, I’m from Gen-Y

In Jerry’s previous blog, you read about a recent Wall Street Journal article titled “When Gen-Y Johnny Can’t Read Nonverbal Cues.” In it, Mark Bauerlein wrote about “the diffidence, self-absorption and general uncommunicativeness of Generation Y.” To better understand why Bauerlein made such a comment, please travel back in time ...

Nonverbal Communication

Major newspapers, along with countless other print publications, have been focused on what is rapidly becoming their chief competition—and perhaps successor—electronic communication; and especially electronic social networking. Text messages, emails, blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, while lacking the organizational breadth and professional depth of newspapers, have clearly encroached on print territory. One ...

The Blame Game

On Saturday, two separate articles from two diverse sources—sports and politics—provided a lesson about the importance of being positive in communication. The sports item featured Stanford’s freshman quarterback, Andrew Luck, whose coach calls him “a rare combination of confidence and humility.” Luck demonstrates that rare combination in his post-game press conferences ...

The Magic of the Power Presenter

Welcome Guest Blogger, Gerhard Gschwandtner What happens when people ask you to address a group of people to persuade them to take action on an idea? Chances are that you suddenly become aware of your heartbeat, your throat may become dry, you nervously take a sip of water, stand up, and ...

Jon Stewart and Journalism

On his nightly “fake” news program, The Daily Show, Jon Stewart often aims his satiric barbs at television news: at the broadcast networks for their breathless inflation of non-events, and at cable news for their extreme branded positions. Two of his favorite targets are Fox News for their conservative views ...

Presentation Advice from L.A. Dodgers Broadcaster Vin Scully

Now that we are in the peak sports period of the year—the culmination of the baseball season and the heat of the football season—the voices of play-by-play announcers and color commentators are filling the airwaves. Most of them are just that, filler; stuffing the soundtrack with meaningless digressions, infantile inanities, ...