50 pounds of clay

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot”albeit a perfect one”to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work”and learning from their mistakes”the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

from Art and Fear via LifeClever

Picture credit

A definition of love

Editor’s note: This is an email forward from a very long time ago.

A group of professionals posed the question “What does love mean?” to a group of 4 – 8 year-olds and the answers they got were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined. See what you think:

Read the rest of this entry »

Great Movie speech: Any Given Sunday – Peace by Inches – Al Pacino

I’m not moved by movies much, they are after all just movies, but the first time i heard this speech from Any Given Sunday starring Al Pacino and Jamie Fox, I wished that I’d a coach as eloquent as all this.

O Captain My Captain a poem by Walt Whitman

O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up–for you the flag is flung for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Abraham Lincoln Quote

“If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six sharpening my ax.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

Best practices for handouts

There are a lot of good things about giving handouts during a presentation. No only do you get to reinforce your message, it gives something for people listening to your presentation to follow along with while you are talking.

Here’s the downside, people are following along while you are reading. You become the distraction when you should be the main act.

Here are a couple of tips on best practices for handouts:

 Make the handouts a bonus. The handouts should contain extra information, places to get more information or footnotes. If the handouts are simply a printout of your Powerpoint presentations then one of either the speaker or the handout isn’t needed.

 The handout should be stand alone. Giving a presentation and a handout are two different forms of communication and both should be approached differently to effectively get your message across. The test is whether you can give the handout to someone not familiar with the presentation and they understand the conclusions you’d want anyone who listened to the speech to come to.

 Give handouts at the end of the presentation. Remember you are the star attraction, a handout only distracts from the presentation. Most people are busy skipping through the presentation while you are talking. Better yet, have them collect the handout as they are leaving, it gives people the opening to ask questions one on one and gives you an opportunity to extend the conversation.

 What tips do you practice when giving out presentations?

Steve Jobs, RIP

Much will be said of Steve Job’s innovation of the way people interact with technology, but I’d like to take a moment to say goodbye to one of the be presenters on the 20th/21st century.

Steve Jobs demos Apple Macintosh, 1984

The First iMac Introduction

The First iPod Keynote (2001)

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

The stumble-bum technique (a high-risk approach)

Edward R.Tufte, super presenter and information graphics guru described a talk given by a humble high school math teacher to a lecture hall full of mathematics professors. On his first slide, the math teacher had a simple proof, with an error on the third line. Naturally, the professors leaned forward in their chairs to point out the flaw. For the rest of the presentation, the audience hung on every word, waiting for the next slip.

Of course, there was no slip.

Caution: if you use this technique, you had better know your stuff.

Original source

Are you boring?

Great tips on finding if you are boring from The Happiness Project. I would hope they follow up with an article on how not to be boring. But the first step to change is recognition right? Anyway tip 7 is especially applicable to speakers:

Audience posture. Back in 1885, Sir Francis Galton wrote a paper in 1885 called “The Measurement of Fidget.” He determined that people slouch and lean when bored, so a speaker can measure the boredom of an audience by seeing how far from vertically upright they are. Also, attentive people fidget less; bored people fidget more. An audience that’s upright and still is interested, while an audience that’s horizontal and squirmy is bored.

Three Keyboard shortcuts you should know in PowerPoint.

Love it or hate it, as a speaker the one thing you should be relatively capable at using is Microsoft PowerPoint. However even the most deft tech-savvy speaker can find themselves fumbling when navigating PowerPoint. Here are three Powerpoint keystroke commands every speaker should know and use.

1. Starting a Presentation. Not matter how nimble and rehearsed you are with starting a Powerpoint, it’s still a very clumsy, mouse drive activity. The easiest and fastest way to launch a powerpoint is to click the “F5” key.
2. Black your presentation out. While presentations are great, if you are in the middle of saying something the slide, at best, may not be applicable to what you are saying, at worst distracting. Remember you are the star of the presentation, not PowerPoint. Hitting “B” on the keyboard will turn the presentation black while you talk. Any button starts the presentation again at the current slide. To see the power of a blacking out a presentation to building drama, check out any Steve Jobs presentation in the last few years. Press “W” to turn it white.
3. Advancing your presentation. Seems like a no brainer, but you do not have to click on the mouse to advance a slide. There are a few buttons that do the same thing, the right arrow key, the “N”, right Arrow, Down Arrow, or PgDn. By far the easiest to find is the space bar. It’s a lot quicker then any other method and you can’t miss it.

Bonus hint: To view all the available keyboard shortcuts in Powerpoint, while the show is running click on F1.

Good luck and happy speaking.