Loraine Antrim

If you're not having fun when presenting, why bother? How many presentations have you sat through that have bored you to death?  Chances are, many. My guess is the presenter was bored as well. One of the keys to a successful presentation is to honestly enjoy what you are talking about. Your presentation does not have to be a light topic. It can be technical, informative, serious or intellectually heady, it doesn't matter. If you are really turned on by your own material, it will show. Next time you gather your thoughts for a presentation, choose a topic or a perspective that grabs you...excites you...gets you jazzed about the chance to share your passion with an audience. If you're not going to have fun when presenting, then why not just type up a word doc and mail it to your listeners? Have a blast when you speak, and watch how your audience catches your fire! ... (more)

PRESENTATIONS ARE...TIMELY

When you speak in public, your words and ideas should grab an audience. One way to do that is to make your talk relevant and timely.  If you are lucky, your topic will be of interest because it IS up-to-the-minute and highly relevant. But many of us have topics that are not tied to a current event or recent happening. What if you are speaking on a technical topic? Then what? Examples will save the day! Use a number of examples that are in the here-and-now.  Describe how a person or group can be affected today by your technology.  Show your technology working in the current economic sit... (more)

IT Personnel Hit Hard by New Flu Outbreak

The newest target population is IT presenters, and the geographic scope of this nascent disease is now global. Rapid onslaught of symptoms include the inability to focus and then agitation. Physical symptoms are fidgeting, then heavy sighing, culminating in the urge to scream.  The final symptom is Cerebral Mortis: the brain just shuts down. The original or parent disease is DBP: Death by Power Point, but a recent variation, the F5 strain, is gaining strength especially in the IT community. What is this new mutation of Death by Power Point? Embedded  Content The new strain embeds ... (more)

CEO Top Ten Communication Best Practices

Thinking like a great CEO. What does it really mean? It means being able to communicate those great thoughts and rally people to action. It's combining speaker and thinker. Who are the best of the best executive communicators, those with best practices other leaders want to emulate? Not in the CEO suite of the West Wing, but in the C-level suite of major companies. I'm sure we could all conjure up a few favorite names—leaders like Jack Welch and Steve Jobs for example. But can you pinpoint their favorite communication strategies and the communication best practices they deploy? W... (more)

CEO or Czar: Which Leader Are You?

CEOs in Technology on Ulitzer The "C" word is getting a lot of press these days (you WERE thinking CEO, weren't you?). It seems that every time someone gets appointed to a government post, they get the title "czar." There are so many of these little crazy Ivans running around in Washington that Senator McCain said Obama has, "more Czars than the Romanovs." We have a drug czar, an energy czar, a border czar, a climate czar, a czar for this and a czar for that. In a Wall Street Journal article, Laura Meckler once wrote about the rising ascension of czars in the White House. And it's... (more)