I must have been in a particularly uncharitable mood that day…

Random notes genomen tijdens een seminar een tijd geleden, onder de hoofding “lessons I learned today”:

• Have your presentation reviewed by a native speaker.
• Rehearse, and more importantly, time your presentation to ensure a balance between marketing blurb and information.
• Don’t tell people who arrive half an hour late “you haven’t missed anything yet” 
• Don’t assume everyone knows PMBOK means the Project Management Body of Knowledge.
• Don’t assume every English speaker knows who “Suske & Wiske” are.
• Do not, under any circumstances, ever read off the information you’ve put on your slides.
• If you’re more comfortable speaking French than English, don’t overcompensate by adding “h” to every word starting with a vowel.
• Do not treat your audience as if this were 1997—we all know why websites are important, and why we need them.
• I never meta data I didn’t like.
• Don’t forget to rehearse the entire presentation, all the way to the end.
• Try to vary your speech pattern & build climaxes and pauses in your story.
• It is halways a good Heidi not to hunderestimate a projecte.
• You know what? If you’re more comfortable speaking French than English, by all means do.
• Don’t overstay your welcome.
• Do not call your own material “a lot of marketing stuff”.
• Don’t repeat time after time you’re going to be short, or brief, or that you’re going to give a “sneak preview”, or that you’ve only got 15 minutes.
• Remove all slides you’re not going to use in a given presentation.

Een slechte mens, ik.

Uitleggen en peetjes tekenen, jaja.

Maar doén, ha!

Geschreven al luisteren naar: Frank Zappa – 71 13-Oct, Toronto, d2 – 10 Billy The Mountain (incl. The Ballad Of Bilbo Baggins)