My blogging activity is still not up to normal pace. Feel free to attribute that to either (1) my computer being down, (2) the usual indoor inactivity (and outdoor activity) of summer time, (3) summer university–or any combination of the prior of your choosing :-).

Meanwhile, I found a very good post from Jeremy Zawodny on sense of accomplishment, and where you get it from. He divides personalities into the individual contributor, the team player, or the team leader/manager. I think the thoughts are very spot on, so go have a look at what he writes.

I always run with my iPod, but I’ve had to use third-party devices for everything related to my running – even for timing!

Answering all my prayers, :), Nike and Apple has made a kit, Nike+iPod, that times, provides calorie burn data and a lot more; it also syncs with the new iTunes.

How cool! I’m getting the kit as soon as it’s out.

I have not read Timothy Koegel’s The Exceptional Presenter yet, but Tom Peters posted about it on his weblog (He Has a Point: A Damn Good One). Tom extracts one simple, very obvious, but—often—very forgettable piece of advice from this book:

Those who practice improve. Those who don’t, don’t

What people often complain, however, is the lack of time to practice, and maybe this should be linked to the fact that the pay-off from practicing is not immediate—it is somewhat distant in most cases. What Tom points out about this book in his post, is that one should simply seize more opportunities to practice, such as in everyday tasks:

One of Koegel’s greatest contributions is suggesting-revealing the fact, the great news, that we have many, many mundane opportunities to practice! He offers numerous ideas. Using people’s names in conversations is very powerful. So practice it at a party this weekend. Smiling is a matchless “weapon” for winning over audiences … so be aware, in family communications, the degree to which you smile, or don’t. In my case, and my wife laughs at me over this one, I spend as much time spell-checking and working on grammar-word choice on emails to old friends as I do when writing something formal to a prospective Client: Every time I communicate with anybody is an opportunity to improve my communications effectiveness.

What a wonderful point. Every time we communicate, we have the chance to improve our communication and presentation skills. Seize the opportunity and Go Own the Room.

For some reason, I love personality tests (well, not all—it really is a jungle out there). I recently bumped into a good one called Personal DNA, which also makes a nice graphic illustration (DNA profile you could call it) of your personality.

Mine looks like this:

…which makes me a Benevolent Creator. Try it out yourself at http://www.personaldna.com/ and let me know how you fared :-).

This is the fourth and final post in a series on presentation technique discussing your mental state while presenting—whether you own the room or not. Prior posts are How to Get a Standing Ovation, Go Own the Room: Enthusiasm, and Go Own the Room: Connection.

Sincerity is where I think most people fall to the ground. It is hard to fake, and it is not easily broken down into components that you can manage and measure (as for instance with Connection). However, it remains important if you want to own the room when you present (it remains important throughout all of life).

What, then, is sincerity all about? How do you come across as a sincere person? The easy answer, albeit not necessarily easy to implement or live by, is to be sincere. Do not underestimate the difficulty in being sincere – day in and day out you are confronted with dilemmas and tough choices that can compromise your sincerity—selling a product you don’t believe in, telling a white lie, doing something you’re not passionate about. It is small things, often, but they are there—day in and day out. And, eventually, larger dilemmas will appear, and it will make it all that more difficult.

My short answer to all of this is: Don’t compromise. Never. All you have is your word, your values, and your will, and the only one who can take these away from you is yourself. Don’t.

While your values and will are more or less tools (to use a very inappropriate word) to keep you on the track you want to be on, your word is something you share with others. Values often change as you grow up, which is natural—and not even close to what I will call compromising. Your will is how passionate you are about these values. Your word is what you tell others. Always keep your word—it is your bond, be true and live by your values with every will possible.

If you do this, which is difficult—please don’t underestimate its difficulty—I promise you that it will shine through when you present, be it in terms of presentation technique or when you present yourself through out life. Go own the room.

In January of this year, Copenhagen Business School (CBS) opened its new building Kilen (which is Danish for The Wedge). It is located very close (2 minutes of walking) to the main building, Solbjerg Plads, which was opened in 1998. Now, almost all of CBS’s activities are located in the Dalgas Have (late 1980s), Solbjerg Plads, Kilen and Porcelain Garden (2006) facilities and has replaced older buildings, which means that we have very nice and new facilities here at school.

It also meant that we (by we, I mean the CBS Case Competition) moved our offices to the new Kilen facility. We now have two very nice offices and a handful of extra meeting rooms at our disposal. The competition is only two weeks away, which means that the offices are in use almost around the clock (the first people pop in at 6-7am, the last leave at 5-6am). I love it.

Photos by Tao Lytzen: Kilen from the outside and the inside.

Good presentation technique (and good conversation and good karma) requires enthusiasm—read my post on Enthusiasm, Connection, and Sincerity to get a heads up on what I’m talking about. This post will elaborate on enthusiasm.

It’s Not What You Say
It’s how you say it (communication break-down chart)—there is no doubt that enthusiasm about your topic enhances your message, and it increases the effect of the conveying of information. The tricky part, then, is how you get enthusiastic. Even if you are enthusiastic about a topic, you may be nervous (or have tonnes of other things to think of) when you present, thus not being able to convey your enthusiasm. This is clearly an obstacle to effective communication.

Let me break down enthusiasm into two basic components, namely (1) teaching and (2) learning.

Teaching
Truly enthusiastic individuals know peculiar things about their topic, and they have an innate desire to share knowledge about their passion. Conveying enthusiasm is about showing a willingness to teach others (or at least convey, communicate or talk about) the topic at hand, and especially anecdotes and other peculiarities. This willingness should be burden-free. The virtue of wanting to share, underlines your enthusiasm of the subject matter. If you were not enthusiastic, why would you know this stuff, let alone teach/talk about it?

Learning
Enthusiasm never ends. Enthusiastic people spare no opportunity to learn something new, and they do so with a wonderfully childish and unbiased approach. Their enthusiasm is not about confirming what they know (nor the opposite) but about learning. Enthusiastic presenters treat their audiences as equal peers, because they know that presenting is in fact communication and conversation, and that they can extract as much from the presentation as can their audiences.

Be Enthusiastic
Conveying your enthusiasm, then, can be achieved by expressing interest in and fascination of teaching and learning your subject matter, using some of the characteristics I described above.

All this, of course, assumes that you are, in fact, enthusiastic about your subject matter. If not, conveying enthusiasm can give you a hard time.

Super Bowl XL–XL has to stand for extra large: What a blast and what a game! Congratulations to the Steelers. We could’ve had a better half-time show, though.

One of the very exciting things about the Super Bowl is also the commercials. However, in Denmark it is illegal to interrupt programmes with commercials (you can only send commercials in between the programmes). So when all the cool commercials take the screen in the US, we have to listen to our Danish commentators. Hoorah (or not).

In contrast to last year, Google Video is here this time around. And of course the Super Bowl XL Commercials are on Google Video.

From the book Karaoke Capitalism (by the authors of Funky Business:

- In 1998, CBS, Fox and ABC paid $12.8 billion to broadcast National Football League (NFL) games until 2005. The very same year the Minnesota Vikings franchise was sold for $250 million. In fact, the three networks could have bought all 30 NFL teams and had free broadcast rights forever. They didn’t.

Unless there is more to this story than this, it a big Oops. Read more fun quotes at Stefan’s Karaoke Capitalism post.

I told you about Guy Kawasaki’s new blog before—and it keeps getting better. One of his latest posts is about how you get a standing ovation, i.e. how to present well. He has eleven good points (go to his post for full details):

1. Have something interesting to say
2. Cut the sales pitch
3. Focus on entertaining
4. Understand the audience
5. Overdress
6. Don’t denigrate the competition
7. Tell stories
8. Pre-circulate with the audience
9. Speak at the start of an event
10. Practice and speak all the time

I think they are all good points, however, I disagree with point 5. It can be as disastrous to overdress the audience as it can be to underdress it. Preferably you should match-dress it, which goes well in line with Guy’s point 4: Understand the audience.

Although I do not have all of Guy’s experience, I also have a couple of tips, which I go by. They all point to the fact that the good presenter should own the room—be omnipresent. How to get there is very difficult, but one step of the way is to realise that you have to speak to everyone (or as many as possible) in the audience—they have to feel you are speaking to them (and—almost—them only).

I try to achieve this by being enthusiastic about what I talk about. When people feel you are enthusiastic, it is much easier for them to be so as well. It is much nicer to hear from someone who loves what he does or speaks about, than a boring nuthead.

I try to connect to the audience, so they feel I am in the room. It is as simple as establishing eye contact while making key points, but also utilising other body language—smiling (!), using my arms, using the depth of the room (walking to and from the audience) (not just the width—walking from left to right on the stage).

Finally, I try to be sincere. If you’re faking it, there is a good chance the audience will spot you, so you might as well just lay it off to start out with.

In summary, my three points, for now, is:

1. Enthusiasm
2. Connection
3. Sincerity

Go own the room.