Text & Presentation is an annual publication devoted to all aspects of theatre scholarship. It represents a selection of the best research presented at the international, interdisciplinary Comparative Drama Conference. This anthology includes papers from the 30th annual conference held in Los Angeles, California. Topics covered include Beckett, Brecht, Goethe, Tom Stoppard, dance performance, staged violence, the Comedie Francaise, and Greek and Japanese drama. Reviews of selected books are also included.
FOREWORD BY GUY KAWASAKI Presentation designer and internationally acclaimed communications expert Garr Reynolds, creator of the most popular Web site on presentation design and delivery on the Net — presentationzen.com — shares his experience in a provocative mix of illumination, inspiration, education, and guidance that will change the way you think about making presentations with PowerPoint or Keynote. Presentation Zen challenges the conventional wisdom of making "slide presentations" in today’s world and encourages you to think differently and more creatively about the preparation, design, and delivery of your presentations. Garr shares lessons and perspectives that draw upon practical advice from the fields of communication and business. Combining solid principles of design with the tenets of Zen simplicity, this book will help you along the path to simpler, more effective presentations.
A collection of best practices for creating slide presentations. It changes your approach, process and expectations for developing visual aides. It makes the difference between a good presentation and a great one.
Spiders, death, dentists, snakes and flying are in the list of the top ten fears of businesspeople (Book of List). But the top position is held by “public speaking”. So great is this fear that most businesspeople have a single objective: to get off the platform as soon as possible. This book, based on a hugely successful course given to thousands of businesspeople, shows how anyone can speak with confidence to an audience of any size. Laced with humour and wit, the author emphasizes that you don’t have to be a brilliant orator to be an effective speaker in business. Simply being good is plenty, because 95% of all business presenters are so awful! 10 reasons you must buy this book and avoid “death by slide-show”! 1. Most business audiences have a single objective: to get out of the room. 2. Most business presenters have a single objective: to sit down in the audience again. 3. Most corporate audiences can’t remember, 24 hours later, what was presented, the title of the presentation or the presenter’s name. 4. Like it or not, 55% of the persuasive power of a presentation is transmitted by the speaker’s body language, 38% by the speaker’s voice tone and only 7% by the content. 5. 75% of speaker-nerves disappear with correct rehearsal. 6. You can discover how to generate applause when you want it. 7. There is a simple model you can use which will create a terrific presentation for you every time. 8. Bullet points are not what slides are for, and using all capital letters makes long stretches of text very hard to read. 9. Reading words off slides (as most presenters do) puts your audience to sleep in about 30 seconds. 10. Good presenters are very rare. When you become a good presenter you can often negotiate better employment terms, a higher salary, and even get yourself promoted – I did... so can you! [Facsimile reprint edition]
Organize a powerful, effective business presentation and deliver it with style! Say it with Presentations helps you define why you're giving the presentation and the audience you need to convince. This compelling, comprehensive presentation toolkit tells you when, why, and how to use humor, and, yes, silence to get your points across...howto make the most of visuals...set up facilities and equipment...and rehearse to communicate your confidence, conviction and enthusiasm, and much, much more.
How is the task of giving a presentation accomplished? In this insightful book Johanna Rendle-Short unpacks this seemingly simple task to show the complexity that underlies it. Examining the academic presentation as a case in point, she details how seminar presenters interact with the audience and objects around them to produce a coherent whole. Through detailed examination of talk-in-interaction the book throws light on one instance of talk as situated practice, demonstrating both the ordinariness of the academic presentation, and its intricate complexity. While audience members recognize that a seminar is underway, this book shows how this recognition comes about. The Academic Presentation will greatly interest scholars of talk and interaction analysis, situated talk, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis.
Ten laws of simplicity for business, technology, and design that teach us how to need less but get more. Finally, we are learning that simplicity equals sanity. We're rebelling against technology that's too complicated, DVD players with too many menus, and software accompanied by 75-megabyte "read me" manuals. The iPod's clean gadgetry has made simplicity hip. But sometimes we find ourselves caught up in the simplicity paradox: we want something that's simple and easy to use, but also does all the complex things we might ever want it to do. In The Laws of Simplicity, John Maeda offers ten laws for balancing simplicity and complexity in business, technology, and design—guidelines for needing less and actually getting more. Maeda—a professor in MIT's Media Lab and a world-renowned graphic designer—explores the question of how we can redefine the notion of "improved" so that it doesn't always mean something more, something added on. Maeda's first law of simplicity is "Reduce." It's not necessarily beneficial to add technology features just because we can. And the features that we do have must be organized (Law 2) in a sensible hierarchy so users aren't distracted by features and functions they don't need. But simplicity is not less just for the sake of less. Skip ahead to Law 9: "Failure: Accept the fact that some things can never be made simple." Maeda's concise guide to simplicity in the digital age shows us how this idea can be a cornerstone of organizations and their products—how it can drive both business and technology. We can learn to simplify without sacrificing comfort and meaning, and we can achieve the balance described in Law 10. This law, which Maeda calls "The One," tells us: "Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful."
Whether you are a university professor, researcher at a think tank, graduate student, or analyst at a private firm, chances are that at some point you have presented your work in front of an audience. Most of us approach this task by converting a written document into slides, but the result is often a text-heavy presentation saddled with bullet points, stock images, and graphs too complex for an audience to decipher—much less understand. Presenting is fundamentally different from writing, and with only a little more time, a little more effort, and a little more planning, you can communicate your work with force and clarity. Designed for presenters of scholarly or data-intensive content, Better Presentations details essential strategies for developing clear, sophisticated, and visually captivating presentations. Following three core principles—visualize, unify, and focus—Better Presentations describes how to visualize data effectively, find and use images appropriately, choose sensible fonts and colors, edit text for powerful delivery, and restructure a written argument for maximum engagement and persuasion. With a range of clear examples for what to do (and what not to do), the practical package offered in Better Presentations shares the best techniques to display work and the best tactics for winning over audiences. It pushes presenters past the frustration and intimidation of the process to more effective, memorable, and persuasive presentations.
