Learning more about presentations?

Maybe it's time that academics started looking a little more closely at the business world of presentations and conferences? Yes, there can be excesses there (all pzazz and dazzleblast), but we have our own excesses, too (and being seriously scholarly of course requires that we present anything in as boring a fashion as is humanly possible).

At the very least, people in business often have their heads tapped into what works in presentations as far as learning is concerned. I just came across what looks like a great site, and a great book, by all accounts, Brain Rules, that is doing the rounds among business heads in the US. It's the work of Dr. John Medina, a specialist in neurogenetics (I just made that term up, hope it exists), and it's fun, and informative, and really helpful. A lot of the stuff up there is really helpful (and scarily provocative in a scarily obvious way) for thinking about teaching methods generally (sitting still for hours on end can't be good for us).

Another site to look at is:

http://www.presentationzen.com/

Directly related to this blog is the following ...

Seth Godin's Blog: The new standard for meetings and conferences

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/05/the-new-standar.html

"If oil is $130 a barrel and if security adds two or three hours to a trip and if people are doing more and more business with those far afield...

and if we need to bring together more people from more places when we get together...

and if the alternatives, like video conferencing or threaded online conversations continue to get better and better, then...

I think the standard for a great meeting or a terrific conference has changed.

In other words, "I flew all the way here for this?" is going to be far more common than it used to be. ..." more