154 Consulting

The TED conference just wrapped up, and while 154 has already highlighted video of some TED talks as a presentation resource , the commentary available from several attendees of the conference is worth highlighting:

-TED Blog is the conference's official blog
-Bruno Giussani has some overlap with the official blog, but also provides a nice list of who's blogging from TED
-O'Reilly Radar's Jimmy Guiterman has daily wrapups and commentary

This year's conference theme was big ideas, and all of those ideas assembled can make for some relentless reading. Here's why the wrapups are worth a glance: all of the commentary and chatter that these talks generated came from twenty minute talks, given by individuals who, while they are certainly strong presenters, are not primarily "talkers." They're just folks who found something that they cared about deeply, have invested in it heavily, and have taken the time to understand how to make that thing clear and compelling to others.

The TED talks are always about big ideas, but shouldn't all presentations address significant questions? If your team is off site for two days to set strategy for the year, someone should be thinking about the big ideas you need to grapple with and working on making the presentation of those ideas clear and compelling. If there isn't anything worth talking about afterwards, there wasn't anything worth making presentations on in the first place. The TED commentary is a great example of the impact a good presentation should have on the audience, and it's worth at least a quick review for inspiration.