Hi all,
My next Workshop on Presentation Magic is a combined morning event, culminating in a lunch, and including vocal coach specialist, Dr. Louise Mahler. It will be held in Brighton, Victoria on May 6, 2009.
You can see the flyer and all details below, but it should be an exciting and fast-paced dynamic morning’s work, and one where both of us expect you can immediately use what you’ve learnt. I’ll focus on presentations using slideware but won’t discuss the mechanics of the software itself except in passing. I WILL by necessity discuss the shortcomings of the “elephant in the room” – the Cognitive Style of Powerpoint – without going into the software’s shortcomings.
Nor will it evangelise Apple’s Keynote application, but I imagine those attending for the first time and who have worked exclusively with Powerpoint will have their eyes opened as to what slideware can actually do to better support your presentation in order to make it persuasive, memorable and engaging.
Contact me for my information, say if you want particular topics covered should you wish to attend, and I’ll also be attempting a slide makeover section of the workshop so you can see my ideas in action. Otherwise contact the Coaching Connection’s Jim Moore for bookings.
Hope you can join us - or send around to someone you think would do well to present better
Les Posen's Presentation Magic 
It’s pretty funny when a guy drops a “sic” into a quote– for a correctly worded sentence, natch– and then calls someone named Farhad “Farhood”.
The above comment was posted here in reply to a comment I left on the commenter’s blog: http://www.ordinary-gentlemen.com/2009/04/why-i-care-about-this-apple-vs-pc-business/
My response: You’re right, it’s Farhad. A re-reading of your sentence shows “incredulity” is appropriate in this context. My error in extracting your meaning. But I stand by my earlier criticisms, where you disallow non-neutrality while admitting your own bias, and see Farhad as a uni-dimensional Apple booster, which my reference shows not to be the case. And like many others who choose to argue the point, unlike Microsoft’s ads which had owners of PCs saying “I’m a PC”, the Apple ads have always been about anthropomorphising the operating software, not describing the user. If you choose, you can take the ads. as indirect criticisms of PC owners who choose operating systems as Windows (VIsta in particular), without giving any thought to the possibility another system may better suit them. While these ads. are beginning to wear out their welcome, when they first began Apple’s overall market share was half what it is today. Apple timed these ads so as to capitalise on growing marketplace dissatisfaction with Vista. To move the conversation along, for Microsoft to even mention Apple in their ads. would have David Ogilvy turning in his grave. Since when does the 90% OS market share need to fight a rearguard action against the 10% market share? Because in the world of laptops the Microsoft ads. play in, the 90/10 ratio doesn’t apply. It’s a much more frightening statistic for Microsoft shareholders to contemplate. Especially as laptops have overtaken sales of desktops, and so many of the current generation of students (definitely not in the 90:10 ratio) will soon be moving into corporate life, where the cash cows of Office and Windows have hitherto dominated.
What’s interesting when comparing the ads. is that Apple focusses entirely on the OS experience. The current Microsoft ads. make no mention of OS, and focus on “features for money”, from a hardware perspective. It really does sum up the different customer philosophies of each company: the end user experience in the long haul, up against the immediate sense of “value” obtained at the checkout. As Dan Ariely would say, “Predictably Irrational”.