Why Not

WOW? with Rex Castle

November, 2013, I flew into North Carolina and made my way to the Pinehurst Resort to present for a great group, the North Carolina Local Government Information Systems Association (NCLGISA).

I began my Why Not WOW? (based off my book on presentation and available through Amazon) with the story of the worst presentation known to man…mine.

The following slides have some text on them. My slides, when I use a presentation tool with slides, generally do not.

Using the science described by John Medina in his wonderful read, Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School, I ask my audience to tell me how long we have from the time we get up until we first start losing our audience.

And I talk about PUNCH from one of Garr Reynolds’ exceptional reads.

The “P” stands for Personal (Again, none of these slides have text on them just cool pictures)

The “U” for Unexpected

The “N” for Novel

The “C” for Challenge

And the “H” for the double-edge sword of humor

This represents the other edge

I ask my audience, based off the science of Hermann Ebbinghaus and his Forgetting Curve, how long we have before we’ve lost more than 50% of what we just learned

With this animated slide we talk for a few minutes about Chip & Dan Heath’s incredible work

And a final question on memory going back to Dr. Medina is how long “can” it take to move something to long-term memory

With this animated slide we discuss the power positions on a slide and graphic placement and slide design and color and…

My Q&A goes here, before my final “Here you go. Go change the world!”

45‒50 minutes later I end with a conversation about the science of presentation primarily from Cliff Atkinson’s dynamic work, Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft® PowerPoint® to Create Presentations that Inform, Motivate, and Inspire

Why Not

WOW? with Rex Castle

Handouts I used in North

Carolina

I use an 11X17” document that’s folded once for an 8.5X11”, 4-page handout.

This is my simple title page

The inside page is an exercise I have where I ask them to list “verbatim” all the bullet points they remember. To date, I’ve had a couple of people able to list one.

The opposite inside page has my “memory” team exercise that allows them to talk, move around, learn together, etc.

Some of the resources I discuss during my presentation.