[VizThinkU] Just One Week Until “Agile Presenting”
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Now I’m sure you’re asking yourself, “What do two comedians have to teach me about making my presentations better?”
More than you might suspect.
Imagine the work environment of a stand-up comic: Performing in an unfamiliar environment, to an unfamiliar crowd and they know there are at least one or two people out there in that dimly-lit room who probably want to take them down a peg. Sound familiar?
Maybe reminds you a little of your last speaking engagement, sales presentation or meeting?
While we’ve focused a lot at VizThink on making your presentations look more appealing and be more effective from a visual stand-point, we haven’t spent a whole lot of time on the skills around delivering it – which is why we assembled this VizThinkU course. This workshop will introduce you to new ideas about engaging and interacting with your audience as well as approaches to think quickly on your feet and react to unexpected situations.
Our two faculty members for this session, Heather Gold and John Vlismas, are both accomplished comedians and public speakers. In addition to their stand-up careers they’ve also consolidated their skills and experiences into workshops that they’ve delivered around the world, and our now bringing them online as part of VizThinkU.
This session promises to be entertaining and informative and you don’t want to miss it – be sure to register today.
This two and half hour webinar will be divided into two parts:
UnPresenting
w/ Heather Gold
People who work in the digital realm love interactivity in every realm, but when it comes to presenting, they forget all about it.
In this workshop on UnPresenting innovative comedian Heather Gold breaks down how public communication works and then remakes it in our collective image. Heather focuses on the main thing business has ignored: the actual source of power in the room and how to engage it.
The Shared World
w/ John Vlismas
Successful comedians are high-functioning multi-taskers. They must exert charm, pre-empt mood changes and conclude a sale every time they tell a joke. Essentially, they are expert at forming temporary movements and guiding that movement for the duration of the performance. Take away the humour, and the skill set resembles the ideal profile for a good leader, be it a person or a brand.
Where corporations find it difficult to react to their markets quickly, encumbered by protocol largely designed to assign blame, comedians must assess and react in the blink of an eye, sometimes facing several thousand people they have never met.Ideally specialist communicators, comedians are adept at managing risk, and do so constantly.
The Shared WorldTM is a system of thinking which encourages high-speed analysis using empathy, intuition and assimilation of data rapidly to make lightning speed, high quality decisions.
The key to winning over an audience is to position oneself directly at the heart of the crowd. Instead of trying to analyze how they feel – experience how they feel.
About the Instructors:
Heather Gold
Heather Gold is the turkey baster love child of Sarah Silverman and Rachel Maddow and tours North America as a comedian, speaker, interactive solo performer and social artist.
She brings insights and authentic conversations to companies, organizations and conferences like Google, SXSW Interactive, BlogHer, AIGA, Social Venture Network, Forum One’s Marketing and Online Communities Conference and Overlap 08.
Heather is the creator of the hit interactive show “I Look Like an Egg, But I Identify as a Cookie,” which ran for a year in San Francisco, showed at Ars Nova in New York and was selected by The Oakland Tribune as “Best of the Bay Area.”
Heather speaks and performs for venues and colleges and conferences across North America and contributes to media like The San Jose Mercury News, Tech TV, The Learning Channel, The Toronto Globe & Mail, and CBC Radio. She’s been quoted and covered in places like WIRED, Salon and NPR. Heather is one of the creators of EqualityCamp, which brings techies and activists together to organize the current gay marriage movement.
John Vlismas
Award-winning comedian, John Vlismas is one of South Africa’s most creative, prolific international comics.
While outspoken and sometimes controversial, Vlismas is a firm favourite in the corporate market, and spends over 80% of his stage time entertaining executives and their staff with tailored material, proving that he has the ability to adapt rapidly and appropriately for diverse audiences.
In 2008 he represented his country in Toronto, finishing in the top eight at the Yuk Yuk’s Great Canadian Laugh Off, and performed at Freedom Day celebrations in Dubai, at the request of the South African Business Council. John also performed his long anticipated one-man show, entitled Lucky Plebian, in June 2008.
John has joined up with academic friend and mentor, Jonathan Foster-Pedley to lecture on MBA “Creategy” Electives at the Graduate School Of Business, delivering his talk “The Shared World” on applied intuition.
He has scripted and performed for the FNB Life Start, and SAB Brand Power national road shows, Arts Alive festival each year and regularly performs at his comedy club, The Comedy Underground, now SA’s longest running regular comedy event.
John has enjoyed much local success with his previous one-man shows, all of which he wrote, directed and produced: Whacked in 2001, Aggravated Assault in 1999, Man in Black in 1998, and Mr Ballistic in 1997. In 2001, his two-hander with Bevan Cullinan, Grinder confirmed his ability to sell tickets. The esteem in which John is held by the comedy industry is evidenced by such events as his role in Steven Wright’s South African tour as support act, and his performance for SA Tourism at the Sydney Art Museum in 2004.
Don’t Miss this Workshop – Register Today!
As you can see, this is a unique workshop offering with two fantastic speakers. Whether you have to make small internal presentations or speak regularly to large audiences I guarantee you this is one you do not want to miss.
Be sure to register today!
- Ryan
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