Author Archive: ffolliet

p cubed presentations > Articles by: ffolliet

At work I'm a Consultant Paediatric Surgeon. That involves Surgical Oncology, Neonatal Surgery and Trauma. There's also a lot of teaching and mentoring. None of this actually makes me particularly clever. I'm pretty heavily into improving presentations and long for the world to lay down the weapon of bulletpoints and embrace creative and engaging presentations. I lead presentation workshops and am currently working up a book on presentations. I did a wee thing at TEDx Stuttgart in 2014 of which I'm quite proud https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFza3W87eDg Outside all of that I struggle to keep fit, cycle a bit and the odd triathlon. I'm a father, singer, laugher, learner, sharer, blogger, thinker, strummer and much more.

Data download complete

March 12, 2025 0 Comments

The perception that presentations should deliver large quantities of data downloaded by the audience is deeply ingrained in both lecturers and recipients. This is driven by institutional expectations, (perceived) academic norms, and misconceptions about learning effectiveness. It does not happen….
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science of fail

JFDI. Do it!

March 11, 2025 2 Comments

Let’s face it: most presenters already know their approach isn’t working. They recognize the glazed-over looks, the restless shifting in seats, and the distracted scrolling through phones. Deep down, many suspect there’s a better way to deliver presentations, yet feel…
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Freytag’s Pyramid

March 6, 2025 2 Comments

Freytag’s Pyramid: Transform Your Presentation Into a Story How do you ensure your presentation doesn’t just inform but also engages and inspires your audience? One,effective tools for achieving this is Freytag’s Pyramid, a storytelling framework originally designed to analyze dramatic…
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p1, story

Total recall

March 3, 2025 4 Comments

Are Your Medical Presentations Stuck in Recall Mode? Most medical presentations never move beyond the lowest level of learning. They flood audiences with facts, demand memorization, and hope something sticks. Real learning, the kind that transforms practice, happens when information…
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p1

How to engage online audiences

January 24, 2022 1 Comment

How to engage online audiences is a real challenge. There are a multiplicity of distractions and the audience has learned, very quickly, that the majority of online presentations are worse than their in-person brothers. The challenge to engage the audience…
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p1

Be the change you want to see

January 23, 2022 0 Comments

Be the change you want to see in the delivery of presentations. The online milieu is not the same as a live presentation. Failure to recognise this and consequently just doing the same old reading out of your slides is…
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#htdap

Please don’t do this

November 18, 2021 0 Comments

please don't do this

Please don’t do this in presentations. It forces the audience to read the text and this will be done in preference to listening. The data is not retained. The highlighting forces the audience to read that section before getting context…
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p2

Your powerpoint is not the presentation

August 4, 2021 0 Comments

hugely complex slide with diagram and data graph supported by massive amount of unreadable text

Your PowerPoint is not the presentation. If you believe that it is, then you have entirely missed the point of every single presentation you have ever “delivered” or “received”. You are not alone in this erroneous belief but you are…
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science of fail

One more time…

July 26, 2021 0 Comments

one more time...

One more time… please stop using bullet points and text in presentations. Ask any audience member what they hate most about presentations and you will receive the same answer. There is an overwhelming volume of research data on why text…
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science of fail

The audience factor

July 12, 2021 0 Comments

the audience factor

The audience factor in an online presentation significantly changes the perceived impact of that presentation. The value of any presentation is the product of the message, media and delivery. Importantly this value is in the opinion of the individual audience…
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