ffolliet

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.
  • Joined: July 3, 2016
  • Articles: 465
  • Comments: 69

Delete your slides

I received a question via Twitter about #presentationskills and where I might focus beginning the journey of improvement. As with so many things, the more I considered the issue the deeper the answer became. I think a good place to…

That’s a paper, not a slide

As conference season gets into full swing more and more presenters are showing audiences that their thoughts are built upon previous work. That is often very important. What is not necessary is to show a screenshot of that journal article.…

Design affects function

Simple design changes in the supportive media  make dramatic differences to the audience’s perception of value in a presentation. The overall value of a presentation (p cubed) is the product of the story (p1) x the supportive media (p2) x…

It’s alright Ma, I’m only bleeding

This is the Mona Lisa, probably one of the most famous images in the world. Putting a frame around her doesn’t make her any more amazing. Putting a load of white space around her would detract from her. There is…

Never say, “I’m sorry.”

There is no place in a presentation for apologies. There should be nothing in your preparation that would cause you to apologise and nothing in your delivery that you should apologise for. Apologies are an expression of contrition and of…

Something they will always remember

My drive is for presentations to be remembered, so that the amazing things people have to share and teach and talk about will not be “lost in time like tears in rain.” One way to help the audience is to have…

Text in presentations

For the benefit of clarity, I am not against text in presentations. The goal of the perfect presentation (p2) is NOT simply to eradicate all text. The goal of the perfect presentation is to augment the story (p1) and add…

Spare some time guv?

We look past them, we try to avoid eye contact or politely but with a degree of embarrassment refuse their request. Our reasons for doing so are multiple but the reality is most of us could spare more than we…

My boss won’t like it.

“I would love to change presentation style but my boss won’t like it,” is a familiar lament heard when considering improving presentations.This resistance may be perceived, explicit, limited or simply an expression of the presenter’s own reluctance to embrace change.…

One word for templates.

  One word for templates. No If you want to give a great presentation, don’t use a template. There are so many problems with templates that detract from a great presentation adding noise to the signal. The need for “branding”…