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.

Pictures don’t need titles

Imagine a beautiful picture, perhaps a sunset or a portrait, destroyed by patronising words on top of it. If a picture requires words to render it comprehensible the image is poorly chosen. If the intent of the image is clear,…

Miles ahead

  Miles Davis, improvisational jazz wonder developed a new form of jazz outwith the accepted boundaries of music. He eschewed accepted understanding of chords and scales and gave the world amazing music. He did this, not by adding notes but…

It’s not about you

The value of a presentation is NOT what you thought it was. Too often a speaker leaves the stage disappointed in their work, upset that a section hadn’t gone as well as planned, that a previous rehearsal had been better,…

One at a time please? One at a time

If you are going to use images in a presentation use them only one at a time. Multiple images in a slide are impossible to look at comfortably. The eye is constantly looking from one to the other and the…

It’s not a shaggy dog story

Intro. Waffle waffle waffle, essential and potentially key interesting information. Waffle waffle waffle. Facts. Waffle waffle waffle. Build up with more key information. Waffle waffle waffle. Punchline. A great presentation is better than a shaggy dog story; it should make…

just for reference- don’t

Big hair, flares, shoulder pads, mini skirts, wide ties, skinny jeans, platform shoes and putting references in powerpoint slides in a tiny font at the bottom of a slide. Just for reference- don’t. No matter who it was suggested to…

200 and counting!

This post marks the 200th in a series of little comments on #presentationskills. I started the blog in March 2013 and the current number of hits is over 120,000. Thank you for your interest!The most popular posts are listed below.…

Presentation wisdom from Winnie the Pooh

My dear friend @nicolegugger is very wise. She recently wrote this blogpost on the presentation insights from Winnie the Pooh. If your German is up to it, I strongly commend the original over at  your German isn’t so good, please forswear…

reflections on failure

So, I stepped onto the stage to give a Keynote presentation having checked and run through the whole IT setup, twice. The IT guy pressed the button to swap from the Conference backdrop to my presentation and launched…absolutely nothing, just…