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.

What is the best, new tool in presentations?

An interesting post at The Harvard Business Review on Presentations discusses other new and exciting tools that may help in effective presentations. Sadly, I think they miss the point completely. “Guns don’t kill: bulletpoints do” is a tagline I use…

What if I told you..

I picked this up from Google search. I tweeted it and it has now been retweeted in some form or other more than 600 times. Which says an awful lot.The meme comes from the film, The Matrix. The character, Morpheus…

The maximum number of words on a slide is zero.

A recent question on twitter to me was, “What is the maximum number of words you can put on a slide?”Easy, the maximum number is zero!Seriously, asking the question shows that the purpose of your supportive media (p2) is for…

The best slide in the world, ever…

One of the biggest problems of text based supportive media (p2) [your “presentation”] is that the audience pay more attention to it than to you. This has been discussed in many posts and principally is a problem because the audience…

Elevator pitch

In business there is a concept of the “elevator pitch.” Effectively, if you happened to get into a lift with a potential customer, could you deliver your pitch within the elevator ride? And yes, elevator rides are short. This applies…

Conformity for success? or not?

A recent email discussion highlighted a problem with improving presentations skills; some people don’t like change. It is clear that the current approach of “death by powerpoint” is ubiquitous. What is unclear is that those who express an opinion on…

@ffolliet would be proud…(2)

More pride as more friends and colleagues make better and better presentations and suggest that I am at least partly catalytic in the process. I do keep encouraging them that it is their own decision to make the move towards…

To corporate or not co-operate?

There is little that depresses me more at a meeting than a poor presentation, save for a poor presentation awash with corporate logos. The (poor) argument for their use on every slide runs something along the lines of making it clear to…