Free How to Deliver a Great TED Talk: Presentation Secrets of the World's Best Speakers (How to Give a TED Talk) by Akash Karia Page B

Gillian Lynne Dance Company — met Andrew Lloyd Weber. She’s been responsible for some of the most successful musical theater productions in history; she’s given pleasure to millions; and she’s a multi-millionaire. Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.
    USE PERSONAL STORIES
    Finally, personal stories are one of the best ways to breathe life into an old topic. Sharing your personal stories adds a new perspective into an old, worn-out topic. For example, in her TED talk on domestic violence, Leslie Morgan Steiner makes a potentially dull topic interesting and emotional by sharing her personal story:
“I was 22. I had just graduated from Harvard College. I had moved to New York City for my first job as a writer and editor at Seventeen magazine. I had my first apartment, my first little green American Express card, and I had a very big secret. My secret was that I had this gun loaded with hollow-point bullets pointed at my head by the man who I thought was my soul-mate, many, many times. The man who I loved more than anybody on Earth held a gun to my head and threatened to kill me more times than I can even remember.”
    IN A NUTSHELL
    Avoid being predictable and boring by:
Talking about something new
Looking at an old topic from a new perspective
Arguing against conventional wisdom
Digging out stories from academic research
Interviewing interesting people
Using personal stories

CHAPTER NINE
    Create a Wow-Moment

    If you want to be remembered, and if you want your audience to be talking about your presentations months after the actual presentation, you need to create a Wow-Moment. If you want to avoid your speech being completely predictable and boring, it helps to have a moment in your speech where your audiences’ jaws drop in amazement.
    In his TED talk, Pranav Mistry’s Wow-Moment was his demo of his breakthrough sixth sense technology where he showed how the virtual world could integrate with the real world.
    However, you don’t necessarily have to demo breakthrough technology in order to wow your audiences.
    For a perfect example of the Wow-Moment in a business presentation, let’s examine Steve Jobs’ presentation at Macworld 2008. ( Click here to watch the video.) During the presentation, Jobs said that the MacBook was “so thin it even fits inside one of those envelopes you see floating around the office.” Jobs then pulled the new MacBook Air out of a manila office envelope just to show everyone how thin it was. The audience roared with applause and laughed with delight. That moment became the most talked-about moment of the event – bloggers blogged about it, journalists wrote about it and fans raved about it. It was also the most common photograph of the conference. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words; this dramatic demo was worth a thousand pictures.
    Let’s look at another example of a Wow-Moment, this time from a TED conference where Dr. Jill Taylor brings out an actual brain for illustration purposes:
“If you’ve ever seen a human brain, it’s obvious that the two hemispheres are completely separate from each other. And I have brought for you a real human brain. So this is a real human brain”
    You can hear the audience gasp when they realize it’s an actual brain! The blogosphere was buzzing with excitement about Dr. Taylor’s Wow-Moment, which is how I originally stumbled across the talk.
    What can you do to wow your audiences? Perhaps you can show a demo? Or use a prop to make your idea more concrete?
    What’s your wow factor?
    IN A NUTSHELL
Create a wow-moment
Demo a remarkable product or use a prop to make your idea more concrete
Do something which will get your audience buzzing with excitement

PART 3
    CONCRETE

    The best presentations are concrete rather than vague. They provide specifics and paint clear images in the audience’s minds. They try to turn abstract concepts into concrete ideas.
    In this section, you will learn how to