Resonate With Your Audience. Here's How...

Watch this video of Nancy Duarte talking about sparkline.

I have often found myself making reference to the ideas of Nancy Duarte. She spoke to me and a group of TEDx-ers on a pre-opening backstage tour of TED2011 early this year about storytelling and presentations that "Resonsate" - the title of her recent book. In my blog post "TEDxWorkshops, Talks, Tips and Tweets..." I recalled my tweets from her talk: Nancy Duarte on storytelling formula: What is - what could be - what is - what could be - what is - call for action - the utopian new bliss. / Nancy Duarte quotes Ernest Hemmingway: “The first draft of anything is shit.” / Nancy Duarte quotes Woodrow Wilson: “If I have 10 minutes to present I need a week to prepare; if I have an hour I am ready now.”

I have since quoted these myself many times when working with people preparing presentations, and am delighted to say that I just today discovered this short video of Nancy giving much the same talk. Watch it. And once you've done so, look at the links on the webpage under the heading 'Extended Web Content'. Here you can click through to examples of how the formula applies to talks - including by Benjamin Zander, Ronald Reagan and Feynman. I think these are very useful to see it in practice, and trust that you too will find this a great resource for thinking about your presentations in the future. Let us know how you get on!