Conquer the SSSStttuterring

Reporting, defense, reporting, defense.. anything that goes with presentation is scary for students (for some)… I’m a talker, I’m a people person by nature but whenever I do presentations, reports and during my first defense, what I did was all stuttering and tensed. I just don’t really like the spotlight, where everybody got their attention on me, gosh! that’s nerve breaking (again, for me and for some)… anyways.. I have some few tips on how to conquer them.. 🙂

1. Know your Audience. This comes from the art of war by Sun Tzu,

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself,
you will succumb in every battle” . 

By knowing your audience, you would be able to find hint on how in particular you would be able to connect to the audience. Yes, you can’t be a all-happy-and-animated-like when your audience are all doctors, and of course you can’t be an all-facts-presentor if your audience doesn’t are.

2. When Presenting, start with a bang! from starting a bang, you would be able to get the attention of the audience. Like what I did during my first thesis defense for my undergraduate (which I’m taking it again now, unfortunately :(….), I started with a command, a shout. Since my thesis is all about Taekwondo, what I did was command charyeot which means attention with a very authoritative voice (if you can’t figure out what I’m talking, imagine a military officer commanding-like-shouting, that’s what it is) and that caught all their attention. For others, you could start with a quote, a very powerful quote. It could be a short film clip, a song maybe (but make it short as possible). 

3. Make a Preview of the presentation. It is simply a bullet form of the presentation in general. By that, your audience would know the run through of the whole presentation. At least it would give them a hint of what you’re gonna blab about.

4. Eye Contact. Making an eye contact, even if you’re unsure of how the presentation would come out, would make your audience think that you’re confident. That you know what you’re doing and you’re not wasting their time. Eye of the tiger!

5. Know the presentation by heart. Audience and listeners would know if you were just memorizing the whole presentation or knows it by heart. The meat of the presentation might not be passed if purely you’ve been memorizing. If you know and study your presentation by heart, you’d be able to insert jokes, examples and apply adlibs.

6. Know your color themes for the presentation slides. It is very vital to have an interesting presentation slides. Put pictures, quotes,and animations but with moderation. And check the colors you use for the background and the fonts if it’s readable. (you might want to read my other post about colors, Know Your Colors)

7. Conclude with brief run through of the presentation. From that, the audience will know (and you yourself) that you’ve already discuss everything, and you could somehow have a brief summary of it. Again, do it with bullet form.

8. Presentation Ender: with a bang! If you started awesome, you could not walk out without being awesome. I also would like to go out from the hall LIKE A BOSS. A great mentor of mine,  Architect Mike Guerrero, who’s into sustainability and green architecture movement, always reminds us that… when you already awed your audience, you couldn’t walkout without ending it. It’s like starting a paragraph but never or forgets to put a period. Everything must have end and each must have a great ending. So, end it with a bang so you could literally WALK LIKE A BOSS. 🙂

Related Articles:

• Presentation tips and conquer stage frights (milobee.blogpost.com)

Know your Colors

Do you  happen to wonder why every time you passed by a fast food chain, even if you’re not hungry you feel like hungry? Or why our teachers never fails to mention that “If you feel sleepy, go look for green stuffs?” Well my teacher back in high school told us that. Why coffee shops have earth colors? why hospitals usually have white all over the place? And why black is considered a mourning color?

You go hit the Google and type: Color Psychology. Yes, all colors have equivalent meanings according to psychological studies. Psychology majors studies that, for some artists, they (we) must have encountered it through our design theory classes. I don’t know with other professions but in design major courses, we study them. We use color psychology to create a certain mood to a space.

There are a lot of websites that talks about Color Psychology. 9gag even has one (no kidding). Whether or not an artist or a psychologist, you deal with colors everyday.

Color is a meaningful constant for sighted people and it’s a powerful psychological tool. You might want to use it for your presentations, marketing strategies, portfolios next time.

Source: Darren Stone‘s Blog

“Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions”. – Pablo Picasso

Related Articles:

• Understanding Colors (milobee.blogspot.com)

Are you Happy?

Happy people plan actions, they don’t plan results. – Dennis Wholey

Be happy. Live longer. No, it’s not that simple, but new research says happy(or being happy) lives are longer — by 35%. (An article by Sharon Jayson)

Happiness maybe caused by life experience, room’s mood and color, positive emotions, movies, etc, there are many ways to make a person happy. But it’s still a person’s prerogative if they really want to be happy or live in a very miserable life. Everything is a choice. Everything in this life is made and caused by our own freewill.

This caught my attention as I was browsing to different pages in facebook.

In architecture, we use color Psychology to dictate a person’s mood. It draws attention, it makes someone feel sleepy, excited, lonely, sad, blue, and some colors can even make you feel rich and royalty. But Yellow, the cheerful yellow is associated with laughter, happiness and good times. Though certain shades of the color may change the mood and it’s associations. Sometimes if you really need to cheer your self up, try looking for things with color yellow. It might brighten up your day and your mood. BUT! Again.. you choose to be happy. You choose to let certain emotions affects you, you choose to let certain circumstances affects your day.

Being happy doesn’t mean you’re perfect. It just means you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections – K.B. Indiana

Improvate

By definition Innovation is changing for better ideas, products that are already ready in the market.  A study says that by 2020, companies employs people that are creative [Link here]. True. 8 years from now, that will be it. But up to what extent one could be creative? Given that almost everything is already given.

I read an article about Invention and Innovation: Barriers, Struggles and Motivations. It mentioned how people is moved to innovate a product, but never invented something new. Just an improvement. It’s funny how smart phones become so mainstream in the market and all this time after it got out, what we only see after are simply innovation of the other and new applications, new shell, color and that’s it. It’s disturbing for me given  that we have the technology and all the resources we could acquire to invent. To make our “life” for the better but we become contented and just innovate. We never think of something new, we become shallow and simply innovate. We become tired to think for new ideas, for new things. We forgot to imagine and dream.

This might be a joke but it unconsciously shows how shallow we are. Forgive me but I have to do this. Maybe, a wake up call.

I like how this 9gag joke shows how we became a society of shallowness.

There is no wrong with innovation but all we can see nowadays are just a copy-paste of something in the past and made it just fit to this time and that’s it. A great example is Architecture. Before the modern times, architects are hungry for new ideas. From the architecture of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Medieval, Gothic, Renaissance, Industrialization, Modernism, Deconstuctivism and we end until here. Sadly, yes. Buildings we see nowadays are just simple innovation and a play of forms. It’s pleasing to the eyes but it has no content. What is pleasing is the shell of the building. I am no exemption to this because that’s what became my culture and this is how I was and am taught. I am taught not to think but only to design. I am not taught to think of impossible things but taught to please. Sometimes being creative has it’s disadvantages. I know. It just scares me.

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. – Steve Jobs

Are we made to IMPROVATE or INVENT?

TIPS on the FLOORS

When tired and not feeling to start cleaning, remember this:

When working, to make it fun, just sing the happy working song!!

The trouble with living alone is that it’s always your turn to do the dishes, the laundry, groceries and the cleaning! But fear nothing!

This is my aunt’s idea and wanted to share it to you. 😉