Blog Outlines Ways to Improve Presentations

Guy Kawasaki, a self-described "evangelist, entrepreneur, investment banker, and venture capitalist" whose blog "How to Change The World," has posted a series of suggestions from speaker Doug Lawrence on how to improve your presentations.

Lawrence is a singer, music director, and speech coachwhose career of forty years has included performances at Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, and venues in Europe. Lawrence has performed with conductors like Leonard Bernstein and Michael Tilson-Thomas, but he has also done many speeches and presentations to large audiences, and has found that singing and speaking have many things in common.

The list has eight suggestions, including:

• "Warm up with a towel. Singers often have to get their chops 'up' in their hotel rooms before leaving for rehearsals or performances. They do this by screaming and yelling into a towel."

• "Just say 'Whoooo!' One of the best ways to get a voice ready to talk or sing is to make a siren sound on - whoooo - from the lowest pitch you can make to the highest and back again. Repeat it several times. This obnoxious sound thins your vocal cords and makes them more supple for easy speaking or singing."

The rest of the suggestions are at Kawasaki's blog, blog.guykawasaki.com.

More suggestions are at an earlier post, blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/06/speaking_as_a_p.html.