To ease yourself back into work, take a look at the perfume critic, Chandler Burr, presenting on the Pop!tech site. If you have never heard of a ‘perfume critic’, join the club – he’s the first in the English speaking world – writes for the New York Times.
Chandler Burr is yet another example of an excellent presenter who breaks a lot of the rules. He uses very long words, complex ideas, talks fast and yet here is a large and varied audience enthralled by the presentation. This presentation is proof that audiences can cope with very technical material, if it is presented well. Burr succeeds because he is passionate about perfume and his topic enables him to waft prestige, status and sexual attraction around his audience.
There’s more to it than that though: His presentation appeals to our sense of curiosity. In this case Burr presents on a topic which we take for granted and gets us to see it completely differently. Perfume is an innately good topic because smell is a very powerful sense that connects deeply with our emotions.
Look at how Burr uses audience involvement with the perfume samples. The audience gets to do things as part of the presentation. He also shows respect for his audience’s intelligence with his questions and builds suspense around possible answers. Plus no slides – yippee!
Keep an eye on Pop!Tech. The site provides a very interesting lineup of presenters, including Malcolm Gladding (‘Outliers’ and ‘Tipping Point’),Richard Dawkins, Stephen Pinker, and a big range of medical experts such as Stephen Badyluk – a specialist in regenerative medicine.
I found the site when on the trail of one of my favourite self-help writers – Ben Zander. Zander is the conductor of the Boston Pops and with Rosamund Stone Zander has written a really good self -help book called: The Art of Possibility. The half hour Pop!Tech video has Zander exploring the ideas from his book as he coaches a fifteen year old cellist.
