I’ve been blogging for about 8 years now. It’s been great fun. I’ve built a global reputation and it’s helped me build my consulting business into a truly international outfit- though we’re still a small company. In the early days of the web there was a generosity of spirit about bloggers, we were a community, that shared stuff. We swapped ideas, and links and scratched each others’ backs. That’s all changed now, as people want to control the web, channel traffic and limit a user’s choice to include x’s products and services and exclude y’s, for commercial reasons.
It’s a fundamental betrayal of Tim Berners-Lee’s ideas. I understand why it’s happened, but I don’t agree with it. I think that readers are intelligent, and they’ll choose those resources that most match their own perspective, and so they’ll find you in the end, however much bloggers like to pretend that they are the only ‘true’ voice out there. In my years of blogging, I’ve shared hundreds of links to others, because I liked what they had to say. I’ve never received a single offer from one of my ‘competitors’ in that time. That might be because my stuff is crap, and none of my peers think that my thoughts are worth a damn, but my readership suggests that I might not be that bad. Anyway…
With this in mind, here’s an old fashioned post that’s designed to help the reader by sharing a wide range of voices, none of which I have any commercial interest in, for your benefit and support. I hope you like them. They are my favourite presentation bloggers and writers on the whole of the web. Plus an opinion on what’s good (and sometimes bad) about them.
- Nancy Duarte– just very comprehensive and lots of free stuff. Not much original thought, but one of the best collections of current thinking around.
- Rick Altman– interesting, witty and comprehensive practical advice on presenting and presentation design in the real world.
- Max Atkinson– brilliant, original, well researched and beautifully comprehensive site on speech writing, oratory and speech-making technique. A speech geek’s paradise. Lots of video examples too.
- 6 minutes- Andrew Dlugan has cornered the market in curating (I hate that word) other people’s ideas and work for the benefit of the whole world. Hundreds of unheard of contributors, writing well organised, and detailed stuff on many subjects to do with presentations.
- Prezi.com– great site full of PowerPoint alternative stuff. Most of it is shit but there’s still a great idea for impactful presentations here.
- Nick Morgan– Just good, experienced, well documented thoughts and advice for any speaker, whatever their field.
- Olivia Mitchell– comprehensive, slightly chippy voice from the far side of the world. Great for beginners and well documented. A bit dull in style and approach for me, but I readily recognise her talents.
- Garr Reynolds– God he loves himself, but ‘Zen’ is a good book. Everything else is a rehash of that original idea.
- M62– An English sales presentation company, named after a motorway for some reason. Brash, opinionated and a bit cheesy sometimes, but well worth a good look.
- Charles Crawford-Ex British Foreign Office Charlie- brilliant and baffling with a fine eye for detail- his website is as much politics as it is presentation.
Visit them all, decide for yourself and let me know who you think should be on the list.
www.jim-harvey.com/jh-staging
