How to Deliver a Great TED Talk: Presentation Secrets of the World's Best Speakers (How to Give a TED Talk) by Akash Karia Read Free Book Online Page A

world use acronyms to help students pass examinations. You might have used an acronym to help you remember important concepts for an exam.
    If you have a list of points, experiment to see if you can perhaps create an acronym to help your audiences remember your points.
    3. ACTIVITIES
    If you can create some sort of quick game/role-playing activity that will solidify your point, then be sure to include it.
    During my workshops, I use lots of activities to help participants internalize the concepts I am teaching. For example, I use an activity that teaches participants how stressing a particular word can change the meaning of an entire sentence. I get them to read out the following sentences with the stress placed on the word in italics and then ask them how that changes the meaning of the sentence:
I didn’t know she was upset
I didn’t know she was upset
I didn’t know she was upset
I didn’t know she was upset
I didn’t know she was upset
    The point of the activity? What word you stress can completely change the meaning of the sentence.
    If you are giving a workshop, seminar or presentation on creativity, you might split audience members into groups and give them an activity to find a creative solution to a problem you’ve given them.
    An activity is a great anchor because:
It gets your audience physically moving and doing something. If your audience members are physically moving and involved in doing something (as opposed to just sitting back and listening to you), you can be guaranteed that they’re engaged … and awake!
It reinforces your point . An activity helps make your point memorable. They might forget what you said, but they won’t forget what they did … and when they remember the activity, they’ll remember the point associated with it.
    4. ANALOGIES, SIMILES, METAPHORS
    One of the best ways to remember or learn something is to link the new topic you’re trying to learn to something that you’re already familiar with. In other words, the best way to learn is to create a bridge between the familiar and the unfamiliar.
    Analogies, similes and metaphors compare two unlike objects to one another. They are great anchors because they take a subject that audience members are already familiar with and create a connection or a link between the known and the new information you’re sharing.
    For example, here’s an example of an analogy from the book The Mars and Venus Diet and Exercise Solution by John Gray:
“Think of your body as an old-fashioned steam engine. You need to feed the fire with coal. When there is no coal available, the stoker slows down so that all the available fuel is not consumed. Likewise, your metabolism slows down for the rest of the day when you don’t eat breakfast.”
    5. STATISTICS
    Statistics help make your points memorable. For example, the following statistic makes the point about wealth inequality very clear:
“Ninety-nine percent of the world’s wealth is controlled by one percent of the world’s population.”
    Here are some other statistics that help make the points memorable because they provide evidence that the point is true.
“One bag of popcorn is as unhealthy as a whole day’s worth of fatty foods!”
    You’ll pick up more tools on how to use statistics in your speech in Chapter 7 of this book.
    6. ACADEMIC RESEARCH
    Using academic studies to back up your point not only anchors your point, but also adds credibility to it. Research studies, if told well, are usually very fascinating because they arouse people’s curiosity. Consider the following portion of Dan Pink’s TED talk where he talks about Dan Ariely’s research:
Dan Ariely, one of the great economists of our time, he and three colleagues, did a study of some MIT students. They gave these MIT students a bunch of games, games that involved creativity, and motor skills, and concentration. And the offered them, for performance, three levels of rewards: small reward, medium reward, large reward. If you do