On Friday and Saturday @matteo_uguzzoni held the first ever Masterclass at the Reef, a new kind of coliving and coworking space run by Edgeryders.
When Matteo told us that you need 40 hours to produce a solid pitch presentation, I was sceptical at first. After working our way through a number of practical exercises to develop pitches for our individual projects, I can see why.
@alberto , @noemi , @matthias and I each picked one different edgeryders project each to work on. Some are under wraps. My own is Edgeryders consultancy services. The more clients we can secure, the more money we have to support members’ personal and professional development (e.g. through high quality Masterclasses :))
The process of building a solid presentation was broken down into a series of steps. Each one described through a series of videos. Then, an excercise through which we developed that skill. By the end we had a complete first version of our presentation, and recieved two rounds of feedback.
How about you? Leave a thoughtful comment to help us move the learning forward!
* If you want to participate in more masterclasses to learn important skills, consider becoming a member of the Reef. It’s a new Edgeryders initiative to support members personal and professional development. Learn more here.
First, thanks to @matteo_uguzzoni for leading this, I had forgotten how much fun learning can be, in a classroom format! Something which definitely stuck with me: it wasnt in the key lessons you pointed out repeatedly, but I sensed it as an underlying piece of advice:
When we are trying to say too much in a slide or in the introduction, outline of the problem, solution, or call to action of a presentation, its much risk free to make an effort to simplify it by all means - not just simplify the words, but use stories or analogies. We forget sometimes the basic ways in which humans learn and remember things… and as a presenter sparing your audience of any extra cognitive load means you’re probably doing yourself a favor.
I learned elements of stricht methodology to create a structured presentation and all this happened in a relaxed, diverse, p2p environment: in few words, a genuinely human experience. Thanks to @nadia, @matteo_uguzzoni , @alberto, @noemi, @matthias and to all the explorers of the edges.
The course was really excellent – but knowing @matteo_uguzzoni and @augusto_pirovano I knew it would be. What I did not know is how damn hard presenting well is. It demands of you, the presenter, to be super-clear about what you are talking about, and super-aware of the how the different pieces are scattered on the board: the audience, their belief, human cognition hacks… I have been making presentations for decades, and I still feel like a rookie.
A class given by a Master of the trade. Even though I could not participate fully, I learned many very useful things. I had already attended several workshops on presenting, but none of them ever gave me such a complete and qualitative overview as this one. A fun two days, a well thought through workshop structure and a usable framework at the end. Thanks @matteo_uguzzoni !
Missed the first half, but thought @matteo_uguzzoni gave a solid and practical hands on approach to presentation techniques : what to avoid and emphasise, design of slide layouts, how to physically present yourself, delivering a simple but effective message… It made me realise how broad the range of skills are to deliver a good presentation. This was all done in a nice and friendly environment thanks to everyone involved.
First of all thank you for having me here, it was a very enriching weekend, sometimes it’s hard to break up the scheme teacher/students, but maybe because of the Reef atmosphere or the mix of people that we have, we made it and when this happens it’s way more effective the passage of contents and the sharing.
As someone said “if you want to learn, teach” that was exactly the feeling.
In this last few days i’ve worked on a new version of our handout, ie a syntesis of the most important content of our workshop, I wrote it in my english, which is pretty basic and not totally correct, but I think that is a good handbook, also to share between members of the community as a first tool to start entering the world of live presentation.
@matteo_uguzzoni did you get to making the final version of the handout? People have been asking for it, what do we send them? also using some of your principles for delivery in a training I’m working on, so thanks again! <3
