…even if they aren’t already aware of it.

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I was conducting a presentation skills seminar for a group of engineers, and I was using one of my favorite exercises. Tell me a story in a sentence. Now tell it again in 30 seconds. Now tell it in 90 seconds. (It also works with children, sometimes to disastrous effect.)

In this case, we were preparing these engineers to go into high schools and middle schools, to get children fired up about math, science and engineering careers. Before you can get others fired up, you have to figure out what lights your fire. There was one young man in the back who didn’t know he had a spark… [Read more...]