Trainer

How many presentations have you sat through and were bored out of your mind?
How much time did you waste on unprepared speakers?
How often did you ask yourself why you had to be there?

We say stop! And, we have good news: it easy to give good presentations. As trainer, presenter, coach, colleague, and friend, we only need repeat one mantra over and over: It’s not about you, it’s about them! If we accept this dogma, we automatically make the audience care. If we accept this dogma, all the DOs become obvious:

• we think about how to generate benefits for them and not what we want to know.
• we spend the time to compress our message and save time for them.
• we talk in a way they can understand and not according to our knowledge level.
• we tell stories they care about and not what we think they should.
• we use metaphors they can relate to and not dry numbers.
• we thrill them with our enthusiasm about the topic.
• we listen to them.

Yes, we need to practice every day to become better. But from our experience, the audience will love you if you keep these intentions in mind. So let’s recite again: It’s not about you, it’s about them!

skills

And we need to bring these skills to do so:

structure

Usually, it is somewhat clear what you want to say. But, it is in no way clear why the audience should care. Structuring the topic and finding the key message can take weeks. We need to get into their heads. Especially, in technological trainings, it is easy to just go from “Hello World” to “Advanced topics”. If we would do this, we loose them quickly. Hence, we think about the potential benefit for each participant. Why are they in that course? What would give the most benefit for his/her daily work? Which exercise is the most fun?

demonstrators & presentation

Today, there are lots of media available to use. With todays technology we can easily harness this power and choose the best tool to get our message out there. Don’t get me wrong, slides (not bullet-point-artillery) are an effective means to express the news. Skillfully executed presentations are invaluable.
With mini-computers for $5, laser-cutters in public labs and basically everything available on Amazon, we can imagine more. We build demonstrators exactly suited for the audience. Yet, we need to tread carefully. Cool, blinky stuff does not automatically make a good demonstrator.

moderation & mediation

Moderation and mediation are essential to understand the problem and come up with a solution. You can be sure that there is more than one opinion in the room when you try to shape the course contents, the presentation or the demonstrator. We bring ideas together and make the best out of it.

design & documentation

Design is beautiful and still underrated in the technological world. We firmly believe that design is crucial in every area of life. It is not only about stability, not only about the next feature, it is also about making it human. And with design we mean: being empathetic, creating usable interfaces, and leaving aesthetic impressions.