Making logical steps in your presentation - and your data management

When he's making a presentation, ZL Technologies' founder and CEO Kon Leong believes in the power of making a logical segue before changing the slide.

"One thing I try to do that I believe makes a huge difference for any presenter is to build a verbal segue before changing the slide. It's more effective to set up the mind of the listener to anticipate the next slide, or even what they think it might be. The logical flow is important to maintain, and presenters sometimes overlook that when they cut to the next slide and then read. The thought process should transition into the next visual rather than the other way around."

But when it comes to the stages in managing your data, it's not the transitions but the elimination of the document that Kon believes is the most important, and the most challenging, part of the process.

For the complete interview with this data management expert about his views on how to scale that mountain of records at your company, see today's CBS Interactive article here.

REthinking the WORKplace - My Interview with 37signals' Jason Fried on Better Work and Remarkable Presentations

One of the things I point out in Ten Breakable Habits is that the slides are not the presentation, and if adding visuals doesn't improve your presentation, don't use them. 37signals founder (Basecamp, Campfire, Ruby on Rails, etc.) Jason Fried talked to me recently about his web applications business and about what he's learned about presentation delivery over the course of his career as an international speaker.

Here's how Jason describes his speaking style:

"Something I've started doing more recently is speaking without slides, or if I use slides, they are just pictures with few or no words. There's certainly nothing where I'm reading or anyone is reading off the screen. I have a set of ideas I like to use for topics and I just run with them and see where it goes. I much prefer the question and answer part of things anyway. I want to be prepared, but I don't want to over-prepare or think too hard about it. I avoid getting to a place where I'm thinking about what I wanted to say."

You can see the whole interview with Jason in today's TechRepublic article here.

Jason's third book REWORK is due out next month.