The talks given at the TED conferences are some of the best you will ever see. While the actual conference is open to only about 1,000 attendees by invitation only, most of the presentations are available free online.

I highly recommend checking out some of the TED talks. Two sentences on their website sum up what you are in for. The first is their site tagline: “Ideas worth spreading.” That’s what TED is about. The second is “riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world.” Fantastic.

One of the reasons the talks are so good is that the TED organizers provide the presenters with ten speaking guidelines (the “TED Commandments”). I admit that the concept of “TED Commandments” is a bit hokey, but they are nonetheless very helpful. Here they are:

1. Thou Shalt Not Simply Trot Out thy Usual Shtick.
2. Thou Shalt Dream a Great Dream, or Show Forth a Wondrous New Thing, Or Share Something Thou Hast Never Shared Before.
3. Thou Shalt Reveal thy Curiosity and Thy Passion.
4. Thou Shalt Tell a Story.
5. Thou Shalt Freely Comment on the Utterances of Other Speakers for the Sake of Blessed Connection and Exquisite Controversy.
6. Thou Shalt Not Flaunt thine Ego. Be Thou Vulnerable. Speak of thy Failure as well as thy Success.
7. Thou Shalt Not Sell from the Stage: Neither thy Company, thy Goods, thy Writings, nor thy Desperate need for Funding; Lest Thou be Cast Aside into Outer Darkness.
8. Thou Shalt Remember all the while: Laughter is Good.
9. Thou Shalt Not Read thy Speech.
10. Thou Shalt Not Steal the Time of Them that Follow Thee.

(HT: Garr Reynolds; SA)

After you’ve given a presentation and want to make your slides available to people without having to email it as an attachment to lots of people, how do you do that? Slideshare.

Slideshare is an great place to upload and share the slides from your presentations. You can share them publicly or privately.

For example, I was recently at the Web 2.0 Expo, and a lot of the presenters put their slides up on Slideshare after their presentations. This was pretty handy.

You can also browse thousands of other presentations on the site. For more details, here is a helpful (slide) tour of the site. The most interesting 6 things it tells you about the site are that you can:

1. Share your presentations with the world
2. Find thousands of interesting presentations
3. Create slidecasts (slides plus audio)
4. Make professional contacts
5. Join groups about interesting topics
6. Check out slides from events you missed

Since we’re on the subject of PowerPoint (or Keynote) presentations, it’s worth giving a few words on quality.

First, here’s a helpful visual summary of how to present information in a way that is interesting and does not overwhelm the user.

Second, when creating a presentation, it’s worth checking out powerpointing.com for some useful designs.

Third, it’s worth checking out Edward Tufte’s essay The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. He talks about the problem with PowerPoint, how to use PowerPoint right, how to avoid the boring use of bullet points, and basically blames the Challenger disaster on the incorrect use of PowerPoint.

BNET has a good 7-minute video on giving better presentations called Present Like Steve Jobs. “While most speakers merely convey information, Jobs inspires.”

Here are the main points:

1. Unveil a single headline that sets the theme. For example, “Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone.”
2. Provide the outline. For example, “I’ve got four things I’d like to talk to you about today. They are …”
3. Open and close each section with a transition in between. Make it easy for listeners to follow your story, letting your outline serve as guideposts along the way.
4. Don’t be stiff and formal. Have fun and be excited about your company, product, service.
5. If you offer numbers and statistics, make them meaningful. For example, don’t just say “we’ve sold 4 million iPhones to date.” Say, “that’s 20,000 each day since it was released.”
6. Make it visual. Don’t fill your slides with mind-numbing text and charts. Paint a picture for your audience without overwhelming them. Use video clips, demonstrations, and guests.
7. Identify your memorable moment and build up to it.
8. Rehearse, rehearse, and rehearse some more.
9. Give your audience an added bonus to walk away with. “One more thing …”

It’s not uncommon for people to say “I don’t like that word — it’s overused.” For example, I think the word “synergy” may have gotten burned out back in the 90s or so. Words like “strategy” and others are today’s victims.

It is important to be original. We should continually be coming up with new ways of saying important things. That not only keeps things interesting, but also advances thinking and stimulates new ideas.

Let’s just not forget that the concepts behind the words that we feel are over-used usually remain valid and significant. Don’t let the concepts be devalued in your mind because you don’t like hearing the words again and again.

And if the bulk of things in your life need to be new in order to be meaningful, you are going to get exhausted. Because even the concept of “newness” can become old. Avoiding cliches can become cliche.

And in the meantime, you’ll also be left with a reduced vocabulary for communication. Buzzwords came to exist for a reason: they do communicate something. Every field has its jargon — the medical field, sports, the business world, the world of work. Without buzzwords, there are certain things that are going to be more complicated to explain, wasting time.

Come up with new, un-buzzword-like ways of saying things continually. But you can’t reinvent the whole field of buzzwords at once. You will always have to use them in some way or another.

The problem is when people use buzzwords without really understanding what they mean, as an attempt to appear credible simply because they’ve used a certain word. That’s ugly, and to be avoided. But the intelligent, thoughtful use of a buzzword sometimes is what keeps the ideas clear and facilitates effective conversation. Maybe, when used in that way, they aren’t even buzzwords after all.

This is probably a bit of risky post — it sounds like I’m devaluing the concept of newness and originality. But I’m saying the opposite: namely, let’s make sure we don’t become unoriginal in our opposition to lack of originality.

A great point made by Patrick Lencioni in his latest email newsletter that is worth remembering:

Chris Argyris, a professor at Harvard, came up with the idea years ago that people need to engage in both ‘advocacy’ and ‘inquiry’ in order to communicate effectively. Advocacy amounts to stating an opinion or an idea, while inquiry is the act of asking questions or seeking clarity about someone else’s opinion or idea. Frankly, one part advocacy and two parts inquiry is a mix I like to see on teams.

Very insightful. This has implications not only for communication (and teams, the direction Lencioni takes it), but also learning. When I think about how I learn best, this really gets to the heart of things. You learn by inquiring, and you also learn by advocating.

Advocating, in other words, has value not simply as a means of convincing others to your point of view. It is also a means of learning in itself. By having a position on a matter and advocating for it, we come to understand the issues better.

Key lesson: Don’t think you are doing people favors by remaining neutral. That’s boring, anyway. Have a point of view. That is far more interesting and will lead to much greater understanding on all sides. Don’t worry that this might “create controversy.” As long as you are polite and respectful, people appreciate (and benefit from) someone with a point of view.