You’ve got a huge presentation coming up. You know your material. You know your audience. But you’re not totally confident that you’re going to nail it. Here are 6 things you should DO and then six things you should NOT DO in order to make this presentation your best ever.
5 Ways To Engage Your Audience During A Presentation
Giving an engaging presentation is hard work. Some people are natural orators, but most of us need practice, feedback, and guidance to improve our presenting skills. I teach the Digital Marketing class at General Assembly’s Atlanta location, run a weekly meetup of entrepreneurs every Friday in Atlanta, and lead several other small groups of people in various other capacities. Over the years, I’ve presented countless times to all types of people – investors, customers, employees, boards, students – and I’ve learned that there are five tactics that, used consistently, will help you keep any audience engaged.
How To build an MVP in 60 days
After a failed attempt at starting a carpool company between 2011 and 2013 in Beijing, I found myself back in the States job searching for startup gigs in the Greater Seattle Area.
Having graduated from the University of Washington with a non-computer science degree, many technical positions were often out of reach.
So during my job search, I started working on a side project to brush up on my technical skills; and I decided that if I was going to build something, it had to fit the following criteria:
What Does it Take To Be A Product Manager?
Despite how common the product management role has become across numerous industries, there has been a lot of debate and discussion about what a product manager actually does and how to do the job effectively. It doesn’t help that the responsibilities often vary from company to company, and even within a particular team.
Uncover The Top 10 Quotes from Peter Thiel’s Book, “Zero to One”
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what tech billionaire Peter Thiel is most famous for. Co-founding PayPal with Max Levchin? Launching Clarium Capital or Palantir Technologies? Early-stage investments in notable startups like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tesla? Or perhaps it’s his contrarian views on education, science, and technology.
No matter which of his accomplishments you deem most note-worthy — they have certainly solidified Thiel as one of the greatest entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and original thinkers of our time.
The Best Blogs for Product Managers
There’s a reason product managers (PMs) are called “mini-CEOs.” They must drive an idea from start to finish. This road from conception to user acquisition is fraught with red lights, stop signs, and detours – so PMs need all the support they can get.
The right blogs can be a PM’s best friend — and these seven will get you started.
Top 3 Tech Skills To Get Hired In The Digital Age
When you graduate from college, you have a degree in some specific subject(s). But it is becoming increasingly important that you have practical skills when you enter the workplace, in addition to the specific knowledge you gained during your college career.
When you enter the workforce, no matter who you work for, there will be some learning curve as you learn how they do business, what tools they use, and their processes and procedures. But wouldn’t it be great if on day one when you arrived at that sweet new job, you were teaching them new tricks?
If you learn these three digital age skills, there’s a good chance that you will blow their doors off when you start work on Monday.
How To Make Your LinkedIn Profile More Recruiter-Friendly
By this point, you probably have a LinkedIn profile and are familiar with how to use the site. You’ve filled out the profile requirements and made sure your LinkedIn presence is professional and polished (and if you’re super on top of it, you might have added a cover photo!), but can you say your profile is recruiter-friendly?
It’s a great idea to invest some time in optimizing your LinkedIn profile specifically for recruiters, because many companies use a tool called LinkedIn Recruiter to search for candidates via keywords, location, industry and a number of other parameters. I know this because I was a recruiter for a number of years, and LinkedIn Recruiter and I were BFFs. Plus, with 250+ million users, you can see why recruiters use this tool A LOT.
‘Lean’ Product Management: Past, Present, and Future
The lean movement has become the rallying cry of entrepreneurs everywhere, keeping enterprise product managers on their toes as they try to understand how, or even if, they should be implementing the iterative learning methodology into their processes.
But beyond supposedly leading to ‘more innovativeness’ more efficiently, what does lean mean for today’s product managers? By understanding where the term came from, I think product managers can better understand where it’s going, and how it impacts them.
Expand Your Library: Announcing Our New Book Series
At General Assembly we’re always finding new ways to evolve our offerings and grow our global community of individuals empowered to pursue the work they love. To that end, we’re thrilled to announce that the first two volumes of our new, original book series, The Practitioner’s Guide, have been published.
In this series, you’ll get an introductory overview—including first-hand accounts, lessons learned, and useful advice—from seasoned professionals working in the most relevant fields of the 21st century.