Like Mr. Zimmer himself, I don’t have any tattoos. He joked about not being fond of needles. For me it’s more about how distracted I get by bright shiny ideas. I don’t know that I could come up with something I’d always want or I’d have to keep adding and end up with a mishmash of stuff. But I find great beauty in many tattoos, so science plus tattoos, I was there.

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"I not only use all the brains that I have, but all I can borrow."

— Woodrow Wilson (via thoughtsdetained)

I recently attended a lecture where the presenter used a laser pointer. And about halfway through I wanted to wrestle it away from him. I was starting to twitch and suddenly sensed some connection to my feline friends. He had two screens with his slides showing but at times he would wave the pointer about on one of the screens.

It was utterly distracting and added absolutely nothing to my understanding of the content. I could feel myself helplessly following the light even as it swung off of the slide and onto the ceiling or wall or wherever. 

I believe it was a nervous habit. Maybe a form of “what-the-heck-do-I-do-with-my-hands-itis.” He finally realized that he was risking blinding audience members with it and set it down. Thankfully. 

Now there are certainly times where pointing out something on a slide may be useful. But like images selected for the slides, its use should be purposeful. Ironically he had slides that had nice callouts of enlarged areas of photos or red circles draw on the images to highlight a particular spot. Both of those techniques were effective.

He could have also had a pen and tablet setup if he needed to highlight things on the spot. With a little practice that can be very effective. But please, unless you have a really compelling reason and targeted approach to using them, please, leave the laser pointer in with the rest of the cat toys.

A few weeks ago I wrote about using effective subject lines, taking a page from the newspaper editors’ playbook. Today I’m borrowing another page. Don’t bury the lead in your emails. There may be reasons to build suspense in a novel or even in some types of presentations, but emails, not so much.

Put the lead front and center. People don’t read whole emails. They read the top (if you are lucky) and then skim the rest. Sometimes people will read the very end to get to the punchline but if you wait to give the important information at the bottom, it will often be lost. 

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."

— H. G. Wells

"Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language."

— Walt Disney

I much prefer his 3D container bar charts to ones in PowerPoint. This is one of the best uses of props I’ve seen recently.

I was visiting the natural history museum this weekend and made a stop at the T-Rex exhibit, among others. Of course, one of the first things you notice about dino boy is how small and seemingly ineffectual his arms are. 

But he’s in good company. I’ve seen a series of speakers recently who are trying very hard to get past the “I don’t know what to do with my hands” issue. They are making valiant attempts to gesture but they are so uncomfortable that they try to move their arms without letting their elbows ever stray from their sides. Their arms are pinned down from the shoulders to the elbows and then their forearms are flailing about like a T-Rex trying to clap.

So shake it out folks. Put your arms down by your sides and shake them loose. Let them hang there and get comfortable with that. Then move your arms, but your whole arms. Let some air under there. It will feel funny at first. It will feel scary. You’ll feel like you are taking up a lot of space. You’ll feel like your gestures are too big. That’s OK. You can tone it down if you need to. But first go big.

Be big. Take up space. Be a T-Rex and command attention. But you don’t suffer from short limbs like T-boy so don’t gesture like a T-Rex or you may find your presentation turns your audience to fossils and your message may become extinct.

"When it comes to customers, feelings are facts."

— Simon Cooper, President & COO, Ritz-Carlton Hotel

“He is one of those orators of whom it is well said, ‘Before they get up, they do not know what they are going to say; when they are speaking, they do not know what they are saying; and when they have sat down, they do not know what they have said.’” — Sir Winston Churchill