How to avoid YouTube ads when you play videos during your talk

If you play a YouTube video in your talk, training, or Teams call, you can really engage people.

For example, a video lets you:

• Demo a technique
• Novelly share a quote
• Share an expert’s opinion

For all those reasons, I wanted to play some clips in a couple of talks I gave lately. But I was at first put off by all the ads that tend to show up on YouTube clips.

In this post, you’ll see a quick way around the ads, without violating the terms of service by downloading the video or using an ad-blocker.

To learn more, you can click any of these headings – or, just scroll down:

Banish bullets – prove you’re a pro! [@NolanHaims video]

You’ve probably heard that if you base most slides on bullet points, you’ll bore people. (Making you and your message less effective.)

But what can you do instead?

Well, below is a great 45-second clip of ideas for you:

That’s from design expert and Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Nolan Haims. I love how he uses Morph transitions to walk you through 3 options to improve your bullet points:

After 10 years (and almost a million views), it’s time for a change

For the last 10 years, I’ve been posting once a month (or more) on this blog.

Now, with 150 posts and almost 1,000,000 views under my belt, it feels like time for a change. That’s why from now on, I’ll post less often than before.

I’m still fascinated by public speaking, data visualisation, and business communication in general. And I believe people’s need for help and inspiration in those fields is just as great as ever. So I’m sure you’ll find new tips and videos shared here from time to time.

You could say:

“It’s not goodbye, it’s just au revoir”

So until the next time, all the best with your presentations. And as this blog’s header-image says:

“Here’s to better presenting!”

 

Also check out

• Thanks a ½ million! (5th birthday news at Remote Possibilities)
• 200,000 views – and counting!
• Who uses this blog most? (1st birthday news at Remote Possibilities)

Build your talk on messages, not topics – Secret #15 of star presenters [Video]

Have you heard of the “assertion-evidence approach” for making slides? It’s a simple, powerful, evidence-based approach to presenting your talk.

It was devised as a more effective way to share scientific findings. But you can also use its direct­ness and clarity in business – to great effect.

And that’s especially so when you present insights from analysing data. You know, like:

• customer touchpoints
• company financials
• employee survey results.

 

What’s in this post?

Speak online – 8½ terrific tips from Eric Winters [Video]

In a rush? Watch the video (30 mins) or read the tips.

When you present online, the tips below will help set you up for success. They come from my friend Eric Winters, who’s a coach, author, and international public speaker.

I love the metaphor Eric uses to explain why it’s hard work watching an online talk:

“There’s a good reason they call it paying attention,
because you have to give up a lot of energy…

So if we want to help our audiences…
we need to lower the price
of paying attention”
Eric Winters – at 1:42 in the video

In his video below, Eric presents what he calls “8½ tips” to elevate your online pres­entations. The clip’s about 30 minutes long, and he spends about 2-3 minutes dis­cussing each tip.

Below the video, you’ll also find:

• a list of the tips
• discussion of each one
• useful links to help you build your skills.

 

The video

As I think you’ll see – and as Eric’s live audience commented – this is a very engaging and helpful session:

 

The tips

Here are Eric’s 8½ tips – click any of them to jump to the relevant part of my post:

Want an awesome opening line? Look no more – I mean stop!

Of the 140+ posts on this blog, here’s by far the most popular…

Awesome opening lines: 20+ more examples for your speeches, from Patricia Fripp (Certified Speaking Professional)

At its peak, that post had more than 22,000 monthly views (in October 2016). That wasn’t just an outlier, either – for 3 months in 2016, the post had more than 20,000 monthly views. And for 11 months that year, it had over 10,000.

From numbers to narrative – 4 keys of data storytelling [Video]

When you’re preparing a data-rich talk, where could you learn to get your message across better?

In my opinion, you couldn’t do much better than watching the 55-minute video below, by Isaac Reyes. (The first 45 minutes or so consist of Isaac’s talk, and the rest is him answering questions.)

Isaac’s a data scientist, and the video’s from ODSC Europe 2018 (Open Data Science Conference).

The talk describes these 4 keys of data storytelling:

2 ways to use modern, ALL‑CAPS slides – without typos!

Do you sometimes follow the design trend of using uppercase text for headings or other short labels on your slides?

Recently, I’ve twice seen presen­tations with very modern-looking slides using all-uppercase text in brief cap­tions.

My logo can help you be a better speaker – here’s how

Even if you’re a regular reader here, it’s quite unlikely you know what my logo looks like. So check it out:

The logo’s shape and colours represent tech­niques you can use

The logo’s shape and colours represent techniques you can use to make your public speaking more effective. In this post, you’ll find:

• What those techniques are.
• Links where you can learn more.

If you’re short of time, you can click a heading in this post’s contents list:

Avoid my mistakes in your Ignite talk – part 2 [Video]

If you’ve read my last post, you’ll know I was inspired by Aaron Beverly (World Champion of Public Speaking 2019) to write a self-critique of one of my talks.

In today’s post, I discuss what are (to me) the strongest aspects and weakest aspects of my talk.

Why not watch my 5-minute presentation below, and judge for yourself?

Then, feel free to share your viewpoint in the comment box at the bottom of this post.

Here’s what you’ll find in the rest of this post – you can click any of these links to skip ahead: