American Business Association of Russian Professionals

These blog entries were posted to the website by the site administrator with permission from Michael Balyasny. January 18, 2007 The Key to Succesful Presentations: Be More Like Gumby The key to success in all your presentations is being more like Gumby. No, not Ghandi... I mean Gumby the 1950s cartoon character made of clay. This may sound like a strange conclusion to come to, but after having presented to VCs, Angel Investors, potential customers, at elevator pitch competitions and at conferences I've come to realize that the one quality that separates the best from the rest is flexibility, being able to adjust your presentation on the fly. To illustrate my point: Today I pitched my company EyeStride to a VC and was expecting to go through my PowerPoint and follow it up with a product demo. All my materials and practice runs were focused on giving a pitch with this traditional format. When I got to the presentation I immediately understood that this simply wouldn't work out, the audience wasn't interested in a formal pitch. They wanted to get to know me and in the process explore my project. I had to adjust on the fly, refocus my energy on a casual encounter where the agenda wasn't predetermined by the order of my PowerPoint slides. A few months ago I would have been lost and uncomfortable, today I can easily adjust and know when to make these adjustments. Here are my quick tips for achieving Gumby like flexibility in your pitches: 1. Know the Material - this is basic and should be a given, but that's hardly the case. I've been in situations where I'm not sure about the topic I'm presenting and without confidence in knowing material there is no hope of being flexible. 2. Don't Over-Prepare on Format - don't expect to do things a certain way unless you are 100% sure of the format and know the audience well. If you do too many practice runs in a certain format the information (words) get set in your mind and you'll have a harder time being flexible. 3. Real Time Analysis - try to study your audience while you pitch, the clues are always there about when its time to shift directions or change the tone of the pitch. It may be as slight as someone quickly checking their watch or as blunt as them reading their blackberry, but if you see that your audience is loosing interest change the topic, try to recapture their imagination. 4. Talk to People - talk to as many people as you possibly can about your business. Don't pitch to them just talk; see what interests them, see how they react and practice your real time analysis (see tip three) when the stakes aren't high. The more you talk it through with different people the more comfortable you'll be changing direction on a dime. 5. Keep Trying - Don't let a bad presentation discourage you, we've all had our successes and failures. Public speaking is more frightening to many people than death, its hard and it takes time to build your speaking skills. Even if you think you're an ace, don't relax keep looking for new approaches. If you don't have someone to practice with, contact me. I'll be glad to hear your pitch and give you my honest opinion and some constructive advice.


July 7, 2007 Street Level Demos Launched :) We quietly launched demos of our street level virtual environments (tours) a few weeks ago and have been receiving some very good feedback about what we’ve created. Check out the street level tours that we’ve put online thus far, only a few samples but they give a good idea of what EyeStride is all about: http://tours.eyestride.com We worked hard on this so its a pleasure to see that people like what we’ve made, but also great to hear some of the criticism so that we can make some small improvements prior launching the private alpha test in a month or so. We’re working hard on a new portal that will allow you to view and interact with the street level photo environments that other EyeStride users create, as soon as we have some of the pages built I’ll post screenshots online. Please send me your thoughts about the street level demos that we launched, all thoughts and ideas are greatly appreciated michael@eyestride.com Check out a few of my favorite demos that we launched: Hollywood Budapest Golden Gate Bridge Its interesting to compare this demo tour with the Google street view version of the Golden Gate bridge, really gives a sense of the difference between user generated and automated approaches to street view. ENJOY!


To read more blog entries by Michael Balyasny visit his websites at http://stepping-stones.typepad.com http://blog.eyestride.com http://www.shiftlabs.com/blog/index.php