Blah, blah, blah, blah...

From Seth Godin's Blog.

You hear yourself saying:

"First, let me apologize for the lighting. We tried very hard to make the screen brighter, but we failed. Before I start, I want to thank seventeen people by name... Now, on this third slide, we see the dynamic effects of our incendiary marketing strategy... Just a few more minutes here... I'm sorry, I don't know why the web connection isn't working quite right... For those of you that remember my talk two years ago... As I was saying to Sir Reginald..."

What the audience hears:

"Blah, blah, blah... interesting tidbit... blah, blah, blah... exciting insight... blah, blah, blah, etc."

My suggestion is that you eliminate all the blahs, eliminate the apologies, eliminate the thank you's, eliminate everything except two interesting tidbits and all the exciting insights.

No audience member, in the history of presentations (written or live) has ever said, "it was exciting, useful and insightful but far too short."