Got Questions? Ask my evil cybertwin

I actually am working on training a Cyber Twin to answer your presentation FAQs, but it's such a new product that it will be a while before I trust her out in public alone.

In the meanwhile, those of you who are thick-skinned can chat it up with MyEvilCyberTwin

NOTE: If you are new to evil cybers, they're not programmed by the user like Cyber Twins, so I am not kidding about the thick-skinned part. All of us obscure and celebrated are spewing insults from a single database.

Why We Hate "Book Reports"

Presenters, PLEASE remember, you're not in 4th grade anymore, trying to use your book report to prove to the teacher that you read the entire book (you know you didn't) by including every possible fact.

In every presentation, even project and performance reviews or status checks, you need to work to accomplish a well-defined business objective.

(HINT: Not "tell them every piece of data possible about the project")

All joking aside, even when the presentation/objective requires significant detail, deliver it in comprehensible ways. Handouts, supporting documents, heck even white papers = good, presentation visual aids = bad, fillibuster-style speaking = bad. Your presentation guides the audience through the material, as opposed to shoveling it onto their heads until they're smothered.

Letters I've Written, Never Meaning to Send

Pretty easy back when that song was released, but what about now? Raise your hands if you've ever accidentally or hastily sent an email you never should have sent. Some ways to avoid this:

1. address the body: go ahead and hit reply or address the email, but then before you write a word, cut and paste the recipient address/es into the body of the email. this saves you from accidentally hitting "send" on a half-baked missive.
   
2. serve it cold: emails written in the heat of any emotion -- anger, enthusiasm, etc. may not be written well at all. if you were emotional in the writing, you need to take a step back (even if it is a trip to the coffee machine and back and then a re-read) before you send it.
• don't serve anger-ever: angry emails are never going to serve you well. even in the most outrageous and aggregious circumstance, you can probably accomplish a lot more using humor or other more positive tactics to respond to something that justifably made you angry.
3. take it outside: if it's particularly explosive and really needs a lot of time in drafting, recondsidering, etc. don't even write it in your email software, just open wordpad and spew away. the ideas are captured, and it's just seconds to cut and paste it into your browser if you really need to.
   
4. the circular file: sometimes you just need to write it and NOT send it. period.