In this solo episode of the "This Moved Me" podcast, host Sally Koering Zimney reflects on her recent experience at the 2017 Presentation Summit, a conference for presentation professionals. She begins with a brief back‑story about how she was invited to the summit and her initial uncertainty about fitting in, then moves into a structured rundown of the five key insights she gathered: 1. Memory is emotive – Cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Carmen Simon explained that audiences remember facts tied to emotion more than abstract stories; speakers should craft vivid, emotionally‑charged images in listeners’ minds. 2. Make your point the most important issue – Dr. Nick Morgan urged presenters to frame their message as a safety‑or‑need‑related priority (using Maslow’s hierarchy) so the audience’s attention stays on the talk. 3. Power of pushback – Presentation coach Sam Horn highlighted that confronting and answering skeptical questions adds grit, credibility, and depth to a talk, especially for TED‑style presentations. 4. Tools, platforms, and community resources – Sally lists a variety of presentation‑management software (Ecospress, Shuffler, Empower), audience‑interaction tools (SendSteps, Poll Everywhere), immersive tech, design services, and professional groups such as the Presentation Guild, directing listeners to her website for full links. 5. Value of play and fun – She stresses that play energizes the brain, builds community, and makes content memorable; the summit’s blend of brain food and playful interaction exemplified this. Sally also promotes the Presentation Guild (offering a 10 % discount with code TMM2017special) and teases her upcoming TEDx talk, inviting listeners to follow her Facebook Live prep sessions and to explore her three‑step “talk development hacks” available via short videos on her site. The episode blends personal anecdotes, expert citations, actionable advice, and promotional calls‑to‑action.
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Hey everybody, and welcome to This Moved Me, a podcast about creating talks that move the world. With me, your host, Sally Koering Zimney. Together with some fabulous guests, we will have a casual conversation about the art of public speaking. Because a good talk can move the world. And it'll be fun. Yeah, I would think making alien cows meaningful. That's not a small task. I love your giggle. Wow. Oh my gosh, so waiting for everybody to figure out the alphabet. Hey movers, it's Sally Koering Zimney Zimney. Sally, it is so fun to be back. Two weeks in a row, I haven't done that in a while, but I am jazzed because in the month of September I just got to have so many of the coolest experiences. Last week I talked about my experience with Storygathering, and this week I get to talk about the Presentation Summit. And you have met Rick Altman, who runs the Presentation Summit. He has been on the show, so you have a sense of like how much energy and love this guy throws into everything that he does. And he's hilarious and so much fun and pours his whole self into this. I think that's the only way you can do that. The same is true with Harris last week with the Story Gathering. I, I think to put something on like this, it has to just be in you in such a huge passionate way, and, and that is definitely true for Rick with the Presentation Summit. And so I thought I would do something similar to what I did last week, which is sharing some of the key takeaways from this conference. Now this conference is so different from Story in wonderful ways, but just like a completely different experience. So Let me just give you a little background information. I totally honestly, I wasn't sure if this conference would be for me. Last spring, Rick reached out to me. I think, I don't know if he saw something online or heard a show or something, I don't know, but he reached out to me and he was like, "You need to come to this conference that I put on." And I was like, "Ah, okay, well, I'm not a PowerPoint I'm not like a PowerPoint person. He was like, that, that's okay, you don't have to be. I was like, oh, kind of looks— I kind of thought you had to be. He was like, no, no, no, no, no, it's for any presentation professional. And he kind of told me about some of the speakers who were gonna be there. I was like, oh, okay, all right, I'll give it a go. I will give it a go. And I really didn't know what to expect, but in the meantime, I met some other people who are really engaged in in the conference, and they were like, "It's the best! It's so much fun! You're gonna have a blast! It's amazing! So many cool tools and strategies and connections!" I was like, "Okay, cool, it'll be great." So off I went, really not knowing what to expect. But let me just tell you this: I loved it! Oh my gosh, I had such an amazing experience. It was full of so much insight and really turned me on to some incredible tools that I'm going to share with you a little bit about today that not just I need to be aware of, but that you as presentation people— maybe you already are in the know on this stuff, but there was some really cool new things happening that I'm excited to share with you. And I met some amazing people. Win-win-win from all across the spectrum. I met some designers, I met people who work with marketing teams, I met like internal communications people, I met other presentation coaches, I met amazing speakers, other podcasts out there who are doing really cool stuff. So it was, it was really a wide breadth, which I liked a lot. All around the idea of presentation. So, and I will say this, it was the most fun I've ever had at a conference ever. So, like, I don't know, they win some kind of award, the fun award. All right, so what I want to do is share with you on the show today kind of the, the top 5 takeaways from my experience at the summit just a few weeks ago. Alright, so takeaway number 1 is that memory is emotive. Alright, and this came from Dr. Carmen Simon, who was the first keynoter the first morning, and she is from a company called Memzee, and she is a cognitive neuroscientist, and I just think that is so cool. And she— I had heard a lot about her, and she's keynoted the summit before, and she and I, because I I sat on a panel, I did a panel as a part of the conference, and she and I were on the panel together, so we'd been exchanging some emails, and she had written in one of those emails, "It's a myth that we remember stories better than facts." And I was like, "Ooh, hmm, really? I don't think, I don't know if I agree with that. I'm not sure, that's not what I know about cognitive science." And I'm not a cognitive scientist, but I know enough to, be able to reference it. And so I was really excited to hear her speak. And aside from the fact she is such a delightful, kind, warm person, she is brilliant. And she has convinced me of something that I knew, but that we oversimplify when we talk about stories. Stories in and of themselves don't necessarily— they're not necessarily sticky. And I know this, this is, this is this is something that I've known for a long time, but there are oftentimes where we remember facts better than stories because it depends, of course, on how we say it, but because the brain likes emotion, all right? And stories, I always thought, maybe took that space more easily because emotion is so baked into it, but our words can trigger a sense memory and emotion. So facts like details, details in the story are the things that we tend to remember. So one of the really big takeaways for me was that it is more powerful and more important for our audiences to create an image in their own minds than for us to use like our slides or something to create it for them. That if possible, that's the powerful way to get your audience to remember and for it to be spicky— spicky— remember, for it to be sticky. And as a coach, I often call this the imaginative connection because when we're telling a story, we— if you're telling it well, they're seeing it in front of you. So I think Actually, Carmen and I, turns out we had way more in common than it looked like, but we really do. So whether you're sharing facts or data or knowledge or stories or ideas, your job is to find the details that create an emotive connection that help your audience see it in their own brains. And that's our way in to their brains. So cool. Okay, so that was takeaway number 2. The second takeaway is is that we have to make whatever our point is the most important issue in the moment, or our audience will take their focus somewhere else. So this came from Dr. Nick Morgan, who has been on the show a long time ago here on This Moved Me, but he was also keynoting, and he is somebody I just admire a lot. I think he's really thoughtful and articulate about the speaking industry and how to bring more authenticity to our speaking. And we— he also talks a lot about persuasion, and that is something that I'm really passionate about because I went to grad school for persuasion. Yes, that is a thing. Totally crazy, I know. And I love that, uh, what— how Nick framed this was like how we make it the most important issue is Well, how I ask it, okay, let's start though. And one of the things that Nick and I have always connected on is persuasion, 'cause I studied it in grad school, and yes, you can do that, so weird, because it is at the heart of speaking, and Nick always says like, what is the point? We're trying to create a life-changing moment, and yes, we're trying to change our audience in some way, And so how I frame it with my speakers is, "What's at stake here?" But I like how Nick kind of took it a step farther, and he brought up Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? And at the bottom is our physical needs, and then it's safety. And so if we cannot speak to the audience's safety in some way, something else that does speak to their safety is gonna pull them away, right? So like, as of course, as a parent, like you get a text about your kids, like, pfft, you're gonna draw your focus there unless you feel like this is more important, right? So you have to make the point of your talk about something that affects their safety or their attention is gonna go elsewhere. And it's not that you make up what, how it's affecting their safety, right? But we as speakers have to dig deep enough to figure out what that is and articulate it in a powerful way to crystallize for them them why this matters. And that is so, so important. But I really liked thinking about it in terms of attention, that if we don't, we, we risk losing their attention. So what is the safety issue that you are trying to make real for the audience? I like thinking about it that way. Very cool. Okay, so the third takeaway from the summit is about the power in the pushback. Oh, this is so cool. So the third morning was keynoted by a woman named Sam Horn, who is a presentation coach, and she's coached a lot of TED Talks. And so it was really about how we can create narratives for these short talks, which was perfect timing for me because I am in the midst of creating my own TED Talk, which is this week. Oh my gosh, hold on while I freak out a minute. Ah, it's gonna be fine, it's gonna be okay, you can do this, Sally, it's gonna be okay. Okay, all right, I'm back. Okay, so one of the most important takeaways from Sam's talk was about this power of the pushback. Moments when someone has kind of poo-pooed your idea or questioned it, or the moment when like your legs were pulled out from under you and you thought, oh man, what am I doing? Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I've got this all wrong, and it like the moment where your faith was really challenged is how she put it. I really liked how she put that. And then for the audience to hear about how you answered those questions, how you came back to a place where you're like, no, this is right, no, this is what I should be doing, what you should be doing. Okay, so essentially what that does is it does a few things. It gives your talk some grit. Right, so it's not just like flowers and happiness and rainbows and let's do this nice thing for the world, but like, no, it's been proven, it's been through some rigor, right, which I think is really important, especially in a TED Talk. And it also speaks directly to the cynics in the room, and I love that idea because I've always been a proponent of, okay, speak to exactly what they're thinking. Like, do you know what your cynics are thinking? And say it first. So that they know you get it, you've thought about this, this is not just like some flimsy thing, no, there's depth to it and you get it. There's power in the pushback. That is point number 3. There's also some super cool tools out there, which brings me to takeaway number 4. Takeaway number 4 are about really just some really incredible things, uh, not— some of these I've heard of and I know about a little bit, but some I just thought, oh my gosh, these are so cool to share with you. So essentially I'm gonna give you some highlights, but I want you to go to my website to see them all listed out, and there's links in there, okay? So there's presentation management software like Ecospress and Shuffler and Empower. There's audience interaction tools like SendSteps and Poll Everywhere. There's immersive technology, which is kind of like blowing my mind in scale. Interactive was there, and P-Spice, or Leah Barnakova, who talks about virtual presenting. It was so cool. Professional associations like the Presentation Guild— I'm such a huge fan of what they do. There's online mags and resources like Presentation Expert and the Presentation Podcast, which I just started listening to because I just discovered it. It's really cool. There's design resources like Nuts and Bolts Speed Training and SlideGenius and eLearning Brothers and Logitech Logitech, who gave me a really cool— and they gave everybody there— like a really cool Spotlight remote. It's their newest remote. It's so cool. I'll talk more about that another time. It was so fun. Okay, so you've got to go check out all of those resources on my website. Okay, so go to thismoveme.com and the blog, and then you'll see this post, Presentation Summit, and you can see all those links. Really cool. Okay, and takeaway number 5, what I want to talk about is the value of play and fun, because honestly, I don't think conferences generally are fun. They sort of think of themselves as brain food, and this conference had plenty of brain food. I took tons of notes and really interesting strategies and, you know, there was some inspiration, but really on the whole it was about connection. It was about bringing the community of presentation professionals together. That was a big part of what they do. And they kept us busy from morning until night. And it was so fun. It was so fun. And I think us as adults need more play in our lives. And I had some really amazing, wonderful moments that were created out of play. And I think it's not just important because play brings people together and builds community and that we as adults don't play enough in our lives. I think that as presentation professionals, as speakers, as coaches, as designers who really think about how an audience engages with content, Play is a huge part of it. It wakes up the brain in a different way, and it turns something that is too often really boring into something that's memorable. Laughter brings people together, and I think it's underutilized and awesome. Okay, so play, that is number 5. We've got play and We had amazing tools that we should be using more of. Go check on the website for those. There's power in the pushback. Be the most important issue or they'll focus somewhere else. And then we started with Carmen Simon and the fact that memory is emotive. So if we want them to remember, it's got to be emotive. There we go. All right, there's more over on the website if you want to check it out. And in fact, one of the most exciting things I want to tell you about right now is that if you want to be a part of the Presentation Guild, which was a big part of this conference, so many of these professionals are members of this guild. And the Presentation Guild is a professional organization really seeking to enhance the profession of speaking and presentations. So once you're a member, the Guild offers training, tools, lots of connections. It's, it's a really incredible way to meet other people and their work and see what they're doing. So there's all kinds of really wonderful benefits of being a member of the Guild. And so if you are in the presentation profession and you want to join the Presentation Guild, if you use a little coupon code TMM2017special, you can get 10% off a Presentation Guild membership. Woo! Woo! That is awesome. So go check that out. It's at presentationguild.org and use TMM2017special as the coupon code. That is awesome. Go check that out. So if you head over to my website, thismovedme.com, and scroll down a little bit, you will see that I've got these 3 talk development hacks, these shortcuts. Well, see, I don't even like calling them a shortcut, but really they're just 3 strategies to help you get from your idea to impact faster. It helps get you started, it helps get you clear, and it helps get you on your feet so that you can get more impact. Get more impact! Get it? So that's over on the website, and I deliver those to you via 3 really short videos that show up in your inbox, so go check those out. Okay, I think that's it for me. Super pumped to be jumping back in thing with things here over, uh, on the show and really excited. And this week, it's Monday this week, on Thursday I've got my TED Talk, you guys. I'm so— I think, I think I'm getting ready. I think I'm ready. Oh no, I'm not ready. I just like heard myself say that. I was like, "No, no, I'm not ready yet." But I see it on the horizon and I'm getting there and I'm really excited. I will be more excited when I get to show up there and meet these other people who are doing this too. I'm super pumped. So this week I'm going to be kind of bringing people into my process. Of getting ready for the TEDx talk, so that's over on the This Moved Me Facebook page, facebook.com/thismovedme, and Thursday around noon Central Time, I will be doing a little Facebook Live walking through the space at the TEDx place. I'm pretty pumped. So if you want to check that out, go find me over at facebook.com/thismovedme. Okay, that's it for me. Talk to you guys later. Thanks. Talk to you later. Bye. Check, check. Check one, two. La la la. Mi mi mo. Mi mi mi. Wawawi! Wawawoo! Hmm, I like it!
