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PDMA New England Chapter Skill-Building Workshop
Saturday January 20th 8:30 am – 1:00 pm
Three experts will polish your communication skills relevant to the end-to-end product development process
Diane Darling |
Brian Mullins |
Peter Flentov Better Decision Making |
Double Tree Hotel
Briar Room
550 Winter Street
Waltham, MA
$75 per person
Diane Darling -- Getting Connected: Effective Networking For All
Someone in the crowd at your next business or social event knows someone who has a need for the product you are trying to market is seeking to invest in a business just like yours or is the ideal candidate for that job you've been trying to fill forever. With effective networking skills, anyone can learn to connect with these opportunities instead of passing like ships in the night. Effective networking means smarter networking; being prepared and focused on specific goals. It means managing your personal brand, building 'relationship equity' in your field and industry. It means creating win-win situations where you get what you need, and help others to achieve their goals as well.
Diane Darling's presentation will offer practical tips, techniques, and strategies for effective networking in social and professional situations. The art of conversation and relationship building, while difficult for some to master, is an invaluable skill for people in all walks of life and at all levels of business.
About the Speaker: As principal consultant for Effective Networking, Inc., Diane Darling founded the company on the premise that everyone can learn to network, they just need to find their own style. Combining interactive training, strategic planning and an exploration of the natural fears of networking, Darling demystifies the process by providing techniques that can be immediately implemented. She has received rave reviews for her seminars and speeches and is increasingly sought after as an expert resource on the subject of networking.
McGraw-Hill commissioned her to write the definitive book on networking called The Networking Survival Guide which was published in April 2003. In 2005, McGraw- Hill published her second book, Networking for Career Success. She has appeared on NBC Nightly News, in The Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Boston Globe. She is a member of the CEO Club, Commonwealth Institute, Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), and National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO).
Brian Mullins -- How to Present Like Steve Jobs, The Secrets to Engaging and Persuading with a Rich, Visual Presentation
You have a great product, service or business idea. But you need to persuade your management, prospects or investors who see hundreds of presentations that all look and sound the same. How can you make your pitch standout? How can you help your listeners visualize and connect with your message?
Instead of creating another boring, bullet-laden presentation that your audience could read themselves, learn how to speak visually by using many of the same techniques as the master visual storyteller - Steve Jobs.
This interactive presentation will explore:
- The research on why the standard approach to PowerPoint presentations is so ineffective - and what to do about it.
- How to structure your presentation to communicate your message in a captivating way.
- The power of storyboarding to make your presentation flow from start to finish.
- Using simple diagrams and visual metaphors to clearly communicate complex concepts.
- How and when to use low-cost stock images to reinforce your points in a powerful and personal way.
- The best resources to learn more about designing and delivering visual presentations.
About the Speaker: Brian Mullins is founder and President of VisuallySpeaking, a presentation design firm that creates visual presentations to help companies sell their product, service or idea more effectively. The VisuallySpeaking team has worked with leading brands such as HP, Iron Mountain, Microsoft, Novell and Thermo Electron - as well as software and nanotechnology startups.
Brian has a BA in Rhetoric and Speech Communications from the University of Virginia and a U.S. Patent for an electronic notepad design. He was a successful corporate entrepreneur, creating and executing marketing plans that launched new divisions of three major corporations. Before his 20+ year career in technology marketing and sales, he worked as a National Forest Service surveyor at Mt. St. Helens, a Colorado ski bum and an Ironman Triathlete.
Peter Flentov -- Decision Traps & Other Reasons We're Not So Good At Making Choices
The decisions we make on a daily basis are becoming increasingly more important in the emerging Knowledge Economy. But while companies spend much of their time defining and implementing processes that determine how we DO things, much less attention is devoted to how we DECIDE things. Effective decision making is a critical life-skill that we get surprisingly little formal training in. Our minds are incredibly complex organs that allow us to process large amounts of information and to make often complicated decisions in split seconds. But for all their power, the algorithms of the mind have some remarkably simple flaws that frequently cause us to make bad decisions. This presentation will discuss some of the basic decision traps that we all fall into from time to time. The session will include hands-on examples that will bring some examples to life. The group will also explore tools and techniques that can be used to ensure that we don't make these basic mistakes.
About the Speaker: The session will be led by Peter Flentov, President of PDMA Boston/NE Chapter. Peter is a founder of 20/20 Innovation LLC, a strategic consultancy based in Boston, MA that helps clients identify and exploit opportunities to create new value through innovation. Recently he has been working with clients in the US, UK and Holland. Prior to 20/20 Innovation Peter was part of the management team at Product Genesis, a strategic product development and design consultancy that was spun out of MIT's Centre for Innovation in 1986. He has also been a managing consultant with OASiS plc, a UK-based consultancy that provided enterprise reengineering and transformation services to global clients such as Lucent, AT&T, Belgacom, Friends Provident and BP. He was also Director of Manufacturing and Logistics Systems at The Timberland Company and worked as a consultant in the manufacturing practices of Coopers & Lybrand and Ernst & Young.
Peter has a Bachelor of Science majoring in Computer Science and a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is an inventor with twelve issued patents.
