Pitch Prfect with Tim Wikstrom of Presentr

02/18/19 • 94 min

Macro Micro Michael Marco & Startups at the Edge (M4Edge)

We shouldn’t judge a book by the cover. But when we meet someone, that’s exactly what we do. Within the first few minutes, we form a strong impression based on how they speak and carry themselves. And when giving a presentation, the quality of the content won’t matter that much if you can’t present it effectively.

In this episode we talk to Tim Wikstrom, who has spent his entire career coaching people on effective presentation skills. With Presentr, Tim and his co-founder Tammy Palazzo leverage Artificial Intelligence to help you improve your presentation skills: the AI tracks and assesses your tone of voice, the rhythm of your delivery, your most frequently used words—and gives you instant feedback. Accessible on both laptops and mobile devices, Presentr can provide training at scale, and has already been adopted by a number of large organizations.

We discuss with Tim what constitutes an effective presentation style, to what extent it depends on the speaker and on the audience, and how cultural differences come into the equations. We debate how you can judge and measure the impact of Presentr’s training. We also reflect on the risks of being in a world where form can often trump substance, and on whether applications like Presentr will make the situation better or worse.

Watch out for references to A Fish Called Wanda, Michael’s NBC broadcaster impersonation, and Tim’s explanation of Bill Clinton’s “Pointing Thumb Thing”. Stick around for the post-interview segment, where we also discuss whether a bot would stick around for an entire State of the Union address.

P.S. Thank you to Tenderboy1 for the nice review on iTunes. PLEASE rate us on Apple/iTunes or your favorite podcast app, and write a review, to help others find us. We really appreciate it.

P.S. Thank you to Tenderboy1 for the nice review on iTunes. PLEASE rate us on Apple/iTunes or your favorite podcast app, and write a review, to help others find us. We really appreciate it.

Previous Episode

How to incentivize and verify a carbon-free future, with Evan Caron of Swytch.io

We all know we need to accelerate the transition to renewable sources of energy. But on a global scale we are doing it in a way that is haphazard and inefficient. Governments experiment with subsidy schemes for renewable energy, with various degrees of success. Countries discuss targets, negotiate commitments, fight about who should shoulder more of the cost. What if we were able to reliably record and measure every action that reduces the carbon footprint—and agree on which steps have the greatest impact?

Swytch.io wants to make this possible. In this episode, co-founder Evan Caron argues that it all starts (as always) with data: Swytch provides a device-agnostic platform that can collect data from a wind farm, a solar panel, a smart meter...pretty much any device in the energy ecosystem. It uses blockchain—and in the episode we debate whether blockchain is really needed here.

That’s only the first step. Swytch will then enable energy and climate experts to access the data and use it to assess with competing models the climate impact of different energy investments around the world. Once you know where the investment should go, how do you create the right incentives to direct where it will have the greatest impact? The models in the Swytch ecosystem will determine the value of different carbon-offsetting or carbon-displacing actions and ultimately, actions which have a greater positive impact on energy sustainability should be commensurately compensated. The hope is that the system could provide the basis to set the right incentives for a faster transition to GHG reductions. It’s a tall order, that makes for a very intense conversation.
One exciting note: About midway through the conversation with Evan, we'll break in for a surprise for our listeners, a new, regular segment called Ricky's Reports from the Edge, with our friend Ricky Buch. You have to listen to see what it's all about.
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Next Episode

Ricky's Reports #3: Chasing Unicorns

This week's M4Edge is solely a Ricky's Reports episode. Ricky talks about how his idea continues to evolve, and we discuss whether forcing startups to chase the $Billion dollar idea is a barrier to entry.
Stay tuned: Marco and I are preparing a mini series on Additive Manufacturing, also known as 3D Printing. We have a great line up for you, including guests from Essentium, Impossible Objects, MELD Manufacturing and MarkForged, as well as 3DHubs, a Manufacturing as a Service company based in Europe.