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Comment by ojbyrne | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure on the pacing thing. I love the Clifford Stoll talk from TED and he's flying all over the place the whole talk. Admittedly its not actually pacing.

For those who do want to get better at public speaking (including me), I'd highly recommend the book "Presentation Zen."

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And for those too cheap to buy the book, this 70-minute Google talk by the author of Presentation Zen will give you most of the information for free: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ2vtQCESpk

There are exceptions to every rule, and Clifford Stoll is definitely an exception: his power and madness make it work.

You can see Jessica Livingston pacing back and forth here: http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2008/12/jessica-livingsto... It is annoying, and she seems nervous.

Note: This is not meant to pick on JL, very few people get it right, and I could just as easily have picked another example.

I see your point, but when I hear "exceptions to every rule" I want to explore the boundaries of those exceptions. I think that presentations are creative performances, essentially, so it's likely that the number of exceptions are going to be large.

absolutely right...

It's just like every other artform - the rules are there to give people a framework they can work from, but the best performers break the rules. Clifford Stoll is a great example of this.

Might also try "Beyond Bullet Points," which keeps you from unleashing PowerPoint hell on the audience.

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