The performance ideas blog

Category: Social

  • The Big Data Challenge of Activity Trackers

    The activity tracker revolution Activity trackers such as the ubiquitous Fitbit, Jawbone and the Garmin Vivofit are extremely popular these days. You can frequently spot them on colleagues, friends and customers. Their popularity raises a question: Does the collected data add value to your personal life? As a data hungry endurance athlete who relies on…

  • Updates and greetings

    Hello again! Wow. I cannot believe it. It’s been two months since the last post on this blog. Thanks to all of you who reached out to find out why it’s been so quiet here. There is a simple reason. Sometime around New Year, I realised that I was due for a creative break from…

  • Three simple ideas for better software demos

    Better software demos The other day I wrote about lessons for delivering a better software demo. This article ended up being one of the most popular ones in recent times. I have therefore decided to add a few more tips as a solid demo can really make a difference. Likewise a bad software demo can…

  • Analytics professionals need to be communicators

    Are we communicators? Analyics are an extremely hot topic. While there is a lot of talk about it, too many companies are still failing to reap the true benefits from “bread and butter” tools such as dashboards. It’s safe to say that there is a disconnect: lot’s of talk and excitement, yet little true engagement…

  • The art of the technical presentation – 5 lessons from Gary Fong

    The Technical presentation As an analytics professional, you often have to show your work to select audiences. This could be a demonstration of a new corporate dashboard at the monthly townhall meeting. It might also be a training class for the operations team or a 1:1 session with the CEO. Regardless of the occasion, you…

  • How to improve your presentations – a simple lesson

    Presentation advice A friend recently challenged me to provide him with my number one tip for improving his presentations. He was looking for that famous ‘low-hanging fruit’ that wouldn’t require too much effort and energy. I didn’t have to think long and hard about that question. In my past job role, I attended many conferences…

  • Why blog? 13 reasons to love blogging

    Why blog? Blogging is fun! Yes, it is. I started the Performance Ideas Blog almost two years ago and I would not want to miss that. There were certainly some stretches where I thought about just dropping the project. Blogging regularly requires a lot of discipline and focus. This is especially true when you write…

  • Guest Post: Become the topic of conversation with content marketing

    PR and Social Media Expert Bernhard Lermann Content Marketing If Dr. Johann August Unzer would have had a company website, it would have been a very lively place. The practicing physician from Altona, Germany, was the publisher of the well-known medical weekly journal “Der Arzt” („The Physician”) as well as the author of numerous medical,…

  • Memorize a presentation? Forget about it!

    Memorize a presentation? Presenting is a highly rewarding exercise. Yet many people struggle with it. Nervousness and also the required preparation induce uncomfortable feelings in many people. The first one is a necessary evil and it can be dealt with. But how about the second one? People often ask me how I manage to memorize…

  • 8 reasons why you should love presenting

    Do YOU love presenting? Too many people hate presenting. A few weeks ago, I wrote about some strategies to combat nervousness when presenting to a larger group of people. This post turned out to be extremely popular. However, I just realized that I had omitted an important point: Why would I want to present in…