A lot of you know, and some of you don’t, that I have been working on my last presentation of the year for SHRM’s Work Flex conference here in Chicago, October 23rd and 24th.

This will be my last conference I attend for 2012, and yes, I’m honored to be speaking on the 24th on “Gaining a Competitive Edge in a High Tech World.”

Having said that, I have been putting off the actual PowerPoint presentation for my session and have been losing sleep over it for months now. I have literally laid there awake in bed thinking “How am I gonna pull this off and add some excitement to my presentation?” You know, keep everyone awake. I love using humor but sometimes it’s very dry and not everyone gets it, especially HR.

If there’s anything I hate, it’s a boring presentation. I have been in numerous sessions and some were good and some, not so good. Some just simply put me to sleep. And I get that some HR topics aren’t the most exciting things to discuss and yet have to be brought “to the table.”

I love when I finally get up before a group and speak but it’s the anxiety before it actually takes place that almost puts me in the grave.

Even when I used to travel professionally and sing in front of thousands I would work myself into a frenzy right before only to get out there and do my thang and LOVE it! They say a little nervousness before something like this is good for you, or normal, but I’m not so sure.

So I wanted to take this awesome opportunity from my friends at SHRM (Society of Human Resource Management) with whom I am a regular contributor over at WeKnowNext, and do it up right. You know, do something different that would actually take a ho-hum presentation to a spectacular, technical masterpiece (cough, cough). And since the topic has to do with “setting yourself apart” from the rest and incorporating technology into the workplace, I wanted to be able to do that in my presentation.

There’s nothing worse than seeing a presentation with massive amounts of statistics and data and or hundreds of bullet points. Learning to present like Steve Jobs is something I’ve been studying for awhile now. Steve mostly used pictures (after all, a pictures worth a thousand words, right?) in his presentations and captured the attention of the audience through various means but he kept it simple and that’s something I wish most folks would do.

There were a few who did this at this past year’s Illinois SHRM conference and I was captivated. They were very effective and kept us entertained and we learned something in the process.

STOP it, I beg you, with your overload of information and keep it simple, stupid!

I finished my presentation just yesterday and I must say, I’m glad that it’s finished. I know there are a few things to fine tune, but the overall presentation, content and use of technology (in going with the theme), I FEEL, is good – though I can’t make any promises. But then again, I often think things are funny, when they aren’t to anyone else.

I am passionate about sharing with others how to incorporate the use of social technology into their strategy for their businesses and organizations and I’m hoping they’ll catch that wave of excitement and be entertained along the way.

I’ll gladly share the presentation on my SlideShare afterward for those of you who won’t be able to attend.

Wish me luck!

Photo Credit: GeekoSystem