I was looking for my childhood home on Google Earth, <\/a>caught a glimpse of it from 30,000 feet, then zoomed in and saw my mother\u2019s herb garden at the bottom of the lawn.<\/p>\n

My Mom and Dad are gone now, and I saw cars I didn\u2019t recognize in the driveway.<\/p>\n

I knew the image was created in late fall or early winter because part of the lawn was brown: my father planted Zoisa grass in the early 1960s when he was waging war against crabgrass and dandelions, and Zoisa turns brown in the cold.\u00a0 I also saw the leafless willow tree given to my parents when my sister died in 2001, more evidence of a cold month.<\/p>\n

I saw no Jack Russell terriers leaping after tennis balls that my Dad would smack with a wiffle bat. It was a still image, a soundless moment, at a house I knew well.\u00a0 It reminded me that film-makers use wide angles and close-ups to tell their stories. Tweet: Wide angles create the setting, and close-ups bring us face to face with uncertain human realities.<\/span> http:\/\/ctt.ec\/A2Wc5+<\/a><\/p>\n

Abraham Lincoln did this in the Gettysburg Address<\/a>. With his first sentence, he invites us to gaze at the continent and 90 years of history.<\/p>\n

\u201cFour score and seven years ago,\u201d he begins, \u201cOur fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

In one majestic sentence he summarizes national history and the view from the heavens. And then comes the close up. \u201cNow we are engaged in a great Civil War\u2026\u201d With that sentence he locates his audience in time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are met on a great battlefield of that war.\u201d Now he locates us in space, in Gettysburg, PA.<\/p>\n

The President goes on to say that the deeds of the dead cannot be honored by the words of the living, and that we can best honor the fallen with a renewed commitment to the principles of representative democracy.<\/p>\n

Like me looking for my childhood home on Google Earth, Lincoln first fixed his listeners’ eyes on the big picture<\/a>\u2014the wide angle, the arc of history, and the curve of the earth.<\/p>\n

And then he brought to their attention the current conflict, and the bloody field where the bodies lay\u2014zooming in on the problem, and on what needed to be done.<\/p>\n

This is a powerful model for presentations<\/a>. Start with the big picture, the setting in which the story takes place. Then zoom in on the problem that clamors for a solution, and offer an actionable and evidence-based answer.<\/p>\n

But equally powerful can be the reverse: \u00a0moving from the close-up to the bigger picture. \u00a0Locating a vivid and telling detail at the start of your talk can focus the mind of \u00a0an audience before you zoom out to provide context and meaning.<\/p>\n

For instance, my wife, Sharon Dennis Wyeth<\/a>, an author of many childrens’ books, often begins her talks with the image of her coming home from school with a piece of paper in her hand, on which she had written B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L, \u00a0the first word she ever wrote. \u00a0She gives it to her mother, and her mother puts it on the refrigerator. \u00a0 \u00a0And then Sharon zooms out, to speak about the importance of nurturing young readers.<\/p>\n

I zoomed out from my childhood home so I could see the wide woods surrounding \u00a0the house–the woods where I played with my friends.<\/p>\n

Still there, now owned by the Nature Conservancy, I saw the canopy of bare branches that shadowed the ruins of our forts made of sticks and leaves, where we fought battles with each other, and went home for supper when it got dark and our mothers called us home.<\/p>\n

From a distance of 50 years, I can say I was a very lucky boy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was looking for my childhood home on Google Earth, caught a glimpse of it from 30,000 feet, then zoomed in and saw my mother\u2019s herb garden at the bottom of the lawn. My Mom and Dad are gone now, and I saw cars I didn\u2019t recognize in the driveway. I knew the image was… Read More »Two ways to structure a speech or presentation<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8595,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_ti_tpc_template_sync":false,"_ti_tpc_template_id":""},"categories":[960,336,149],"tags":[548,297,618,78,612],"yoast_head":"\n