Presentation training can provide you with the skills and techniques to improve your performance when speaking to an audience. Whether you are a seasoned public speaker or fearful at the thought of presenting, professional training can help you to build the skills and confidence needed to speak effectively and to give you or your company an advantage.  

Practice, practice, practice

“It’s a funny thing. The more I practice the luckier I get.” (Jack Nicklaus)

Understanding your key messages and rehearsing delivery is the starting point for an effective presentation. Preparing well will ensure you know the purpose of your presentation, who your audience is and what they are expecting. Delivering a presentation when you are fully prepared will help you to relax and present yourself or your company confidently and in the best possible light.  

Get your message across

It’s important to structure your presentation. Tell your audience what you are going to say, say it, and then tell them what you’ve said.  Content should be simple and tools such as PowerPoint should be used sparingly.

Make an impression

It’s important to get the basics right. Speak slowly and clearly, dress appropriately and be aware of your body language.  An experienced trainer will help you to identify any bad habits and give you tips and advice on how to improve your delivery.

Build your confidence

Good presentation training is about building your confidence and giving you the skills and ability  to enjoy speaking in front of an audience.

Some of our latest delegate feedback speaks for itself:

“The professionalism and constructive criticism from everyone at The Media Group helped make this an excellent day's training.”

“The course exceeded my expectations, I feel much more confident and able to stand up in front of an audience”.

Contact us to find out more about our presentation training courses.

We’re excited to have upgraded our post-production suite including a shiny new workstation.  The new machine has a 6 core cpu, 12gb of RAM and enables us to work in real-time with 10bit uncompressed 1080p footage!

Or, if you’re not familiar with tech speak, we can now edit quicker with better quality to give your videos a bit more oomph. 

Do you have a video project coming up? Get in touch, we’d love to discuss and show you around.

Last night I watched The Sun’s campaign to ensure in 2012 we make great, Britain (which however you punctuate is a tortuous phrase, but in the context of the ad worked), and BMW’s take on the Olympics. 

As someone who loves sport and applied for loads of tickets for the Olympics and ended up with none, I’m holding on to my enthusiasm despite wondering how some people I know have a shed full of tickets and I’ve got a place on the sofa to look forward to! 

But the media is embracing Olympic stories with gusto.

Over the New Year break ITV in the Midlands was pulling together some Olympic features and we were able to help two of our clients, Sport Nottinghamshire and Badminton England.  ITV’s feature was on: is sport ready to cope with the increased demand?  The answer here was yes.  Sport Nottinghamshire has been preparing clubs for a while, running special events to ensure preparation was in place.  And Badminton England has a scheme up and running to increase participation which they were able to showcase. 

Yet on the way in to the office this morning I heard a story about national targets for increasing participation being dropped and a London-centric reporting style which may take over through to the Games themselves - regeneration of bits of London, special routes for Olympic traffic and so on. 

I can’t help thinking The Sun and BMW are, at the moment, providing the most effective inspiration.

The whistle stop tour of sport-related topics was fascinating.  The passion and enthusiasm with which grassroots coaches approach their voluntary activity was inspiring.  Working at Wembley is, for me, always an honour and the list of guests and the topics something I have a personal interest in.

I must confess to knowing less about grass.  But the Institute of Groundsmanship conference and awards ceremony at Bolton gave me some insights.  My biggest eye opener was from the head groundsman at the Green Bay Packers from the NFL.  On the pitch front they only have eight regular season games, a couple of pre-season friendlies and may be a game or two post-season if they are lucky.  Ok, so it snows a lot, but it makes looking after Wembley and it’s multi-use function from pop concerts to rugby union seem a doddle.

The club can never be taken over (like Chelsea or Manchester City say) because of the way the shares are owned by ordinary fans.  And the town of Green Bay itself only has 100,000 residents!

Back at the start of the week the RFL World Cup countdown got underway.  After next year’s Olympics, the World Cup in 2013 is something I’m looking forward to – with a tremendous tour of European venues staging matches.

Our BBC Children in Need fundraising day raised the fantastic total of £153.64! 

The Media Group will round this up to £200 and a cheque for this amount is on its way to BBC Children in Need. 

Fundraising activities on the day included a Pudsey Bear poster competition, blind auctions and the infamous cake sale.

Thanks to all the team for their generous support.

It is great to watch people I have schooled in media work like, Freddie Flintoff, Paula Radcliffe and Martin Johnson appearing on TV, plus various MPs and captains of industry, who have attended my courses.

I am about to start work on a book – that is going to be very tongue in cheek - it is tentatively titled, ‘How to be a Sports Journalist’. Not really an instruction manual - more comedic than academic.

But I have now tutored and taught at around 15 universities. I have really enjoyed a return to academe, after the rather more ruthless world of journalism. It is now nearly three years since I retired from TV work. I was reminded of those days when I stopped for some petrol at a service station and the guy serving said, “didn’t you use to be Dennis Coath”.

Dennis Coath has spent over 40 years in the media industry and is one of the best known television faces in the midlands. He now conducts media training on behalf of The Media Group. To find out how the courses can benefit you and your company contact us on 0115 969 4600 or info@themediagroup.tv

"14 minutes for a response to my e-mail...what kept you???  In all seriousness, it confirms the professionalism and quality of service I have come to expect from my dealings with The Media Group.  Many thanks for confirming my order, I eagerly expect the arrival of my DVD."

Now I'm not saying we can respond to every enquiry within 14 minutes - but it did remind me of how important it is to always remember that the only reason we are in business is because people pay us to do work.

Does that sound stupid?  Perhaps. But I think at times it is easy to forget that business is only able to fuinction if it gets money in.  You can't go on borrowing forever (can you, Greece?).  But as businesses mature it is easy to take for granted clients and, perhaps, suppliers.

The same day on which we received the praise email I had to contact one of our suppliers after a second lapse in their service standards.

The MD responded exactly as I hope I would.  Within ten minutes I had a phone call apologising and saying thank you for letting me know.  "If I know," he said, "I can do something about it."

The moral of this?  Well I think it's simple. Take the praise when it comes and use it to reflect glory on your team.  But also build relationships with your suppliers so that when something does go wrong they don't just chuck you - but appreciate the constructive comments.

I remember my own early days and the people who spend time talking to me – so I think it’s the least I can do.  Especially in these tough financial times. 

So a few weeks ago I was with a very impressive young graduate who wants to be a journalist.  She’ll get there, but it did start us wondering whether there are aspects of ‘how to present yourself’ that we can help with. 

So we developed a course, exactly to meet those demands.  And I’m delighted to say it’s already working as evidenced by the thank you emails. 

So how do you present yourself? 

Well one simply tip is this: look the part.  It sounds daft to anyone within work, perhaps, because that box has already been ticked.

But for anyone coming for an interview let me say this: for goodness sake do yourself a favour and dress for it.  Take your lead from a national newscaster on ITV or BBC.  Fiona Bruce or Hugh Edwards might not be the raciest of television personalities, but their dress is appropriate.  Yes it’s an awful word, but it’s the correct word when you are looking at attending an interview.

Then we started talking about body language, eye contact, what to say, posture and PowerPoint.  But that’s for another day!

We hope this gives you an insight into our events, video, design and motion graphics work.

Our diary is packed full into the New Year so keep an eye out for a brand new showreel early next year.

We’ve talked about the idea of sending e-cards, doing something gimmicky and even abandoning cards altogether.

But we still think there is something rather special about receiving a personal Christmas card and knowing that you’ve been remembered.  Plus, nearly all the e-cards I receive are deleted without being opened.  

Those that do have to be vetted by our IT team to make sure any website they take you to isn’t going to infest you with the latest virus. 

So we’re proudly traditional when it comes to Christmas.  We’ll have a tree and lights and proper cards.  

But I’m getting a little previous.  It’s still only October.  

I was intrigued to find out though, as we looked at options for cards, about all the latest trends.  I’m not a designer, but our graphics team is wonderfully creative and suggesting ideas - both on trend and radical.

I suppose a robin in the snow – which was what I had in my mind – is a little predictable. 

But a new Christmas card must  be one of the toughest briefs you give a designer.  Because you are really saying: here’s a creative brief without limitations, but with so much history that you’ve got to do something different! 

The results could be interesting!

With exclusive footage, exciting behind the scenes features, pilot interviews and, of course, those fantastic air displays, the 2011 DVD is a must buy whether you were there at the show or not.

It includes:

- Vulcan feature – take a peak inside the cockpit of this iconic British bomber
- Thunderbirds ground ceremony – the US Air Force team certainly put on a great show even before they got off the ground
- The ever popular acrobatics of the Red Arrows display team
- Air-to-air refuelling - exclusive bonus footage of an E3D Sentry refuelling mid-air.
- Every display from the weekend – from the smallest to the largest, we captured them all.

The 2011 DVD, as well as the DVDs from 2009 and 2010, is now available to buy online from http://raf.themediagroup.tv 

Following a masterclass with Dame Kelly Holmes at the Council House in Nottingham, our team are fit and raring to go – slowly!

Kelly – with whom we work on a number of other projects – hosted the class for teams running to raise money for her charity, the Dame Kelly Holmes Legacy Trust.

The Corporate Relay part of the Robin Hood Marathon, sponsored by Cooper Parry, is in its ninth year and is set to break through the quarter of a million pounds mark in money raised.

The event, on Sunday September 11^th, is always a popular and well-attended event.

This year the TMG team will be led by Sam Ellis with Dan Hammond, Julie Humphrey, Dee Ellis and Keith Daniell (MD) also taking part.

Local television was the theme.  I was interviewed by Evan Davis in London; I was at the BBC studios in Nottingham. 

As someone who spends time helping people prepare for media interviews it was an interesting experience.

Our offer is simple: we want local television for Nottingham and Nottinghamshire.  We want to be one of Jeremy Hunt’s  Pioneer Locations and we are pulling together interested groups locally to support this.

The ‘down the line’ to Radio Four meant waiting in a studio early one morning, looking out on a rainy day and rush hour traffic building up.

But in London I suspect Evan was more concerned with fitting me in between the topics of obesity increasing and the weather forecast.

It wasn’t an inquisition.  It wasn’t hostile.  Sceptical, perhaps.  But there’s nothing wrong with that!

So what’s the outcome?

Well, we’re working hard to pull together Digital Nottingham and becoming a Pioneer Location.  I hope Evan Davis wants to talk to us again – because we’ve got a good news story about Nottingham and Nottinghamshire.

Our mantra for Digital Nottingham is simple: serving Nottingham.

I hope Mr Hunt provides the opportunity for that to happen.

We’ll be taking part in the Robin Hood Marathon on Sunday 11^th September, as part of the Cooper Parry sponsored business relay.

Managing Director, Keith Daniell and Account Manager, Sam Ellis are both running the full 13 miles, with Keith saying, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.  But then the training hasn’t really been long enough!  Still, I’m looking forward to the atmosphere – and the Cooper Parry hospitality afterwards!”

'Team TMG' are also looking forward to the Masterclass hosted by Dame Kelly in Nottingham tomorrow (Thursday, 1st Sept).  Kelly, who TMG work with regularly, will be passing on tips and motivating the various teams taking part.

A few things struck me.  Firstly, how, all over the country, the people who come to these events are committed, passionate and delighted – no, proud - to be engaged in the conversation.  And they are nearly all volunteers.

Secondly, how everyone I come across really does care about the future of the game – and in most cases has an opinion.

Thirdly, the research and work done by Nick Levett from The FA, who is leading these sessions, is really impressive.  And Nick delivers it with enthusiasm and knowledge.  On top of his brief – pitched perfectly at his audience.  Never patronising and always informed.

And what’s the rationale behind it?  Basically in many other countries kids don’t start playing on big pitches and 11 -11 when they go to secondary school.  They play on smaller pitches with smaller sided games.  That means more touches of the ball, potentially under pressure and hence greater skill.  The FA are consulting over the idea and that continues around the country for the next few months.

But I was thinking at Wembley that this is exactly what we at The Media Group do when we help people improve their presentation or media skills.  Rather than put them up in front of hundreds of people or, for broadcasting, millions, we break down the skills into defined learning situations.  Then, when the knowledge and skills are there, we put them under pressure and suggest improvements.  And so the process continues.  You don’t go straight to Newsnight or the Today programme!