During a recent presentation skills training, one of my participants suggested I was like Barney Stinson from “How I Met Your Mother”. At the time, this meant nothing to me, as I had never seen the sitcom. 2 weeks later, I received a spontaneous email from another participant of that training, Christophe Schmitz, containing this text-based presentation…
As a side note, I’d say he learnt well 🙂
Enjoy!
Presentation by Christophe Schmitz…
Hi and Welcome to this absurd “presentation”.
One well known rule to make a high impact presentation is “know your audience”. Dan spoke about this during his presentation skills training at CSC.
And what better way to know people in the audience than knowing their entertainment interests? It could be a song, a book, a movie or even a sitcom .. whatever … People like and retain such things because they recognizes themselves in it …Â And it probably reflects their personality.
Most of Dan’s training “audience” at CSC were born in the 1980’s (except me and Dan himself). They didn’t know “Top Gun” [we will talk about this later ] but they did know “How I Met Your Mother” (HIMYM)
During training … one of them said:
You know Dan, you kinda look like Barney Stinson in the sitcom “How I Met Your Mother”
..but Dan didn’t get it. He’d never seen it. Hence this “presentation”.
So: Does Dan Steer look like Barney Stinson ? Let’s see…
5 REASONS WHY DAN STEER IS BARNEY STINSON
Similarity number 1: They both like tweetable messages .. and both love how the word “Awesome” sounds
Barney Stinson once said awesome is the answer to everything (video)
What does Dan say?
Here’s just 2 excerpts from his blog
- Talking about how Yannick Noah’s connects to his audience: “I’ve never seen anything like it. 60,000 people and he still jumped in. It was awesome!”
- “Follow my blog by entering your email address… Its free and its awesome “
..and if you’ve ever followed Presentation Skills training with Dan, you have heard this word a hundred times!
Similarity number 2: They both have “Awesome” presentation skills
If you’ve ever seen Dan present, you know he’s great.
…but Barney Stinson elevates presentations to a religious level. For example in his insane theory called the “Ewok appreciation” he explains the only obvious reason why his girlfriend Nora couldn’t like possibly like Ewoks (video)
As a side-note:
- Dan is a massive Star Wars fan … and was born after 1973
- You can get the entire Barney Stinson Ewok slide-deck here
Similarity number 3:Â They both “Air graph” [*]
(*) Air graph” is to presentation, what “air guitar” is to rock ‘n roll : It’s the ability of an individual to draw graphs in the air using nothing but its fingers and arms to mime an invisible graph.
We all know Dan Steer does this regulary in training 🙂 Often in our late-night CSC training sessions, lazy-Dan would stay seated and sketch out an entire graph or model with only his hands.
..and Barney Stinson definitely has the same skill (video)
Similarity number 4:Â Awesome Synthesis capabilities
Just like Dan Steer can resume your entire presentation of 15-or-more minutes in one minute, Barney Stinson can recap the entire sitcom “How I Met Your Mother” in less than one minute (video)
Similarity number 5:Â They are both huge TOP GUN fans
If you’ve never seen Barney suit-up Top Gun style, watch the video here
…and everyone knows Dan Steer’s famous iPhone ring: “Top Gun Anthem Instrumental”
As I said in the introduction, movie interests can tell you a lot about people’s personalities 🙂
And so, to end this “presentation” (as Dan told us to), let’s summarize the 5 similarities:
- Tweetable awesome expressions
- Awesome presentation skills
- Awesome air graphs !
- Awesome synthesis capabilities
- Awesome TOP Gun passion
In conclusion… Dan Steer and Barney Stinson are the same person !
And that is why knowing your audience entertainment interests can be of major importance
Thank you for your attention
ps from DAN: When I read this post, I thought I must check out HIMYM and I’m hooked. Thank you Christophe 🙂 Barney IS awesome 🙂
danSTEER 