Boris Hristov

Founder of 356labs

Founder of 356labs
and PowerPoint MVP.
Speaker, Trainer & Author.
A guy that loves to do sports, have fun and enjoy life. Gallery / Blog / Contact

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Train the Trainer!
A Collection of 50 Posts For You!

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A few months ago I got a chance to train and mentor a group of 20+ future IT trainers as part of a Train the Trainer course at the Software University in Bulgaria. Back then I decided I will take notes of the mistakes I see and then blog about them thus creating a small library of useful knowledge that can help everyone who is or wants to be a trainer at some point in his career.

Below are the 50 blog posts that I wrote on my company’s site that I am sure will make you both better trainer and speaker in general!

Enjoy reading and in case you want me to come and train you and your team, you obviously know how to reach me now!  😉

Mistake 1: Phones Ringing
Mistake 2: The Dying Battery
Mistake 3: Not Using Your Own Machine
Mistake 4: Not Using a Presenter(Pointer)
Mistake 5: The Screensaver
Mistake 6: The Notifications
Mistake 7: Busy Demos
Mistake 8: Equipment Problems
Mistake 9: Projector Problems
Mistake 10: IDEs Not Demo Ready
Mistake 11: Your Name, Please
Mistake 12: EXCUSES
Mistake 13: Weak Start
Mistake 14: 0 Experience!?
Mistake 15: Reading From Your Slides
Mistake 16: The Watch
Mistake 17: Notes In Your Hand!?
Mistake 18: Timing Issues
Mistake 19: Skipping Slides
Mistake 20: Too Much Stuff
Mistake 21: Acronyms
Mistake 22: “As You Know”
Mistake 23: Foreign Words
Mistake 24: Filler Words
Mistake 25: The Wrong Approach!!!
Mistake 26: No Audience Involvement 
Mistake 27: Slide Mix
Mistake 28: Thinking You Are A God!?
Mistake 29: Staying Behind Something
Mistake 30: No Eye Contact
Mistake 31: Hands Behind The Back
Mistake 32: Talking Fast
Mistake 33: Irrelevant Demos
Mistake 34: Summarize The Demo
Mistake 35: Not Sure In Your Demo
Mistake 36: Writing Code Live
Mistake 37: No Data Source Referenced
Mistake 38: Spelling Errors
Mistake 39: Weak End
Mistake 40: The Microphone
Mistake 41: Too Much Text
Mistake 42: 16:9 not 4:3 
Mistake 43: PowerPoint Templates
Mistake 44: No Text Animation
Mistake 45: Weird Animations
Mistake 46: 3D Stuff
Mistake 47: Images Everywhere
Mistake 48: Different Fonts
Mistake 49: Color Combinations
Mistake 50: Slideshow, please!

You read them all? Let me know what you think in the comments!

Seminar: From Bad Slides to Effective Slides

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It is my absolute pleasure to share that on 7th of April at 19:00 at Software University I will be delivering yet another seminar on presentation design. This time, however, I am going to do something different. I am going to do something that you guys asked me to do – “something like a workshop, something like a live demonstration”. This is what I heard from you after the incredibly successful first seminar that I did at SoftUni some time ago – Presentation Desgin: The Fundamentals! 

The plan is simple – we will take a bad slide deck and transform it live, in front of you, into an effective one! So if you are a presenting often or you just want to become better in your presentations, then I do not see a reason why you would not join me this Thursday evening! I just don’t see such! The event is free, so come, have fun and let me help you become an even better speaker!

Resources:

Link to the FB event!

Update: The event went just great! Thank you so much everyone who joined me for those 2 hours! I really hope I brought some serious value to you and hopefully changed the way you think about presentation design.

All of the materials we used are below! Enjoy using them and in case you have any questions, let me know at boris.hristov@356labs.com!

Materials that were used during the event: (video coming soon)

ALL THE FILES – PRESENTATIONS, FONTS, THE GRADIENT, PHOTOS, TOGETHER WITH INSTRUCTIONS! (200+ MB)

Photos: (Creative Commons 0 – no attribution required!)
Pexels
Pixabay
More Photos
Photos from the event!

Fonts:
FontSquirrel
More Fonts

Icons:
IconFinder
More Icons

Other:
Sli.do
Recording: Presentation Design: The Fundamentals
Workshop: Storytelling & Presentation Design 7th and 8th of May (coupon: softuni)

Note! Even though the slides were exported to PDF files because they are using custom fonts, they are still not displayed in the way they actually look. Download the files, follow the instructions and you will see how the originals looked!

Seminar: Presentation Design. The Fundamentals!

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On 27th of October I will be speaking at the Software University. Again. This time, however, I am going to cover 10 fundamental principles of great presentation design. So if you are presenting often or you just want to learn how to become a speaker that differentiates from the 99% of presenters out there, join me at 19:00 at the Code Ground room! Hope to see you there!
Update: Oh, what an event this was! More than 350+ people registered and I don’t know how many came, but the room was packed full! There were even people standing during the whole presentation, so huge “Thank you” to all of you who came and joined! I really hope that you enjoyed it and that the content and the numerous discussions that happened were of value to to you!
The slide deck and the video(in Bulgarian) are below, photos can be found here and in case you still haven’t seen the PresentationReactions blog, go ahead and check it out! You will have fun for sure!

Teaching Advanced Topics at SoftUni Database Class

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softuni-bulgariaI am back! And I am back for a second time as part of the database course at Software University. It’s again a huge privilege for me to teach the two most advanced topics during the course – the one on transaction concurrency and the one on performance tuning. Last year these two lectures were rated by the students phenomenally and I promise no surprises this year too – the level will be outstanding! Looking forward to the opening day for the course – 16st of June and hope to see again full room of people ready to learn about SQL Server and the world of databases!

Update: Two lectures, two completely full rooms of more than 100 people! I had superb time teaching those guys and for those of you who are trainers – you know that it’s always a pleasure when your audience is simply trying to absorb as much as possible and is asking questions before, during and after your sessions! Again, thank you all and I hope you enjoyed the two days we were together as much as I did! All of the materials are below and of course on the SoftUni website.

Database Performance from Boris Hristov

Database Transactions and SQL Server Concurrency from Boris Hristov

Speaking at Softuni Summer Conf 2015

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SoftUni Summer Conf June 2015

It’s time for the second SoftUni Conf for this year and it’s coming really soon – at the end of this June! I am really happy that I was invited to speak at the conference again and I am already looking forward to spend 2 days with the great students of the best software university in Bulgaria. The conference will be held in Borovets – a wonderful place in the Rila Mountain and I am about to take the students on a journey to what it takes to create a business intelligence solution using SQL Server. Let’s see if anyone from them will decide to choose a career in that path.

Update: Video(in Bulgarian) and slides are now available! What a great, great event and I am again so sorry I was not able to stay till the end on Sunday and had to leave immediately after my session. Hopefully next time I will be able to enjoy the whole experience in the same way as I did in the start of the year!