Guest Blogs
Knowitall.ch often invites local experts in their field to contribute to their own blogs on our site. This means not only you will benefit from the useful recommendations that we make on our News pages, but you can also profit from some of the great advice and tips that these experts have to make on their favorite subjects. Whilst each of these bloggers has been recommended to us at some point during the evolution of Know-it-all passport and knowitall.ch, obviously we are not able to test out all the suggestions they make on their blogs, nor do we necessarily agree with all their opinions. So if you do find one of their tips useful (or not!), do let us know!
To make these blogs more accessible to you, we have now decided to group them altogether in one section, entitled Guest Blogs, accessible from our main menu bar. We will also post the most recent blogs on the home page of our site in the right hand column.
We are still building up this area of the site, and are looking for bloggers in a number of sections, including Your Home, Travel, and Leisure, so if you feel you have a useful contribution to make in either of these areas, and have the time to submit blog entries approximately every month, then please get in touch!
By Claire Doole, Claire Doole Communications
Many of the people I coach in the art of powerful presenting are highly intelligent and articulate. They are medical doctors, academics, bankers and lawyers.
But they are not journalists, like myself. They often don’t have an innate sense of storytelling or they know too much and struggle with getting the level of detail right.
This is where structuring your thoughts for maximum impact comes into play. I recommend two ways to structure your thoughts that will guarantee the audience is focused on the key messages, and not on trying to decipher meaning in a disorganized presentation.
IMPACT
All trainers love mnemonics – memory devices. Here is one to help you structure a presentation.
- Introduction – get the audience’s attention with a bang and make sure the benefits are clear.
- Main messages – outline your purpose and your key messages – what do you want the audience to take home so that you achieve your purpose? Do you want to inspire, sell, persuade or inform?
- Points – what are your main points? How are you going to structure them? Chronologically, most important to least important, geographically or thematically? Remember to support your points with facts, data and stories.
- Associate – make sure your supporting examples are relevant to your audience.
- Conclude and recap – summarize and repeat your key messages.
- Take-away – finish with a bang. This can be a call to action – what do you want your audience to do, feel or say as a result of your presentation?
By Sunita Sehmi, Walk The Talk
A few months ago a friend of mine gave me a copy of the film Tashi and the Monk. She explained the project and gave me a brief history about the benevolent monk behind the project Jhamste. Jhamtse (jhaam’-tsay) is Tibetan for “love and compassion”, it is an international non-profit organization run by volunteers and sustained by individuals who participate in their programs. The film lay on my desk for a time but I kept thinking of completing my never-ending to do list before I was permitted to watch it! What I saw and what I witnessed was so heart-rending, so touching it literally blew me away. The 42-minute film has no elaborate camerawork, no superstar narrator, just an unpretentious story of Tashi and the monk, Lobsang Phuntsok. This left me even more curious and desperate to become involved with Tashi and Lobsang, because we have all met a Tashi in our lives. A chaotic, scorned and angry child due to no fault of their own and then it just takes one person to believe in this child and help this child and this can be life changing for them.
Lobsang only has room for 85 children at his school but he is bombarded with hundreds of requests from villagers begging him to take in more. But he just can’t, with limited capacity Lobsang has to make some life-altering decisions.
“Many people believe in compassion. Because it works.” Lobsang Phuntsok
By Hiba Giacoletto, Healthwise
Growing up in an Arabic family meant that hummus was a staple in our home. Whenever we had to bring something for school events, my mother would make hummus.
Something wasn’t going well? Eat hummus. Something to celebrate? Lets make hummus.
So yes, I do like my hummus. And for a long time, I stuck to my mother’s traditional hummus recipe. Then one of my Food Coaching clients casually mentioned she had thrown in a few sun-dried tomatoes to my hummus recipe. Sun-dried tomatoes and hummus? I was intrigued but did I dare mess with such an institution?
Next time I made hummus, I tentatively added a few sun-dried tomatoes. It blew me away. Excited by the idea of re-creating hummus, I started experimenting. I added in zucchini in summer. Pumpkin in autumn. Some raw beetroot in winter.
And I discovered that there is no one way of preparing hummus - that there were endless varieties of this delicious dish.
I put together these recipes and guidelines to help you get started. Once you understand the building blocks, you will know what you want to add more or less of - keep tasting as you prepare food and trust your intuition!
Click here to download my Everything Hummus Guide and Video.
Alexandra Palace Fireworks Festival 2015
By Rachel Beacher, Journalist
This weekend the UK will celebrate Guy Fawkes Night, the closest thing the Brits have to Swiss National Day or the Fourth of July.
The fireworks-themed festival commemorates the eleventh-hour capture of a gang of traitors who were attempting to blow up Parliament with 2,500kg of gunpowder. People today burn effigies of Guy Fawkes, the most famous of the group of Catholic plotters, because he was found hiding in the cellars of the House of Lords on 5 November, 1605. Each year there are thousands of public bonfires and fireworks displays held across the country – with the biggest and most breathtaking events in London, attracting hundreds of thousands of spectators.
Also known as Bonfire Night, the events are generally extremely family friendly, with children always expected. Tickets, usually free or inexpensive, are required for entry to most events, with the exceptions of Victoria Park and Blackheath. But the shows can be seen from miles around and there are even special viewing cruises along the Thames.
With the plunge of the pound since the UK's shock Brexit vote, it's a great time for people from mainland Europe to head to London for sightseeing and shopping.
By Sunita Sehmi, Walk The Talk
Anthony Levene is the Director of AMATA SA with twenty years’ experience producing and directing TV commercials, corporate films, and through-the-line marketing and internal communications campaigns for leading international brands.
Operating in Switzerland and the UK, he works with a highly experienced and talented team to deliver two distinct services to clients worldwide: Production Services and Bespoke Communications.
Film production services in Switzerland range from TV commercials, web and corporate, to TV documentaries and feature films - at all levels of budget whether it be a shoot downtown or up the highest mountain peak.
Recently Anthony and his team fully serviced a complicated glacier shoot for Nike featuring two US Olympic athletes and they also ensured that the Oscar-winning director, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, created a powerful Nike film featuring Roger Federer.
I caught up with him about his move to Switzerland from the UK, the trials and tribulations of being local and global. I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did.
