PowerPoint Alternatives – From Browsers to Blogs, Part II
In Part I of PowerPoint Alternatives, I talked about presenters who use HTML to display the visual portion of their presentation. Now that blogs are popular, some speakers are using blogs as presentation tools, including Steven Cohen of Library Stuff fame. Here’s a presentation he created in a blog last February and his post on the Note that he used Blogger, a tool that is free and can get you up and running with a blog in just a few minutes. Downsides of using a blog instead of PowerPoint include a busier screen that you would find on most PowerPoint presentations. Also, a blog entry is not going to fill the screen the way a PowerPoint slide will, so it could be more difficult for the audience to read. From the presenter’s standpoint, getting the slides in the proper order is cumbersome; you need to tweak the dates and times so as to get the blogs to display in the proper order, then remove the date from the blog template, since in this context, it’s irrelevant.As with HTML, the advantages of using a blog are greatest when you be presenting using a live Internet connection. You can include the links you want to visit in the blog/web page, and easily link out to web sites. The blog also makes a great “take-away.”
How often have you switched off (even for a few seconds) when attending yet another PowerPoint Presentation at work?
Our experience is that this probably happens more than 9 times out of 10.
So that’s about 90% of PowerPoint presentations where the lack of PowerPoint presentation skills actually undermines the very presentations PowerPoint is supposed to enhance.
So why do people continue down this road to presentation anesthesia? And can we divert at least some of them to a more enlightened, creative approach?
Here are seven PowerPoint presentation skills tips to help you on your way.
This from Nick Morgan really should be simple enough!!
Follow these rules and you’ll be using Power Point in a way that enhances, rather than detracts from or competes with, your presentation.
The whole post is here
From David Feith at the Wall Street Journal
Speaking Truth to PowerPoint
Dunkin’ Donuts insists that “America runs on Dunkin’.” Actually, America runs on PowerPoint. Slide, by slide, by slide.
But maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe—while we reconsider how we bank, manufacture cars, emit carbon and visit the doctor—we should also rethink how we PowerPoint. Maybe cutting the cord is change you can believe in.
The Presenter Center has a myriad useful PowerPoint tips.
This is just one …
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Keep text and graphics separated. Text that is placed on top of graphics appears cluttered, busy, and competes for attention. Click for makeover.Thanks OliviaMitchell
What Size Pictures Should I Use?
Those of us who include a lot of pictures in slide shows (hopefully everyone in the near future) need to think about the resolution of those pictures. Resolution, in a digital image context, is basically synonymous with quality. The higher your picture’s resolution, the higher its quality—in other words, the better it will look when printed or displayed. A high-resolution picture looks crisp and clear. A very low-resolution picture might look fuzzy or blurred. … more
Vischeck, checks your slides (or other visual work) to make sure that color-blind people can actually see it. From the website:
Many pictures, documents and web pages are hard for color blind people to read because the people who designed them didn’t think about the problem. Vischeck lets them check their work for color blind visibility. It is also interesting to anyone who is just plain curious about what the world looks like if you’re color blind.
One in 20 people have some form of color blindness, and the problem is most acute with shades of red and green, so think of this as a way of ensuring that your audience has a fighting chance to pay attention to your slides.
Source: The Eloquent Woman blog http://eloquentwoman.blogspot.com/2009/02/are-your-presentation-slides-colorblind.html
Designing attractive slide visuals does not need to be a painful task. You don’t need to hire a design firm. You don’t need loads of expensive software.
You can design attractive visuals by following simple guidelines. One of these simple guidelines is the Rule of Thirds — a composition technique borrowed from photography and other visual arts that works wonderfully in PowerPoint.
In this article, you will learn:
* What is the Rule of Thirds?
* How do photographers use the Rule of Thirds?
* How can you apply the Rule of Thirds to Your PowerPoint slides?
To create effective backgrounds in PowerPoint is one of the most challenging tasks for a presenter, as balancing visual impact, layout balance, properly matching colors while keeping great legibility is nothing that I would consider easy. Article continues
Jan has a useful post about using 3D in Powerpoint –
Many 3D effects are NOT useful. Three dimensional graphs make it harder to match the data to the value axes. Adding “random” bevels, reflections and shadows to a PowerPoint object does not make it an elegant graphical element. The fact that PowerPoint can do it, does not mean you have to use it.
Why don’t we use 3D for what it can do best: show distance? The example below shows a time line that we expect to last forever.
When it comes to bad PowerPoint presentations, most people love to blame the tool or software. However, it’s interesting that many other people can use the same tool and achieve completely different results.
You might be able to rack up the different outcomes to a person’s experience and expertise, but I believe all ‘PowerPoint evil’ can be traced back to the simple issue of time – and how we manage it or choose to spend it.
A strong post from Rowan on Powerpoint. He makes excellent points with extremely valuable supports.
If your presentation consists of a PowerPoint and the File Properties tell you that the audience will be spending more than half of your allotted time reading your slides, I would recommend staying home and sending an email.
http://fortifyservices.blogspot.com/2009/02/putting-value-on-your-audiences-time.html
Have you run into a situation where you need a photo for a slide and you either can’t find one that works and looks just right on services such as iStockPhoto or for a shot like this, you can’t justify paying for a photo of some Sharpies? You can try the Creative Commons route at flickr, but even then it’s a crap-shoot whether you’ll find something worthy of being included among your slides.
Well, a lot of us presenting slide design bloggers have suggested using your own photos in place of stock photos when you can. Not only can it be cheaper, but you’re guaranteed to be the first to use that particular photo.
Read more as Mike provides some useful tips on creating the photos
Michael Hyatt has compiled a list of the tools he uses. It is practical and very useful.
Just for grins, let’s cover some examples of logical fallacies that we often hear about PowerPoint — the tool many love to hate.
http://www.maniactive.com/states/2009/01/top-6-fallacies-about-powerpoint.html
[From Boing Boing]
So many of the epic problems that Obama is going to be wrestling with over the next four years involve systems of great complexity and scale: the bailouts and stimulus programs, our national energy use, the immense expenditures involved in fighting two wars, the global scope of climate change. Tufte would be the first person to argue that complex systems like these are not easily explained using sentences and statistics, particularly when we’re talking about such vast numbers. I can imagine a White House address on the stimulus package, or his long-term plan for energy independence, where instead of sitting at a desk reading from a teleprompter, he’s actually walking us through the problem and his proposed solution with a backdrop of visually arresting and memorable slides. That would actually make for more stimulating television, and at the same time do a better job of communicating the issues.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/01/19/the-case-for-powerpo.html
Garr at Presentation Zen has reviewed Timothy Samara’s book“Twenty Rules for Making Good Design”. He showcases 10 of the rules. Though they are basic, they are still vital and we need to be reminded of them – always …. http://adjix.com/uj7p
By Christine Kent
Streamline the process of creating slides for your speaker
Not all of us who work in communications are blessed with a strong design sense—we’re usually good with words, and we leave the design and image creation to the experts. But communications people are eventually called on to create smart, informative and eye-catching slides for an executive presentation—usually under some insanely tight deadline.
For those times when you are pressed into the “slide jockey” role, Nancy Duarte, presentation design maven, offers some advice. Duarte says the task of creating a presentation for someone else is made tougher by the fact that executives believe they are defined by their presentation style.
Recently, I’ve become aware of some emerging trends regarding presentation styles and have recognized some individuals who seem to be at the forefront of these trends. Stylistically, these trends often involve rapid, compact presentations spoken over carefully chosen words and imagery to punctuate the points being made. These ‘cut the crap’ style presentations can be surprisingly informational and quite entertaining if delivered well. It’s something that personally gets me motivated to attend events and makes me hopeful for the future of visual storytelling.
As humankind has evolved from telling stories on cave walls to seeing world leaders use PowerPoint (for better or worse) we’ve also evolved how narrative takes place. Here are some emerging trends I’ve been able to identify: http://adjix.com/428
by Joanna C. Dunlap, CPT, PhD
I attend numerous conferences, symposia, and workshops each year—both as a participant and a contributor. I am increasingly frustrated with my colleagues’ and my own performance. In general, the issue is our misuse and overuse of the standard presentation format: bulleted slide after bulleted slide.
I know there is no narration, but the slides speak for themselves … We can all become more powerful presenters using Garr’s expert techniques
This is a quick and easy way to embed a YouTube video into a PowerPoint presentation on a PC.
Have you talked in front of many people? Have you wondered what to do in order to get your ideas across?
Any public speaker who has faced a crowd of listeners knows that humor has a great effect and brings out a point like nothing else. I have talked to many presenters and all of them say they have a number of jokes up their sleeve, as well as visual gags — CARTOONS.… more
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Designing presentations without bullets is easy, but involves layout, thinking about your content and the processes you’re describing, working with images that function as metaphors, and more.
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I recommend Cliff Atkinson’s book, Beyond Bullet Points. It’s a complete system for designing and organizing presentations without bullet points.
Now for the shortcut….
It’s 9:30 in the morning and you’ve made it to the third presentation of today’s marketing meeting. The presenter is pretty much reading word for word from a deck of 40 slides, which are mostly densely worded, bulleted items with an occasional chart or graph thrown in. You have no interest in the topic, and to keep from falling asleep during the next 30 minutes, you are taking this opportunity to proofread some documents for a pressing deadline.
This is a visual display of the different types of information presentation. Deigned as a periodic table, it is well organised and can be used for all sorts of purposes – presentations, planning and information literacy come to mind.
http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html
Even the best messages can be ruined by a bad presentation. To get your information across effectively and to generate the right response from your audience, you need to know how to use audiovisual technology to your advantage.
Interested in how to improve your presentation? Read on for some audiovisual presentation dos and don’ts.
In fact there are two tricks; the first is a very simple way to download a YouTube Video and how to convert this YouTube video in all kinds of formats and the second real PowerPoint Tip and Trick is how you can insert this YouTube video download into your PowerPoint presentation
Everyone uses it, but is it the best way to present your information?
Most people who use PowerPoint of give Presentations have not had much, if any, public speaking or presentation skills training. However, we tend to copy what others are doing. I would like to suggest stop doing what everyone else is doing and do it right. The following steps will help you stand out above the rest.
It’s 9:30 in the morning and you’ve made it to the third presentation of today’s marketing meeting. The presenter is pretty much reading word for word from a deck of 40 slides, which are mostly densely worded, bulleted items with an occasional chart or graph thrown in.
You have no interest in the topic, and to keep from falling asleep during the next 30 minutes, you are taking this opportunity to proofread some documents for a pressing deadline.
Microsoft PowerPoint is like Photoshop for clip art images. In just a few clicks, you can modify existing clip art graphics in PowerPoint so that the image appear more relevant to the theme of your Presentation.
You can insert an Organization Chart by clicking Insert > Diagram > Organization Chart.
You will though realize that if the shapes are in incorrect order, you cannot reposition or reorder the shapes in the organization chart while AutoLayout is on. Here’s one simple and neat trick to reorder the shapes.
Your conclusion should do much more than simply tell your listeners that your presentation is over. Your entire presentation, in fact, can hinge on the final impression you make. It’s that last impression that can linger the longest. So preparing a strong ending to your presentation is every bit as important as preparing a strong opening
From the PowerPoint Team Blog
Some excellent secrets that expand the functionality of View Switching. I have found them incredibly useful. Thanks guys
Quick, Try This: Secrets of the PowerPoint Status Bar – View Switching Party Tricks.
From Smart business
“There’s a wonderful feature of PowerPoint, you hit the B key and it blacks the screen in show mode, most people don’t know that,” says Hamburger, the president and CEO of DeVry Inc.
When DeVry, the higher education holding company for DeVry University, Ross University, Chamberlain College of Nursing and Becker Professional Review, hit a rough patch, Hamburger got to know that B button pretty well.
This is remarkably true!! “How not to make a PowerPoint”
http://www.consultpivotal.com/videos.htm#powerpoint_not
http://www.consultpivotal.com/videos.htm#powerpoint_not
“Are you still doing speeches in the stone age?” This was the question a participant asked of a presenter at a recent conference I attended. The presenter had lugged along a box of transparency slides to show during his half-day seminar, and I admit, I was a little doubtful at first about the lack of modern technology. The presentation went well, overall, but could have clearly been enhanced by a good Microsoft PowerPoint, Lotus Freelance, or Aldus Persuasion program. Additionally, it would have been much easier to present for the speaker, and definitely lighter to carry on the airplane.
Later in the month, however, I got a different perspective when I spoke a participant in one of my seminars after the rest of the class had gone. She told me that when she first walked into the room, she was very disheartened to see a computer-generated image being shown on the screen. She confided that although she had enjoyed the presentation entirely, and that I had overcome her initial apprehension, her first reaction was:”Oh no! Not another PowerPoint Presentation”
This reaction is not unique, I’ve found. When talking to people in my seminars and social settings, the message I get is clear; People are tired of worn-out power point presentations! Does this mean we should jettison the technology and go back to the “stone age”, as one person put it, in giving our presentations? No more than we should ban television because of the likes of Jerry Springer and Temptation Island. The medium itself is not to blame, it is how that medium is used that falls short.
