I enjoy much more creative freedom using Adobe InDesign than I have using PowerPoint. With features in InDesign such as Table and Object Styles, my creation steps are reduced to a fraction of the time I once spent assembling a presentation. Furthermore, with a little refinement of some tips offered by Dallas based designer Bryan Tamayo in his article Thinking Outside the Page and reported here on Acrobat Users, I can add a little more design freedom to my slide presentations.

Take Figure 1 as an example. I find that adding icons and page numbers off the document page provide me a little more real estate for adding bullet points on the document pages.

Figure 1

Let’s take a look at the circle on the lower right side of Figure 1. To create a similar design, I start on a Master Page in Adobe InDesign. The circle is off the page and the page number is reported inside the circle. When you place objects off the page, you need to have the center-point of the object within the page boundary. To get the circle to appear off the page, we need to finesse it a little.

Draw an object in InDesign or import an object from Adobe Illustrator on to a Master Page in Adobe InDesign. For the circle in Figure 1 I add a little stroke (just a 0-point stroke with about a 1-point length) offset to the left. All you need is a dot offset from the object. When I select the objects you something similar to the selection shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

With both objects selected I choose Object > Group. When the objects are grouped the bounding box changes to what you see in Figure 3. You can see that the center-point has now changed for the circle object and when I place the graphic off the page, I can keep the center-point within the page boundary (this is essential) while the circle is completely moved off the page.

Figure 3

My next step is to add a page number to the center of the circle. I draw a text box and right align (Command/Ctrl + Shift + R) my text. I can choose my font colors and styles from the Type menu to format the font. After formatting the font, I choose Type > Insert Special Character > Markers > Current Page Number or press Option/Alt + Shift + Command/Ctrl+N to set the text to an auto page number.

Next, move the page number to the position you want to appear on the object. Select both objects as you see in Figure 4.

Figure 4

With the objects selected, again visit the Object menu and choose Group. The bounding box and page position are shown in Figure 5. Notice that the center-point falls well within the page boundary.

Figure 5

The last step to finish off this graphic is to convert the object (now grouped as a single object) to a button and set the button action. With the object selected, choose Object > Interactive > Convert to Button.

The Button Options dialog box opens. Click the Behaviors tab and choose a Behavior from the drop down menu. For my button I want to use the button action to open the next page in my slide presentation. Therefore I choose Go To Next Page.

As a last step, click the Add button so the behavior appears in the left pane as you see in Figure 6. Then click OK.

Figure 6

If you want to change the button action to an action type that doesn’t appear in InDesign, you can do so by double clicking the button with the Select Object tool in Acrobat and click the Actions tab when the Button Properties dialog box opens. In the Actions tab you can assign any action Acrobat provides you by making selections from the Select Action drop down menu.

When you convert to PDF from InDesign, make sure you check the box for Interactive Elements in the Options area of the Export Adobe PDF dialog box (shown in Figure 7) you get when you choose File > Export.

Figure 7

Some other advantages you have in using InDesign as your original authoring program for slide presentations include converting to Adobe PDF Layers, using Table and Object styles to facilitate your design creations, and using the marvelous style sheets that only InDesign provides. Once in Acrobat you can import video and sound, add page transitions, link to other PDFs and external application documents, and of course all the other functions and features Acrobat provides you.

In regard to Adobe PDF Layers, if you happen to create multi-lingual documents you can add all graphics to a background layer in InDesign and add layers for different language versions. When you convert to PDF with the Create Acrobat Layers checkbox enabled in the Export Adobe PDF dialog box, your InDesign layers are viewed as separate layers in Acrobat/Reader. When making presentations in a different language you can toggle the layer view to the language you’re addressing.

An argument many PowerPoint users may advocate is that it’s easier to modify a presentation in PowerPoint than InDesign and recreating a PDF. I don’t see using InDesign as a problem for modifying my presentations. At times I’ve had to revise an entire presentation after adding all my links in the Acrobat PDF. Assuming the links remain the same, all I had to do is convert a second document to PDF and use the Document > Replace Pages command to replace the background pages while retaining my button links in the new PDF.

What about handouts and speaker notes? Admittedly, creating handouts and speaker notes is much easier in PowerPoint than InDesign. However, you can create these items in InDesign such as you see in Figure 8.

Just create a frame and design elements on a master page and place your PDF slide presentation using the Show Import Options item in the Place dialog box when placing your slide show on the document pages. Unfortunately, you need to place each page individually making it a much more timely task than using PowerPoint —but placing PDF pages in InDesign is a matter of just loading the cursor and scrolling pages to place the PDF pages on new InDesign pages. I find the trade-off for taking a little more time with an InDesign authored presentation not to be a hassle when I need speaker notes or handouts.

Figure 8

If I’m speaking on Adobe Acrobat and PDF, then my PDF presentations provide me much more credibility with my audience.

Source: www.acrobatusers.com

In any professional association meetings, poster printing sessions have become very significant with its purpose of providing the presenters a way to connect with their audience and relay their research findings. This has become such a way of life in any organizational meetings in disciplines of the sciences that poster printing sessions are made more often than the presentation of any research paper. It seems that the science community has become more acceptable of making research studies more flexible and easier to understand.

However, a poster printing presentation is certainly neither a thesis nor a dissertation. As much as you want to put everything you have to say in your poster printing presentation, space is limited to such that it makes for a much better viewing than reading. Keep in mind that viewers of your poster printing presentation would be averse to lengthy reading, and would only be inspecting what you have done. Your lengthy explanation would be much better off in a journal or thesis that you can provide after.

Therefore, keeping it simple without sacrificing the information contained within would get you more viewers than any other kind of poster printing presentation. Here are a few suggestions that can help you come up with an effective poster printing presentation for your research:

1 - Your title should be brief and descriptive. With just one look, your viewers should be able to deduce what you have in store for them. Your title has a very solid role to play in your poster printing presentation. It’s either your title grab your viewers’ attention or they simply decide that they are not interested.

2 - A brief abstract should be able to orient the viewer to your whole poster printing presentation. Take note that it is brief. Always remember that your poster is not a journal or a thesis paper. It should be able to tell your viewers what to expect in not so many words.

3 - Provide content in a story-like fashion. Tell your research as if you have a story to convey. Just like a tale, plan your content to unfold in every information you impart such as your context, your results and analysis, and the importance of your research.

4 - As much as possible, use visual images and bulleted outlines to explain a point. Your viewers would appreciate a more visual presentation, rather than a wordy explanation. Hence, graphs and tables should be used to prove a point. But make sure that your viewers would be able to interpret them easily.

Finally, always provide a smooth and clear flow to your poster printing presentation. It won’t be any use to you if your viewers have a hard time following your poster’s sequence. In addition, you have to remember to create your poster printing pieces that even the common man can understand what you’re trying to say. You’re goal is to reach as many people as you can anyway, so try to make it as simple and as easy to understand as possible.

Source: www.goarticles.com

It has been designed from the ground up as a tool for presenters; slowly fine tuned with feedback from these professionals, people for whom presentations play an essential role in their job.

Whether an occasional PowerPoint user or, if indeed, presentations are a critical part of your job, PhonePoint will give you a competitive and polished edge when delivering PowerPoint presentations. With PhonePoint you can concentrate upon just the presentation and the audience, leaving the PC well alone.

Compatible Devices:

Nokia N93, Nokia N90, Nokia N92, Nokia N-Gage QD, Nokia N95, Nokia N76, Nokia N73, Nokia N72, Nokia N77, Nokia N75, Nokia N71, Nokia N91, Nokia N93i, Nokia N-Gage, Nokia N70, Nokia N80

Features:

• PhonePoint allows you, remotely from your phone, to move Forward, Backward and Restart your presentation.
• Seamless Bluetooth Integration (support for the Toshiba, Widcomm, BlueSoleil, Microsoft and other common bluetooth stacks).
• No user configuration - works right out of the box! Direct access to the bluetooth stack, no slow browsing-for bluetooth devices or time spent attempting to connect-to a Bluetooth device - it just works!
• Ideal for presentations using a projector - freeing you up to stand next to your presentation. No more sneaky change-slide hand signals to a colleague positioned next to the PC.
• Large and Clear display of the Current Slide’s Title and Position.
• Keep your presentation on track - counters display the time spent on the current slide and for the total presentation.
• Quickly (and Privately) access the Speaker Notes for the Current Slide on the phone’s screen.
• Supports all Series60 phones in their native screen resolutions.
• Remotely play (and stop) video and audio embedded within slides.
• Works wirelessly up to 10 meters - 30 foot from your PC.
• Fully compatible with Windows Vista and Office 2007.

Source: www.n95blog.com

In any professional association meetings, poster printing sessions have become very significant with its purpose of providing the presenters a way to connect with their audience and relay their research findings. This has become such a way of life in any organizational meetings in disciplines of the sciences that poster printing sessions are made more often than the presentation of any research paper. It seems that the science community has become more acceptable of making research studies more flexible and easier to understand.

However, a poster printing presentation is certainly neither a thesis nor a dissertation. As much as you want to put everything you have to say in your poster printing presentation, space is limited to such that it makes for a much better viewing than reading. Keep in mind that viewers of your poster printing presentation would be averse to lengthy reading, and would only be inspecting what you have done. Your lengthy explanation would be much better off in a journal or thesis that you can provide after.

Therefore, keeping it simple without sacrificing the information contained within would get you more viewers than any other kind of poster printing presentation. Here are a few suggestions that can help you come up with an effective poster printing presentation for your research:

1 - Your title should be brief and descriptive. With just one look, your viewers should be able to deduce what you have in store for them. Your title has a very solid role to play in your poster printing presentation. It’s either your title grab your viewers’ attention or they simply decide that they are not interested.

2 - A brief abstract should be able to orient the viewer to your whole poster printing presentation. Take note that it is brief. Always remember that your poster is not a journal or a thesis paper. It should be able to tell your viewers what to expect in not so many words.

3 - Provide content in a story-like fashion. Tell your research as if you have a story to convey. Just like a tale, plan your content to unfold in every information you impart such as your context, your results and analysis, and the importance of your research.

4 - As much as possible, use visual images and bulleted outlines to explain a point. Your viewers would appreciate a more visual presentation, rather than a wordy explanation. Hence, graphs and tables should be used to prove a point. But make sure that your viewers would be able to interpret them easily.

Finally, always provide a smooth and clear flow to your poster printing presentation. It won’t be any use to you if your viewers have a hard time following your poster’s sequence. In addition, you have to remember to create your poster printing pieces that even the common man can understand what you’re trying to say. You’re goal is to reach as many people as you can anyway, so try to make it as simple and as easy to understand as possible.

Source: www.goarticles.com

Padgaonkar says:

Remember, PowerPoint is simply a means to an end. It is only a visual aid. Don’t hide behind it and don’t let it overshadow the protagonist—the speaker.

Indeed. The article includes some good tips on using PowerPoint, but there’s just one overarching point I’d make: the PowerPoint presentation should be the last thing you do. You should have thought things through, written your supporting documents, and crunched your numbers before you use PowerPoint to create visual aids that will help you tell the story.

PowerPoint won’t tell the story itself, unless the story is so simplistic and dull that nobody should be wasting their time sitting in front of you to hear it. And this is why I think PowerPoint, the program, does deserve its bad reputation.

The idea of it is fine: a tool for creating slides and showing them to people. The problem is that Microsoft, in its usual fashion, then tarted it up with templates and formatting and tools that are supposed to help you create the content. And they are horrible, because they are designed to make you stupid about your content.

I once had a boss who did kick-ass presentations with PowerPoint. Of course, his slides usually consisted of a headline or a few words and images that illustrated his point. Without him speaking, they would be meaningless. With him speaking, they made you remember what he was saying and pick out the key points of his presentation.

To make PowerPoint a useful program, I recommend deleting every template that comes with it. When you are ready to work on your presentation, take out a piece of paper and pen and start sketching what you’d like it to be. Only when you have some ideas down should you fire up PowerPoint and get to work.

Otherwise, PowerPoint will be doing the thinking for you. And you know what? It’s not nearly as smart as you are.
Source: www.opinionatedmarketers.blogspot.com

The judges and top presentation gurus were Guy Kawasaki, Bert Decker, Garr Reynolds and Jerry Weissman.

Now I’ve created my share of presentations and I’ve been really proud of most of them… but these WAUW! I can’t wait to create the next presentation for a bunch of IT-executives or managers. Looking through the contributions you will quickly notice that they have a lot in common.

1. Most use very large font sizes
2. Lots of colour contrast - most have a dark background with light text
3. Each presentation tell a story
4. Graphic images are big and simple - generally just one per slide
5. Images help tell the story - often critical to understanding the text
6. Text is minimal - many of the presentations only have a few words per slide
7. Text isn’t in the same place on every slide
8. Headlines aren’t used very much - Regular sentences or “Down style” are more common
9. Text and images are static, they don’t scoot around on the page
10. Slides don’t need audio to be understood (I might have some difficulties at that, people need a reason to listen to you)

Some of my presentations are way too text-heavy and according to these 10 observations way too boring and I might not get the right message out. Now all I need to learn is how to create the beautiful and fancy graphic in Photoshop (and be creative *ahem*). You can check out the winning presentations on SlideShare’s page. Amazing what you can do with PowerPoint.
Source: www.shoutwire.com

Another Teacher Tech Article for you. This is for anyone who would like to edit a video clip from a video file or from a DVD and add that video clip to your PowerPoint presentation. There are several steps in this process - some of which you might not need if you already have a video clip on your hard drive.

Presentations and word processing are my bread and butter. That is, I earn my living writing and presenting. I have been writing Power Point presentations for years. I’m actually very good at them and occasionally freelance for my geek challenged colleagues. It is with those years of experience in mind that I was initially skeptical about using Apple’s presentation software, Keynote. That was, at least, until the first time I saw a Keynote presentation.

I think Keynote (even before this recent update) is superior to PowerPoint in both ease of use and final product. With the release of Keynote ‘08, the gap has just grown larger. For the purpose of this review, I’m going to skip over a lot of the features that already existed in Keynote and focus on the new additions. If you are not familiar with Keynote, even before the upgrade it was full of stellar templates, transitions, and text effects that made producing convincing presentations a breeze. Indeed there are even more new transitions and effects but that is just the start of some fantastic changes and additional features.

Mr. Sparks’ post continues, and is quite detailed, for those who wish to explore Keynote ‘08 in more depth; just click Another Lawyer’s Review of Keynote ‘08.

Attorney Ben Stevens, writing at The Mac Lawyer, also apparently loves the product: Another Lawyer’s Review of Keynote ‘08

You can also catch this podcast Surfbits MacReview Cast Episode 121 for even more on the subject.
Source: blog.blawg.com

Zoho Show, SlideShare, Scribd, SlideAware and Splashcast are some of the most popular hosting services for uploading PowerPoint files on the web for others to watch the slideshows online or for you to embed the presentations inside web pages.

If you want to skip the details, watch the PowerPoint embeds from all the different services compared side-by-side.[The embed feature is unavailable with ThinkFree Docs and Google PowerPoint inside GMail.]

Though we compared SlideShare and Zoho Show in the past, it’s probably time to revisit the topic with the entry of some very good PowerPoint players like the one from SplashCast and Scribd.

Scribd [review] - This may surprise some but Scribd is an excellent place for uploading PowerPoint files. The big advantage of using Scribd is that visitors can search inside the content of your PPT files right inside the viewer. Another feature unique to Scribd is Zoom which is not available in any of the other PowerPoint players. And you can select the slide number that should load at the beginning.

SplashCast - This “one size fits all” web player allows you to embed PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, MP3 songs, videos and photographs right inside one player. And you know what - SplashCast gives a skinless PPT player - the navigation bar is visible only when the visitors wants to see else it remains neatly hidden. The transition effects between slides are again very impressive.

SlideShare [review] - The most popular PowerPoint hosting service is also the most convenient one. Upload, grab the Flash embed code and paste. Slideshare create a text transcript of your PowerPoint presentations making it easier for search engines to discover your content. Presenters can learn which websites are embedding their PPT presentations which is such a useful feature. The SlideShare player looks good but you cannot resize it and there’s no autoplay option. Supports multiple uploads in one go.

Zoho Show [review] - Zoho is the only service to provide an IFRAME based embed code though the player is done in Adobe Flash like other services. With Zoho Show, viewers can jump to any slide by selecting the slide name from the drop-down in the player bar. They can also select the slide transition duration and run the slideshow. Zoho Show lets you edit your existing presentations before sharing them.

SlideAware [review] - Unlike other PowerPoint hosting services, SlideAware is mostly paid but they do have a free plan which should work for lot of presenters. The PowerPoint player of SlideAware can be resized and you can decide what buttons to display on the player skin. SlideAware provides excellent viewership stats per PPT slide - you’ll know who viewed your Presentation, when they viewed it and how long they spent on each slide.

Live Example:
You can also compare all the different PowerPoint players. Here’s a quick recommendation:

Recommendations:
If you a have a long text-based PPT, use Scribd since visitors can quickly search for text phrases.

If you want to edit the PPT online before sharing, Zoho Show is the way to go.

If you want to integrate the PowerPoint presentation with pictures from Flickr, videos from YouTube and even MP3, SplashCast is the perfect service for you. Very clean interface.

If you want a quick and easy way for sharing (multiple) PPTs, go with Slideshare. Your presentation will gain maximum visibility here.

Source: www.labnol.blogspot.com

There are always two steps to giving a presentation, and because of that there are two steps in which poor choices are made. The first is always going to be the organizational phase. The organizational phase is when all the information for a presentation is gathered, sorted and processed into a presentation. The number one mistake here is that it is done too late. Procrastinating to the night before can be hard not to do, but even giving yourself an extra day can help improve the presentation drastically.

The next example of bad presentation skills is poor ordering. Simply throwing together all the information will create a hard to deliver and hard to understand presentation. Along with the technical aspects of the organization phase, it’s often viewed in bad light when you don’t write anything down at all. Some people can naturally organize things in their head, but all people will benefit from putting it down on paper, even if it takes a little more time. These are the bad presentation skills that you should avoid during the organizational phase.

The next phase, delivery, has just as many poor presentation skills. The first and most common is muttering or speaking softly. While many people are shy in front of crowds, muttering and speaking quietly will only draw more attention to you than if you were to speak in a reasonable manner in the first place; on top of that it makes your presentation impossible to understand. The next example of bad presentation skills is ignoring the audience. Without acknowledging they are there or making eye contact the audience usually loses interest in what you have to say fast, and that will make your entire presentation wasted. Finally, don’t acknowledge mistakes during the presentation. It’s fine to discuss and reflect on how you could have done better afterwards, but don’t interrupt the flow of the presentation to dwell on a mispronounced word or mistake, simply correct yourself and move on; often times an audience won’t even realize that you had made a mistake, so acknowledging it in this fashion only makes it more pronounced. These are the bad presentation skills related to delivery.

Sure, you could invest in a dedicated prototyping tool, but you can create surprisingly quick and effective prototypes with a software program that’s probably sitting on your hard drive right now. It’s PowerPoint—and no, I am not kidding.

I’ve met many designers who use PowerPoint for blocking out screens without ever discovering the interactive features for creating hyperlinks, buttons, and dynamic mouseover effects. Yes, PowerPoint can do all that. When I show people an interactive PowerPoint prototype, someone inevitably asks what I created it in. The reaction is always the same: “PowerPoint can do that?”

Overview

To see what PowerPoint can do, here’s a sample interactive prototype created in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 for Windows. (Important: View the document in slideshow mode to see the interactivity. Links and orange buttons are clickable.)

Though there are other prototyping tools out there, here are the main reasons I lean toward PowerPoint:

• It’s fast. You can try something, hate it, and try something else—all in a matter of minutes.

• It’s low-fidelity. A PowerPoint mockup doesn’t try to look exactly like the final product, so it’s easy to work on high-level design issues and not get bogged down in details like colors or exact text. I also like being able to jot down notes in the margins of an early design, which I’ve never found a good way of doing in HTML or Flash.

• Everyone has it. One of the great things about PowerPoint is that the people on your team usually have it. You can easily email a PowerPoint prototype to people for review and feedback.

Basic Interactivity

To begin, create a simple PowerPoint mockup, each slide depicting a separate screen in your site or application. You can use shapes, text, and clipart to populate the screens. I like to leave a little space in the margins for notes and half-baked ideas.

Once your basic mockup is in place, you can add hyperlinks to text, shapes, or images. The links won’t be active in regular working mode; in slide show view, clicking on a linked object will go to a specific target screen.

Ready to give it a try? Let’s take a look at how to do it.

Note about versions: The detailed steps and screenshots in this article apply to PowerPoint 2003 for Windows. It’s possible to achieve similar results using other Windows versions of PowerPoint, but please be aware that the exact steps will vary.

Hyperlinking Text

Voila! The text is now hyperlinked. View the PowerPoint as a slideshow to see it in action.
Hint: PowerPoint automatically applies a style to text links, but only if you apply the hyperlink to the text itself, not the box around the text. You’ll probably want to change the default sea-foam green color. Here’s how:

1. Open the “Slide Design” panel from the Format menu
2. Click on “Color Schemes”
3. Click on the “Edit Color Schemes” option, which appears at the bottom of the screen.

Two settings control the color of links: The “Accent and hyperlink” color (for active links) and the “Accented and followed hyperlink” color (for visited links).

Creating Buttons and Hyperlinked Images

Follow the same basic process to create buttons and images that link to other screens.

Right-click on the image or button. (I use a simple rectangle to represent a button.)

Hint: Try giving hyperlinked buttons a different color so you (and reviewers) can tell which ones are active in the prototype.

Simulating the Back Button

PowerPoint has a “back” control, but it steps back to the previous slide in the presentation. With hyperlinks, this may not be the slide the user just viewed.
If you want a back button that lets the user get back to the screen he came from, you’ll need to build it yourself. Here’s how:

That’s it! Now, when viewed in slideshow mode, this link will take the user back to the screen he just viewed.
Hint: Even without a back button, you can go back in slideshow mode by right-clicking anywhere on a slide and selecting “Last Viewed.” However, keep in mind that other people who click through your prototype might not know this.

Advanced Interactivity

PowerPoint can go beyond basic hyperlinks and simulate dynamic behavior, such as mouseover effects for a Rich Internet Application.

Creating Mouseover Effects

Start with two slides: one “before” the mouseover effect and one “after.”

On the “before” slide, right-click on the item that will trigger the mouseover effect, and select “Action Settings…”

second dialog box will let you select the “After” slide.

Now, in slide show view, mousing over the item you selected will switch to the target slide: the one that shows the “after” mouseover effect.

Hint: There’s no “mouse out” effect in PowerPoint. The best way I’ve found to simulate it is a bit clunky, but it gets the job done:

1. On the “After” slide, draw some boxes around the item you want to apply the mouse-out effect to.
2. Apply a mouseover action to the boxes around the object. (For example, if you want to return to the previous slide when you mouse off an item, give the boxes around the item a mouseover effect that returns to the previous slide.)
3. Make the surrounding boxes transparent.

Mouseover behaviors can get out of control quickly in PowerPoint. This is partly because creating the mouse-out behavior is awkward, and partly because you need to create “after” screens for each individual mouseover effect. PowerPoint can help you try out a mouseover behavior (e.g., wire up a single example), but for prototypes with lots of dynamic effects—or many instances of the same effect—you’re probably better off with another tool.

Other Tips & Tricks

Use slide masters for persistent navigation

If your mockup uses a persistent navigation framework (tabs, left navigation items, etc.), create the navigation elements in a slide master, and apply hyperlinks that lead from the master to individual screens. This way, each slide you create will already have the navigation built in. If you need to make changes, edit the master and the changes will automatically apply throughout the prototype.

Disable standard slideshow controls

Even with interactive elements in place, PowerPoint continues to work like a slideshow: clicking a slide advances to the next one. This can be disorienting for people using your prototype. When they click on something you didn’t make interactive (which—trust me—they will), the slideshow will advance to something that doesn’t make sense.

To avoid this confusion, I suggest turning off the slideshow behavior. Your hyperlinks will still work, but clicking outside them won’t advance the slideshow.

Note: In PowerPoint 2007 for Windows Vista, this feature is under the “Action” item on the Insert ribbon.

Conclusion

It’s possible to take the interactivity a step further with the Control Toolbox and ActiveX controls in PowerPoint, but I find that the techniques outlined here are all I need for early-stage prototypes. They help me test-drive an interactive design, get feedback, and make improvements early in the process.

Of course, PowerPoint isn’t right for every project. Here are some trade-offs to keep in mind if you’re deciding whether PowerPoint is a good fit for what you’re doing:

• Sample interactions vs. all interactions. PowerPoint works well for creating a skeleton of a site or application and for testing individual interactions. But since it’s not especially object-oriented, it can be awkward to apply the same basic interaction to multiple things. For example, imagine a list where each item leads to a separate details screen. You can do this in PowerPoint, but each individual page and each individual link need to be created manually. It’s a lot of work, you wind up with a huge file, and God help you if you need to modify anything. Keep PowerPoint in mind for sample interactions, but if you’re looking to build a complete prototype where everything is truly functional, keep looking.
• Low-fidelity vs. high-fidelity. PowerPoint is great for testing interactivity, but it won’t give you a realistic sense of what any one screen will really look like. You’re not going to get a sense of exact layout from PowerPoint. Also, remember that PowerPoint screens don’t scroll, so if you’re designing for the Web, your mockups won’t necessarily get a full-size picture of any one screen.

Overall, PowerPoint can be a blessing for interaction designers who want to create interactive prototypes quickly and easily. Interactive PowerPoint mockups can give a flavor for how a site or application will feel when you move through it—which is what interaction design is all about.

Source: www.boxesandarrows.com

This slideshow feature of GMail will be useful since you no longer have to download the full PPT attachment in order to view that 16th slide of the presentation.

Here are two additional situations where it may help:

1. If you have to view a presentation on some computer that has no copy of PowerPoint, gmail yourself the PPT file and watch the slides inside the web browser. [similar to converting PDF to text using GMail]

2. GMail converts every slide of your Powerpoint presentation to a Flash (swf) file - if you manually advance the entire PPT slideshow using the arrows, all the slides will become available as Flash files in your browser’s temp folder.

Just a quick way of transforming Powerpoint slides into SWF documents without using any desktop conversion software. The swf files may then be embedded in your blog for sharing with readers. Nothing great since Scribd can also convert your PPT to Flash paper.

Do you know if GMail Powerpoint viewer can read PPS (Powerpoint Show) formats.

Source: www.labnol.blogspot.com

The problem with PowerPoint is that you need to become a multi-media guru to use it effectively! From flashing text to animated images, it’s great if you have hours to indulge your creative passion, but on the most part, if you don’t’ know what you are doing, it can turn into a dot point disaster. To take the stress out of your learning process, let me illustrate seven key ideas to ensure your PowerPoint presentation is not an invitation to switch off!

1. TRY NOT TO USE ALL THE BELLS AND WHISTLES IN THE ONE PRESENTATION.

Use the KISS principle - Keep it Simple Sweetheart. A master of anything knows that less is always best. You need action BUT you also need inaction.

2. TRY TO BE CONSISTENT IN YOUR STYLING AND CHOICE OF IMAGES.

A sloppy presentation will give the impression that you don’t really know what you are doing. Different background colours on each page, different sized headers, different size text and inconsistency in the colour of texts and style of images all point to a lack of skill. A PowerPoint presentation is like creating a book or a magazine. People are conditioned to expect that each page will have the relevant information located in the same places. They also want to be visually stimulated by interesting imagery. You can get some great free images online at places like http://www.sxc.hu, so don’t just rely on Microsoft for your images.

3. TRY TO AVOID USING THE PRESET SOUNDS

Its lovely that PowerPoint has some preset sounds like applause, bells and typewriter but for most these are just plain annoying noise. If you want to add some sounds, find professional sound library and select sounds that add rather than take away from your presentation. Also, avoid the trap of sending people off to sleep with the beautiful piano or peace themed background music.

4. BE CAREFUL WITH YOUR CHOICE OF COLORS.

Remember that some colors are hard to read on different colored backgrounds, especially if you are presenting to older people who find text on the dark shades difficult to interpret.

5. PRACTICE THE PRESENTATION USING THE TIMING FEATURE

If you practice first, you will know that you are going to be able to get through the presentation in the set time frame. Don’t forget to allow time for interruptions and questions. Real people use up time. Unlike using notes and winging it, you can’t easily jump ahead a slide or two if you are running out of time, so bear this in mind when creating your presentation.

6. INTERSPERSE YOUR PRESENTATION WITH ACTIVITIES.

Get people actively engaged in discussions and in activities as at the end of the session you will find they are far more satisfied if they have been able to participate. With modern media containing flashing images and fast changing visual stimulus, people are conditioned to a flashy visual feast. If you put them in front of a dot pointed PowerPoint for hours on end, they are going to switch off. Mix it up for their sake.

7. VIEW THE POWERPOINT AS A SUPPORT, NOT THE MAIN SHOW

Try not to just read each slide out aloud as you don’t have to be a subject specialist to read dot points. You may as well give them a print out of the slide show and send them away. While we are on the dot points, PowerPoint exists for summarised information. If you type big blocks of text you will have to use a number of successive pages to fit it all in, so try to avoid long blocks of text. A simple handout can help you to overcome the need for more detailed information. Use dot points to effect by choosing your words carefully

I remember how joyful I was when I first started using PowerPoint back in the early 1990’s. Unfortunately, since then I have sat through too many boring PowerPoint presentations where the presenter had limited imagination and no creativity. I still believe that PowerPoint can be a powerful tool for creating animated presentations if you but it requires the user to take the time to investigate what the program can do.

As a Business Trainer that often gets rated at the top end of the scale, my advice is: be creative if you want, but remember that at the end of the day, artwork is subjective and people’s tastes often differ! You don’t need to be a multi-media guru to put on a great presentation, however, following the seven rules presented will start you on the process and ensure your presentation does become a dot point disaster!
Source: www.helium.com

SlideShare is a great online application that lets you upload and share PowerPoint presentations (or Keystone for Mac users and OpenOffice presentations for those of you who are open source minded). Back when the company launched in October 2006, Techcrunch hailed them as Powerpoint and YouTube combined. PowerPoint presentations showcased in a YouTube interface, a perfect solution to sharing with or showing to a group.

Presentations are hosted online and you can provide a unique URL for each of your slide shows. You can tag your presentation for others to find it online, and choose favourites or get inspired by other members. SlideShare also allows you to imbed your uploaded presentation into another website or blog, so that you can host your presentation on their site, but make it available anywhere.

One possible drawback is that all files have to be made public and are searchable by the SlideShare network. Not a huge deal by and large, but it may make you think twice before you add any slides with financials or confidential company data.

SlideShare recently added a new feature to make their application even more powerful. Slidecasting allows users to sync a PowerPoint presentation with an mp3 file.

Slidecasting is a new multimedia format for viewing slide decks synchronized with an audio file. It is for conference talks, musical slideshows, audio picture books or whatever else you can imagine.

Slidecasting is like a PowerPoint presentation crossed with a podcast, and it provides an excellent free option for online demos - without large scale, expensive (and often clunky) applications. Best of all it’s free, and doesn’t require plugins or players like Java and Flash. Slidecasting takes Slideshare even further down the PowerPoint + YouTube path, and offering a versatile tool for sharing ideas.
Source: www,webnamesblog.ca

Yesterday Laurence talked about the challenges that a multitude of interfaces can present a solution builder, specifically in the context of ECM, and today Billy added his thoughts.
While both posts seem to be focused more on visual interfaces (UI) than
non-visual interfaces, the concerns raised apply to interfaces in
general.

Here are my thoughts:

• I very much agree that it’s more a matter of should than can.
  Is the new UI or user experience relevant to my business? Does a new
  experience enable the retirement of any other experiences? Does a new
  experience lower training costs (e.g. is it more intuitive to my users)?
• At some level, all user experiences from a vendor should be
  consistent. However, one must also consider where ultimate experience
  control resides. For example, I see at least two major categories of
  users where ECM applications are concerned: (1) those who prefer a
  standalone experience, typically within their web browser of choice,
  and (2) those who prefer that the vendor provide an integrated
  experience within the primary applications serving the business’s
  knowledge work (e.g. Office applications, a third party portal, etc.).
• I agree with Laurence: UI should serve the task at hand; not the
  other way around. You have a job to accomplish and the provided
  experience should clarify and simplify that job–even anticipate next
  steps, etc.
• How a business is run and wants to be run will determine whether or
  not a solution has one or more graphical/visual aspects. Knowledge work
  is becoming more specialized; so, each user experience should be
  tailored specifically to the particular link in the value chain it
  serves. Some have called this approach “purpose-built applications” or
  “task-centric experiences.” At the same time, there are horizontal
  (cross-cutting) concerns with visual needs, too (e.g. CIO dashboards,
  BAM, management consoles for admins, etc.).

When you provide presentation tier code as part of your
solution–”whole cloth UI’s” as Billy calls them, you should acknowledge
that users can be a fickle bunch (read: today’s Lexus experience will
become a Yugo eventually–it’s a matter of when, not if).

So you should have a well-factored architecture that separates
business logic and services, which serve all your UI’s, from
application logic and services, which serve a particular UI (e.g.
web-based, Office-based, etc.). Doing so, should produce a “thin
veneer” for a presentation layer, which is easier to evolve or replace.
Again, the UI serves the task at hand; over time, a new UI may serve the task better.
Source: www.craigrandall.net

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We have found ourselves in the business world so concerned about being politically correct, well practiced and prepared for anything that we have forgotten that all presentations to be effective must be heard, they must be engaging, and they must be interesting enough to listen to when the speaker is delivering the information.

Middleton doesn’t use power point presentations (3P).

He has convinced me that I will not use them much any more either, except when I am faced with the CEO who will have it no other way.

When making a presentation to our audience, even if it is an informational and educational piece, the objective should be to get the audience to understand and appreciate our point of view.

We are faced with the challenge of getting the listener to, at the least, understand our position and be sympathetic to it.

Power point presentation, no matter how well done they are, simply won’t accomplish that for you.

Middleton points out that this is what you must do to persuade the audience to your viewpoint.  

Have a Purpose

The presentation must be an organized set of points. It is best told as a story, and certainly here in West Kentucky we understand the importance of good story telling. The story must have a theme (a reason) for being told and it must lead to a logical conclusion.  

Start with a Problem

Your audience will listen to you, if you explain to them the problem at hand. What is at risk if the problem is not solved? Make it clear how the problem is not only your problem but their problem as well. What happens to them if they don’t fix the problem?  

Direct Them Towards a Payoff

Remember our audience is interested only in the WIIFM - “What’s in it for them (me)?” If you can clearly explain what they can get out of doing, whatever it is you want them to do, and how it benefits them if they do it, then you have them hooked and will have their “buy-in.” Paint their future for them and explain the “payoff” clearly and how it will look, feel, sound and be different when they have completed the tasks.  

Explain What They Need to Do

The main focus of the presentation should be this. Outline your approach in detail and how to take each step forward. This is where most people feel compelled to do the dreaded 3P. However, you don’t need fancy slides, or even any slides to get this done. Simply, think clearly, outline the points, use good logic and lots of engaging stories to make your points.  

Ask for Action

Make your case and then ask them to take the next step forward with you. Ask the audience to adopt your position, take your stand, and take the next step as you have clearly outlined it.  

Be Spontaneous

If you have a good story to tell, that makes your case and a good presentation to give, you can stop being worried about being careful. When we are authentic with ourselves, and our audience, both parties know it, understand it, feel it, hear it in our language and see it in our actions.
Source: www.darrylarmstrong.wordpress.com

Setting up Powerpoint for graphics editing

Under the view menu select grids and guides. Select snap objects to grid and select 1/16th as the grid size. Make sure the display grid on screen checkbox is checked. On the right side menu click the “blank” layout box (this gets the annoying text boxes out of your way)

Under the view menu select toolbars and make sure the drawing toolbar has a check mark next to it.

The drawing toolbar is where you will import your graphics, select AutoShapes, and select WordArt.

Importing Your Pictures

Once you have your screen setup you can import your first picture. To do this click on the insert picture icon from the drawing toolbar, select the picture file you want to import, and click OK. This will put your picture on the screen.

Click and drag the corner handles of the picture to resize it. Don’t use the center handles as this will distort the picture. Resize the picture to the size you want it. In the case of this tutorial I resized the picture to 2 grid blocks high by three grid blocks wide. In my version of Powerpoint, each grid box represents approximately 150 pixels, so my resized picture will be 300 pixels high by 450 pixels wide.

This is a good size for e-mail and the resulting file size will be much smaller than the original picture.

To Save The Resized Picture: Right click on your resized picture and click Save As Picture from the menu. For a finished picture that you want to e-mail or use on your website, chose the JPG format. This will result in the smallest file size. If you are going to bring your picture back into Powerpoint for use with AutoShapes, use the PNG or TIF format.

File Size Reduction: Resizing our picture from almost full screen to a 2×3 grid size resulted in a much reduced file size when saved as a JPG.

Original size: 600H x 900W = 256K 

Reduced size: 300H x 450W = 14K

When you send pictures by e-mail, a small file size is a must for people who have dial up internet connections. Using Powerpoint is a quick way to modify your large digital camera pics for sending by e-mail.

Adding a Border To Our Picture: To add a quick border to our picture, right click on your resized picture and click Format Picture. In the box that opens select the Colors & Lines tab. In the Line section, set the color, line type, and size in the boxes. Click OK.

You can create some interesting borders easily with this tool. Experiment with different colors and line sizes until you get the look you want. By clicking on the color box and selecting patterned lines, you can create all sorts of creative borders. Experiment and have fun with this tool.

Importing Pictures Into AutoShapes: You can easily import your pictures into different AutoShapes as a background for a lot of creative effects. Using the grid decide how big you want your final picture to be.

In the example above I resized my original picture to two grid blocks high by three grid blocks wide. I saved the reduced size picture as a PNG file to my computer.

I then created an AutoShape from the AutoShape menu (On the Drawing Toolbar) that was the same size. I dragged the AutoShape to two grid blocks high by three grid blocks wide. Now I had a picture and a shape that were both the same size.

To import my saved picture as a background, I right clicked on my AutoShape and clicked Format Auto Shape from the menu. In the box that comes up, click on the color box under the fill section . Then click on the Fill Effects selection. In the resulting box, click on the Picture tab. In the picture dialog box click the Select Picture box and select the reduced picture you saved to your computer above. Make sure to click a checkmark into the Lock Picture Aspect Ratio checkbox. Click OK.

Your picture will now be the background of your AutoShape. In our picture above you can see some of the great graphics you can create using this technique. Make sure you save the resulting pictures as PNG files so they will have transparent edges. You can use these great graphics on web pages, word documents, and objects in your next Powerpoint presentation.

Here is a full size example showing the transparent edges and great quality of the PNG file. Have fun with this and experiment with different AutoShapes, colors, and border effects.
Source: www.successbeginstoday.org

The PowerPoint viewer is pretty simple. When you click on “View as a slideshow” a new browser tab opens up with the first slide. You can click back and forth, but you can’t organize the slides or edit them in any way.

Google does plan to add presentations to its online office suite this summer. In April the company purchased Tonic Systems, a company with experience in document conversion and presentation applications. The email preview option is probably just a sneak peak of things to come.

It’s still pretty useful. Most computer users can go their whole lives without ever needing to create a slideshow presentation. But it’s pretty handy to have an application that can read them without shelling out the big bucks on Office. Of course, there’s always Open Office, but if all you need is a presentation viewer, installing Open Office is sort of like swatting at a fly with a shotgun.
Source: www.fanpotai.wordpress.com

Tip #1 Get on the same version
If at all possible, everyone should work on the same version of PowerPoint that will be used to present with. I had a situation earlier this year with a client where their older version of PowerPoint did not support some of the animation and transparency features that I had used in designing the slides. In this case I had to design down to the version they were using.

Tip #2 Use viewer if necessary
One solution to different versions of PowerPoint being used is to use the PowerPoint Viewer to be able to see the presentation as it has been designed. The Viewer is available for download from Microsoft and will allow you to show the latest features even if you have an older version of the full PowerPoint program.

Tip #3 Keep Updated
Make sure that everyone on the team has updated their version of PowerPoint with the latest service packs from Microsoft. I recently had a client that kept seeing a black box around some graphics I had created. It turned out that it was because I was using a transparent background in the graphic and without the service pack, it would not appear properly. Once they updated their PowerPoint, everything looked fine.

Tip #4 Meet via the Web
One of the best investments I made last year was signing up for a web meeting tool. It allows me to schedule a web meeting to review slides or to spontaneously show examples to a client who has just called me. Last year I completed a project that had people in the U.S. and the U.K. and myself in Canada where we never met each other in person. It was all done via web meetings and they were thrilled at the way it worked at the time and cost savings. You can check out the service I use at snipurl.com/webinarhost

Don’t be concerned the next time you have to collaborate with colleagues on a presentation. Follow good presentation practices, like setting goals and preparing an outline before you start, and use the above tips to make the creation run smoothly.

Featured in the Members Site this week is a video on how to download and use the PowerPoint Viewer mentioned in tip #2 above. I carry it with me on a USB drive just in case the computer I am presenting from has an old version of PowerPoint. Not a member? Join at members.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.
Source: www.pptideas.blogspot.com

You can also add comments to slides in a PowerPoint presentation. The comments are sort of like side notes.

To add a comment in PowerPoint 2007:

1. Click the appropriate slide within a presentation.
2. On the Review tab, in the Comments group, click New Comment.
3. Type in the information you want to appear in the comment and click outside the comment box.

Source: www.lockergnome.com

PowerPoint 2000 and 2002 contain two features to do this:

The Speaker Notes feature lets you add notes during a presentation. From slide show view, right-click and choose Speaker Notes. A dialog box opens, where you can type notes for each slide. These notes are automatically added to the Notes pane and you can see them afterwards in normal view.

The Meeting Minder feature (from slide show view, right-click and choose Meeting Minder) lets you take minutes and assign action items to individuals with a due date. You can view them later in PowerPoint from slide show view by opening the Meeting Minder again, or export them to Microsoft Word, where you need to save the document. Content on the Action Items tab becomes a separate slide, called Action Items.

I think these features are very useful, but Microsoft apparently doesn’t. I assume that their research showed that people didn’t use them. PowerPoint 2003 didn’t include the Meeting Minder. Then PowerPoint 2007 removed Speaker Notes! You now need to return to pen and paper — or do you?

The following technique comes from Sonia Coleman’s site; the credit for this tip goes to her.

1. Create your presentation.
2. Insert a new slide at the beginning of the presentation; you can give it a title of “Notes” or “Minutes.” This slide is now slide 1.
3. Add a blank action button; the Action Settings dialog box automatically opens. Choose the Hyperlink To option and choose Last Slide Viewed from the drop-down list. Click OK. This will return you to your current slide when you’re done entering notes. Type Return to label the button. (If typing doesn’t work, right-click the button, and choose Add Text. )

4. Choose Slide Show > Set Up (Slide) Show. In the Show Slides section of the dialog box, choose the From option and change the first number to 2. This starts your presentation at slide 2, so that the Notes slide never appears until you hyperlink to it. Click OK.

5. Choose View > Toolbars > Control Toolbox. (In PowerPoint 2007, click the Developer tab. If you don’t have a Developer tab, click the Office button at the upper-left corner, and choose PowerPoint Options. On the Popular pane, check the Show Developer Tab in the Ribton check box. Click OK.)
6. Click the Text Box button  and drag a rectangle on your slide with enough width to comfortably enter notes.

7. With the text box selected, right-click and choose Properties to display the Properties sheet. Click the Categorized tab. Change the settings marked with arrows as shown here:

• Value: Provides pre-entered text if you want it. The Data item automatically changes to match the Value item.
• EnterKeyBehavior: Set to True so that pressing Enter starts a new line.
• MultilLine: Set to True so that the text box can have multiple lines of text.
• WordWrap: Set to True so that the text wraps if you enter a long line of text.
• Font: Choose a font that you’re sure will exist on the computer you’re presenting on.
• ScrollBars: Set to 2-fmScrollBarsVertical to display a vertical scrollbar when you add enough text.

Feel free to play with the other settings to see if they’re useful to you.

8. Close the Properties window by clicking its Close button.
9. To make the Notes slide available from all other slides, open the slide master (View > Master > Master Slide; View > Slide Master in 2007) and insert the blank action button. From the Hyperlink drop-down list, choose Slide. In the Hyperlink to Slide dialog box, choose 1.Notes. Click OK. (You can’t choose First Slide, because that’s slide 2!) As you did earlier, add a lable such as Add Notes, or similar text. Close the Slide Master. If you want access to the Notes slide from only certain slides, add individual action buttons on those slides instead of on the slide master.

10. If you want to use this presentation as a template for future presentations, save it and then save it again under a new name. Use the new presentation for now. You can go back to the first presentation and delete all the content from slides 2 on, so that it really works as a template.
11. Test the presentation. When you open it in slide show view, it should start with slide 2. On any slide that has a button (all of them if you put the button on the slide master), click the Return Add Notes button to go to the Notes slide. You can enter text in the text box. When you’re done, click Return to return to the previous slide you were on.

Because all the notes go on the same Notes slide, you may want to start each note with a notation about the slide you’re working on, perhaps by entering its title.

If you add text to test the text box, you can always delete it in normal view.

After the presentation, when you return to normal view, you’ll be prompted to save the file when you close it. Saving the file will save the notes.

Later, you can open the file in normal view. To copy and paste the notes, select the text box, right-click, and choose TextBox Object > Edit. You’ll now be able to select the text, copy it, and paste it.
Source: www.ellenfinkelstein.com

PowerPoint 2003 has enhanced the slide sorter feature to make it a little simpler to reorganize and reorder your slides. Once your presentation is open, click View and select Normal. Your slides will appear as thumbnails in a list on the left side of the window. You can display any slide in a larger view by clicking on the appropriate thumbnail. If you want to quickly change the order of the slides, simply click a thumbnail, drag it, and drop it where you want the slide located in the list of thumbnails.
Source: www.lockergnome.com

Getting started

• Plan what you want to put on the slides (which will be different to, and much less than, what you want to say!)
• Start, end and middle etc. Find the images you might need and save them somewhere. If you intend to use links to web sites, store them as Favourites or Bookmarks
• Use the defaults. Leave the fonts alone. Type where suggested. Ignore all the designs and groovy backgrounds (at least until the content is finished)
• Use supplied slide layouts. Don’t add your own text areas to a blank slide unless all your doing is a picture show
• Use a Master slide for anything that needs to appear on every slide (like a corporate logo, name, date etc.

Source: www.studyzone.pbwiki.com

“It takes one hour of preparation for each minute of presentation time.”

- Wayne Burgraff

Note: This guest post was written by personal development blogger Scott Young. You can check out his website here.

Communication is a skill. That means if you want to blow the interviewer away, knock them out with your slide show or have them cheering after your speech you need to practice. Unfortunately since formal presentations, interviews and speeches are often an infrequent occurrence, you can’t become a master overnight.

But even in my own limited speaking I’ve discovered a couple hacks that can be used to improve your communication right away. They can work immediately to give you an edge in an upcoming event.

Hack #1: Rephrase Questions

When you get asked a question, spend a few seconds to rephrase the question. If you are giving a speech to an audience this has the first benefit of clearly stating the audience members question for everyone to hear. But the hidden benefit of doing this is that it gives you a few extra seconds to prepare a response.

Polished professional speakers and interview veterans can prepare for common questions in advance with a great reply. But if you don’t have the experience or a question throws you off balance, you can maintain composure by rephrasing the question. To everyone it looks as if you immediately knew an eloquent response, but in reality you were given a few seconds to process a response.

Hack #2: Pause, Don’t Trip

When you are nervous, everything get’s magnified. During an interview, speech or presentation forgetting what you intended to say or losing your flow of speech can be terrifying. When this happens remember to stop and take a deep breath. This pause feels incredibly unnatural for the speaker, but it is usually barely noticed by the audience.

Pausing is far better than tripping over your words and making incoherent sentences. Most people end up speaking too fast when they feel nervous, so intentionally slowing down and taking time to pause can prevent tripping over your words which is a lot more noticeable.

Hack #3: Write Out the Tricky Parts

If you have to talk for over five or ten minutes, it can be difficult and incredibly time-consuming to prepare every single word of your speech and memorize it. Many professional speakers instead choose to just write major topic headings so they understand the structure but can deliver the speech naturally.

When you get a chance to practice your presentation, notice points where you trip up. These are usually the same points you will have trouble with when presenting. Write out those few sentences word for word before presenting. The easy parts of your speech will continue to flow and you can be thoroughly prepared to handle the harder parts.

Hack #4: Watch Your Apologies

Never apologize when the goal of that apology is to soften the criticism of the audience. Some speakers apologize for appearing nervous when giving a speech. The truth is most the people in the audience wouldn’t have realized the speaker was nervous until he apologized for it. Apologizing from where you lack confidence only draws more attention to your weaknesses and detracts from your performance.

Apologies for legitimate errors are acceptable, but apologies designed to elicit sympathy won’t help your performance.

Hack #5: Don’t Distract With Powerpoint

Powerpoint presentations are very popular among presenters. But remember that as a speaker you want the focus to be on you. Slides should enhance your presentation, not form a backup. If I can get all the information I need out of your slides, why should I pay attention to you?

If you watch any presentations done by hugely successful speaker and marketer Seth Godin, you quickly notice how many of his slides are nothing more than a single image or word. These slides enhance the message he is trying to convey but they don’t steal the spotlight since they don’t contain enough information to distract.

If you are going to be doing a lot of presentations, interviews or formal communications in your work or life, I’d suggest joining Toastmasters. A non-profit organization dedicated to improving communication skills they can give you practice. But if you are concerned about an approaching presentation you’ll just have to hack it.
Source: www.ririanproject.com

- Click the Add Effect button on the task pane
- Select Entrance
- Select More Effects What appears is every animation effect available to you.

They are grouped into four categories: Basic, Subtle, Moderate and Obnoxious (actually, the fourth category is Exciting, but they can be considered obnoxious if you’re not careful in choosing them). When you click on one, you’ll see the bulleted list come in using that animation. (Don’t worry that all bullets come in one after another at this point. Once you’ve actually selected it, you can control when they arrive). By clicking OK, you select that animation for that list. You’ll notice that the bulleted list will have small numbers in a square box next to their position on the slide. This will tell you the order in which they will appear. (Hmmm, does this mean I can modify that to bring them in the order I choose - you bet it does!). You’ll see a reference to the animation which you chose in a box beneath the Add Effect button. Some options you can easily control include: - Start - By default, the animations appear when you click your mouse. Do you want them to appear simultaneously? Select “With Previous”. How about timed? Try “After Previous” (with the little clock next to it, it’s a dead giveaway)

- Direction - Need I describe what this does? (try it…you’ll like it).
- Speed - See above comment. Now, if you’re really adventurous, click the drop down arrow next to the animation listing in box below Direction and Speed. A world of customization options appear. One choice you may want to play with is “Effect Options”. This leads you further down the road of customizing your animation to your liking. So remember, Slide Transition applies a transition effect from one slide to another (and is best used with a single transition per presentation). Animation focuses on movement within a single slide. So, Death to PowerPoint? I think not.  Death to speakers who don’t know how to use PowerPoint properly? Now you’re on to something.
Source: www.schoollibraryjournal.com

1. Make the presentation relevant.

One of the most common mistakes people make is to use a generic presentation. They say the same thing in every presentation and hope that something in their presentation will appeal to the prospective customer. I have been victim to this approach more times than I care to remember having been subjected to many “canned” PowerPoint presentations.

The discussion of your product or service must be adapted to each person; modify it to include specific points that are unique to that particular customer. If you use PowerPoint, place the company’s logo on your slides and describe how the key slides relate to their situation. Show exactly how your product or service solves their specific problem. This means that it’s critical to ask your prospect probing questions before you start talking about your company.

2. Create a connection between your product/service and the prospect.

In a presentation to a prospective client, I prepared a sample of the product they would eventually use in their program. After a preliminary discussion, I handed my prospect the item his team would be using – instead of telling him about the item, I placed it in his hands. He could then see exactly what the finished product would look like and examine it in detail. He was able to ask questions and see how his team would use it in their environment.

Also, remember to discuss the benefits of your products, not the features. Tell your customer what they will get by using your product versus your competitors.

3. Get to the point.

Today’s business people are far too busy to listen to long-winded discussions. Know what your key points are and learn how to make them quickly. I remember talking to a sales person who rambled at great length about his product. After viewing his product and learning how much it would cost I was prepared to move ahead with my purchase. Unfortunately, he continued talking and he almost talked himself out of the sale. Make sure you know what key points you want to discuss and practice verbalizing them before you meet with your prospect.

4. Be animated.

The majority of sales presentations I have heard have been boring and unimaginative. If you really want to stand out from the crowd make sure you demonstrate enthusiasm and energy. Use voice effectively and vary your modulation. A common mistake made when people talk about a product they are very familiar with is to speak in a monotone - causing the other person to quickly lose interest in your presentation.

I recommend using a voice recorder to tape your presentation. This will allow you to hear exactly what you sound like as you discuss your product. I must profess to being completely humiliated when I first used this tactic. As a professional speaker, I thought all my presentations were interesting and dynamic – I soon learned that my stand-up delivery skills were much better than my telephone presentation skills.

5. Use showmanship.

In The Sales Advantage, an example is given of a vending sales person laying a heavy sheet of paper on the floor, saying, “If I could show you how that space could make you some money, would you be interested?” Consider the impact of this approach compared to the typical approach of saying something like, “We can help you make more money.” What can you do to incorporate some form of showmanship into your presentation?

6. Use a physical demonstration.

A friend of mine sells sales training; he often uses the whiteboard or flipchart in the prospect’s boardroom during his presentation. Instead of telling his client what he will do, he stands up and delivers a short presentation. He writes down facts and figures, draws pictures, and records certain comments and statements from the discussion. This approach never fails to help his prospect make a decision.

7. Lastly, believe in your product/service.

Without doubt, this is the most critical component of any presentation. When you discuss solutions, do you become more animated and energetic? Does your voice display excitement? Does your body language exhibit your enthusiasm? If not, you need to change your approach. After all, if you can’t get excited about your product, how can you expect your customer to become motivated enough to buy?

Kelley Robertson, President of the Robertson Training Group, works with businesses to help them increase their sales and motivate their employees. He is also the author of “Stop, Ask & Listen – Proven sales techniques to turn browsers into buyers.” Visit the Robertson Training Group and receive a FREE copy of “100 Ways to Increase Your Sales” by subscribing to his 59-Second Tip, a free weekly e-zine.
Source: www.sbinfocanada.about.com

I’ve sat through more than my fair share of boring slides filled with clichéd clip art and masses of boring undersized text.

Thing is I can’t help thinking powerpoint is not to blame. It’s surely the person putting the presentation together.

They’re so concerned with squeezing in every ounce of detail that they leave themselves with nothing to talk about.

This week I got lumbered with the job of putting together a powerpoint for a major telco client.

Rather than a brief, they gave me two presentations done for internal use.

There was not an ounce of white space to be seen on any of the slides. Hardly any pictures either.

So I took out my favourite pink highlighter and highlighted the key points. These became the basis of the new presentation.

I then took a large proportion of the remaining info and included it in the ‘notes’ section.

Next up I searched the client image library for some interesting pics, which really helped to lift the whole thing.

Suffice to say the client loved it. Best powerpoint they’ve ever seen apparently.

The key to my success was the use of the ‘notes’ section. Without these notes the powerpoint didn’t make a lot of sense.

By including them the client felt comfortable with an incomplete story that they were able to complete during the presentation.

If I’d left them out they’d have taken one look at the slides and panicked.

So there you have it. Powerpoint is innocent.
Source: www.branddna.blogspot.com

You can use a picture as the background image on a slide in your presentation by following the steps that I describe below:

1. Select the slide for which you want to change the background.
2. On the Design tab, in the Background group, click Background Styles.
3. Click Format Background.
4. Click Fill.
5. Click Picture or texture fill.
6. Click File, locate and double click the picture you want to use as the background.
7. Click Close.

PowerPoint applies the picture you selected as the background to your slide.
Source: www.lockergnome.com

The Functional Abstract

“What if I told you that you never had to make an object invocation again? Using an Inversion of Control container like Windsor Container from the Castle Project ( www.castleproject.org) will enable you to code to abstractions without worrying about wiring up your object dependencies. In this session I will take an example application built without using Windsor Container and refactor it towards a cleaner design utilizing Windsor Container and Inversion of Control. During the course of refactoring towards using Windsor Container you will be introduced to some of the benefits that using an Inversion of Control container can bring to your project. ”

This is all well and good - it describes what you are doing.  But all it is doing is describing what you are presenting - nothing else!!  So let’s look at what we call:

The Orgasmic Abstract

“Object invocation.  Who likes it?  NOBODY.  What if I told you that you never had to make an object invocation ever again IN YOUR LIFE?    You’d probably wet your pants.  Well, get your Depends, because we’re going look at using Inversion of Control Containers, like Windsor from the Castle Project.  Code to abstractions without worrying about object dependencies!!  Show all those women who laughed at you who the REAL MAN is!!  In this session, we will take a sample application built w/o Windsor Container, and show you how to turn both it and your life around by using Windsor and the concept of Inversion of Control.  Join Steve Rockarts for the session that will refactor your heart.”

Just like the functional abstract, but with a huge amount of bombast and hype.  Obviously, people reading this will
a) know there is no way that they can afford to miss this presentation
b) need to clean their pants after reading it

Now, you might be uncomfortable with so many people messing themselves up (hence the title) and if that’s the case, you’ll want an alternative.  How else can you get people wanting to see your stuff?  Well, we all know sex sells, so let’s try:
The Porn Star Abstract (also known in EDMUG circles as “The Brad Daoust”)

“Heeeeeeeeeeeey.  You want to get a better look at my “object” “invocation”?  Well, too bad because I don’t use object invocation anymore - not after using Windsor Container.   Mmm…Windsor.  It makes me *hot* just thinking about it and the Castle Project together.  Coding to abstractions without having all that pesky wiring getting in the way.  In our session I’m going to take an example application without Windsor and then have a heavy refactoring session with it.  Bring a towel - you’ll need it to wipe up after you see why using an Inversion of Control container gets the ladies going.”

This sort of abstract is guaranteed to get developers all riled up, but it might be too hot for certain conferences to print.  In that case, you’re going to need another hook.  Let’s try:

The Underdog Abstract

“Holy cow am I ever nervous!!  If I told you that you never had to make an object invocation again, would you come see my presentation?  I’ve been looking at Windsor Container and I think it’s kind of neat - I hope you think so too.  It lets you code to abstractions without wiring up object dependencies!! Like I said, kind of cool…I think.  If you come out to this session I’ll take an example application (built without Windsor) and try to make it better, using Windsor Container and Inversion of Control.  Hopefully you guys will see that there are some benefits to using an Investion of Control container to your project!  And if you don’t like it I’m happy to hear suggestions!  Thanks everybody! ”

Unlike the previous two abstracts, this has the advantage of displaying absolutely no confidence whatsoever.  Half of the people will come to your presentation because they’re rooting for you to actually make it through, and the other half are coming because this sounds like a train wreck waiting to happen.   You can’t lose!

Now, it’s entirely possible that none of these work for you because they just don’t feel like “your voice”.   And in that case, you should probably go a little bit personal.  If people feel a bond or kindship with you, they are more likely to come to your presentation.  Knowing what details we do about Steve’s life, let’s craft something that lets the potential audience really look inside his heart.

The Personal Abstract

“Do you get beaten by your girlfriend as much as I do?  Well, let’s not focus on that right now, and instead let’s focus on Windsor Container.  Using an Inversion of Control container may not make the bruises go away, but it *will* make object invocation disappear!   Finally you can code to abstractions without worrying about whether you’ve made Catherine angry again…I mean, without worrying about wiring up object dependencies.  In this session I’m going to take an example application built without using Windsor Container and refactor it towards a cleaner design using Windsor and Inversion of Control.  I’ll try to introduce you to some benefits of using an Inversion of Control container and what it can bring to your project…please don’t be angry, I don’t need to hurt anymore!!  I’ll do a good job!!  I PROMISE!! ”

Quite frankly, I thought all of these abstracts were excellent, but Rockarts decided to go with his original after all - something to do with being “high as a kite MAAAAAAN”, whatever the hell that means.  Regardless, I thought I shouldn’t just let Rockarts alone benefit from this analysis - if *you* want to guarantee a large group of screaming, enthusiastic software developers at *your* next presentation, try one or more of these out!  You won’t regret it!
Source: www.graysmatter.codivation.com

Anything, even something small or negligible, can deter a student from his or her academics for a day in conjunction with great weather.

Many students say one reason for this is the use of PowerPoint presentations and their subsequent release and availability on the Internet and on the campus drives.

“PowerPoint accessibility for classes that do not involve a large amount of participation, testing or quizzing can make it difficult to want to attend class sometimes,” sophomore Gary Crabtree said.

Lack of classroom attendance can be combated through teaching interactively and teaching information not available on PowerPoint presentations, computer science professor Daniel Stevenson said. He added he believes his classroom attendance has not been reduced by PowerPoint and that he finds its use to be extremely beneficial.

For Stevenson, the release of his presentations online does not decrease his lecture attendance because his lectures are not solely focused around PowerPoint. Oftentimes, there will be a large amount of white-board use and student interaction in combination with the PowerPoint slideshows, he said.

The specificity of information in a slideshow can also determine how much of a lecture deterrent it can be. Interim Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Interim Dean of Graduate Studies Andrew Phillips said he used exceptionally detailed presentations in his classes and students would look ahead at problem solutions instead of thinking themselves.

Phillips said his “attempt to engage (the students) in the actual critical thinking and problem-solving process was wasted - or rather, was circumvented - by (his) own solutions.”

The resolution to this problem was then maintaining two sets of presentations - one detailed set to use during class and the other set without solutions, which was released to students, Phillips said.

Not to be discounted is the ease of note-taking through release of more generic PowerPoint presentations prior to lecture. Sophomore Erin Johnson said seeing a slideshow before a lecture helps to “focus on the lectures and take notes without having to worry about getting all the information down.”

Reviewing is also easier through the convenience of online lecture materials, senior Kayla Lorenzen said. She added students can view the notes of a professor’s lecture and possibly recall information more easily without having extensively detailed notes of their own.
Source: media.www.spectatornews.com

Tonic’s TonicPoint tools allow you to open a PowerPoint presentation with your web browser, edit it, add new slides to it, extract text and images from it, and save the edited version in various formats. What makes TonicPoint particularly interesting, in the context of Google’s ambitions, is that you don’t have to have a copy of PowerPoint installed on your PC to open and edit a PowerPoint file with the tools. You only need the file. You can, effectively, work in a Microsoft app without buying the Microsoft app.

As with Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets, Google seems to be designing Google Presentations as a hybrid complement/competitor to Microsoft’s Office applications. You first use them as add-on tools for manipulating and sharing Microsoft files online, and then, eventually, you find that you don’t need the underlying applications anymore. Google Apps, in other words, is designed not as an Office Killer but rather as a kind of Office Bodysnatcher. Google doesn’t want to fight the Microsoft apps head-on. It wants to get inside them, and slowly take them over.
Source: www.roughtype.com

Here is our debate. I prefer to use as few words as possible on my slides and speak most of the content. It jives with Swellers research, but has one problem. If my PowerPoints are the “notes” that the students have after the presentation, the slides themselves will not be good review documents. I make up for this by recording my voice and syncing it to the slides via TeacherTube.

She gives the PowerPoint to the students as a resource. That’s it. They listen to it in class. They take notes. She places the PPT file into Carmen (their Learning Management System) as a resource. Unless their notes from class are clear, there is a chance some of the material from the presentation will be lost.

There are two possible solutions (not counting the TeacherTube approach). The first (and most common methodology I see from my students) is to put all the text into the presentation itself. This creates a PowerPoint with too many words… the type that is typically “read” to the audience. The second (and preferred) method is the put the extra information in the Notes of each slide.

In PowerPoint, each slide has a Notes field. If you don’t see the Notes area under your current slide, click the View menu and select Notes Page. This displays a feature where as many notes as are needed to explain the slide can be typed. These notes will not show up on the slide when the presentation is given. Notes are a handy way of making a PowerPoint with diagrams or a nominal amount of text into a more useful study guide.
Source: www.trustyetc.com

One of the key choices you make when developing your presentation slides is what fonts to use and how to use them. Here are some guidelines to help you use fonts effectively in your next presentation.

Font Effects
One way to make words stand out is to use font effects, such as these:
Bold – makes the lines of the font thicker. A very useful effect and the first choice to make a word stand out.
Underline – places a line under the word. The second choice for making a word stand out, but it can get tiresome if used too much.
Italic – slants the tops of the letters of the font to the right. An italic font is harder to read, so it should be used sparingly to emphasize words.
Shadow – places a dark gray shadow of each letter behind the letter slightly to the right and slightly below the letter. A shadow is a poor choice to emphasize a word because it is so hard to actually see the shadow in many cases.
All Caps – the word is typed in all capital letters. In the past, this was an acceptable way to emphasize a word, but today all capital words are considered to be shouting at the person and will not be viewed favorably.
Word Art – this feature allows you to distort the letters of the font in a variety of ways. Unfortunately many of these effects end up looking amateur and should be used with caution.

Bullet Points
Using bullet points on a slide is a great way to present the key ideas during a presentation. When selecting a bullet to use, consider these ideas:
Bullet Character – The most popular choices are a filled circle, filled square, open circle, hyphen and arrow. The characters with a large portion of the character filled are easier to see by the audience and are preferred. You can select a graphic as a bullet, but make sure that it does not detract from the slide by drawing too much attention away from the words on the slide.
Bullet Size – Try to select a bullet size slightly smaller than the font of the text so it does not overpower the text itself.
Bullet Spacing – make sure that there is sufficient space between the bullet and the first letter of the text so that the first word is readable.
By selecting and using fonts effectively on your presentation slides, you can increase the impact of your message.
Source: www.thinkoutsidetheslide.com

Serif, Sans-serif

Serif

Serif fonts have curls or tails at the end of each letter. Use this font type in titles. Why? Cause serif fonts take a bit longer to digest. Gets the mind ready for whatever that’s next.

Sans-serif

Sans-serif, on the other hand, has no tail. This improves readability speed so it’s suitable for texts of sentences. The minimum text size for any text is 14 pt. This will help your powerpoint presentations to get the message across efficiently.

Design

Bad

Good

Keep it composed and analyzable. The most important thing is to focus on getting the message across. Distractions from lousy templates with low quality pictures will give others a sense of disconnection. Keep it clean, bulletize your lists, be consistent on fonts, colour and background. Limit punctuation and avoid putting words in all capital letters. Empty space on the slide will enhance readability. Use contrasting colors for text and background. Dark text on a light background is best. Patterned backgrounds can reduce readability of text.

Keywords

Use only key information. Period. Having to spend more than 2 minutes on a slide equals to yawns and thoughts of ‘hmm… i think I’ll have burritos at Pablo’s for lunch’ during the presentation.

Slide transitions

‘hmm.. let’s do something flashy. Lets have the title fly in from the bottom with the sound of drums’. FORGET IT! It’s old stuff. Maybe if it were the 80’s it will win you clients like drinking water, but now’s the 21st century. Having animations and sound effects will only impact the presentation negatively and you lose credibilty. Value in content will impress most.

Images

Only use high quality images. Low quality pixelated photos will only weaken the message. I have made a post on 9 reliable gigantic websites where you can get reusable high quality images for free. Use them.

Don’t read the whole slide

Only the title. The pool of text after the title is for the audience. Do it professionally. Relax and keep yourself composed at all times. Keep the audience motivated and try your very best to look like you’ve burnt a kilo of midnight oil preparing the presentation for your audience.

Body posture

Face the audience. Speak only after each successful page load. Don’t talk to the slide while checking. The audience may not hear your words clearly.

Keep it cool

For example, you’re at slide 11 and you forgot point number 5 and 6. Cover up and act cool. Do it like as if it’s in the plan. The last thing you wanna do is say ’sorry’. That’s why simplicity is the number 1 factor in giving out steady presentations. When people can read something easily, they will understand what you want them to. Most importantly, have fun!

Source: www.rangit.com

Toufee is an online Flash movie builder that aims to make it easy for non technical users to quickly create impressive multimedia items for embedding in web pages. Toufee allows you to create flash movies, flash banners, flash e-cards, flash tickers and flash presentations easily without having any knowledge of flash or programming.

With Toufee, making a flash movie will only take you about 2-3 minutes average. You can add frames, text, images, videos, notes, sounds and buttons to your toufee movies. You can even import images from Flickr or videos from YouTube. There are hundreds of special effects for your text, photos and videos. Toufee has a built-in text-to-speech engine so you don’t have to waste time uploading audio.

When you are done, you will receive a permanent URL. You can view or share movies online using either a permanent URL or with embedded HTML (which you can paste on your blog or site).

Toufee is free online Flash movie maker, visit www.toufee.com and sign up for the service to make you own movies. No downloads!

Source: www.blog.adglobe.net

I wish people would share their recommendations and conclusions at the beginning of their PowerPoint presentations. But instead they click through dozens of slides, people ask questions, and we never get to their recommendations before the end of the meeting.

Since I do not attend many meetings with PowerPoint presentations, I asked Carl what happens when presenters don’t get to the point before the end of the meeting. He said:

The presenters just say, “Well, I guess we need to schedule another meeting.”

Take it from Carl: It is much more productive to share your recommendations and conclusions near the beginning of your presentation than to never reach them.

Conclude at the beginning. Give your meeting attendees the information they came for at the beginning of your presentation, and you won’t risk the frustration and embarrassment of not getting to your point and having to try to reschedule. Also, you can invite people with limited time to come to the start of your meeting and leave when they must. They will still take away the essentials.

Source: www.businesswritingblog.com

Another thing that looks unprofessional is tinkering around with a PowerPoint window at the start of your show. Before your audience is seated, you should have your presentation open and displaying some type of a welcome screen. I think the easiest and most professional looking method of accomplishing this is to simply add a desktop shortcut to your PowerPoint file. Just open Windows Explorer, locate your PowerPoint file, right click on the file and select Send To, Desktop (create shortcut). To launch your presentation, simply double-click that desktop icon and PowerPoint will launch and immediately open the first slide. A side benefit of using this method is that when you finish your presentation and close down PowerPoint, you are returned to the desktop. Of course, you should try to keep your desktop neat and tidy, with as few displayed icons as possible. Now that you know how to make a good first and last impression, all you have to do is fill in the middle with high quality information and you will win the hearts and minds of your audience.

Source: www.rlsei.com

You want to design using guides in PowerPoint 2007? Here is what you have to do:

How to activate guides in PowerPoint 2007

1. Click on the Home Ribbon

2. Click on Arrange

3. Hover over Align

4. Click on Grid Settings

5. Under Guide Settings,
click on Display drawing

6. Click OK. (See graphic).

Because I use Guides regularly when I design, I also selected “Set as Default”. That way, I do not have to go through this elaborate exercise every time I want to create a new presentation.

Old-timer’s rant alert: Before PowerPoint 2007, this used to be a one-step process (Ctrl+G). And if I forgot about the simple one-step Ctrl+G approach, I could always revert to the PowerPoint 2003 three-step Guide process of clicking on “View”, and select “Grids and Guides…” then check”Display drawing guides onscreen”.

Six+ hard-to-find steps to replace one simple one or three. That’s not exactly a productivity boost.

Worse, if you want help with finding how to activate PowerPoint guides using the help button, here is a screenshot of what you get:

That’s right. Pick from a grand total of 74 frustrating options - most of which have little to do with activating PowerPoint Guides from within PowerPoint!

I eventually found out how to activate the guides by clicking on the first option titled Interactive: PowerPoint 2003 to PowerPoint 2007 command reference guide. This option assumed that I had previous knowledge of PowerPoint 2003 (I do) and a fast internet connection (I do). So, I got a little bit lucky there.

Still, it took about 20 seconds for a slow-to-load online presentation to come on screen and give me only partial instructions about where to find the command I needed. (I was able to piece together the full instructions myself. I hope sharing more complete instructions at this post can help someone else out!)

If you think upgrading to Office 2007 is going to make you instantly more productive, think again. Back in July 2006, I wrote that I do not mind falling into the “trough of despair” part of the learning curve if I feel confident that my long-term productivity will improve.

I have been working rather steadily with PowerPoint 2007 this week, building online presentations for clients. So far, my annoyances with the ribbon have been minor. I will hang in there - and soon, I will quit sounding like an old cranky pants that cannot tolerate change!

Source: www.maniactive.com

First, you must have an outline in Word format. Your Word outline will need to have Heading styles used to distinguish the different levels. It also works if you have a Word Add-on that uses other leveled styles such as Legal MacPac numbering.

If you haven’t created an outline in Word before, use Outline View (View | Outline) to begin. (Hint: Tab to Demote to lower level, Shift Tab: to promote to higher level). Once your outline is created in Word, save and close it.

Next, you need to create a presentation so the outline can be inserted into it. (From PowerPoint, choose the File menu and then choose New.)

Now that you have a presentation ready, from the Insert menu choose Slides from Outline. Navigate to your Word document that contains the outline and select it. Choose Insert.

The slides will be inserted into the presentation. All Level 1s from the outline will begin a new slide. All lower levels will bullet points on your slide.

You will need to delete a few blank slides that get added with the transfer. You will also need to proof all the slides to make sure there isn’t too much text on the slides. But if you already have an outline in Word, inserting it into PowerPoint is quick and easy way to begin a presentation.

Source: www.abanet.org

Source: www.thinkoutsidetheslide.com

Invisible buttons are AutoShapes with no fill and no line that have a hyperlink attached to them. You use them for two purposes:

• If you’re navigating through the presentation, you may want your navigation to seem invisible to create a magical effect. The button may be small or may cover the entire slide.
• If viewers are navigating themselves, you may want them to be able to click anywhere on a slide to execute the hyperlink. In this case, the invisible button covers the entire slide.

For example, let’s say you create a quiz that students will navigate by themselves. You may add hyperlinks from a question slide to a Correct and Incorrect slide, depending on which answer the person clicks. Then, you can hyperlink the Correct slide to the next question and the Incorrect slide back to the original question so viewers can try again.

By covering the entire Correct and Incorrect slides with an invisible, rectangular AutoShape, students just click anywhere to get to the right place.

To make the process easier, attach the hyperlink to your rectangle before you make it invisible. Then double-click it and use the Format AutoShape dialog box to change the line to No Line and the fill to No Fill.

In PowerPoint 2007, invisible buttons made this way don’t work! Instead, you need to make the fill 100% transparent. Click the Format tab and then the Shape Fill drop-down list. Right-click the shape and choose Format Shape. In the Fill pane, drag the Transparency slider all the say to the right, and click Close.

Source: www.ellenfinkelstein.com

The solution to this would be making a habit to add your text shadow through the Text Effects instead of the Shape Effects. When double clicking on the textbox, the Drawing Tools tab will appear. If you have added the shadows through shape effects, remove it.

This time round, add the shadows from the Text Effects under WordArt Styles.

Figure 1: Text Effects button

Source: www.msmvps.com

This program separates the design process from the actual displaying of presentation, making it easier to run for the presenter/lawyer. The designer uses an edition of the software to create the template, they call them Design Kits, which are sent to the presenter who then inputs his content. What makes that so great is they allow the attorney to put their content in ‘on the fly’, while maintaining the professional look and feel of the presentation.

In the demo video, filled with the usual puffery in the beginning, the full potential of this can be seen. As you can see, StandOut lets you insert new media content with premade templates from the design section of the program. The caliber of these templates are only matched by Keynote, which as you may know, is Mac only. I’m ecstatic to finally see a company like Electric Rain making a program of Keynote’s professional presentation quality on a PC system and personally hope Apple is aware the gaunlet has been thrown challenging Keynote.

Source: www.technoesq.com

A colleague, Dan McWeeney, and I have been trying to follow a new rule we made called the no-presentation rule for presentations; it states that:

If I can send you my presentation and you can understand it by reading through it, then you don’t need me to waste time by presenting it.

Since then, I stumbled upon a blog by Garr Reynolds called Presentation Zen. It is a great blog with a lot of good tips. I found that Dan and I are not alone with our no-presentation rule. Here is the second presentation tip listed on Garr’s personal site:

The best slides may have no text at all. This may sound insane given the dependency of text slides today, but the best PowerPoint slides will be virtually meaningless with out the narration (that is you). Remember, the slides are meant to support the narration of the speaker, not make the speaker superfluous.

Many people often say something like this: “Sorry I missed your presentation. I hear it was great. Can you just send me your PowerPoint slides?” But if they are good slides, they will be of little use without you.

Thanks Garr, I couldn’t have said it better myself. In my college presentation skills course, PowerPoint slides and transparencies were termed visual aids. At what point did slides become the entire content and the speaker minimized to be an audio aid only? Most people that I talk to prefer slides that have very little text, very few bullet points, and are not up on the screen for more than a minute. Amazingly enough, we do not always create slides for our own presentations the same way we would prefer to see them if we were sitting in the audience.

Recently, Cote asked his readers whether he thought agenda slides were appropriate for presentations. The responses that surprised me the most were the ones that stated agendas were good so that the audience participant could know early on whether he wanted to leave or he would at least know how long into the presentation you were along so he could decide whether he needed to stay. The question that comes to mind for those responses is how did that person get invited to the presentation if it didn’t concern them in the first place. It’s safe and easy to invite everyone to your meeting, but in the end, you only wasted their time and yours. If you stay focused on the point, speak and not read, and keep the length to a minimum (preferable 6 - 15 minutes) , then most people won’t have the need to constantly refer to the agenda wondering when they can get the hell out of there.

As we sit in our standard template, bullet-point ridden, text filled presentation hell, hopefully there lies ahead a future where we see more of the likes of Lawrence Lessig, Steve Jobs, and Guy Kawasaki. All of these presenters are not just audio aids, they actually make their presentations enjoyable and interesting. What a crazy thought that a presenter would actually be essential to a presentation. So do your part the next time you have a speaking opportunity and try to apply the no-presentation rule for presentations.

Source: www.ewherrmann.com

There are thousands of sites out there that provide information for doing presentations, some really great ones… but there are a handful of well written and to-the-point articles that I feel shine brighter than the rest and are much more useful. So I have compiled my top five list of best articles for presenters. Here they are in order:

1. Seven Steps to Better Presentations by Jeff Veen
2. How To Give A Great Presentation by D. Keith Robinson
3. How to Get a Standing Ovation by Guy Kawasaki
4. Better Beginnings: how to start a presentation, book, article… by Kathy Sierra
5. The Problem With Presentations by Doc Searls

If you have come across some very useful articles or blog posts about presenting at conferences you feel should be shared with the rest of our readers please add a comment and let us know.

Source: www.digital-web.com

In the corporate world, everybody presents. And almost everybody sucks at it. The standard behavior is to display dozens of slides crammed with as many bullets as possible, and then to read each bullet aloud as if the audience were illiterate.

Sales reps have a term for the standard corporate presentation:

“death By PowerPoint.” They also have a term for sales reps who try to use them with customers: “unemployed.”

Sales presentations – effective ones, that is – are models for what most corporate presentations should be (but aren’t). This is because sales presentations don’t just communicate information, they must inspire the audience to take action (i.e. actually buy something).

Here’s how to do a perfect sales presentation, in five easy steps:

1. Stop Using PowerPoint. Yeah, you’ll feel naked without it, but top sales pros stick all the complicated information (like product specs) into handouts and brochures. They never risking boring or boggling a customer with reams of on-screen data.
2. Do Your Homework. Learn everything that you can about your customer, before presenting. Remember, unless the presentation is an academic lecture, you’re trying to get somebody to do something. Therefore, your presentation must be primarily about the customer’s needs, and only after those needs are established, about what you have to offer.
3. Create an Agenda. On a single page of corporate letterhead, put the full name of the customer, the date, the start time and the end time of the meeting. Then, based upon what you learned in Step 2, add five or seven questions that focus the conversation on the customer’s needs, going from the general to the specific. (This idea comes from Brian Tracy, author of some 300 training programs for sales pros.)
4. Focus on the Customer. Keep the presentation moving forward by using each agenda question as a springboard to discuss and clarify the customer’s needs. As appropriate, show how your offering meets those needs. Pace the presentation so that the customer is never overwhelmed with information.
5. Close on Next Steps. If both you and customer agree that there’s a good match between the customer’s needs and what you have to offer, ask for the business. It’s really that simple.

Source: www.blogs.bnet.com

Here are six tips to help you raise your grade and, most likely, your income.

1) Confirm room and operational dynamics, size of group, AV equipment available (if none, bring your own), room location, directions, etc.

2) Arrive at least 1 to 1 1/2 hours before the presentation to ensure that everything is in proper working order. Then go over your presentation several times in that environment before you have to do it for high stakes.

3) Prepare your presentation carefully and professionally. For example, no more than 5 words per slide, proper branding of logo(s) on slides, not too many slides, etc.

4) Consider using an advancer rather than having to reach down and advance slides with your laptop. I recommend the Power Presenter. It’s the one we use and it’s great.

5) Give some thought to withholding any collateral material until after you deliver your presentation. That will guarantee attention on your topic and reduce wandering eyes, premature questions, etc. If you are going to do that be sure to tell your audience that they’ll receive it at the end and there will be time for review and questions at the conclusion of your presentation.

6) Never finish a program without establishing the ground rules relative to what is happening next. For example, say this at the end of your presentation (following review and Q&A) – Ask this question: “What are the next steps…Where do we go from here?” Don’t leave the room without an answer to that question.

Never forget, persuasion is key to sales. Don’t overlook how critical it is in a group setting. However, sometimes no matter how persuasive you are, poor mechanics in a group setting can derail you, too!

Source: www.brooksgroup.com

The new Ribbon UI in Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007 is easier to use with a mouse, but if you want to use your keyboard shortcuts, there is a quick, easy, and visual way to find out what you need to press.

All you need to do, is hit the “Alt” key.  Simple as that.  By pressing the “Alt” button in Word 2007, the keyboard shortcuts appear on top of all the different sections of the Ribbon.

For example, (looking at the screenshot), to open the file menu, all I need to do is hit “ALT+F”.  If I want to save my file, which happens to be one of the Quick Access Toolbar buttons, I could hit “Alt+1″.  To change to the Insert Tab in the Word 2007 ribbon, I could hit “Alt+N”

As soon as you go to another tab in the ribbon, if you hit “Alt” again, you can see all the shortcuts for each piece of functionality on that tab.

So there you have it - all you need to do is remember “Alt” is your shortcut to keyboard shortcuts in Word 2007! (and Excel 2007, PowerPoint 2007 etc etc).

Source:  www.thenewpaperclip.com

And just for fun, we also analyzed the text with the language-assessment tools at UsingEnglish.com. Click on the names of those ratios below for definitions. Lower scores generally mean that the language is easier to understand. By those measures, one executive did noticeably better than the others.

Read on to see what we found:

AP Photo/Paul Sakuma

Source: www.blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com

Steve Jobs, 2007 Macworld Conference and Expo

Avg. Words/Sentence: 10.5
Lexical Density: 16.5%
Hard Words: 2.9%
Gunning Fog Index: 5.5

Video | Text

Well, you can change that. Here, we tell you how to hone your presentation skills, so that you look forward to it instead of approach it with dread.

For those who are lost, PPT is an abbreviation for the PowerPoint Presentation. This is a high-powered software tool marketed by Microsoft. They claim 30 million presentations are made with PowerPoint every day.

Basically, it is a tool used to present information in a slide show format. You can use text, charts, graphs, photographs, sound effects and even video with a lot of ease to present (sometimes boring) ideas, facts, trends, whatever information you want to.

So, whether your audience is your boss, your colleagues, a client, or students, here’s how to make a killer presentation.

6 tips to make a great presentation, When making the slides…

Shoot them with bullets

“Less is more on a slide show. Too much information on a single slide becomes unreadable, especially when it is projected on a big screen for a large audience,” says Delhi-based Ajay Jain, CEO, TCP Media.

1. Present your content in the form of four to five bulleted points per slide; anything more and you end up creating clutter. Using bullets not only makes your slide readable, it also adds to the overall impact of your presentation.

2. Let your bullets be visible. Try to use a font size of 18-24.

3. Don’t let each bulleted point be too lengthy. Limit it to six words in one line — use short sentences.

4. Try to restrict it to six lines in a slide.

5. Contrast the text with the background.

6. To highlight certain important information, present that text in a larger font size.

Don’t make it too animated

PowerPoint offers tremendous multimedia capabilities, but don’t get carried away with flashy videos, music clips or graphics. Restrict it to certain slides, you don’t have to employ it for each and every one.

“One of my students made a presentation on micro finance. It was a serious topic but every slide had background music and even the click of the mouse produced fancy sounds. This took away from the seriousness of the subject being discussed,” says Madurai-based M Subramanian a senior faculty member with the R L Institute Of Management Studies.

Use the multimedia capabilities only for special emphasis or to demonstrate how something works. If you use animation excessively, your presentation could be labeled as ’school-boyish’.

Space it out evenly

Select the first of the three or more objects you want to space out, hold down the ‘Shift’ key and click the remaining objects you want evenly spaced out.

Go to the ‘View’ menu and select ‘Toolbars’, then select ‘Drawing’ to open the ‘Drawing’ toolbar. Once there, click ‘Draw’.

A menu opens.

Click ‘Align’ or ‘Distribute’, then ‘Distribute Horizontally’ or ‘Distribute Vertically’ to align the objects you selected. Your slides will look balanced and dapper.

Making a presentation? Use mind maps

When presenting…

Your PPT is not a Teleprompter

Don’t commit the cardinal sin of reading out your slides word for word. This is guaranteed to get your audience yawning and reaching for more coffee.

PPT slides are to be used as a visual communication aid and not as a teleprompter for the speaker.

“If I want my audience to make notes of important points, I usually provide hand-outs or leaflets after the presentation. This ensures the audience is listening instead of taking notes,” says Mumbai-based Prabh Sharan, training manager with Kingfisher Airlines.

Get out of the way

Make sure you are not blocking the audience’s view. Use a laser beam to identify the points on the screen, never your arm. A flailing arm is a distraction.

“In one of the college presentations, a colleague kept prompting us to read the slides but would not move away. We ended up reading the slides from his face as he was standing right in front of the projector,” says Madan Ramachandran, an MBA graduate from ICFAI business school, Hyderabad.

Go slow

“In one of our routine university meets, a fellow academician flipped through a 15-slide presentation in about five minutes,” says Delhi based Shanthi Chander, senior administrative officer, Indira Gandhi University. “At the end of it,” he concludes, “we all had the same question on our minds — what exactly just hit us?”

Don’t rush through your slide show. Give about 30 seconds to two minutes for the images on your slide show to make an impact. This will also give you time to answer questions and make your point.

Do dummy runs

Don’t make the first presentation to your audience. You should do the entire presentation by yourself (in front of a mirror, if possible). See how it flows and how long it takes.

If you are uncertain, maybe you could run it past a colleague or a friend. Ask them for feedback. Go through other presentations. if you have them, and see how others have done it. Recollect all the presentations you attended — what you like about them, what you disliked about them, etc. Now, implement what you have learnt from all of this in your slide show presentation.

It’s not just technology

PowerPoint may be a great piece of technology, but your effectiveness as a public speaker will eventually dictate the impact.

Dress smartly. Entertain the audience with some amount of planned humour. Share anecdotes and stories.

Don’t talk in a monotone. Pack in enthusiasm and energy into your voice.

And, if you do goof up, never apologise — take a breath, smile and move on. You will be surprised to know how many in your audience may not have even noticed the mishap until you made it obvious.

Become a superstar at telesales. Here’s how

Smart tips…

Go blank: If you want the audience to take their eyes off the slides, just put the presentation on slide show mode and press ‘B’ on your keyboard.

This will blank out the screen and you will have the audience’s attention. Press ‘B’ again and you are back.

Add speaker notes: Worried about forgetting your script? Here’s a smart solution.

Go to the slide for which you want to add notes. Go to the ‘View’ menu and select ‘Notes’.

Click the text placeholder and begin typing your speaker notes. Only YOU can see these notes, so your audience will leave your presentation, impressed with your ability to say smart things at the right time. Try it out, it’s really cool.

Navigate: If you have to navigate through slides, you can simply type in the slide number and press ‘Enter’.

3 golden rules for effective communication

A powerful presentation is not a matter of chance. It takes a lot of preparation and practice, but the thundering applause from your audience will make it all worth it.

So bring out your shining new slide show and wow even the toughest audience.

Source: www.itvidya.com

First thing to check is the resolution of the projector. The resolution is actually the number of horizontal and vertical pixels there are in the image. The more pixels there are, the more closely packed they are together, to provide a smoother appearance to the image. The most common configurations are named VGA, and XGA, which is most common in laptops. The most common resolutions for CAD, GIS and other graphic applications are SXGA while UXGA is for large format graphics. The best way to make a choice for a projector is to buy one that matches the number of screen pixels on the laptop that will be driving the computer.

Check for the luminosity of the projector. Luminosity is the amount of light that is projected on the screen, i.e., the brightness. It is measured through an international unit, lumens. The higher the luminosity, the brighter and more visible is the projected image; while the greater the distance between the projector and the screen, the more lumens that is required for a clear image. If most of your will be made while on the road, it is better to buy a small and lightweight projector that weighs between 6 and 10 pounds. There are also another smaller version of projector called ultra portables available that weighs between 2 and 6 pounds. When travelling, remember to get a good, sturdy case to keep the projector safe.

When buying the projector, make sure that it has connectors that are compatible with the laptop you plan to use. Check the VGA, S-Video, RCA and the number of pins on the interface cables. If required, all this information is found on the ‘full specifications’ part of the projector information. There are two main projection technologies of projectors: LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) and DLP (Digital Light Processing). Most of the projectors are of either technology. Recently, there has been a new projector technology called LCOS (Liquid Crystal On Silicon) that is emerging as an alternative to DLP and LCD. LCD is the oldest and most widely used technology of the three. However, DLP is a new technology that has made great strides in five years to challenge the LCD market. LCOS is the newest technology to surface in the projector industry and is considered a hybrid between LCD and DLP technology.

When buying a projector, make sure to get a good warranty on the projector. There are several types of warranties available. The repair or replace warranty is the best warranty offered by most manufactories. If the projector is not working, the company sends over technicians to fix it. However, if it cannot be fixed, then the manufacturer replaces the projector with a new one. The return to base warranty is a warranty where if the data projector is not working, it is returned to the manufacturer. He repairs it in 2 to 3 weeks, or perhaps longer, depending on the availability of spares. The swap out warranty is a good, but rare warranty. Here a technician determines the problem of the projector over the phone, wherein you send it to the manufacturer to fix it. In return, they send you a loaner projector to be used till yours is being repaired. The loaner projector is usually supplied the next day, which has to be returned on receipt of your repaired projector. The dead on arrival warranty is warranty projector manufacturers give to protect you if the new projector does not work on its first usage. Then the manufacturer replaces the projector with a new model projector. Most lamp warranties of projectors last from 30 days to 6 months. If you are going to frequently use the projector, then it is better to buy a projector with a good lamp warranty.

You could consider buying a wireless projector as it makes your workspace tidier, less confusing and the signal loss through cabling is not a problem. Wireless projectors allow you to switch between multiple PC servers easily and better mobility in the room without the fear of tripping over wires! The room in which the presentation is to be made too is vital for deciding on the right projector to give a clearly projected image. Larger rooms needs projectors with more lumens to reach the screen with enough brightness. The lighting in the room too is important. Consider how much light the audience will need, i.e. if they will only be listening to the presentation or be taking notes too.

Source: www.softwaredrivershub.blogspot.com

There is a better way. Instead of overloading text on your slides, design a slide file that has both detail slides and properly designed visuals that can serve both show and print purposes. Here’s how you can do it.

For each topic, create two slides. The first one you will display during the presentation and it should be visual, not packed with text. The next slide should contain any detailed information you want the audience to have to refer to after the presentation. This second slide will never be shown during the presentation. It is there for printing purposes only.

Then, for each of the detailed slides, click on Slide Show - Hide Slide. This stops the detailed slide from being seen during the slide show. When you are running your slide show during practice sessions, make sure that the detailed slides are not shown.

To print a handout of slides that includes both the display slides and the hidden detail slides, check the Print hidden slides checkbox on the print dialog box. You will then get a printout with each of the detailed slides beside or below the display slide. Your audience can quickly see that they have more detailed information and can take notes that are appropriate to their own situation.

When you are presenting using this type of handout, it is a good idea to mention how the handout is structured at the start of your presentation. This lets the audience know that they do not need to take copious notes and can be more engaged in what you are saying. It also frees you from feeling that you have to plow through a lot of detailed slides in order to finish on time.

Source: www.pptideas.blogspot.com

Never overcrowd your slides. This is because you make slides to let people focus on the content of the presentation, and on you, as you make your presentation. If your slide proves to be too crowded, it diverts the attention of the audience and obscures your main points. Remember that the intention of the slide is to illustrate your speech, and not to replace your handout! Limit the number of points on the slide to three to six points, and avoid sub-headings. It is better to otherwise break the major points of the presentation into separate slides. Always stick to the same backgrounds, styles and transition throughout your presentation as otherwise; the changes may distract the audience. If you are using animations, sound or video in the PowerPoint presentation use them sparingly as too much of them may also distract the audience! It is always better to use headlines, than outline headings in a PowerPoint presentation.

This is because each bullet in the slide gives you the chance to introduce, set expectations for and to sell your views on an argument. In other words, writing the points as headlines gives your presentation energy and power. Try to find the most effective style for your PowerPoint presentation using music clips, color effects and audio effects. There is an ample range of tools in PowerPoint to fit your style. Choose the one that best suits your presentation!

When making a PowerPoint presentation, you have to always be ready for the unexpected. You never know when projectors become tricky or may not work with your laptop computer. It is because of these unexpected problems that most speakers carry whole tool kits of extra bulbs, copies of the presentation on floppy disks, extra hard drives, cables, cords and adapters when making presentations. Usually, all things work out well, but it is always the failures that are quite visible! To overcome all this, it is better to come to the room early and get everything set up and tested by befiending the technical person assigned to your presentation. However, if you do make quite a lot of presentations, it is better to buy your own projector!

When making a PowerPoint presentation, try to picture what it actually is that your audience will be hearing and seeing. Spend more of your time on getting content for your presentation, than on design issues. One important point related to this matter is to always use large fonts for your PowerPoint presentation. If it doesn’t fit the slide, break up the points into individual slides. As colors have connotations, they matter a lot on the PowerPoint presentation. Avoid red as it only agitates people negatively. Practice makes perfect, is the old saying. Similarly, for the success of your PowerPoint presentation, you have to be comfortable with using the program. Practice giving your speech, while running the laptop computer, as you will have to do both during the PowerPoint presentation. If you can’t do both things alone, get someone else to run the laptop.

Remember to always make a conclusion slide for your PowerPoint presentation.

Most PowerPoint presentators conclude their presentations by saying “that’s all I have.” However, if you have a concluding slide with 3-5 summary points, you will leave the audience with a stronger impression, and remember, you can never emphasize and restate your main points too often! There are many people who hire others make their PowerPoint  presentations. However, it is always better to have your own presentation while making the presentation. This is because when you know the presentation, and are comfortable working with the slides, you yourself become free to connect with the audience and thus, shine as a resenter! When making your PowerPoint presentation, try to inform the audience of some information or try to persuade the audience to take some action. Remember these points in your next PowerPoint presentation, and notice the difference!

Source: http://www.articleonramp.com

How does this release impact Articulate Presenter?

The short answer is that the Articulate Presenter System Requirements have not changed. We still recommend that you use — and will only support — PowerPoint 2000, PowerPoint 2002 (PowerPoint XP), or PowerPoint 2003.

We expect to support PowerPoint 2007 no later than the end of Q1 2007, following the January 2007 general public release date of Office 2007.

We’re a fast-paced software company and pride ourselves at being on the cutting edge of technology, and the release of Office 2007 doesn’t change that. Our product development team has been hard at work for months already thoroughly testing the compatibility of Articulate Presenter with beta releases of Office 2007.

We will do our best to communicate with all of you — here on the Word of Mouth Blog, in our Community Forums, and via email update notifications to all licensees — when we do officially begin supporting Office 2007.

In the meantime, using Presenter with PowerPoint 2007 is not recommended, but you may be able to use it to some degree. We’ve heard reports of varying success. If you do decide to use Presenter in PowerPoint 2007, look for it under the new Add-Ins tab of the Ribbon.

Stay tuned. And if you have any specific questions about this announcement, please leave a comment here or submit a support case.

Source: www.blog.articulate.com

Digital Storytelling is not about the end product - the video - as

much as it is about the story, the planning, and the collaboration.
From a teacher’s prospective, insight into the storyboarding process
provides a richer assessment of the students work than the actual
digital media that results from the project. From Wikipedia: “[This]
process of visual thinking and planning allows a group of people to
brainstorm together, placing their ideas on storyboards and then
arranging the storyboards on the wall. This fosters more ideas and
generates consensus inside the group.”

I am a big fan of storyboarding with the following offering some ideas why.

For some, storyboarding may seem like a hassle, or a
tedious extra step in the process of digital storytelling. This is not
true. Storyboarding is a valuable step in digital storytelling. It
allows the user to organize images, text, motion, interviews, and music
before they begin making their digital story. It allows the user to
visualize how the story will be put together and what holes exist so
that they can be filled. Storyboarding also inspires new ideas for the
user’s digital story because the user sees all of the pieces of the
story laid out in front of them.
From “Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling“

There are many ways to produce a storyboard online. One option would to use a service like Google Docs

and put the storyboard in a word processing like document. Another idea
is to use a wiki putting each cell of the storyboard in a separate page.

I would like to suggest trying ZohoShow, an online presentation creating service where you can create, share, view, and publish PowerPoint

like presentations. As with the other solutions that I have mentioned,
your work is stored online making it available to everyone in the group
wherever there is an Internet connection. With ZohoShow, it is very easy to create storyboard cells with the requisite information. Like PowerPoint, ZohoShow
allows you to create slides from a template but you can always add
additional elements like text blocks, images, or graphical symbols. The
information that you require your students to include in each cell
(slide) of their storyboard will vary but it will probably include the
narration, description of the image, animation, and audio effects.

What I like most about using a presentation type of approach to

storyboarding is the ease by which you can move cells around in the
story as well as move elements within a cell around. The drag-and-drop
approach provides an intuitive (as well as easy) way of reorganizing
your story.

The biggest drawbacks to ZohoShow

are lack of an RSS feed, versioning, and concurrent editing. As I will
explore tomorrow, RSS feeds help teachers keep track of work being done
on a project. By not saving versions of the storyboard (presentation), ZohoShow makes it difficult to see just how the board was developed and who did what. Finally, ZohoShow
does not allow multiple users to work on a presentation at the same
time, though might not be a critical issue. (Writeboard does not offer
concurrent editing but I have found it to be one of my most valuable tools for collaboration.)

ZohoShow

is still in beta, so who knows what features will be available in the
future. For simple presentations (and storyboards) it works well. It
does not have all of the bells and whistles of PowerPoint, but I see
that as a plus, after-all we want our students to focus on the
storyboard and not the page transition effects.

Source: www.digiwalks.blogspot.com

Whether you are an executive who must drill corporate strategies into the psyche of the company, or you are a mentor, acting as a guide for a young employee, or your are just having an average conversation with your boss.

But the one area of communications I have not pursued here is the presentation — most likely because I have such bad memories of my own performances.

I can tell you that at least twice a Sr. manager told me I needed to go to classes to improve my skills. I never had the time to do that, but I did teach myself a few things — and they have helped me as a business owner.

I know there are thousands of books, articles, blogs and other resources on this subject — not the least of which is Dale Carnegie.

But I wanted to share my own ideas to keep things uncomplicated and genuine for you:

Preparation is king in speech-giving — lest you want to be compared to the person who gave the horrible toast at a wedding.

Preparation means a few things to me:

* First, if you don’t know how to use PowerPoint or whatever presentation software your company uses…you must learn or get someone to teach you.

* Trust me–this is half the battle. Plus you get to play graphic designer for a little while — designing strong and stylish images and messages.

* Know your subject matter — i.e. your company and your business — inside and out.

* If there is time, prior to the presentation, begin to take good notes at meetings, talk to colleagues about important aspects of the business or strategic plan that you are presenting.

* Scour the internet about your industry…find relevant facts about your company, your competition and about new trends that may impact your company.

* No idea is really ever new (seriously) don’t try to write the whole thing from scratch.

* Dig through files and find previous presentations to see what is relevant to yours…and then edit, re-write, cut and paste into your presentation.

* And just like you did for your college term papers, reference experts.

* And speaking of writing…use everyday language…no one is going to care that you’ve chosen to use the word postulation, as opposed to concept.

* Keep your slides or images very concise…bullets, bullets, bullets! You want people to commit to memory your key points.

* Which brings us to timing. A solid presentation really shouldn’t be more than 12 minutes…15 minutes tops — unless your Steve Jobs giving the annual Apple presentation.

* Be mindful of your attendees schedules…they will appreciate it.

* Find impactful images: graphs, charts, even photos if it will help strengthen your ideas.

* Practice! Take your presentation home and practice in front of a mirror, before friends, maybe even video tape yourself so that you can see what you look and sound like.

* Speak up — speak clearly and slowly. Women can sound shrill if they speak to quickly.

* Check your overall appearance: no dangling pendants, no shiney brooches…you want your audience to be listening to YOU, not be distracted by your jewelry.

* Try to limit your hand movements…but if you can’t help yourself, make sure you’ve gotten a manicure.

* If you have to give a presentation out of town, be sure to have a general sense of your audience in terms of office wardrobe. NYC Vogue does not fly in Des Moines.

* When presentation day comes, be sure to thank your audience — especially senior members of management.

* And lastly, try to stay on point — my biggest faux pas usually happened when I began to notice the audience fidget (often when I digressed and tried to throw in a giggle.)

I would stutter and really get so off topic that I’d forget where I was in the presentation — which eventually led my management to pull me aside and tell me I needed classes…ick.

We all know that public speaking is difficult…but believe me…if you prepare and practice — you will present with confidence.

Source: www.blogfabulous.com

Bump up your editor’s font size. Bump it till it looks big. Then double it. Learn how to maximize the code portion of your IDE since your code will most likely be off screen. Write your sample code such that it is multi-line - this will cut down on the amount of side scrolling you need to do. (If your editor supports code wrapping then this is a non-issue.)

Bump up your browser’s font size. Don’t worry how ugly it looks. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a presentation and while I could read the slides, and maybe the code, the browser was kept at the normal font size. Yes - it may look a bit ugly. Get over it.

Name your files right. This isn’t for the audience per se - but for the speaker. If you are talking about foo, you want to make your example file named foo_example.cfm, or something similar. It is pretty embarrassing when you go to show an example and have trouble finding the relevant file. I’m kinda good at this, but I still tend to forget what the right file is. The best thing you can do is use the Notes feature of your slide program and list the right files for each slide, then print out the notes before the presentation.

Source: www.ray.camdenfamily.com

PPT2Flash2007 is the tool for sales and marketing personnels, E-learning developers, educators and speech makers to create flash presentations, demonstrations and courses. . The delivery of this version is to support our customers’ update plans whether they upgrade to Window Vista, PowerPoint 2007, Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 2.

The launch of these updates to is really exciting news for it offers users substantial new capabilities in security andperformance. At the same time, users will have safer and more convenient online experience.

Wondershare is fully committed to releasing an new ersion of PPT2Flash, PPT2Flash2007. That will make users rest assured that PPT2Flash remains their best choice to enhanced presentaion, learning and training when they decide to upgrade their current operating systems, office applications and browsers to the new ones.

Key Features of PPT2Flash 2007

* Create web-compliant flash presentations with multiple publish options
* Turn PowerPoint presentations to E-learning content for LMS(SCORM/AICC)
* Integrate the slideshow with great multimedia : Flash movies, video clips and audio
* Embed the Flash presentation in a custom Flash player
* Add a quiz to enhance presentation, learning and training
* Collect and pass data of the quiz results to a web database
* Compatible with Window Vista, PowerPoint 2007, Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 2

About Wondershare
Wondershare Software’s flagship software packages, including PPT2DVD and PPT2Flash, enable users without any specialized programming knowledge or technical skills to create inspiring video and Flash demonstration for web publishing, online education, business presentation . Visit http://www.wondershare.com and unleash the power of high-impact communications with Wondershare.

Source: www.sameshow.com

Source: www.shop.com

Take advantage of your opening

You have the highest interest at the beginning and end of your presentation. George Morrisey first put forth the Retention Curve principle, and it’s a good one you can use to your advantage.

So open strong by using these six sure-fire methods:

- The ideal tools for creating more memorable presentations!
- PowerPlugs for PowerPoint work right inside of PowerPoint!
- You’ll make a great impression on every audience!
- They products are easy to use. Some take just 2 or 3 clicks!

The PowerPlugs for PowerPoint Lineup

	PowerPlugs: Ultimate Combo The ultimate suite of great products designed to add quality and excitement to all of your PowerPoint presentations. It includes all the titles listed below:
	PowerPlugs: Transitions NEW! An all new volume of Transitions VII Keep your PowerPoint audience’s attention with television-style 3D transition effects! Download free Transitions software and demo effects.
	PowerPlugs: Animator NEW! Special introductory offer! Only $39! Apply professionally produced text and backdrop animation plus supporting sound effects to an entire PowerPoint presentation with just 2 or 3 clicks!.
	PowerPlugs: Templates New! Enhance your PowerPoint presentations with an annual subscription to the world’s best collection of PowerPoint templates!
	PowerPlugs: Video Backgrounds 29 NEW volumes to choose from! Add incredible, television-quality full-screen moving backgrounds to PowerPoint presentations with just 3 clicks! PowerPlugs: Video Backgrounds Player plugs right into PowerPoint and is incredibly easy to use.
	PowerPlugs: Charts The world’s most powerful PowerPoint plug-in for presenting data in dramatic charts and graphs!
	PowerPlugs: Pictures A diverse, dynamic collection of royalty-free JPEG business photos on CD and/or download. Easily drop them into presentations to make your point with pictures!
	PowerPlugs: FlashReady The easiest way to quickly add the power of Flash to PowerPoint presentations. Includes over 90 Flash animations.
	PowerPlugs: Presentations to Go Jumpstart your PowerPoint presentations creation with over 20 professional topic-specific presentation “shells”.
	PowerPlugs: 3D Titles Grab your PowerPoint audience’s attention with customizable 3D title animations!
	PowerPlugs: Flash Clips Our professional Flash movies will instantly energize your PowerPoint presentations and websites!
	PowerPlugs: PhotoActive FX Focus your audience’s attention on your key visuals with “one-click” photo animation!
	PowerPlugs: Music Energize your PowerPoint presentations with upbeat background music! Each volume includes 25 or more upbeat song soundtracks!
	PowerPlugs: SuperShapes Direct your audience’s attention to your key points with customizable, animated clipart for PowerPoint.
	PowerPlugs: Screensaver Creator Now you can create impressive screen savers, right within Microsoft PowerPoint! Use them to inform, motivate, persuade. Plus a special bonus!
	PowerPlugs: Quotations Access over 45,000 famous quotations, love quotes from within Microsoft PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook®, instantly!
	PowerPlugs: Slides that Win This tutorial CD provides training that teaches you how to create high-impact PowerPoint presentations. Includes PowerPoint tips, tricks and samples!
	PowerPlugs: Headings Give your PowerPoint presentations a professional look with over 1,000 headings & coordinated backdrops!
The PowerPoint FAQ Frequently Asked Questions about PowerPoint
How do you add Flash to PowerPoint? How do you add Video Backgrounds to PowerPoint? How do you add 3D Transitions to PowerPoint? Where do I get good photos for PowerPoint? How do I convert PowerPoint presentations into Flash? Where do the PowerPlugs commands appear in the PowerPoint menu? How do I use PowerPoint templates in PowerPoint? How do I get professional looking charts in PowerPoint?

Source: www.crystalgraphics.com

As of its manufacture date, mid-November 2007, PowerPoint 2007 has a few known problems.

Links to Excel items may break:
Error message when you try to update a link in a PowerPoint 2007 presentation: “Some linked files were unavailable and can’t be updated”

If you save your PowerPoint 2007 presentation to PowerPoint 97-2003 Presentation format, First/Next/Previous/Last slide links, along with links to slide titles and to custom shows may break:
A hyperlink in a PowerPoint 2007 presentation may take you to the wrong location

PowerPoint (and other Office 2007 apps) may crash when you apply a custom template to your charts:
A 2007 Office program unexpectedly closes when you apply a custom chart template that you created in Excel 2007

Note: this KB article mentions chart templates created in Excel; bear in mind that you’re working in Excel whenever you use charts in PowerPoint 2007, so this applies to charts you create while in PowerPoint also. The article also makes it seem that this only happens under Vista. Not so, it can happen under Windows XP also.

Source: www.pptfaq.com

PowerPoint presentations can be informative and eye-catching, conveying information in a unique and memorable way. Unfortunately, most PowerPoint presentations are also very large files that can cause major sending, storage and bandwidth issues.

PowerPoint compression tools offer a way to more easily distribute large PowerPoint presentations without sacrificing image quality or content. But in how many ways can a compressed PowerPoint presentation be used? Consider that most offices in every industry use the Microsoft Windows operating systems as an integral part of their day-to-day operations. The Windows operating system package includes Microsoft Office, of which PowerPoint is a part. PowerPoint is most commonly used to create presentations which introduce a new product, explain a company’s method or spark a brainstorming session. Shortly after 1997 when the internet went mainstream, many companies adopted an online presence with the goal of reaching all corners of the world. Learning institutes are a good example, as online courses became the norm. Today, instructors can upload their course overviews, assignments and more to their institute’s web site for eager students to download and browse from the comfort of home.

Healthcare has also benefitted from the advent of the internet. A PowerPoint presentation can be emailed and shared with doctors worldwide. Because they are of such small size, compressed PowerPoint presentations can be shared quickly. This can increase the efficiency of diagnoses; improve the clarity of communication, and alert physicians about newly-discovered illnesses or symptoms.

Compressed PowerPoint presentations allow Retail corporations to communicate with offices in distant cities, making the synchronized release of a product seemingly instantaneous. When a new idea for an existing product is discovered, all company teams benefit from the quick downloading of information, whether they receive it on a PC, mobile phone or PDA. Military organizations serving in countries overseas often have internet connections that are slow and/or unreliable.

Compressed PowerPoint presentations can ensure that the information they need, such as maps, vital statistics or a secure location can be transferred quickly and easily. This provides troops with the time they need to locate specific landmarks, learn about their surroundings or safely depart from an area.

Government agencies can also make use of compressed PowerPoint presentations. Building plans, team restructuring, crucial election information - all can be placed in clear, easy-to-read presentations and compressed for the timely transfer of information. Almost every public and commercial sector today can be found using PowerPoint to communicate important information that, 10 years ago had to be delivered by regular mail. Today’s PowerPoint compression technology can save a company time, energy, space and money. How will you use it to your benefit?

Source: www.goarticles.com

No, you can’t do it automatically and it is kind of a pain in the butt. After a lot of trial and error I have my method down, so I thought I would share it with you all.

1. Use KeepVid to download the YouTube video as an .flv file.

2. PPT won’t recognize FLV files as movies — you can’t embed Flash in PowerPoint, apparently– so you need to convert it to MPG. I use a program called Riva FLV Encoder.

While Riva converts to FLV by default, it can convert from FLV as well.

3. Click “Encode”. This will take a while depending on how powerful your machine is.

4. Open Windows Movie Maker (hey, it’s free and it comes installed on XP by default). Click “Import Video”.

This can also take a while. For some godawful reason Windows chops up certain videos into lots of little bits. If you’re editing down the file for a presentation, this can be really useful, however. Just drag whatever bits of the video you want on to the Video storyboard, etc. This program is made for 11 year olds, so you should find it pretty simple.

5. When you’re done, click “Save to my Computer” and go through the wizard.

6. Now you can import the .mpg into PPT as an embedded video. NOTE: POWERPOINT DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY SAVE THE VIDEO AS PART OF THE PRESENTATION, so if you’re going to be running the presentation off a CD/someone else’s computer you’ll have to fiddle a bit.

The easiest thing I’ve found is to select the “Package for CD” option, which will make a CD including the .ppt file and all linked files. Click “options” and make sure you select “embedded TrueType fonts” if you’re not using one of the standard Windows fonts.

All this rigamarole should be completely unnecessary soon, as I’m sure Google’s PowerPoint clone will include YouTube video embedding as standard. Keep your fingers crossed.

Source: www.tiara.org/blog/

The question? Simply put, WAWA’s wife is a philosophy teacher who needed to sort out a few presentations, preferably using Quicktime and Keynotes as it’s something they’re already familiar with, plus the ease of use is enough to entice anyone. WAWA was unsure of which route to take in getting these presentations off the ground and obviously needed to keep the cost as low as possible. Their options included

1) Transfer to DVD

2) Buy an iPod and transfer picture and audio content from that to an external monitor

3) Buy a cheap iBook, insert some more memory if required and connect it to an external monitor.

We normally have more technical questions here on AAM, but whenever a user requires our opinion I think it’s only fair that we give it. This week user S-E-P-T-A offers his sound advice which, thankfully, WAWA has agreed with.

Before I wrap up this weeks post, I’d like to take the opportunity to send our deepest sympathy and regret to James Kim and his family, friends and colleagues. James Kim, CNet.com Senior Editor, was found deceased last Wednesday in the remote south west Oregon wilderness after him and his family had gone missing for 11 days after a Thanksgiving road trip.

I won’t go too much into the story here, but in a desperate act to save his wife and children, he put his own life at risk to find help after their vehicle was left stranded in the middle of nowhere through taking a wrong turning - his wife and children are now thankfully safe.

Kim was a popular editor for Cnet.com, offering reviews of gadgets including the iPod and other Apple related products and will be sorely missed, not just from those close to him, but throughout the entire internet community. He’s in a better place now and me he rest in peace.

Question of the Week

Presentation in a classroom. Which solution?

Question by: WAWA

My wife is a philosophy teacher and I help her with various tasks usually involving making exhibit material for the school. She works at two schools. In one school -4 days a week- she has instant access to a television monitor, including her own portable DVD player. In the other school -one day a week- access to a monitor is possible but only when ordered etc.

She would love to use Quicktime movies and eventually keynote presentations. It’s my task to make things workable. She wants the things to be usable whenever she feels like it. She wants to say, “Wait I have here something that perfectly illustrates what you are saying” and just do it. Her lessons are highly dynamic and pupils are 16 -21 years old.

We consider three options.
I make everything ready on my mac and…

1) Transfer it to DVD.

2) We buy a Serious iPod and transfer the content to the monitor.

3) We buy the cheapest iBook, (put 1GB ROM in it), and connect it to the monitor.

Thanks for helping us make up our mind.

Answer by: S-E-P-T-A

Sir, i Would go to iBook as my device.

First, DVD player is sometimes very hard to keep track on, and you can’t play with the time line as you wish.

Second, iPod if I’m not mistaken can only save a Slideshow of pictures. It’s quite a good option if you considered the money you spend. But, controlling a slideshow, and explaining things to their students is quite a complicated task for me.

Cheapest iBook would be a best choice for me.

First,

Keynote application. Killer apps, you could easily control your presentation with a Bluetooth device without touching your iBook (For me, a Sony Ericsson K750i) and amaze those students who still use Power Point for their presentation needs (kidding). Using Keynotes for presenting I think is much easier than using your DVD player or iPod.

Source: www.applematters.com

People give terrible presentations for one primary reason. Inexperience. Yet, there is a effective, inexpensive solution. Since 1924, millions of professionals from around the world have polished their speaking skills through Toastmasters. Many people don’t join Toastmasters because they mistakenly think it’s only for beginners.

I’ve been a Toastmaster for over two years, and it has helped my speaking ability immensely. I’m very comfortable giving presentations and have always received good evaluations from my audiences. Yet,  Toastmasters provides me with a weekly forum to practice new material and work on areas that I seek to develop such as using humor to illustrate my points. Recently, I was selected to be the president of the Oregon Chapter of the National Speakers Association . Yet, I’ll continue to go to Toastmasters to keep improving as a speaker.

So, whether you’re nervous about speaking in public or are an accomplished speaker wanting to take your speaking the the next level, join Toastmasters and you’ll discover how much more effective you can be in spreading positive word of mouth.

Source:  www.buzzbuilder.typepad.com

Thought Microsoft PowerPoint offers no direct way to extract images or audio files from PPT files, you can still save these embedded objects in three simple steps:

Step 1: Open the PPT or PPS file inside Microsoft Powerpoint and choose File -> Save As.

Step 2: From the “Save As type” drop down, choose the Web Page format (*.htm, *.html). Type a file name and click save.

Step 3. Open the file folder where you saved the Presentation as HTML and there you’ll see another subfolder with the same name.

That’s the magical folder - open it and you’ll see tons of JPEGs, HTML and WAV files there which were actually used in the original Powerpoint presentation. One of the WAV files here is probably what she is looking for. Happy Hunting.

Bonus Tip: When you save your presentation as a Web page, PowerPoint creates a folder that contains an .htm file and all supporting files, such as images, background textures, sound files, cascading style sheets, scripts, and more. Save your presentation as a Web page when you want to edit it with an HTML editor, and then post it to an existing Web site.

Source: www.labnol.blogspot.com

And in this Indezine exclusive, we have Kurt Dupont who heads PresentationPoint — creators of CounterPoint, DataPoint, and other amazing PowerPoint add-ins.

Geetesh: Tell us more about CounterPoint.

Kurt: Well, CounterPoint is our latest addition to our product range of dynamic presentations. We all know that number display (Now serving 34) in a shop or take-away restaurant.

Boring and simple as it can only display a number from 1 to 99 and has no additional features. No additional information can be displayed and it is only used in peak times.

CounterPoint now offers that same functionality by using Microsoft PowerPoint. The big advantage here is that you can format your counter as you which and add general-purpose or advertising slides to the slide show.

You can now run a normal PowerPoint slide show with company and product information, promotions etc, all combined with your counter. As soon as an employee presses the button of a mouse — this could also be a PowerPoint presenter remote control — a counter slide is shown, the running counter is incremented and a sound is played. After an idle time that you can configure, the counter slide is made invisible and the normal slide show continues. You can even use multiple service desks by sharing the common number.

Geetesh: Give us some case studies about organizations using CounterPoint.

Kurt: A trendy Belgian take-away restaurant was looking for a counter display system with more functionality. The normal counter display they already had (costs EUR 400) was simply replaced by a normal PC with a 20″ TFT monitor. This was even an old computer that was not used anymore. CounterPoint was installed and the owner started playing with the slide show. She created a presentation of some 20 slides with meals and promotional information. At the end a CounterPoint slide was added. Just as easy as that. Now the system is running continuously and serves as a counter display system in peak times.

The advantage that she saw was that they can better control the waiting queue in the restaurant and animate the customers with promotional information, which also leads to more sales.

At the end the customers are entertained and informed, the waiting queue is managed correctly (first in, first out), promotions are displayed and finally the employees are better organized and more effective. And all of this with CounterPoint and a spare computer.

Source: www.indezine.com

In the classroom, new technology is finding more important roles when it comes to educating students.

More professors are creating their lectures as PowerPoint presentations, which allows them to combine visual aids with their lecture, and are using computers in other ways to run their classes.

Nicholas Rauh, associate professor of foreign language and literature, uses his personal Web site in the classroom to post lecture notes and messages for his students.

“Having the material up and getting the messages out has increased the dialogue in class,” said Rauh.

Using visual aids, such as a 3-D model of the Roman forum or slides of ancient pottery, helps enhance students’ learning abilities, said Rauh.

“It enables the viewers, whether they’re specialists or non-specialists, to analyze a problem through visual or spatial means rather than just through text,” he said.

Some students feel the increase in technology has been a good thing when it comes to learning in the classroom. Bryan Trabert, a freshman in the College of Technology, said he enjoys the new technology.

“It’s easier to take notes,” said Trabert. “It’s better because the professor is not in your way when you’re taking notes.”

As technology continues to change, certain aspects are being cut back or eliminated at Purdue. The University is no longer installing projector boxes at the back of classrooms; instead, the University is relying upon professors to post images on computers.

With the new technology available to more professors, some students believe there will always be a place for chalkboards and projectors in classrooms.

“It depends on the teacher,” said Rui Zhou, a senior in the School of Mechanical Engineering. “For some classes, it’s better on the blackboard because you can see the teacher working the problem out.”

Source: www.purdueexponent.org

For IT managers, deploying Office 2007 will mean introducing change to users, many of whom will not be immediately open to adopting the new ribbon interface or figuring out the new XML file formats.

To make the upgrade path easier, Microsoft has made available a number of training tools and videos for IT managers and users. eWeek Labs has evaluated some of these tools, and we’ve found them to be helpful in educating users on how to work comfortably and productively in Office 2007. All the Office 2007 training materials are available at Office Online (office.microsoft.com) and are free.

When we first started testing Office 2007, it took us a while to figure out where the commands we used most often in Office 2003 were located in Office 2007. Realizing that most users would have the same problem, Microsoft released interactive command reference guides that allow users to click on a specific Office 2003 command and then be automatically directed to the location of that tool in the Office 2007 versions of Excel, PowerPoint and Word.

Users who need more hands-on help with Excel and Outlook can get in-depth training at Office Online. Also available are 30- to 60-minute “Get up to Speed” training courses that familiarize users with the Office 2007 suite of applications and the ribbon interface.

IT managers concerned about the new file formats introduced in Office 2007 can point users to the file-format section of Office Online, which includes videos explaining the new file formats, how to use the compatibility modes and how documents can be shared among different versions of Microsoft Office.

Microsoft also is offering tools that help corporations develop training programs for employees during Office 2007 deployment. The tool, called the Enterprise Learning Framework, asks IT managers a series of questions regarding their specific deployment and then recommends learning topics that they can relay to users in the form of URLs.

Source: www.eweek.com

A: There are so just many variables in that question! If you walked in my door as a client and asked me that, I would respond with a bunch of questions:

• Is the budgetary/headcount increase coming as a surprise for the Board or do they know that it’s going to be discussed?
• How does the increase fit into the org chart? What is happening in the sector, your organisation, and in other departments?
• Is a presentation the best way to table this idea? Would meetings and one-on-ones do the job better?
• What is your professional credibility within the organisation? What has been your track record in situations like this? How good a presenter are you? Are you the best person in the team to make the pitch?
• How personally committed to this are you? (Will you resign if you don’t get what you are looking for?)

Next steps:

• The disposition of the decision-makers right now. If you pitched this idea to them today, one at a time, and they HAD to make a decision, what would each of them say and why? If you can’t answer that question, you should not make the presentation. When you CAN answer it, then you can determine how to swing the vote in your favour between now and D-Day.
• Crunching the numbers – looking at the short medium and long term implications of making the change and of not making the change. You need to be comprehensive, fluent, credible and totally accurate with your figures.
• The macro picture – what is coming down the pike? Sectoral changes, possible M&A activity, new product/service launches by competitors, etc. You are the presenter, you have to know this stuff.
• The micro picture – what are the internal impacts going to be? Big things like will there be enough people in the accounts department to deal with the change? Little things like parking spaces, switchboard capacity and stationery costs …
• A world-class, Oscar-winning film director is nothing without the full team. Who is your director of photography for this presentation? Who is your continuity person? Who is your researcher or fact-checker? Don’t do this alone unless you have to. Draft people in.
• Start capturing ideas on paper. Most people jump into the slide software too quickly and it becomes a constraint on their thinking. If you stick with a few big words per page, you can spread the pages on a big table or all over the floor. Keep asking yourself, “So what?” as you do this. (The “So what” is, of course, asked from the perspective of your audience.)
• When you are committing your ideas to software, be mindful of death by bullet point and death by pie chart. Sometimes you need to pretend PowerPoint was never invented and simply tell a story … Technology is your servant, the second you feel like you are its slave, something has gone fundamentally wrong. What are you going to do if there is a power cut in the middle of your presentation and the Board members are all going to be unavailable for the next two months?
• Assuming that there is no power cut, make sure your visual aids are stupendous. Clear, stripped back; a mixture of words, images, sounds, silence and whatever else you need to use. No small fonts. No 200-word slides. No 50-word slides. No clipart. No blurry images enlarged from the web. Human beings are immensely visual animals, seduce your audience with your visuals.
• Distil, distil, distil. Poor presenters frequently present what a skilled presenter would regard as an early draft. Too wordy, too ragged, no flow, crappy images. Distil - hone it, tweak it, refine it.
• REHEARSE! I wish more people would admit how much work they put into a great presentation. Have a look at Lawrence Lessig’s talk on Open Source (http://lessig.org/freeculture/free.html). Do you think he made this up as he went along? A 30-minute presentation requires an average of 4,500 words. Shakespeare’s Romeo only speaks 5,031 words onstage. Would you get up in front of an audience to do, “Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say ‘good night’ till it be morrow” without the benefit of rehearsal? The top people I work with habitually spend 30 hours honing a one-hour delivery. For really crucial presentations, they will spend even longer.

Q: I’m not a graphic designer. How do I produce “stupendous” slides?

A: Open your eyes! Start paying attention to posters, TV ads, magazine layouts. If you see something that looks good in someone else’s presentations, lift it. Type “good presentation design” into Google and spend a few hours surfing and downloading from the resultant 45 million hits. Delete ALL the clipart and ALL the design templates that came with your computer.

Use a digital camera or your mobile phone to take large, clear images of interesting stuff on an ongoing basis and save them in a dedicated folder on your PC. Explore images.google.com when you need to represent something visually. Buy stock images for three bucks a pop online.

Backgrounds. I produced this background for a brightly-lit presentation environment in 2 minutes flat on PhotoShop. It’s a simple white-to-grey gradient, filtered so that when it’s projected large up on a screen, it has a nice brushed metal look to it. I learned how to do that in under 10 minutes from one of the designers in my studio:

This blue background was done in the studio in about 30 seconds. The key to both this and the one above is that they don’t use flat colour – the human eye doesn’t respond well to flat colour and you rarely see it occurring in nature:

Using quotations. Here is how PowerPoint produces a Title Slide straight from a template, which is how most presenters will reference a quotation:

Quotes are much more pleasing, and therefore effective, when they are reinforced visually. I found a high resolution image of Tom Peters on his website and it took me less than 3 minutes to isolate Tom’s head and stick him down on my background. A stronger font and a bit of balancing and we have a much more polished-looking slide:

Q: What about text? How do I handle that?

A: People can read faster than you can talk, so do not fill the screen with text. Here’s a lumpy bit of speech (99 words) from a presentation on the subject of change:

If there is something in your existence that needs to evolve, something that just isn’t quite right … The first step is the easy one - you have a small “AHA!” moment. Your intelligence tells you what the problem is, and with a modicum of thought, it will probably point you towards the solution too. The difficulty for most people arises when you try to effect the change necessary to remedy the thing that isn’t quite right. And that’s where the stumbling block manifests itself – there is quite a gulf between your intellectual intelligence and your emotional intelligence.

A typical wordy slide for this would look like this:

33 words onscreen to represent 99 words spoken by the presenter. Not too bad, particularly if the presenter uses the ‘Build’ function to have each bullet appear as he or she speaks. But I think it could be done a whole lot better with 7 words (building in time with the spoken words) on screen:

Or even better, do it visually and you can then use the little green IQ and the big red EQ as a visual ‘hook’ for the rest of the presentation:

Q: So good presentation is 95% perspiration, 5% inspiration?

A: I’m afraid so. A cobbled-together presentation speaks volumes about how seriously you are taking the subject and the audience, which is why I say throw away the clipart and the standard templates. Good presentation, great presentation, is about understanding your audience, respecting them and caring enough about the topic and about them to put in the work. Only then will your content be relevant and your delivery polished.

If you were looking for a loan, you wouldn’t show up to your bank stinking of BO, wearing a torn “All Bank Managers Are Bastards” T-shirt. Don’t expect any member of your audience, all of whom are busy people, to ‘loan’ you their attention, their interest, their buy-in, or their approval unless you are behaving appropriately.

Part of the reason people dread public speaking is because they know if it is going to be any good, it’s going to take a whole lot of work. We all remember the endless rehearsals for the school play or Feis, so in your heart of hearts, you know what needs to be done. Senior management can set aside time, set aside budgets, have PAs and staff members do the research, and pull in outside expertise for look-and-feel and rehearsals. If you are making an important internal presentation, you need to do the same at whatever level you can. If you don’t take the business of presenting seriously, you can’t expect to be taken seriously …

Rowan Manahan has been described as an Insultant. He is the MD of Fortify Services in Dublin and he spends a lot of his time bellowing, “That was crap, do it again!” at his clients. He blogs on this, and other subjects here.

Rowan has kindly prepared two of these backgrounds in hi resolution finish for your own use, in Blue and Grey

If you would like to receive these backgrounds email rebecca.clark@recruitireland.com and we will email them to you.

Source: www.recruitireland.com

You are just a few clicks away from a free online test drive of the latest version of Microsoft Office programs. Take them out for a spin in this quick, easy-to-use, browser-based trial experience.

The real-time test drive does not require product installation or download—it’s the fastest way to try out 2007 Microsoft Office system programs. In just minutes you can start exploring Microsoft Office through your Web browser on your own, or follow the step-by-step tutorials to experience all of its useful features.

Click here to begin.

Source: www.bettypowerpoint.blogspot.com

Note: Jim Endicott is a nationally-recognized executive coach, author, and speaker specializing in professional presentation messaging, design, and delivery. Jim was an award-winning columnist for “Presentations” magazine and has written for Business Week, Consulting and Selling Power. He is the co-author of The Presentation Survival Skills Guide.

It was my first year in business and I was 20-minutes into delivering a one-hour presentation skills seminar when it was becoming painfully clear that I was losing my audience fast. With this particular group, the early warning signs were all there. It started with some subtle multi-tasking activity followed by a pronounced loss of eye contact by a few individuals at first and then half the group.

If you’ve ever had that experience you know that you only have a couple of options at that point. You can try to pump up the energy level and occasionally re-energize an audience; but, let’s face it, the odds are pretty slim. Or you can always start summarizing, cut your loses and go for a well-scripted close. At least there’s some hope that your audience will, at a minimum, hear a few crisp closing points and an interesting story to tie it all together.

On that particular day, I didn’t have a chance to do either. The bell rang at precisely 11:22 and Cheryl Bailey’s third period PowerPoint class darted for the door and I was left standing there (unplugging my projector and laptop) wondering what the heck just happened. It was my first time presenting to a group of kids and since then I’ve had to revise my technique considerably for this unique audience.

Lest you think these opportunities are pretty rare, you’d be surprised. Recently a client of mine was asked to be a keynote speaker for an audience of 300 high-achiever type high school kids. He had a track history of turning around troubled companies and had spent the last three years creating a nationally recognized direct marketing powerhouse from a once struggling east coast printing company.

As we scripted his one-hour address, we came across the writings of Dr. Kenneth McFarland, an International Speaker’s Hall of Fame Award recipient and a strong advocate for the importance of sharing our very best thoughts with the youth of America. R.S Warn captured some of them in a paper called, When Asked to Speak. If you ever think you may be speaking to a group of kids (or perhaps are just wondering how to get through to your own), you will find these insights helpful as you attempt to communicate with today’s toughest audience.

Have the Right Frame of Mind

Speakers should approach a young audience with one very important understanding – young people are genuine. Young audiences openly express feelings where adults often pretend. When young people don’t like what’s being said, they will never act like they do. They are not naturally rude: they just refuse to pretend. This instant and honest feedback is a sterling quality in young audiences, a quality that some speakers avoid like the plague.

Ignore Their Masks

Shallowness, insincerity and callousness are masks young people wear, but rarely indicate who they really are. Our youth will appear untouched on the surface while deeply stirred by stories with human and emotional elements. They will also rally around basic ideals faster than the average adult audience. They do want to build a better world and are grateful for any relevant insights you may provide.

Make It Come Alive

A common error made by business speakers is the attempt to breathe life into a dead script (theirs or someone else’s). Unless your heartfelt feelings are involved, it is impossible to bring life to the words of another. Young people are not concerned with factual details of a letter-perfect manuscript, what they need to know is that the person standing before them is real. Hiding behind a script is a very fast way to lose them. The more of yourself you weave into the fabric of your speech the more “alive” it will become for them. When looking for ways to drive home a point, look for what you thought, what you found, what you felt, what you did and how you now feel. Inexperienced speakers, breaking every known rule of speech, have touched young people deeply by speaking from their heart.

Know You’re On Stage

This audience is sizing you up from the moment you arrive. When required to sit on stage or at a head table, know that everything you do either “adds to” or “detracts from” the value of the program. Pay full attention to the other speakers on the program as well. When this is not done, it tends to discredit the value of what’s being said. Kids can spot disrespect quickly and it will only impact their perception of you.

The True Power is in Simplicity

True power from the platform lies in using simple language to express meaningful ideas. Words are mental brush strokes we use to paint pictures in the minds of others. Uncommon and difficult words tend to leave people, especially youth, confused and insulted. A speaker overly impressed with a large vocabulary and insistent on demonstrating six syllable words is not a speaker at all, only a person who fills a room with confusing noise. (Noise that young people will always add to in very short order.)

Audience Participation

Audience participation helps hold the attention of young people. The younger the audience, the more important this device becomes. It can be as simple as a show of hands and as involved as your time, talent and ability contributed before and after the event. A participation device needs to tie directly with a major point in your message, however. Where this is not done, your audience becomes sidetracked. When asking group questions from youth, you can expect questions that adults would never ask. (How much do you make? How many hours do you work? Have you ever fired anyone?) Whatever the question, they must be handled as an important question and treated with respect.

Never Talk Down

They may lack wisdom that comes with maturity, but the average high school audience of today is better informed than they’ve ever been before. Young people watch the evening news and are often more in tune with worldwide problems than some adults. Any speaker who stands before them with an attitude of being all wise will lose this audience in the first 60-seconds. Our young people encounter so much condescending speech in their daily lives that they naturally assume any adult who steps before them will deliver the same. You need to break that perception quickly.

Never Attempt to Be One of Them

The only way you can become like a child again is to become senile and these young people know it. When you earn their respect, they will accept you as an adult, but they will never accept you as one of them. Any attempt to be one of them, just one of the gang, will backfire in your face. Everything you do, your dress, actions and words should aim to project an image of an adult, the type of adult they may want to become.

I’ve only hit the highlights from Dr.McFarland’s insights and I’ve thrown in a few of my own. From these pearls of wisdom, one thing is clear, the need to be genuine is never as important as it is with youthful audiences. What kids are looking for is often very different than what we may think. As the father of some great kids, I found some basic wisdom here as well. We rarely understand at the time how our words impact young hearts and minds. And as indifferent as they may seem at times, they desperately want to find adults in their lives who they can look up to and model.

Young people may be one of today’s toughest audiences, but there will never be any more important.

Source: www.ellenfinkelstein.com

It’s the age-old question of presenters everywhere: “Which PowerPoint slide design should I use?”

I know the feeling so well of booting PowerPoint and looking through the same old 15 tired slide designs that everyone uses, knowing full well that I would only consider using three of them.

So when the PowerPoint team set off to create a new graphics engine for Office 2007 along with new features for varying the theme, color scheme, font scheme, and special effects scheme across all of the main Office apps, I was personally elated. Finally, I thought, light at the end of the slide design tunnel!

One of the key concepts to understand about this new world is that each of the slide designs (now called “themes” in Office 2007) is way, way more than just a static design. Each theme is actually an extremely elaborate design that can be totally transformed by applying a different color scheme, font scheme, effects scheme, and background style. What looks on the surface to be a very flashy style can be made very corporate-looking is just a few clicks. On the other hand, more subdued themes can be punched up in the same way.

Because of the way the themes engine was built into each of the objects of Office (charts, tables, diagrams, etc.), as you change each of the aspects of the overall design (color, intensity, fonts), all the content in your slides changes to match your new design. It’s hard to explain just with words, but when I play with it, I’m astounded at how well it works.

All of the controls you need to play with the options in PowerPoint are there on the Design tab. Check out the Themes gallery to set the overall style, and then use Colors, Fonts, Effects, and Background Styles galleries to tweak the look.

Why did I mention 96,000 slide designs? Well, that how many variations we’re shipping “in the box.” The math looks like this:

20 Color sets x 20 Fonts sets x 20 Effects sets x 12 Background Styles = 96,000

The PowerPoint and OfficeArt teams have done a great job at explaining how this all works in great detail (with tons of pictures) on their blog. It’s highly recommended reading, and it gives you a good idea of how the more visual components of the new user interface (especially galleries and Live Preview) work together with this new themes and graphics engine to make getting great looking output really easy.

Read Office Themes: The Infinite Variety Generator, Part 1

Read Office Themes: The Infinite Variety Generator, Part 2

See more of the graphics capabilities of Office 2007

Source: www.blogs.msdn.com

I am often asked how can you make PowerPoint interactive when presenting to a large audience of students. My standard answer is either don’t use PowerPoint for the whole session, or if you absolutely have to, then set the students a question, challenge, exercise etc either to do individually, in pairs or larger groups. If doing this, then there could be a desire to set a time limit, in which case a countdown timer could have a use. I have produced a PowerPoint file containing different timers for different lengths of time (5 seconds, 10 seconds, 30 seconds, 2 minutes) - all somebody would need to do, is copy the timer out of my presentation and into their own - the first slide of the presentation contains some notes (more text than I normally put into an entire presentation) to help with this process.

Feel free to use as you wish - if you do use it, maybe postig a comment back about how you have used it, or any other types of timer you would find useful.

Countdown Timers for PowerPoint

This was created in PowerPoint 2003, testing it in office 98, some of them work, some don’t, I don’t know about other versions of PowerPoint due to not having them.

Source: www.davefoord.uniblogs.org

Open an image in Photoshop and then open the Image Size Dialog Box under Image in the menu bar. The upper part of the box, Pixel Dimensions, tells you exactly how large the image is in pixels and how much space the image requires on the hard drive if it is uncompressed. In this case, the image is 10.1 Megabytes (Mb) in size. The lower box, Document Size, tells you what size the image would print if it were sent to a printer and what the resolution of that print would be. In this case, the print would be at 72 ppi (pixels per inch) at 32×21.3 inches. For some unknown reason, when you download an image from a digital camera it always sets the ppi to 72 at a large print size. These are somewhat awkward dimensions, so I try to make the following changes as soon as I download an image:

Image Size

Open an image in Photoshop and then open the Image Size Dialog Box under Image in the menu bar. The upper part of the box, Pixel Dimensions, tells you exactly how large the image is in pixels and how much space the image requires on the hard drive if it is uncompressed. In this case, the image is 10.1 Megabytes (Mb) in size. The lower box, Document Size, tells you what size the image would print if it were sent to a printer and what the resolution of that print would be. In this case, the print would be at 72 ppi (pixels per inch) at 32×21.3 inches. For some unknown reason, when you download an image from a digital camera it always sets the ppi to 72 at a large print size. These are somewhat awkward dimensions, so I try to make the following changes as soon as I download an image:

Change the resolution to 300 (this is a standard resolution for printing and publishing photographic images) and in the pulldown menus next to Width and Height choose percent. Set the percent to 100 and click OK. Be sure that you have the Constrain Proportions box at the bottom checked, this will make any changes proportional to both the height and width.

When you open the Image Size Dialog Box again, you see that the image will print at 7.6×5.1 inches at 300ppi. Also note that in this process the Pixel Dimensions stayed exactly the same. We didn’t add or subtract pixels, we just told the printer that we wanted a smaller, higher resolution print of the image.

Another way to change the Document Size without changing the Pixel Dimensions is to uncheck the Resample Image box (red arrow) at the bottom of the Image Size Dialog Box.

Now when you change the values of either the Width, Height, or Resolution, the other values will automatically change while retaining the same Pixel Dimensions. In this case by changing the Resolution to 300ppi, the Width and Height automatically changed to 7.68 and 5.12 respectively. (Thanks to Paul Chaplo for this method.)

When you resize an image to place in a PowerPoint presentation, you will be changing the pixel dimensions as detailed in the folowing section.

Image Size for PowerPoint

Open the image you wish to insert into a PowerPoint presentation in Photoshop and open the Image Size Dialog Box. Make sure the Scale Styles, Constrain Proportions are checked and set Resample Image to Bicubic. Note that this image requires 10.1 Megabytes of space (uncompressed) to save. This is a very large file and inserting only a few images of this size into your presentation will require alot of memory and likely slow down or even crash the computer. Images do not need to be this big to appear well when projected so we want to reduce the pixel dimensions before inserting into PowerPoint.

PowerPoint defines the area of one slide (in On-screen Show setting of Page Setup) as if it were a piece of paper 7.5″ high and 10″ wide at 100 ppi. This gives an area of 750 x 1000 pixels. Compare this to the initial pixel dimensions of the image to be inserted. All those extra pixels are not necessary, as PowerPoint will not use them. Lets go back to Photoshop and change the size of the image to more economically fit into PowerPoint.

If the image is horizontal, change the Resolution to 100 ppi and the Width to 10″. If Constrain Proportions is checked, the Height will automatically change proportionately. Note that at this new size, the image is only 1.9 Megabytes, a fifth of the original size. Click OK and at this point it is a good idea to use the Unsharp Mask filter to sharpen the image.

Now save the resized and sharpened image as a Jpeg. I would set the Quality to the highest number in the Medium range (7) or the lowest number in the High range (8). Also make sure the Format Option is set to Baseline (”Standard”). When saved at these settings, the image now is only 60 Kilobytes (Kb), about 1/160 of the original file size! Make sure you save this Jpeg in another place than the original file, as you wouldn’t want to accidentally overwrite the original file with this much smaller version.

When you insert this image into PowerPoint it will fill the slide horizontally. If you don’t want the image to fill the slide you can proportionately reduce the image size in Photoshop before inserting or resize the image in Powerpoint.

For vertical images, resize the original to 100 ppi at 7.5″ in height, sharpen, and save as Jpeg.

When you insert this resized image into PowerPoint, it will fill the slide vertically.

Source: www.plantpath.cornell.edu

Bullying Presentation

I used to hate doing PowerPoint presentations. The ones I saw had way too many words on them, were boring, and were a pain to read. That was less than a year ago. Today, thanks to Garr Reynolds of www.garrreynolds.com and his blog, Presentation Zen, I’m able to prepare and present a much more interactive presentation. Through his website (on Top 10 Slide Tips and How to Design & Deliver Presentations Like a Pro) and blog entries (like What is Good PowerPoint Design?), Garr taught me that PowerPoints (or Keynote on a Mac) are merely an extension of me as a presenter. I learned that anyone can read from a text-filled slideshow, but that it takes a dynamic presenter to bring a presentation to life. I learned to cut out extraneous text or graphs, to increase the font size by a lot, and to include nice, big graphics or pictures to draw attention to the point I’m trying to make.

Though I still have plenty to learn, I feel like I have gotten a solid foundation on what it takes to deliver a great presentation. The photo above is from my Anti-Bullying presentation that I do for some of the schools here in the CNMI. As you can see there is very little text, the font size is legible from the back of the room, and there is also a nice graphic/picture to add emphasis. Thanks to Garr, my presentations are now brief, yet more interesting than ever before!

For those of you reading this, if you do any types of presentation or speaking, go check out Garr Reynolds at www.garrreynolds.com and his blog, Presentation Zen. You’ll learn not only ways to make your presentations stand out, you’ll also learn how to speak more effectively and naturally. Oh, and I’m not affiliated with Garr in any way. I just wanted to share two of the most helpful sites on presentation ever.

Source: www.stevenguyenonline.vox.com

Phil Rosenthal was a writer and producer for “Everybody Loves Raymond’ for its entire nine-year run. He has a new book out called “You’re Lucky You’re Funny”. I read the review on the book and liked what I read about how he incorporates humor into his show. His secret is specificity. When your are speaking to an audience there are specific pieces of humor that may only be known to that organization or association. If you do your homework and discover what humor is specific to them you are going to be there hero and remembered long after the event.

He mentions that one of the reasons we see so many failed comedies today is that writers keep looking to get the next laugh instead of trying to “tell a great story’. The same is true for you. Many executives are initially reluctant to share a personal story with their employees, I think this is a mistake. If the story has relevance to your current situation and it makes a powerful point-I would encourage you to use it in your presentation! By taking advantage of telling a great story that is personal to you-your audience will have a strong emotional bond with you and your message. don’t miss out on this opportunity! Via: New York Times.

Source: www.salespresentationstraining.com

I’ve been chewing over this question quite a lot this week (yes, okay, I’m sad but voice & presentation skills training is what I do) but it was brought to mind particularly by the (very good) speech by Tony Blair and the (excellent) speech given by Bill Clinton. By general consensus these people are great speech-makers. (I’m referring to the Labour Party Conference, 2006, by the way.)

Equally, by consensus (it seems to me), the quality of speech-making and business presentations in this country is generally very low. It’s a sharp contrast. When I challenge people about this on my training courses it seems to be that there is a certain kind of ‘legitimacy’ about not being able to make even a half-way presentation. People giggle about it in the same way that “it’s okay” to struggle at maths or map-reading or…..

Crimes committed with PowerPoint seem to be accepted in the same ways people seem (often) to accept that it’s okay to do 80 mph on a 70 mph motorway.

Personally, I’m inclined to say that neither option is acceptable - but it is widely accepted like that because everyone else believes the same thing. In other words, making bad presentations is acceptable to most people because everyone else makes bad presentations: it becomes the acceptable norm to be bad.

Lots of people say “I need to make presentations and I’m rubbish at it.. but I’m going to sort it out, honest.” - but ask them “When?” and you’ll get the standard “When I get around to it” in the same way as they’re going to get fit, join the gym, give up red meat, drink less alcohol, take up a new hobby or whatever “when they get around to it”.

Hopefully the bar has been raised by comments this week about the recent political speeches - but somehow I doubt it. People are happy in mediocrity it seems - although that could just be because I’m feeling cynical this morning!

Source: www.curved-vision.co.uk/presentation-skills-blog/

Just like Presenter View, animations can be problematic. Each slide redraws in the edit mode and while it is updates processing power for animations is reduced. But there are some steps to take to minimize the animation lag.

There is a lot of processing power used with each slide transition if you have:
- Slide preview at 100%
- Both left and right action panes open
- PowerPoint running full frame

I have found better results when PowerPoint runs like this:
- Close the right action pane
- Reduce size of thumbnails in left action pane, or close all together
- Make slide preview 25% (active slide in center)
- Reduce the actual application window to run in a small vertical area

Source: www.pptblog.tlccreative.com

Intriguing new Web 2.0 site for sharing presentation slideshows, SlideShare.net, went live this week. Currently in invite-only beta (natch), the site enables you to upload PowerPoint or OpenOffice slideshows of up to 20MB in size and then, in their words, “share with a link, embed in a blog, discover interesting slideshows, tag, comment and have fun”. I uploaded an 11MB .ppt of some of my most popular Flickr photos. Apart from mangling my choice of font (Cooper Black), the resulting Flash rendering was pretty tidy. The interface owes a fairly big debt to YouTube, although I guess they figured there’s no point in reinventing the wheel. Will be interesting to see what people use it for and how it scales up. Looks pretty promising.

Source: http://www.fabricoffolly.blogspot.com/

www.empressr.com

www.thinkfree.com

www.thumbstacks.com

www.zohoshow.com

What’s common for those services? PowerPoint copying. Why I don’t like it? I started find online presentation builders when a lot of people (often it’s women) begin to ask me make presentation for them, because “I don’t know how to use PowerPoint… It’s too difficult for me…” etc. What they need in my opinion?

1. Online service, because often they are unable to install programs.

2. Primitive interface.

I haven’t found such service and so I made it:

www.aroup.com/online_presentation_builder/en/ (Online presentation builder)