Blog about presentations

Recently, Robert Middleton, http://www.actionplan.com/ reminded me why we must get away from power point presentations, or as I call it the dreaded 3P!

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

You can use Powerpoint to edit your photographs with advanced features like transparency, masking, and custom borders. You can actually create some pretty stunning creations using your digital photos and auto shapes. The drawback to PowerPoint is that you are unable to accurately measure things. You can’t set the resolution or the actual graphic size by pixels.

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

Google has added yet another document preview button to Gmail. You could already preview Word documents and spreadsheets sent as file attachments using Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Now if you receive an email with an attached PowerPoint presentation, you can view the slideshow in your web browser with no need to download.

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

In my consulting work, I get a chance to collaborate on developing presentations with people in many different geographic locations. Sometimes it is face-to-face and other times it is done virtually. Collaborating on presentations instead of doing it yourself is becoming more common. Today I have some tips for making collaboration work no matter if you are in the same room or oceans apart.

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

If you work in Microsoft Word, you may be familiar with the comments feature. It allows you to add comments throughout a document to alert a reader or author to certain information. For example, an editor can leave comments by certain content in a document to alert the author about specific issues.

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