Dave Paradi's PowerPoint Blog

PowerPoint Tip: Boring presentations are not the problem

2012-01-24T13:48:00.001-05:00

How many times have you heard that the problem with many PowerPoint presentations is that they are boring? This is a common refrain from the media and it used to justify why presentations should not use PowerPoint, or use some other hot presentation tool instead of PowerPoint. I heartily disagree that most business presentations are boring. The problem with most presentations is not that they are boring, it is that they are confusing. In today’s article I want to explain the difference and what we can do about the problem.

A boring presentation is one that has no useful information for the audience and is a complete waste of their time. Does this type of presentation happen? Absolutely. But not very often. My experience is that the presenter does have something valuable to say to this audience. The audience has agreed to hear the presenter because they believe that there will be value in hearing what the presenter has to say. So what goes wrong?

The big problem with too many business presentations is that they are confusing, not boring. The audience doesn’t leave bored, they leave confused. Their time was wasted not by useless information, but by useful information that was presented so poorly that the time spent gave them no value. When executives call me to help their team improve their presentations, it is never because the presentations are boring. It is because the presentations are confusing and not getting the important message across.

Why are so many presentations confusing? I think there are two key reasons. First, the presenter has not thought enough about how to structure their message for this audience. I see presentations that seem to be a random brain dump on the topic. The presenter just dumps everything they know on to the slides in whatever order it tumbles out of their brain. No wonder it seems confusing to the audience. There is no flow or structure to the message and the audience can’t figure it out.

The second key reason so many presentations are confusing is that the presenter feels compelled to include everything they know about the topic. Every background piece of information, every data chart, graph or diagram ever created on the topic, and every bullet list they could think of goes on to slides. This overwhelms the audience and they don’t know what to make of all this information. No wonder they leave confused.

What can presenters do to reduce the chance that they will leave their audience confused? First, spend more time structuring your message. You need to sit down and actually plan what this audience needs to hear. It starts with deciding on the goal, continues with analyzing the audience and finally determining what points need to be included in the presentation. This is such an important topic that I did a one-hour webinar last year on Planning a Successful Presentation.

Second, be brutally honest about what really needs to go in to your presentation and what should be left out. This is a very difficult task because you are dealing with your emotions. You are emotionally invested in all the analysis and work you have done, and to leave it out can hurt. But you must be ruthless in evaluating what information should be included or excluded. For more tips, refer to this newsletter article on what data to include in a presentation.

Confusing presentations are a much bigger issue in business today than boring presentations. You can make your presentations more effective by structuring your message and including only the information the audience really needs to hear. By taking these actions, your audience will leave the presentation informed, not confused.

PowerPoint Tip: Effective dashboard slides

2012-01-10T07:55:00.000-05:00

At the start of the year many organizations are looking back to see how they did last year. They will use many different measures, and they may decide that they want to start tracking certain statistics that will make a difference in improving performance going forward. A common approach is to create one or more dashboard slides that give executives a quick snapshot of how the organization is performing. In this article I want to share some tips on creating effective dashboard slides.

The term dashboard comes from vehicle dashboards that use indicators to show the status of such metrics as amount of fuel remaining, oil temperature, and battery power. An effective dashboard slide gives the viewer a single quick view of the performance of key areas in the organization. By glancing at the slide, the executive can quickly determine what areas need attention. Many dashboard slides contain stoplight indicators, with red indicating an area that needs immediate attention, yellow an area of concern, and green indicating acceptable performance.

The first step in creating an effective dashboard slide is to decide on the correct metrics to use. This is done in conjunction with the executives responsible for that area of operations. When selecting the metrics, make sure that you will be reporting numbers that have context. A single number on its own does not have context since you can’t tell if that number is acceptable or not. By comparing the current value to one in the past or a standard, the viewer will have context. Since many dashboards use the stoplight indicators, get agreement on what constitutes a red, yellow, or green indicator for each metric. If the executives will be making decisions based primarily on these colors, it is critical to get the definitions of each color correct up front.

Once the metrics are well defined, the next step is to decide how to show the metrics. If you decide to use the stoplight indicators, remember that some people may not be able to interpret the colors green or red due to red-green color blindness. Medical research suggests that this condition affects approximately one in ten Caucasian males. If you use the stoplight approach, include the first letter of the color (R, Y, or G) in a contrasting text color so everyone is clear on what the indicator means. Don’t restrict your indicators to just the stoplight colors. Use indicator arrows (up or down) to indicate trends. Use a checkmark or ‘X’ to indicate acceptable or unacceptable situations. A thumbs up or thumbs down symbol can also work. By using a variety of indicators, it makes it more visually interesting for the viewer.

Next, don’t get trapped into thinking that every metric must be reduced to a single indicator. Some metrics are more complex and may need more information to allow an executive to properly interpret the results. You may need to show a simple trend graph along with the goal that is trying to be achieved. In this way, the executive can see that performance is better than last year, is improving each month, but that the goal has not yet been achieved. This is a better interpretation than a simple red circle showing that the goal has not been achieved this year.

Also, work with the executives to determine the order of information that will help them make quick and effective decisions. Usually you will start with a broad overview, and then go deeper into each area so they can interpret the broad indicators properly. There are many ways to break down the overall results. You could dive deep by geographic area if that makes sense, or by product or service grouping if that will be more helpful. Some executives will want to break down the information by first looking at what metrics need attention, regardless of what area they come from. Ask the executives how they want to see it broken down and perhaps give some options with a non-linear approach to building and delivering the presentation.

Dashboard slides can be a valuable part of a regular presentation if you take the time to design them to be an effective visual that gives executives the information they need to make decisions. If you are creating new dashboard slides or reviewing the ones you currently use, keep the above tips in mind.

Apply John Bohannon’s proposal to your organization

2012-01-03T21:50:00.000-05:00

Recently, John Bohannon presented a TED talk in Brussels that proposed replacing PowerPoint with dancers. The video has had over 330,000 views in less than two months and the idea has once again started people talking about how to improve presentations. In his presentation, John quotes a calculation from an article I published a few years ago to illustrate how much poor PowerPoint presentations are costing organizations. He compares the enormous amount wasted by poor presentations with the cost of funding arts programs in the US, and suggests that cutting arts programs would not help the national economy nearly as much as capturing the productivity that is wasted creating and sitting through poor presentations. I suggest you consider applying his thought to your own organization, no matter how small or large it is. If you could plan and create presentations more efficiently, and the presentations were so good that they allowed quick decisions and increased profits, your organization would reap clear benefits. If your organization took some of those gains and used them to support local causes in the arts or other areas, our overall economy would benefit. Where do you start improving your presentations? I suggest you start with better planning of what you want to communicate in the presentation. Most poor presentations fail to communicate the important message because the presentation has no clear purpose or structure. Recently I delivered a one hour webinar on how to plan a successful presentation. You can order the webinar recording here and get started this week. If you are skeptical that your organization could really be wasting that much due to poor presentations, you may want to use the formula in this article and be prepared to be surprised at the number you end up with. There is a lot of discussion going on about how to improve the global economy. All of us can do our own part by improving the presentations we create, which will increase productivity and improve results.

PowerPoint Tip: Spreadsheets don't belong on slides

2011-12-20T09:28:00.001-05:00

Frequently people tell me that financial presentations include a huge spreadsheet that has been copied on to a slide. The text and numbers are way too small and inevitably the presenter says, “I know you can’t read this, so I’ll read it to you.” Spreadsheets don’t belong on slides. Today I want to talk about why not and what you can do instead.

Why don’t spreadsheets belong on slides? Because a spreadsheet is an analytical tool, not a communication tool. We use spreadsheets because they are the best tool for analyzing numbers, doing calculations and comparing numerical information. A spreadsheet does those jobs well. It quickly allows us to do hundreds of calculations that would take hours if done by hand. It is so easy to do calculations that we may end up doing more analysis that gives additional insight into the numbers. So for this purpose, a spreadsheet is a great tool.

But when it comes to communicating the results of that analysis to others, the spreadsheet is a terrible tool. It contains far too much detail that confuses instead of informs. The audience only wants the results or conclusions of the analysis, not every step you took. The spreadsheet you used to do the calculations contains both the detailed work and the results, usually with the vast majority of the cells taken up by the details of the analysis, not the resulting conclusions.

So what should you do instead of copying the entire spreadsheet on to a slide? You should create a summary table of results. You can create a new worksheet in Excel or put the summary table below the existing worksheet, whichever you prefer. This summary table only contains the numbers that the audience needs to see in order to understand the conclusions of your analysis. The final numbers, the bottom line, is all they need to see.

When you are deciding on those final numbers, make sure that you aren’t forcing the audience to do math with the numbers. If you are presenting a comparison, don’t put both numbers in the table and expect the audience to figure out the difference. Show a percentage difference in the table if that is the important message you are trying to communicate.

Once you have the table down to the bare minimum of numbers, you can copy the table on to a slide or create a table on a slide and enter the numbers by hand. Add a graphic indicator, like an up or down arrow to indicate the direction of the change or difference. Make the table as easy to understand as possible. Now you have a table that truly gives insights and doesn’t confuse the audience.

Next month I’ll be doing a webinar that is a little different from the ones I’ve done this year. I will be sharing the best techniques for using financial data in PowerPoint. There will be more of a focus on the “how-to” in this webinar and I expect I’ll be dropping out of slide show mode to show how things are done in editing mode. You can see all the details and register at http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/effectivepresentationwebinars.htm#financial.

The best tool for presenting PowerPoint on the iPad

2011-12-12T06:08:00.000-05:00

In the next few months I’ll be doing a webinar on using the iPad to develop and deliver presentations, but I want you to know about one of the tools that I’ll be discussing. It is SlideShark and it is the best tool I have seen for presenting PowerPoint slides on the iPad. I was one of the testers of the app, but I’ve held off sharing it with you until now because I wanted to make sure it was going to stand up in the real world - and it does. It is a free app, and here’s how it works. You upload you PowerPoint file to a free SlideShark account on the web (you can do this from the iPad if you want to), they convert the file into a format that works on the iPad, then you download it to the iPad ready to present from the SlideShark iPad app. It works well and supports more fonts, animations and features than any other solution I’ve seen. Right now you can get extra storage space on your account if you use this link that SlideShark gave me: http://www.slideshark.com/r?r=14787B. Sign up today and discover the best solution for presenting PowerPoint on the iPad.

PowerPoint Tip: The audience wants the conclusion

2011-12-06T11:21:00.002-05:00

In my survey this fall of what annoys audiences about bad PowerPoint presentations, the clear message you sent was that too many presentations suffer from information overload. Whether it is text, numbers, or a combination of both, the excessive information causes confusion and lack of action by the audience. Today I want to address the issue of whether to present a little or a lot of your work in a presentation.

It is likely that you have done a lot of analysis and many calculations in order to come up with the conclusions that you want to present. The common view is that it is important for the audience to hear about all the assumptions, steps in the process, formulas, and calculations. You may also be tempted to include who did each step, how long it took, when it was done and even what office location helped out. While all of this information may be important to you, the truth is that the audience doesn’t need to hear it all.

What your audience needs to hear is the conclusion you reached. What does your work mean to them. How will your work help them make an important decision they are facing. They want to know the bottom line, not all the lines in between. The focus of your presentation should be on the conclusion of your work, not the details of your work. They trust that you did the work properly, that’s why they asked you to do this analysis.

But what about all the details? Shouldn’t we include some details? Only include those few details that, if changed, would significantly impact the conclusion. Talk about a key assumption you used that, if not correct, would change the whole outcome. Review the source of an input that some may want to question. When you review these areas of possible contention, also discuss how you verified the decisions you made so that further questions don’t need to arise. Other than those key details that impact the conclusion, leave out the rest of the details.

But what if someone asks about one of the steps or a formula we used, shouldn’t I include everything just in case? No. You should anticipate possible questions and prepare answers for them. If you want to include a slide that will help answer the question, create a hidden slide that you can jump to if the question gets asked. You can include a hyperlink on the slide that will likely trigger that question, or use the ability of PowerPoint to jump to any slide to access the hidden slide from any point in the presentation.

In your next presentation, step back and focus on the conclusions that will impact the audience instead of listing every detail of your work. Your presentation will be more effective, your discussion with the audience will be more insightful, and decisions will get made faster.

PowerPoint Tip: Creating universal icons

2011-11-22T09:56:00.003-05:00

When creating visuals, it can be helpful to sometimes use icons to represent items generically, such as people, cars, or objects. You could purchase vector icons from a site like istockphoto.com, but you can usually create your own custom icon using the drawing tools in PowerPoint. PowerPoint MVP Sandy Johnson did a session at the recent Presentation Summit demonstrating some of the new techniques in PowerPoint 2010. In today’s article, I’ll focus on the techniques you can use in PowerPoint 2007, since that is the version most people are using today.

Why might you want to use a universal icon? I have used them in proportional diagrams, tables, or when I want to represent an idea, but don't want the complexity of a photo to distract the audience from a simple point. Here is an example of one of my slide makeovers that used a universal icon: watch video on YouTube here.

The first step is to design the icon you want to create. I suggest keeping it simple, because it will make it easier to create. Try to come up with a design that is a combination of common shapes, such as rectangles, triangles, and ovals. If it helps you to sketch what you are trying to create, go ahead and grab your pencil and paper.

Once you have the idea in a more concrete form, it is time to start creating it. Start with the largest shape. One tip for drawing shapes is how to draw a perfectly proportional shape, such as a perfect square or a perfect circle. After you select the appropriate drawing tool, hold the Shift key down before you start drawing. The shape will stay equally proportional, creating a perfect square or circle.

Draw each of the shapes that you need. It usually works best to not have any outline on the shape so when you place them on top of each other it looks seamless. If you need to align shapes, use the tool built in to PowerPoint. You can align multiple shapes to all line up at the top, bottom, left, or right edges. Start by positioning one shape at the edge you want all the shapes to line up with. Then select all the shapes by clicking on the first shape and holding the Control key down as you click on the other shapes. Under the Arrange ribbon button on the Home tab, you can select the type of alignment that you want. All of the shapes will now be perfectly aligned to that edge.

If you need to create a shape that does not exist in PowerPoint, you might be able to create it using a subtraction technique. In PowerPoint 2010 they have more shape subtraction features, but there is a way you could do this in PowerPoint 2007 as well. Since every object on a slide is on its own layer, you can place a shape on top of an existing shape. If you set the new shape to have no outline and a fill color of the slide background, it makes it look like part of the underlying shape has disappeared.

Once you have your icon created, you can group all the shapes to make it easier to copy and reuse this icon. If you want to select all the shapes in one area of the slide, you can draw a rectangle with your cursor around the shapes and PowerPoint will select all of them. Now you can use the Group command under the Arrange ribbon button to combine all the shapes in to a single icon shape you can easily reuse.

In the video I linked to earlier, I used these techniques to create a generic person icon by using a circle for the head, rectangle for the body, and rounded rectangles for the arms and shoulders. Once I have it created, I can use it over and over again. These drawing techniques are also used in creating your own diagrams, which is the topic of the webinar I’ll be delivering this afternoon. If you’d like to join us or get the recording, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: Three lessons learned from Pecha Kucha

2011-11-08T09:25:00.002-05:00

At the recent Presentation Summit, Ric Bretschneider did a session on Pecha Kucha, a presentation format that has gained a lot of followers in recent years. As part of his session, he asked a few people to volunteer in advance to demonstrate this technique. I was one of the volunteers and today I'd like to share three lessons I learned from the experience.

First of all, I should explain what Pecha Kucha is. A Pecha Kucha is a twenty slide presentation that lasts six minutes and forty seconds because each slide is on the screen for only twenty seconds. The slides automatically advance, so the presenter has to time their remarks to coincide with the changing of the slides. There are evening events held in a number of cities where presenters prepare and deliver these types of presentations (find out more about the organization behind Pecha Kucha at http://www.pecha-kucha.org/).

The goal of a Pecha Kucha is to focus your message into a short presentation that still gets the point across. When I was approached with the idea, I immediately said Yes because I wanted to see how I could grow from the challenge of using a new approach.

Most Pecha Kucha presentations are on topics that are the personal passion of the presenter, such as a hobby or a business idea. I wanted to see how this format would apply to a hard business topic, so I chose to present Microsoft’s fourth quarter financial results to an imaginary internal company audience in six minutes and forty seconds. This is public information, so I wasn’t revealing any secrets. My presentation was very well received and a number of the attendees commented that they now saw that the ideas behind Pecha Kucha could apply to business oriented presentations.

The first lesson I learned from my experience with Pecha Kucha was the importance of the structure of the presentation. Financial results can be a lot of complex information and you have to decide what the focus should really be. I looked at the extensive press release that Microsoft published and selected my topics related to the revenue, income and expenses in each business unit. The lesson for all presenters is to first decide on what your message needs to be (that's why I did a webinar two weeks ago on planning a successful presentation).

The second lesson was that when you only have twenty slides that will be on the screen for twenty seconds each, you have to dramatically cut down the information on each slide. The format forces you to make hard decisions about what should stay and what should be cut out. You can’t have a spreadsheet on the slide because it is way too much information. You can only make one point per slide, which is a good approach for all presentations.

The third lesson was the importance of rehearsing. I got many compliments on how well my presentation flowed and how I transitioned from one slide to the next. When you have a clear structure and have limited your points to the most important ones only, it makes it easier to speak to those points. But it is critical to rehearse so that you know what you want to say for each slide and you can tie the current point to the next point. Make sure you schedule time to rehearse your presentations, it makes a big difference.

While I don't think most organizations will adopt Pecha Kucha as the way to present all of their presentations, I think that many presentations could benefit from using the lessons it teaches us: Create a clear structure, one point per slide only, and rehearse so it flows well. Thanks Ric for asking me to take part in the session.

Update Nov 21/11:
The video of this presentation is now available thanks to Charles Greene III. Here it is.

PowerPoint Tip: Takeaways from the Presentation Summit

2011-10-25T16:57:00.000-04:00

Last month I had the privilege of speaking at the ninth Presentation Summit in Austin, Texas. It is the one time during the year that the presentation community gets together and shares ideas and best practices on creating and delivering effective presentations. In addition to being a speaker and connecting with colleagues, I attend to further my knowledge from the excellent speakers who present. Today I want to share three of the many ideas I took away from this year’s conference.

Connie Malamed delivered a pre-conference workshop on visual design and one of the points I took away is how sketching taps in to our natural creativity. I am not an artist or designer, but I have often used sketches to determine what visual will work best for a particular situation. Recently during a consulting call, I was sketching different graphs as my client spoke about what he was trying to communicate in a specific slide. It helped to be able to visualize my thoughts and gave me new ideas as I sketched.

You don’t need to have any artistic talent to sketch. In my latest book on effective presentations for government managers, I use a form that allows presenters to plan each slide in detail. One of the main parts of the form is a space for you to sketch what visual you will be using for this slide. I’ll be showing this form in today’s webinar on planning a successful presentation. I recommend sketching your ideas to stimulate your natural creativity and come up with ways to visually represent your point. It does work.

It was a delight to see Nigel Holmes present again at the conference. Nigel has a naturally entertaining style that conveys serious topics in a fun way. One point he made was to show how many ways he could illustrate the number of hot dogs that a champion hot dog eater consumes during a competition. Because most of us limit ourselves to a few hot dogs in one sitting, we can’t relate to the large number that a competitor downs during these events.

He came up with a number of ways of showing the more than sixty hot dogs that they eat. It reminded me of the importance of making the numbers we present easily understandable for our audiences. Often it is best done using an analogy, so that we translate the magnitude of the number into something that the audience can relate to. My recent slide makeover video shows this along with a four step process to create an analogy for a large number. Make sure that you consider each audience individually, since the same analogy may not work for every audience.

The conference encourages audience interaction, which allows audience members to ask questions during the presentation to clarify their understanding. I saw a number of times where the question was related to the topic of the session, but wasn’t exactly about the visual the presenter had on the screen at the time. The speaker answered the question, but left the visual on the screen. I think that by blanking the screen (by pressing the period key in PowerPoint), the presenter could have focused the audience on the answer instead of leaving a visual on the screen that did not relate to the answer. In your next presentation, if the visual is not related to the answer you are giving to an audience question, turn off the slide so that the audience isn’t confused with a visual that is not helping to answer the question.

If you are interested in learning more about the Presentation Summit, and joining us at the tenth conference next year in Scottsdale, Arizona, go to www.PresentationSummit.com.

PowerPoint Tip: Adding crosshatching fills to graphs in PowerPoint 2007

2011-10-11T11:19:00.001-04:00

When I was presenting a course for accountants in July, a number of the participants mentioned that starting in PowerPoint 2007, they had lost the ability to fill graph segments with crosshatch patterns. This is important when printing graphs in black and white since shades of grey are hard to distinguish. The participants asked if there was any way to get back this important feature that had been eliminated. Today I want to show you a way to restore this functionality to PowerPoint 2007 (Microsoft added this feature back in PowerPoint 2010).

First, let’s start with what crosshatch patterns are and why you may need to use them. A crosshatch pattern is a series of lines on a white background that is used to fill a shape or, in the case of a graph, a column or pie wedge. There are usually patterns such as diagonal lines (in both directions and a combination), vertical and horizontal lines, and dots. A crosshatch fill is used to be able to distinguish the different parts of a graph, such as the five wedges in a pie chart.

Why would you want to use crosshatch patterns instead of colors? If you are printing to a black and white printer, the different shades of grey that PowerPoint uses to substitute for the colors of your graph end up being hard to distinguish on the printout. By using crosshatch patterns, the pie wedges or columns are easy to distinguish because the pattern is different.

Since Microsoft removed the ability to fill a graph element with one of the crosshatch patterns, you have to work around this limitation to get this feature back. As I explained in the workshop to the accountants, the approach is to use the ability to fill an element with a picture. If the picture is a crosshatch image, the elements look like they are filled with the patterns that were available in previous versions of PowerPoint. By adding a solid border around each element, it has a boundary that makes interpreting the size of the shape easier.

I have created seven patterns as small image files that you can download and use to fill your pie wedges, columns or bars. There are a few tricks to getting the patterns to work in PowerPoint graphs, so all the instructions and links to download the image files are on my website at www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/crosshatch.htm. The explanation includes screen captures and examples that would have been too large to fit in this newsletter, so the page on my site is a permanent spot you can refer to and share with others.

If you present financial information and have been wanting to use crosshatch patterns in PowerPoint 2007, you now have a method for doing so. And if you want to learn more about presenting financial data effectively, join me in Toronto on October 18 by registering here, in Edmonton on November 14 or Calgary on November 17 by registering here.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #74: Using an analogy to make a large number make sense

2011-10-04T05:51:00.000-04:00

Below I’ve posted a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution". Presenters often struggle with how to make large numbers easy for the audience to understand. This makeover shows how using a four step process can create a visual that makes it easy for the audience to grasp the importance and magnitude of a large number.

The slides I use in my makeovers are drawn from my consulting engagements and training workshops. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

You can get all my podcasts through iTunes, subscribing to my YouTube channel, or through Brainshark. If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

Full Results of the Annoying PowerPoint survey

2011-09-27T13:40:00.000-04:00

As I analyzed the responses and comments in the survey of “What annoys you about bad PowerPoint presentations?”, a clear theme emerged. Audiences are fed up with presenters who fill their slides with too much content and are then compelled to read it all to those seated in the room. Let’s look at the responses first and then the comments.

In looking at what the 603 respondents said were their top three annoyances, it was clear that reading the slides is by far the top thing that presenters do that annoys their audience. This has been in top spot for all five of the surveys I have done going back to 2003. Moving up one spot from the last survey, the second most annoying thing is the presenter filling the slides with full sentences of information instead of summarizing the key messages in bullet points. And rounding out the top three, is the presenter using fonts that are too small to read, probably because they are cramming too much information on the slide.

Here are the top five annoyances along with the percentage of respondents that selected them as one of their top three:
The speaker read the slides to us – 73.8%
Full sentences instead of bullet points – 51.6%
The text was so small I couldn’t read it – 48.1%
Slides hard to see because of color choice – 34.0%
Overly complex diagrams or charts – 26.0%

It is clear that the top three annoyances are separated from the rest by a significant distance and are clearly the areas presenters need to focus on. And yet, I think that these are only symptoms of the bigger issue of information overload. When a presenter feels that they have to include everything they have done or all they know on this topic, the slides will be a confusing mass of text and numbers that give the audience no clue on what the important takeaway should be. Presenters need to make better decisions on what content to include in a presentation so that the message is clear and understood.

In the survey, I also ask how many presentations people see on a weekly basis. The number of presentations people see is on the rise. When I look at the responses for people who see one or more presentation each day, it has risen 38.7% from the last survey in 2009 (from 14.2% in 2009 to 19.7% in 2011). Presentations are becoming a more common way of communicating in organizations and the quality of the presentations doesn’t seem to be getting better. This is reinforced by the result of the last question I ask on the survey. Almost 43% of the respondents said that over half of the presentations they see suffer from the one or more of the annoying problems I ask them to select their top three from. This is up from 39% in the 2009 survey, so the problems are more prevalent than before.

I also ask respondents to write in what else bothers them about the poor presentations they see and as in every other survey, people take the opportunity to tell me their strong feelings. The comments filled ten and a half pages of eight point type! As I read them all, three themes
emerged.

First, their comments reinforced my conclusion that the root cause of the annoying behaviours was really due to presenters attempting to cram too much information in to the presentation. Many commented that presentations have become reports that are read to the audience. It is a trend that I am seeing in my workshops as well. Attendees are asking how to determine what should go in and what should be left out of the presentation. Because they are unsure, they default to including everything. Another contributing factor is the need to send the presentation by e-mail to those who could not attend the live presentation. In order to make the presentation make sense, the presenter basically writes their script on the slides. This will be a key area of focus in my writing and work over the next year. I am starting to teach strategies for questioning each piece of content to determine if it really contributes to the goal of the presentation. I am also teaching ways to include additional detail that is not on the slides presented during the live presentation, but is available when the slide file is sent to others (or used as a record of what was presented at the meeting).

The next theme is that presenters need to be better prepared to deliver the presentation. Some of the comments related to presenters who did not create the slides themselves and had not practiced with them before the presentation. The presenter ends up reading the slides and is not able to add anything to what is written on the slide. Audiences feel that this shows a lack of respect. Presenters need to be familiar with their presentation and invest the time to rehearse and make the presentation their own, even if the slides were prepared by someone else. Respondents also commented on presenters who lack the skills or knowledge of how to speak effectively or don’t know how to use the equipment when presenting. If you aren’t comfortable speaking or don’t know how the equipment should be used, ask someone. Get some training so that you don’t embarrass yourself at the front of the room.

The third theme was the continuing problem of poorly designed slides. From poor color choices to unreadable fonts, to spelling and grammar errors, the basics are still not being understood by too many presenters. If the content of the slide can’t be understood because of poor design, there is no way it can be an aid to the presenter. You don’t have to be a designer to create slides that are visually appealing. Select colors that have enough contrast, use sans-serif fonts in large enough sizes, and double check all text on your slide before presenting. When the presenter doesn’t even bother to get these basics correct, the audience feels that the presenter doesn’t care about the presentation, and the audience will naturally be less willing to listen and act upon the message the presenter is giving.

So what do I conclude from this survey? That presentations are becoming a more important vehicle for communicating, but presenters aren’t really getting any better at effectively using this important vehicle to get their message understood. To change the current state, it will take awareness on the part of the presenters and a willingness to do things differently. I ask that we all do our part. I will continue to share my insights and suggestions. I ask each of you to take the message to those who need to hear it. Together we can make a difference.

Survey Reveals What Annoys Audiences About PowerPoint® Presentations

2011-09-19T07:02:00.002-04:00

Here is the press release that will be going out that summarizes the results from the recent survey. More detailed results and analysis will be available next week.

Mississauga, Ontario

September 19, 2011

For immediate release

The most annoying thing a presenter can do is read their slides to the audience. This is the conclusion of the recent survey of over 600 audience members by author and consultant Dave Paradi. Almost three-quarters of the respondents to the fifth biennial survey cited reading the slides as one of the top three choices from a list of twelve annoyances.

Paradi said, “From the comments and responses, it is clear that too many presentations suffer from information overload. There is so much on each slide that the presenter is actually reading a detailed report instead of presenting the key insights or conclusions that the audience wants to hear. Audiences are left confused, leading to a lack of action and wasted effort in organizations of all sizes.”

Other top annoyances included using sentences instead of summarizing the key point as a bullet point, and using text that was too small to read. Paradi sees these as further indications that presenters are not doing the work of summarizing the information for their audiences. He added, “Instead of analyzing their information and creating a concise summary of the key message, presenters are putting everything they know on slides, leading to paragraphs of detail in fonts that are far too small.”

Paradi has joined other presentation experts from around the world this week at The Presentation Summit in Austin, Texas. The attendees will discuss ways to improve the presentations that corporate, government, and educational organizations create and deliver. The detailed survey results and further analysis will be released next week on his website at www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

The top answers to the question, “What annoys you about PowerPoint presentations?”, according to 603 respondents:
The speaker read the slides to us – 73.8%
Full sentences used instead of bullet points – 51.6%
Text so small I couldn’t read it – 48.1%

Dave Paradi is an author, consultant, and speaker who helps presenters communicate effectively using persuasive PowerPoint presentations. He is available for interviews at 905-510-4911.

The Presentation Summit is an annual conference dedicated to improving presentations. More information can be found on their website at www.PresentationSummit.com.

PowerPoint® is a registered trademark of Microsoft Inc. The opinions expressed here are solely those of Dave Paradi and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization, including Microsoft Inc.

PowerPoint Tip: Amazing pre-made animation effects

2011-09-13T09:43:00.000-04:00

At the end of this week I’ll be travelling to the Presentation Summit in Austin, Texas. It is the only gathering of presentation professionals and I look forward to seeing all of my colleagues and learning about the work they have been doing in the past year. One of the people that always gets a lot of attention is Julie Terberg, a presentation designer from Michigan. Her makeovers session is always packed and she has our jaws dropping at what can be done with PowerPoint.

A couple of years ago she showed us some templates she was working on for Microsoft. She was designing more than just a look and feel template. This was a template that showed you how to create a certain effect using the drawing tools and animation effects in PowerPoint. We were amazed at what we saw and were looking forward to these templates being available for everyone to use.

I had forgotten about this until recently when someone asked if there was a way to create a slide that made it look like the page of a book was flipping over from right to left. I recalled that this was one of the effects that Julie showed during her session. All of her templates are now available online for you to use, but Microsoft hasn’t made a big deal of them so far.

To see these pre-made animation effect templates, go to this link. The collection is on the Microsoft Office site in the Templates section and is not easy to find. The collection is called Example slide effects with instructions, but the search function doesn’t do a good job of finding the collection all as one. The link above takes you to the category listing. You can also see the listing of templates for PowerPoint 2010 through the support section of the Office site here.

These templates have the examples for you to see and use. They also have instructions in the Slide Notes section below the slides that tell you how to customize the slide and even how to create it from scratch yourself. If you are looking to take your slides to the next level, check out these free templates. And if you want to see Julie work her magic live, join me at the Presentation Summit at the end of the week in Austin; all the details are at www.PresentationSummit.com.

Last Day for What Annoys You About Bad PowerPoint Presentations Survey

2011-09-09T10:52:00.000-04:00

Tonight I'll be wrapping up my survey of audience members on what annoys them about bad PowerPoint presentations. I conduct this survey every two years and the results get published in my own newsletter, other people’s newsletters and in books by different authors. It only takes a couple of minutes to complete the survey and everyone who delivers PowerPoint presentations will appreciate knowing your opinion. If you haven't completed the survey yet, please click on this survey link now and share your thoughts since today is the last day to complete the survey:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGxPYXhxQVdsX01pTWtKbWJsY3h3U1E6MA

Feel free to forward this link to others who see PowerPoint presentations and are interested in improving presentations in the future.

Survey: What Annoys You About Bad PowerPoint Presentations?

2011-09-06T09:05:00.000-04:00

At the end of this week I'll be wrapping up my survey of audience members on what annoys them about bad PowerPoint presentations. I conduct this survey every two years and the results get published in my own newsletter, other people’s newsletters and in books by different authors. It only takes a couple of minutes to complete the survey and everyone who delivers PowerPoint presentations will appreciate knowing your opinion. If you haven't completed the survey yet, please click on this survey link now and share your thoughts:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGxPYXhxQVdsX01pTWtKbWJsY3h3U1E6MA

Feel free to forward this link to others who see PowerPoint presentations and are interested in improving presentations in the future.

Thanks for your time and participation in this year’s survey. I’ll be releasing the results in September at the Presentation Summit conference (if you’d like to be at the conference, register at www.PresentationSummit.com).

PowerPoint Tip: How animating a graph makes it easier to understand

2011-09-02T06:34:00.000-04:00

I spoke last week to a group of executives and one of the challenges that I saw in their presentations was the tendency to put spreadsheets on their slides when talking about financial topics. A graph is better than a spreadsheet to illustrate numeric information to your audience. Use a pie chart to show proportions, use a column chart to compare measured values, or use a line chart to show a trend. Showing the point instead of asking the audience to do math to figure it out is far more effective.

By default, the graphs in PowerPoint appear all at once. In this article I want to suggest that by animating the elements of your graph, you can make it even more meaningful for your audience. When you build each part of the graph one at a time, it allows you to discuss just that data and the audience can focus on each point you are making.

For example, you can show each set of data in a line chart so that you can discuss the trend in each set of data and what it means to the audience. If you have a pie chart, build each wedge, discussing the importance of that part of the whole picture. With a column chart, as you show each column, talk about what that value represents and how the audience should interpret the information. It makes the graph easier for you to present and much easier for the audience to understand.

When you are building the graph using the Animation feature in PowerPoint, don’t use any of the fancy swirling or twirling effects. Use the simple Appear effect or use the Wipe effect to show a line drawn from left to right or a column grow from the x-axis. The default setting when a graph is animated is to have all parts of the graph come on at once. You will need to change the option to build the graph by series or category, so that your graph is built piece by piece. Take some time to think through how you want to explain the graph in support of the points you are making so you can set the animation to match your plan. You can even bring related parts of the graph on at once, such as three related pie wedges that appear at the same time.

Many graphs benefit from adding descriptive labels that explain each data set better than the default legend does. You can animate these labels to come on while the parts of the graph are being displayed. To do so, set the timing parameter to With Previous and move the text label animation element right after the element of the graph in the animation list. This looks great when presenting using PowerPoint, but be aware that some web meeting services do not recognize this type of animation when they convert your slides (I know from personal experience). Always test how these slides look after being converted by a web meeting service.

Animating graphs to make them more effective is one of the topics I will cover in my courses to the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ontario and Alberta this fall (see the listing to the left for dates and locations). I also covered animation and many more techniques in my Advanced Graph Techniques webinar earlier this year. You can get the recording here. Take the time to build your graphs using the Animation feature of PowerPoint and the message will be clearer for your audience.

PowerPoint Tip: Saving money on technology purchases

2011-08-18T06:37:00.000-04:00

According to retail statistics, this time of year is now more popular for technology buying than Christmas. The back-to-school purchases for those heading to high school or college/university often include technology such as computers, software, tablets, and smartphones. Our kids have been using PowerPoint in school since grade 3, so we know how important technology is in schools today. Since we are all looking for ways to save money when making these large purchases, this article is about legitimate ways to reduce how much you spend when making technology purchases.

Computer manufacturers have recognized the importance of getting students hooked on their brand early, so a number of them offer special educational stores as part of their offerings. Apple has an educational part of their website that offers discounted prices on many computers and tablets. The discounts are also available in their stores. Dell offers a student centre where you can save on their laptops and desktops. Check with your preferred supplier to see if they offer discounts for students, and ask retailers what offers may be available at the store.

Software vendors also offer discounts in different ways. Microsoft, Adobe, and other vendors often offer student pricing through retail stores, or offer special student versions of software. If your son or daughter is attending a college or university, the computer store or book store on campus often will offer some of the popular software at drastically reduced prices for student use. Some even offer these discounts through online services where you can download the software after providing a valid educational institution e-mail address. Sometimes buying the software you need with the computer can save you money as well.

For any of these technology purchases, look for non-cash ways to pay. Converting loyalty points or airline points is a popular approach. We have converted airline points into gift cards for a retailer and then purchased the technology at the store using the gift cards. You may also be able to convert these points into gift cards for a mall that allows you to use the gift card at any store in the mall, even Apple stores. Look at the web site for the points programs that you belong to in order to see what your options are.

You also may be able to get discounts because you belong to a club or association. Many associations have negotiated discounts with certain suppliers, including technology companies. Sometimes the association or club gets a percentage of the discount as a bonus, so you help them out as well. Check the member benefits area on the web sites of the clubs or associations you are a member of to see what discounts might be available.

Because technology costs so much, some people are tempted to download software illegally or use other means to acquire what they want. You don’t need to take those routes. By taking some time to investigate what discounts are available, you can save from a few percent to over half on some of your technology purchases. Some of these discounts are available all year long, not just at this back-to-school time of the year, so you should keep these ideas in mind no matter when you purchase technology.

PowerPoint Tip: Presenting from someone else’s computer

2011-08-08T11:37:00.000-04:00

In my workshops it is common that participants ask about what they need to take into account when they must take their PowerPoint presentation to another computer on a USB drive instead of using a laptop. It may be that the room they are presenting in has a fixed connection between the projector and a computer in the room, they don’t have a laptop, or they want to travel lighter and use the equipment they know will be in the room. Today’s article gives some best practices when presenting from a different computer.

First, make sure you have created your slides so that you minimize the chance of things looking differently on another computer. Ask what version of PowerPoint the computer has and save the file in the format for that version (this is especially necessary if your version is more recent than the version on the computer you are presenting on). Use standard fonts that will be on all computers, like Arial or Calibri so your text appears the way you designed it. Make sure you have inserted photos using the Insert – Photo function instead of copying and pasting from a file list since this can cause problems especially when moving between Windows and Mac versions of PowerPoint.

Next, you want to make sure you have all the files you will need. While the latest version of PowerPoint does a better job of embedding some multimedia files, they are usually only linked and you must make sure they are with you for the presentation to function properly. Files you have hyperlinked to, such as word processor documents, spreadsheets, or PDF documents, will need to be copied on to the USB drive as well since they are never embedded in your PowerPoint file. The best way to make sure all the files come with you and work on the other computer, is to place all files in the same folder before any of the linking or embedding happens during the creation of your slides. Then you can just copy the whole folder to the USB drive and copy the folder to the other computer.

Other items that you want to remember to bring include your remote control so you can change slides from anywhere in the room. I use the RemotePoint Navigator from Interlink Electronics and it has served me well for many years. It plugs in to any computer and doesn’t require additional software, so it is easy to take with you. Make sure you have all of your speaking notes, introduction, and a printed copy of your slides as well. You can have these in paper form or saved on your tablet device (I’ve been saving copies on my iPad and it has been working well).

When you get to the room to present, copy your files from the USB drive to the room computer. Check that everything works by going through all slides and checking that linked files come up properly when activated. If the USB drive fails, which is unlikely, but does happen, you will also want to have the files available online. You can e-mail the zipped folder to yourself as an attachment and access your webmail to download the files, you can sync the folder with an online storage service such as Dropbox and retrieve the files if needed, or you can copy the files to your smartphone and connect the phone as a drive if it has that capability.

By designing your slides with portability in mind, following practices that help ensure linked files will work, taking your reference notes, and having a backup, you give yourself the best chance of success when you have to take your PowerPoint presentation to another computer to present.

Breaking the habit of speaking to the screen

2011-07-19T10:03:00.001-04:00

In the past, I have discussed the habit some presenters have of talking to the screen instead of the audience when using PowerPoint. In two previous newsletters (here and here), I suggest that the problem stems from presenters using the slides as speaker notes and needing to regularly look at the screen in order to remember what they are supposed to say. I suggested strategies such as setting up a monitor so you can see what is on the screen instead of turning around, and rehearsing so you know your material better. In today’s article I want to move the discussion to a higher level and talk about the mindset that can help break the habit of speaking to the screen.

Recently I spoke to a group of accountants on why many financial presentations are so ineffective and confusing. It boils down to a need to shift our mindset to one of serving the audience instead of delivering the data. If you are speaking to the screen when delivering a PowerPoint presentation, I suggest you consider making this mindset change as well. Place a greater emphasis on serving the audience instead of delivering the content and you will discover that your approach to the presentation will change.

You will want to have a conversation instead of a content dump. To start a conversation, all you need is a persuasive visual that contains a summary headline and a visual that illustrates your point. This is your starting point to then explain what is behind the visual, tell a story that illustrates the point further, or engage the audience in thinking about the point. You will get rid of the overloaded text slides that constrain you in your presentation (read this newsletter for more on why overloaded slides constrain presenters).

When you start with a focus on serving the audience, you don’t feel a need to regularly check what is on the screen. You can focus on delivering each point because you know the audience will find it helpful. Practice looking at one person in the audience as you deliver the point. Make it feel like you are having a one-on-one conversation with that person. When you are done with that point, move on to deliver the next point to another member of the audience. Deliver your points as a series of one-on-one conversations.

Many presenters have the habit of looking at the screen when delivering a PowerPoint presentation and they don’t even realize they are doing it. To check how often you do it, videotape your presentation. When you watch it back, turn off the sound and focus just on where you are looking. This is the only way to really know how often you are looking at the screen instead of the audience.

If you find you are looking at the screen too much, change your mindset to one of serving the audience. Create persuasive visuals instead of overloaded text slides using the five-step method in my book The Visual Slide Revolution. And practice delivering your presentation as a conversation with the audience instead of a content dump directed at the audience. Your presentations will be more effective and your audience will appreciate it.

PowerPoint Tip: You need permission to use YouTube videos

2011-07-05T21:24:00.001-04:00

One of the most frequent topics on the PowerPoint newsgroups and forums is how to include YouTube videos in a presentation. People find a cool video on YouTube and think it would be great in their presentation. In this article I’m not going to show you how to include a YouTube video in your PowerPoint presentation. I want to discuss the right way to get permission to do so.

Permission, you ask? Why do I need permission? I thought anything on the Internet, especially YouTube, is free for the taking. Actually, this is one of the most common misconceptions around. Just because it is on the Internet does not make it free. Just like every other broadcast medium, like television or a movie theatre, videos are copyrighted by the creator, and you need permission to use the video in your work.

So how do you get permission? You must ask for it. The challenge is how do you know who to ask? Here’s the best route I’ve found. Whenever you are watching a video on YouTube, you’ll see under the video frame a line that says “Uploaded by” followed by a username that is a clickable link. If you click on the username link, you will go to the person’s YouTube channel. In the person’s profile, you will find more information about them. They may include a terms of use for their videos in the profile, but not many people do this.

If there is no terms of use statement, then you will need to contact them. If their e-mail address is listed, you can send them an e-mail. If there is no e-mail address listed, you can still use the Send Message link at the top of the profile section to send a message from your YouTube account to their account (if you have a Google account, then you automatically have a YouTube account, you just may need to activate it). If they have a website listed, you may visit the site to see if there are instructions for use of the videos on their site.

When you are sending a request, here are some pieces of information that will make it easier for the video’s creator to decide if they want to grant permission and what the terms will be:

Whether you plan to use the entire video or just a piece; if it is just a piece, what specific clip do you want to use (ie. from second 23 to second 42)

What setting will you be using it in; usually you will let them know that it will be a presentation on a certain date to a certain audience

Whether you will be using the video as a “good” or “bad” example; if you are showing their work as an example of what not to do, permission may be harder to get

Whether you will be charging for the presentation and will copies of the presentation be sold; any time you are making money from their work, expect them to ask for some compensation, which is only fair

What permission text they would like on the slide showing that the use is permitted and who owns the copyright; you can put this text in small font in a muted color so it does not attract undue attention

Can you get a high-resolution copy for the presentation since running the video directly from YouTube is a risky adventure and capturing the low-res version on YouTube will not look good in your presentation

If the creator gives you permission, you are all set. If you can’t get permission, consider a video from a different source or even a photograph to make your point. Using a YouTube video in your presentation can be a good idea, but you should think of these videos the same way you think of all videos. There needs to be a relevant point and you are not using it simply because it is “cool”. If you want to know more about incorporating videos in your PowerPoint presentation, check out the one-hour webinar I did earlier this year that shows you how to incorporate videos from many different sources into your PowerPoint slides; the details are all here.

Using a tablet or e-reader for Speaker Notes

2011-06-21T14:05:00.000-04:00

One of the sessions I’ll be presenting at the Presentation Summit conference this September in Austin, TX is on the topic of being more environmentally friendly with our presentations. While PowerPoint presentations are seemingly all digital, they tend to generate a lot of paper with the handouts, speaking notes, and flipcharts that are used in many presentations. In my session I’ll be showing techniques to eliminate the paper associated with many presentations.

One of the techniques I’ll be showing is a technique that I have started to use that eliminates the speaking notes that I would print for each presentation and then promptly recycle afterwards. Instead of printing 30-50 pages of notes, I now carry those notes on my iPad and no trees are sacrificed for the presentation. Here are two ways to create speaking notes that you can carry on a tablet or e-reader device, like an iPad, Kindle, Nook, Kobo, or any of the other similar devices on the market today.

If all you need is a preview of the upcoming slides, you can use an electronic version of the Handout printout available in PowerPoint. I suggest the PDF format for the electronic file because it is a universal format that almost every tablet or e-reader can use. Print the handouts at four or six per page from PowerPoint to a PDF file. The size of the slide on the printout is the same in the four per page and six per page layouts, it just depends on how many slides you want to see at the same time. I find the nine slides per page layout too small to read on a tablet or e-reader. Transfer this file to your device, and page through as you speak instead of flipping pages in a printed set of pages.

If you need some notes about each slide, use the Speaker Notes section of PowerPoint below the slide to capture the key points you want to make on this slide. Don’t write a transcript of what you want to say, just some of the key words or phrases that will jog your memory on the key points you want to cover. Format these notes in a large font so they will be readable on your device. I find I need at least 18 point or larger for my eyes to be able to read the words if the device is on the table in front of me when speaking. Print the Notes printout from PowerPoint to a PDF file, which will create a document that shows your slide at the top of the page and your notes at the bottom of the page. You will have one page per slide and you can flip through them on your device.

After you have transferred the PDF file to your device, there are a few settings or techniques I have found helpful. First, make sure that the brightness and contrast settings are high enough that you can see your notes in the lighting of the room. Many of the devices adjust for ambient light, and I have found that manually adjusting the brightness has helped make it easier to see my notes when presenting. Also, set the auto-sleep mode off so your device does not go to sleep in the middle of your presentation. Since it will be on the whole time, make sure it is fully charged before you start.

Practice flipping pages on your device so you can do it smoothly. I use the Good Reader app on the iPad to read PDF files and it has two ways to move between pages. I can swipe from right to left to flip the page or just tap on the right edge of the page to go to the next page. Practice to see which technique you will be most comfortable with on your device. Figure out where you will put the device, whether on a lectern or table, instead of holding it, although you can do this too if it is comfortable.

I’ll be covering this and many more techniques to make our presentations more environmentally friendly in my session at the Presentation Summit. Check out all the great sessions at www.PresentationSummit.com and join me and 249 other attendees Sep 18-21 in Austin, TX. Get the early bird discount if you register by June 30. See you there!

Editing old graphs in PowerPoint 2007/10

2011-06-08T14:19:00.000-04:00

One of the major changes between PowerPoint 2003 and PowerPoint 2007 is the way that graphs are created. In PowerPoint 2003 and earlier versions, graphs were created by using a module called Microsoft Graph. Starting in PowerPoint 2007, you now use Excel to create graphs, which makes more sense since most of the data for graphs comes from an Excel spreadsheet. The challenge is that the old graphs and the new graphs don’t have the same format.

Even though they may look very similar, a graph in PowerPoint 2003 is very different than a graph in PowerPoint 2007. If you try to edit a PowerPoint 2003 graph in PowerPoint 2007, you will find that all of the new options are missing and you only have access to a limited set of options that mimics the older approach to creating graphs. You can recreate the graph from scratch, but that could be a lot of work.

My suggestion is to convert the old graphs to the new format. Double-click on the graph in PowerPoint 2007 and you will see a dialog box asking you if you want to convert the graph or not. I suggest you select the option to convert all the graphs in the file, since this will save you the time of having to double-click on every graph individually. It may take a little while to do the conversion, especially if you have a lot of graphs in the presentation.

After conversion, you may notice some slight differences. I’ve noticed that sometimes the text shifts very slightly. I think it is because they have adjusted some of the default spacing for some of the graph elements. Once the graph is converted, you have all of the new graph tools available for use, which make it easier to customize the appearance of the graph.

If you save the file in the older PowerPoint 2003 file format, your graph will be converted to the previous format and you may notice some slight appearance differences. The new graph features will be lost and if you want to edit the graph in PowerPoint 2007, you will have to convert it again. You may want to stick with saving the file in the current format since older versions can still read the new file format and you won’t lose any changes you’ve made to the graph.

This is one of the tips I covered in my webinar on Creating Effective Graphs. If you’d like to get a solid foundation on how to create graphs, you can get the recording here. Later this week I’ll be holding a webinar on Advanced Graph Techniques for those who are familiar with the basics and want some ideas to take their graphs to the next level. You can get all the details of what I’ll cover here (you can pre-order the recording if you are unable to make the live session on Thursday).

PowerPoint Tip: Why You Shouldn’t Use Google Images to Find Photos

2011-05-26T13:24:00.000-04:00

In my workshops, whenever I speak about using photos in a presentation, someone always asks about Google Images. It is so easy to find pictures using the image search function of Google, why don’t I recommend it? Because in almost every case, it is more risky than presenters could imagine. Why? Because photos are copyrighted and you can’t use them without permission. Let me share with you one of two examples I shared in my webinar in March to illustrate the risks.

An advertising firm was creating a blog post for a client. They needed a photo, so they did a web search and found one that would work perfectly. The blog post got uploaded to the client site and everything was fine. Until their client received a letter from a lawyer informing them of the copyright infringement. The client was not happy. It ended up costing the advertising firm $4,000 to settle the case when they could have purchased a photo for around $10. If you want to read the whole story, click here.

If you believe that you will never get caught because your presentation isn’t on the web or not that many people will see it, this example should change your thinking. You never know if an audience member will recognize the photo and tell their relative or friend about it. You may not post your presentation to the web, but someone you send it to might. In today’s connected world, you are fooling yourself if you think no one will ever find out.

And there is no need to take these risks when there are so many great sources of photos you can use legally. Microsoft makes tens of thousands of photos available for your use in presentations and you can search this library from within PowerPoint. Stock photography sites sell professional photos for very reasonable prices, as low as $7-8 for a photo that can be easily used in a presentation. And some photo sharing sites allow their members to grant a license to use the photo in commercial presentations.

With so many ways to stay legal, why take the risk of using Google Images to find a photo for your presentation? If you’d like to learn more about finding and using photos in your presentation, including specific sites and techniques for finding great photos legally, check out the recording of the webinar I did in March, just click here for all the details.

PowerPoint Tip: Prepare for Problems so you Respond, not React

2011-05-10T13:23:00.000-04:00

At a conference in February I heard Bo Boshers share a story of two groups who faced the same situation and had very different reactions. One group saw a potential danger and reacted by running away. The other group had been prepared for challenges and, when confronted with the same potential danger, was able to stand and respond. In this article I want to talk about how presenters should be prepared for problems so when they happen, we respond, not react.

If you are going to do presentations, you will at some point face a problem with the equipment, room, technology, sound system, audience, or any number of possible things that could go wrong. When something goes wrong, will you react and panic, grasping the first thought that comes to you in desperation, or will you respond, having thought through possible scenarios in advance, and handle the situation gracefully? I believe it is your choice.

To be prepared to respond, the first step is to think through what could go wrong. Make a list of all of the potential problems that could happen. Include every horror story you have heard other presenters tell, all the ones you have encountered, and all the ones you think could never happen. Look at all aspects of the presentation, from preparation to travel, to room, equipment, food and any other area that you can think of.

Once you have your list, you should look at how you can mitigate, or reduce the probability of the problem, and what your contingency plan would be if that problem actually happens. Let’s look at mitigating the problem first. Look at ways that you can prevent the problem from occurring or ways to prevent it from impacting the presentation. Sometimes you can’t prevent the problem, like severe weather, but you can prevent it from impacting the presentation by booking travel the previous day so you have time to make alternative arrangements if need be. Other mitigation strategies include using checklists for equipment and arriving at the room early enough to make changes before the audience arrives.

After you have done everything you can to prevent the problem from impacting your presentation, you need to think of what to do if the problem does occur; your contingency plan. As an example, if the projector stops working, you will have to use descriptive language to create a mental picture of your visuals for your audience. You may also be able to use a whiteboard or flipchart if available. As you develop these plans, make note of items that should be included in your preparations, such as practicing how to deliver without your visuals, or arranging for a flipchart to be in the room just in case.

There are literally hundreds of different problems that you can run in to. The key is to be prepared, so when it happens, you respond based on your preparation. If you panic and react by blaming the venue or staff, or you stop for many minutes trying to fix a technical issue, your audience will not leave with a good impression of you or your message. Take the time to prepare and even the craziest situation will not faze you.

PowerPoint Tip: Formatting text in a table

2011-04-26T20:27:00.000-04:00

Recently I wrote about how to format text on slides because text will always be a part of our slides. Today I want to take the topic further and discuss the formatting of text in a table. Tables can be a great way to visually show a comparison between two or more items. In many cases, that table will include text, so we need to format it properly to make it easy for the audience to understand the comparison we are presenting.

There are some aspects of text formatting that work the same in tables as in text boxes. The most important is the ability to use tabs to format text into columns or align the text in a particular way within a table cell. As I talked about before, you can use four different tab types to achieve the text alignment you want. You can also use the text highlighting technique I described to make text stand out.

Another similarity between text boxes and table cells is a feature that was added in PowerPoint 2007. In PowerPoint 2007 and later, you can apply different formatting to the different lines in a text box or table cell. If you highlight a few lines of text, you can add tab stops, change whether the text is bulleted or not, or change the alignment without changing how the rest of the text in that text box or table cell appears. This gives you much greater flexibility in formatting text to get exactly what you are looking for.

While there are those aspects that are the same, there are also two important differences. The first difference you will need to keep in mind is that any tabs you add on the ruler apply only to the cell you are working in at the time. PowerPoint treats each cell as its own text box for the purposes of changes to the ruler. If you want to have the same tab stops on multiple cells, you will have to set them each individually. You can’t highlight a group of cells and add tab stops since the tab option for the ruler disappears when you select multiple cells in a table.

Another difference is in getting the tab stops to work. In a table cell, if you press the Tab key, you will jump to the next cell in the table. This is done to make it easy to navigate the table when entering text. To move to the next tab stop in a cell, hold the Control key down and press the Tab key. Then PowerPoint knows you want to move to the tab stop within the cell, not jump to the next cell. It takes a bit of practice to get used to doing this if you mostly work with tabs in a text box.

Tables are a good way to show a comparison between two or more items on multiple dimensions. You can have a row for each criteria and the audience can easily follow your discussion. Use the tips in this article to format the text in tables so they look exactly as you want them to.

PowerPoint Tip: Using Exit animation to reveal a graphic

2011-04-19T10:36:00.002-04:00

The last step in my five-step KWICK method from my book The Visual Slide Revolution is to Keep the Focus of the audience. The best way to do this is to build your points or slide elements one by one on the slide. This works if you have created the visual, but it isn’t so easy if you are using a graphic that was supplied to you. This article is about using a technique to reveal a graphic piece by piece.

Revealing a graphic is like what our teachers used to do with overhead transparencies. They would place a piece of paper over the transparency, covering up what they didn’t want us to see yet. They would slide the paper down to reveal each point as they spoke. This gives the same benefit to the audience as building elements on the slide, so we can use this technique with graphics that have been supplied to us for our presentation.

The first step is to position the supplied graphic on the slide. Make it as big as you need to, depending on what else you are placing on the slide. If the graphic is in a PDF document such as a brochure or report, use the technique for copying graphics from PDF documents that I discussed in the newsletter last November (click here to read that issue in the archives).

Now, just like our teacher, we need to cover up the graphic. You can use the regular drawing tools in PowerPoint to create shapes that will cover up each piece of the graphic. Usually, you will draw a series of rectangles that will cover up two to four sections of the graphic. Make the fill and outline color of the shapes the same as the background color of the graphic so it looks like you are building the graphic piece by piece.

The last step is to make these shapes slide off the graphic like the teacher did with the piece of paper, revealing what is underneath. To do this, select the shape and apply an Exit animation effect. I suggest the Wipe effect in the direction that makes sense. For example, if you are revealing pieces of a graphic from left to right, have the shapes wipe to the right, just like it would look like if we had a piece of paper on a transparency.

Now, when you present, you can speak about each part of the graphic individually, without the entire graphic being displayed from the start and distracting the audience. You can see an example of this in my slide makeover video here. This is one of the many advanced techniques I cover in my Advanced PowerPoint Techniques webinar hosted by Rhonda Scharf. If you’d like to attend, click here to get all the details about the next session and sign up.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #73: Making proportions stand out

2011-04-05T13:07:00.003-04:00

Below I’ve posted a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution". A pie chart is better than a data table to show proportions in data. This makeover takes it the next step to show how a proportional diagram can be more effective than a pie chart in some situations.

The slides I use in my makeovers are drawn from my consulting engagements and training workshops. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

You can get all my podcasts through iTunes, subscribing to my YouTube channel, or through Brainshark. If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

PowerPoint Tip: Text formatting tips

2011-03-29T14:28:00.005-04:00

Last Friday I did a web based training session for a consulting organization and one of the issues we discussed was formatting text on slides so that it was easy to understand. Even though I try to help people use visuals instead of text, I know that text will still be an important part of our slides. So today’s article gives a few tips on making that text easy to interpret.

Let’s start with a common issue I see on slides, improper use of hanging indents. This happens when you want to have text on a slide that is not in bullet points, so you just click the bullet point format button to turn off bullet points in the default layout. Unfortunately, PowerPoint removes the bullet, but does not remove the hanging indent, which causes the first line of text to hang off to the left of the rest of the text. The audience wonders what is wrong. One solution is to adjust the indent settings on the ruler to make the first line indent marker line up with the left indent marker. An even better solution is to select the Title Only slide layout and add your own text box. This way, PowerPoint won’t reformat the slide if you re-use it in another presentation.

When you use a text box to hold your text, an easy way to format the text into columns is to use the tabs that you can add on the text box ruler. There are four types of tabs you can add, and the two most important in my mind are the left tab and the decimal tab. The left tab allows you to line up text on the left edge at a certain spot. This works best for a column of words because we are expecting words to be left-aligned. The decimal tab lines up numbers at the decimal, regardless of how many numbers are on either side of the decimal. This is the best way to line up financial amounts because it makes the numbers very easy to understand. And is a much better approach than trying to use spaces to line up numbers (which never works perfectly anyways).

If you are forced to display a paragraph of text on a slide because you are quoting a person or a legal/regulatory document, you need a way to make the most important phrase or two stand out. You can make those words bold, but I have found that, depending on the lighting or screen, bold doesn’t always stand out well in the middle of a paragraph of text. Underlining was a good approach in the past, but today it has a different interpretation. When people see underlined text, they assume it is a hyperlink because we have been conditioned by viewing web sites. The best approach I have found is to highlight the words you want to emphasize. Since there is no highlight tool in PowerPoint, you need to create a rectangle behind the words in a color that will be easily seen (yellow highlighting on a white background works well because it looks like a real highlighter on a page of paper).

Some of you already know the techniques to use in PowerPoint to implement the ideas I’ve shared in this article. If you are looking for step-by-step videos, I demonstrated these techniques and many, many more of my most asked for “how-to” techniques in a webinar last year. The recording is available here.

Presentation Lesson from the Applebees Men’s Room

2011-03-22T08:52:00.004-04:00

Don’t worry, this is a G-rated blog post. In the last two weeks I’ve had lunch twice at our local Applebees with business colleagues. The first time I went in to the men’s room, I stopped and looked at the mirror above the sink. Here’s what I saw.

They are using a new technology that displays a visual ad on the mirror. I don’t know how the technology works, but it looked pretty cool. When I went to wash my hands, the ad disappeared from the mirror.

There is a little motion sensor below the mirror that detects if someone is in front of the mirror and turns the ad off. Now how does this relate to presentations?

In too many presentations, the presenter keeps a visual up on the screen even though the visual doesn’t add to what they are saying. It may have been used to introduce the point, but then the presenter moves in to a deeper explanation or story and the visual really isn’t necessary. The visual on the screen distracts the audience and takes away from the message you are delivering. What should you do? Get rid of the visual. Go to a black slide.

It is similar to what happens on the mirror in the Applebees men’s room. The ad on the mirror disappears when you want to focus on your appearance before you leave the men’s room. When you want the audience to focus on you and the point you are making, get rid of the visual that distracts them and give them only you to focus on.

Especially in keynote presentations, I think presenters could use black slides far more often than I see today. Use a visual to introduce the point, then go to a black slide and the audience is forced to focus on you and your message. I am not suggesting you get rid of all visuals. I am suggesting that they be used more effectively during the presentation. Sometimes the most effective visual is not on the screen, it is you.

PowerPoint Tip: Quickly adding iPhone or iPad videos to your presentation

2011-03-16T06:47:00.000-04:00

Last week the new iPad2 joined the lineup of popular Apple devices that have video cameras. The desire to use those videos in our presentation is a hot topic. One of my consulting clients will be using his iPhone videos this year to show testimonials. I used my iPhone to demonstrate taking and using video in a recent CSAE presentation. And I included the topic in last month’s webinar on Incorporating Video in Your PowerPoint Presentations.

So how do you use video from an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch in your presentation? There are four steps I want to cover in this article. One important thing to realize is that you don’t need to use iTunes to get your video off your device. This means you can take a video and use it even if you aren’t at your home PC that you use to sync your iPhone or iPad. Here’s how you can use these videos in your presentation.

First, connect your iPhone or iPad to your computer and wait for it to be recognized. If you have iTunes on this computer, it usually automatically opens up, assuming you want to use iTunes. In this case we don’t. You usually get a notification from Windows that the device has been connected and it allows you to view the files in Windows Explorer (you can just open Windows Explorer to view the files even if you don’t get the automatic notification). This is what you want to do. Find the video file you want on your device and copy it to your computer using the normal file copying techniques.

Most of the time you will want to edit the video clip to remove any extra segments that are not needed to make the one point you are using it for. To convert the video to the WMV format that is preferred by PowerPoint on Windows, use the online conversion tool at www.online-convert.com. It is a quick tool that does a great job.

Third, edit the video using Windows Live Movie Maker, which is a free download from Microsoft’s web site. It is easy to use and includes a good tool to clip some time off the front or back of a video. Microsoft has some good tutorials on using this tool online here. Output the video in at least a 640 x 480 resolution so it will be easy for the audience to see it.

The last step is to insert the movie clip on a slide in your presentation. PowerPoint makes this easy when you click on Insert – Movie. Select the option to play the video automatically and as soon as you go to that slide, your video will play.

By becoming comfortable with these steps, you can start to quickly incorporate videos from your iPhone or iPad2 into your presentations. If you’d like more details on using video in your presentation, check out the recording of my webinar on this topic by clicking here.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #72: Revealing details in levels

2011-03-10T09:52:00.001-05:00

Below I’ve posted a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution". Too often presenters overwhelm audiences with details using a spreadsheet copied on to a slide. This makeover shows how you can reveal details in levels so the audience can follow your message easier.

The slides I use in my makeovers are drawn from my consulting engagements and training workshops. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

You can get all my podcasts through iTunes, subscribing to my YouTube channel, or through Brainshark. If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

PowerPoint Tip: Equipment to carry when presenting

2011-03-01T05:37:00.000-05:00

I was speaking at the CSAE Trillium Chapter Winter Summit last Friday. I brought a lot of cables and equipment because I was doing a live demonstration of how you can create a video for your web site using visuals you create in PowerPoint. I normally don’t carry that amount of gear with me, but I do carry more than just my laptop and remote. In today’s article I want to talk about three pieces of equipment that help me present successfully when travelling.

I carry a 12 foot VGA extension cable in the bottom of my laptop bag. Why? Because it allows me to place my laptop where I can see it and work with it regardless of how the AV staff have set up the projector connection. Typically the connection for the projector is taped down to the lectern. I don’t speak behind a lectern because it creates a physical barrier between the audience and the presenter. Instead, I use my extension cord to move the connection to a nearby table or chair. This also allows me to access my laptop in case I am doing a live demonstration or hyperlinking from a slide to external content.

Another key piece of equipment in my laptop bag is a small hamburger speaker. When I want to use a video or audio clip, the laptop speakers are inadequate because they are not loud enough and they are aimed towards me, not the audience. I don’t want to haul a large set of speakers with me, and this is the smallest speaker I could find that fills a room. I’ve used it successfully in rooms with 50-75 people. It is powered from a USB port, so there are no power cords to carry. It plugs in to the headphone jack on the laptop, and it can also be used to play music from an MP3 player if you want to. If you’ve never seen this type of speaker before, here is a link to the one that iHome makes: http://www.ihomeaudio.com/iHM60LC/, which is available at many retailers.

Last year I changed the portable wireless mouse I carry when I travel. I am now using the Microsoft Arc Mouse. Why did I make the switch? A number of reasons. First, it is the smallest and lightest portable mouse that I can use comfortably (those tiny ones hurt my hand after a short time). It stores even smaller because it flips closed, which is great when you are trying to fit everything in a laptop bag. That flipping closed also turns off the mouse, saving the battery when I am not using it. The USB dongle for the computer magnetically sticks to the bottom of the mouse and is protected when the mouse is flipped close. And being wireless, I can use it as a remote if I need to in case my remote dies during a presentation. You should be able to buy this mouse at most computer or electronic retailers.

Those are three key pieces of equipment that I carry to help my presentations be successful. If you have other key pieces of equipment that help you present when travelling, feel free to add them in the comments below.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #71: Using tables in PowerPoint

2011-02-23T16:30:00.001-05:00

Below I’ve posted a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution". A table is a good way to organize information into rows and columns. Unfortunately, the default appearance and behaviour of tables in PowerPoint does not make them as effective as they could be. This makeover shows a default table improved so the message can be communicated more effectively.

The slides I use in my makeovers are drawn from my consulting engagements and training workshops. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

You can get all my podcasts through iTunes, subscribing to my YouTube channel, or through Brainshark. If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

PowerPoint Tip: Why presenters spend way longer working on presentations than they need to

2011-02-16T14:25:00.001-05:00

One of the issues I am often asked about during my workshops is the length of time it takes to create a PowerPoint presentation. Many presenters bemoan the hours and hours it takes. When I inquire as to what they are doing in that time, there are two big issues that are usually contributing to the length of time spent on preparing a presentation.

The first issue is that they tell me they spend a lot of time revising and reorganizing their presentation. Is it because they always deal with incredibly complex topics? No, the root cause is that they don’t spend time on structuring their message at the start. If you don’t spend quality time thinking about what you are going to say, you end up doing that thinking during the creation process instead. And your thinking gets interrupted by working on slides and takes much longer than it should.

Instead, block off some time before you even touch the computer. Use that quiet time to reflect on the goal of the presentation, what your audience is thinking right now, and what points you need to make in order to move the audience from where they are to where you want them to be. Write an outline on paper or use sticky notes so you can move ideas around. Add sketches of what visual will best communicate the point. You are not done the structuring stage until you have a complete outline and are convinced that this is the right message to deliver to this audience.

If you spend the time on the structure first, the creation of any slides is much easier. You already have a good idea of what visual you want to use to make the point and can simply create the visual you need, whether it is a graph, photograph, diagram, table, or other visual.

The second issue I hear that causes presenters to spend a lot of time creating presentations is that they don’t know how to use PowerPoint efficiently to create visuals such as graphs or diagrams and they don’t know how to include media such as pictures and video clips. Unfortunately, most organizations do not offer proper training in the common office programs like PowerPoint. It is assumed that you have already learned the skills in school or a previous position. If not, the common thought is that you can easily learn these programs because they are so easy to use.

My experience is that while you can open up PowerPoint and use the basics, most presenters don’t know what they don’t know about PowerPoint. In my workshops, some of the most useful tips I give are small ones like shortcuts or key combinations that can solve frustrating problems that many people have using PowerPoint. I encourage presenters to never stop learning. Actively seek out focused training that gives you the practical knowledge you can use immediately.

I offer this type of focused training through in-house workshops, one-on-one consulting, and the upcoming webinar series (get more information at www.EffectivePresentationWebinars.com). When you are looking for training and trying to decide between the different options, make sure that the trainer is a presentation professional, not a computer specialist who knows every feature of the technology and is only going to run through a technical laundry list. The training should be designed so you see how PowerPoint is used in a real presentation situation then you are shown the feature in PowerPoint that was used. Look for a trainer who knows enough about PowerPoint to show you the insider tricks, not just the common features you already know. Make an informed decision about where to invest your training time and money so you get the payoff you are looking for.

If you allocate time up front to structuring your message, then learn how to efficiently use PowerPoint to create persuasive visuals, you will spend far less time creating your presentation, and have more time left for practicing and polishing your presentation.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #70: Using proportional diagrams (example from Pres. Obama SOTU)

2011-02-10T08:22:00.001-05:00

Below I’ve posted a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution". In the recent State of the Union address, President Obama used some visuals in the enhanced broadcast on the web. One of those visuals was a proportional diagram. This makeover shows how you can use a proportional diagram effectively on a slide.

The slides I use in my makeovers are drawn from my consulting engagements and training workshops. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

You can get all my podcasts through iTunes, subscribing to my YouTube channel, or through Brainshark. If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

PowerPoint Tip: Can you solve presentation problems by switching tools?

2011-02-01T08:09:00.001-05:00

Many people acknowledge that far too many presentations are not designed or delivered nearly as well as they could be. So how can we solve this problem? The solution, say some, is to change the tools we are using. Throw out PowerPoint because it causes the problems, they claim. Instead, they say we should use tools like SlideRocket or Prezi, or even switch over to Keynote on the Mac, as one organization did.

So will this finally solve the problem once and for all? I haven’t seen any evidence that this rush to change tools solves the problem. I recently got to see my first Prezi presentation live. Prezi is the latest hot presentation tool that has captured attention. It allows for non-linear presentations where you scroll across a large canvas, showing each visual in whatever order you want. In comments made to me afterwards, and my own impression, it was clear that the dizzying scrolling movement did not make the topic any clearer, and actually distracted from the message.

In all of the surveys I have done, the overwhelming response is that the tool is not the issue. The misuse of the tool, whatever tool is used, is the true problem. You can create an awful presentation in PowerPoint, but you can also use Keynote, SlideRocket, Prezi or any of a number of other presentation tools to inflict just as much pain on an audience.

The real solution to the problem of ineffective presentations starts with better training for presenters. Here are some solutions you can use today, with the existing version of PowerPoint you have on your computer.

First, before you open PowerPoint, spend some time thinking about your message. What do you want the audience to do at the end of the time you have together? What points do you need to make in order to move the audience from where they are now to where you want them to be? You will save hours of time by simply getting your message clear before you start using any tool.

Second, use visuals instead of writing everything you are going to say on your slide. Instead of copying a spreadsheet on to a slide, create a graph. Instead of listing five steps of a process, use a diagram. Instead of a wordy description, show a photo. There are many ways to make the visual you use more effective than a “wall of text” (that’s why I wrote a whole book on it, The Visual Slide Revolution).

Third, if you want to use a non-linear presentation style, use the built-in hyperlinking feature of PowerPoint to enable you to jump between sections as the audience reaction and questions dictate. I’ve been creating and delivering non-linear presentations for years, so this isn’t a new feature of the latest version of PowerPoint.

Finally, don’t read your slides. Audiences have told me over and over again that the single most annoying thing a presenter can do is read the slides. Don’t do it. If you’ve followed the previous three suggestions, you won’t have all the text on the slide, so you won’t end up reading. Use the visuals as a starting point and have a conversation with the audience. It is better for them and easier for you.

The next time someone says that you should try the latest presentation tool that everyone is talking about, keep in mind that it won’t solve the true problems. Work on creating and delivering better presentations and you will get compliments no matter what tool you choose to use.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #69: Demonstrating calculations

2011-01-29T07:54:00.001-05:00

Below I’ve posted a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution". It is a good idea to use calculations to back up or prove the points you are making. This makeover shows how a slide overloaded with text explanations of the calculations can become more effective.

The slides I use in my makeovers are drawn from my consulting engagements and training workshops. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

You can get all my podcasts through iTunes, subscribing to my YouTube channel, or through Brainshark. If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

PowerPoint Tip: Structuring a presentation that sells effectively

2011-01-18T13:33:00.000-05:00

In my consulting work, I recently worked with three different CEOs on presentations where the primary objective was to sell their ideas or services. The reason an executive hires me to work with them on a presentation is not because I am a designer who creates fancy looking slides. They hire me because I work on the content of their presentation to make it effective and create slides that support the message (if you want to see if I would be a good fit for your organization, read this page). Today I want to share a few ideas on making sales presentations more effective.

The foundation is to get a clear structure as the starting point. Let me use one of the recent situations as an example. I asked the CEO to answer the three key structure questions. First, what do you want the Board of Directors to do at the end of the presentation? While this sounds like an easy question, it took some discussion before we came up with the specific action he wanted them to take. It was not to make the buying decision that day. Don’t always settle for the first easy answer to this question, because it may not be as clear and specific as you need it to be.

The second question was what situation did the Board of Directors find themselves in at this time? There was a history of what had happened that was causing them to search for a new supplier of this service. What were the pain points? Was there a looming deadline (there was, within three days of the presentation)? What other competitors were they also asking to present a proposal? Finding out as much about the current situation is critical in setting the stage to answer the third question.

The third question is what arguments will you make that will move the Board of Directors from their current situation to the desired action by the end of the presentation? There should be three to five of these key ideas. If you have more than three to five, group like ideas into broad categories Think of these as the elements of an equation, where you would be able to say that because of argument one, plus argument two, plus argument three, plus argument four, the conclusion is that the Board should take the following action. These must be logical and in sequence to take the Board on the journey.

Getting a solid structure takes some time, but it is critical to the success of the presentation. I worked with this CEO on the structure over 2-3 phone calls and we developed answers to all three questions. He was amazed at the clarity it gave him on what needed to be said during the presentation.

Only then could we decide on what slides he would use to support the arguments in the presentation. Your slides are never the starting point for the presentation. We created slides that demonstrated his company’s unique approach and expertise. When he went to present, he was confident because he was clear on the message he was to deliver. Any questions that came up could be answered easily because he knew what direction he wanted to take the conversation.

The end result, he won the deal worth over $200,000. Having a good presentation structure is a key ingredient to selling your ideas effectively in any setting. Start with structure, then create slides to support your arguments.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #68: Distracting background images (uses slide from Gov Cuomo)

2011-01-11T07:40:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. Using an image as the background for your slide might seem like a way to increase the visual appeal of your slides, but it can actually distract the audience from your message. This makeover takes a slide used by NY Gov Cuomo and shows how the message could stand out more without an image background.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: Switch the focus from the data to the audience

2011-01-04T15:05:00.000-05:00

A few months ago I advised a senior executive at a research firm on an upcoming presentation. Today I want to share the advice I gave her because it can benefit all presenters who are sharing data with their audience.

This executive was about to present data to a client and the desire was that the client understand what that data meant to their business. This type of scenario is common to many analysts and other professionals who present internally or to clients. She was struggling with how to make the data make sense. As we chatted, the key issue became clear.

She was focused on the data, where it came from, how it had been collected, and proving that the data was accurate. All important aspects to her, but not important to the audience. The audience didn’t care as much about the origins of the data as it did about what that data meant to their business. They cared about what directions the data suggested, what this data implied for their future initiatives, and what they should do now given the results of the research.

Once she heard what I was saying, she was able to view her presentation from a totally different perspective, the perspective of the audience. She focused her presentation on the key conclusions from the research and gave a few points of proof from the data. It helped the audience understand and act on the points she presented. She also mentioned that she found it easier to present since she was focused on the few key messages and could stay on track without getting lost in the details of the data.

The key for this executive, and for many presenters, is to switch the focus from the data to the audience. By taking the audience’s perspective, you gain great clarity on what they are looking for and what is important to them. If you have a lot of data, you’ll see that the audience is really only interested in the conclusions, not the data itself. They don’t need to hear all the background behind the data. They need to know what they should do based on what the data and analysis has shown.

Make this switch in your perspective, and you will find data driven presentations become far more effective.

The Top 5 PowerPoint Slide Makeover videos of 2010

2010-12-31T07:41:00.000-05:00

Every two weeks I record another PowerPoint slide makeover video showing lessons presenters can learn to improve the effectiveness of the slides they use. I publish my videos on iTunes, YouTube and Brainshark. If you subscribe via iTunes, you get every new video automatically downloaded to your iPod, iPhone or iPad. The viewers on YouTube and Brainshark have to make a more conscious decision to click and watch the videos, since there is less of an automatic viewing opportunity.

So at the end of the year I decided to look at the past year’s videos and see which ones were the most popular with the YouTube and Brainshark viewers.

#1: Slide Makeover #45: Transforming speaker notes into a visual

Description: Far too many slides are, in reality, notes for the speaker to remember what they are supposed to say. The slides end up being read to the audience. This makeover takes a wordy slide and the accompanying speaking notes and shows how the clues hidden in the text can lead to a more effective visual.
Watch on Brainshark here (more corporate friendly). Watch on YouTube here (more home friendly).

I have to admit that I was not all that surprised that this makeover proved to be the most popular this year. I still see far too many slides that are really speaker notes instead of visuals that promote a conversation with the audience. Yes, it takes a little more time to create simple visuals instead of just writing out what you want to say on your slides, but your presentation will be so much more effective and your audience will take action on your message.

#2: Slide Makeover #53: Using a full screen photo to enhance a story

Description: Stories and analogies are important to increasing the impact of your message. Don't just type out the key parts of the story on a slide as bullet points. Use the ideas in this makeover to show a full screen photo that increases the impact of your story or analogy.
Watch on Brainshark here (more corporate friendly). Watch on YouTube here (more home friendly).

Using photos is a great way to illustrate what you are talking about and increase the impact of your point. Just remember to get permission to use that great photo. You don’t need to cause yourself or your organization legal trouble by using a photo that you don’t have permission for.

#3: Slide Makeover #46: Creating a simple visual to replace text

Description: When replacing text with a visual, don't make the mistake of thinking that you need a fancy or complex visual. This makeover shows that a simple visual combined with a good headline is much easier to create than trying to design a more complex visual; and it is more effective.
Watch on Brainshark here (more corporate friendly). Watch on YouTube here (more home friendly).

This makeover dealt with a subject area outside the traditional business context, but is a great example of how we can use a simple visual instead of thinking we have to create a complex graphic or even a full-scale animation to get our message across.

#4: Slide Makeover #44: Making definitions interesting

Description: In too many training and teaching presentations, the definitions of key terms are read verbatim from text on the slides. This makeover shows that definitions can be interesting if you connect with the audience and leave them with a definition they will remember.
Watch on Brainshark here (more corporate friendly). Watch on YouTube here (more home friendly).

I wasn’t sure if this makeover would be very popular, as it deals with what can be a boring topic, definitions. But with the need to explain more complex issues to a broader audience, you are regularly going to have to include definitions in your presentations, and this makeover gives some good ideas.

#5: Slide Makeover #57: Revealing infographics one portion at a time

Description: Infographics are a popular way to illustrate information, especially for print publications. When used in presentations, they can sometimes be overwhelming. Use the ideas in this makeover to reveal the portions of the infographic one at a time to keep the focus of your audience.
Watch on Brainshark here (more corporate friendly). Watch on YouTube here (more home friendly).

Infographics gained popularity this year. Most of us will never create one ourselves because we are not graphic designers, but we may want to use one that someone else has created in our presentation. While they are visually appealing, they can be confusing unless you use the ideas in this makeover to present them piece by piece to the audience.

Almost every slide makeover that I do is based on a slide that has been sent to me for one of my in-house or public workshops (learn more about my workshops here), one I’ve helped one of my consulting clients create or sent in by one of my newsletter subscribers (sign up for free here). They are real slides being delivered to audiences by presenters who want to improve. I hope you’ll join this movement by signing up for my newsletter, adding my blog to your RSS feeds, and attending a workshop in the future, either live or via the web.

Thanks for a great year of learning and sharing.

Dave

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #67: When the appeal of a full-screen photo is the wrong approach

2010-12-21T07:17:00.002-05:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. We are being told to use more visuals on our slides and it is a better approach than walls of text. But if you are tempted to use a full-screen photo just because it looks cool, consider the advice from this makeover that shows how a simple visual can communicate more effectively in some cases.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: Using Infographics on slides

2010-12-14T10:04:00.002-05:00

A popular visual today is an infographic. What is an infographic? Based on definitions online, I would say that an infographic is a graphic visual representation of information, data or knowledge that presents complex information quickly and clearly. The infographic does not simplify the information, it just represents it in a clear manner visually.

Here is an example I used in one of my slide makeovers:

Many infographics are complex, which is why using them in a presentation can be a challenge. Showing the infographic all at once on a slide can be overwhelming for the audience because it is too much information at once, even though it may be visual. The audience feels overloaded and the presenter has a hard time explaining each part of the infographic because the audience has trouble following along.

So how can you use an infographic you have been provided with on a slide? Reveal it piece by piece instead of showing it all at once. By showing only one part at a time, the audience can focus on what you are trying to explain and not be distracted by the other parts of the graphic. If you'd like to watch the video to see this demonstrated, you can watch it here. There are two approaches to building an infographic piece by piece on a PowerPoint slide.

The first approach is to reveal the pieces using exit animation of shapes placed on top of the infographic. Start by placing the infographic on the slide. Decide what portions need to be revealed in what order. Draw a shape over one of the areas using the rectangle tool or the freeform tool if the shape needs to be more complex than a simple rectangle. Set the fill color to be the background color of the infographic. Add an exit animation to this shape so that when you advance on the slide, this shape disappears, revealing the portion of the infographic underneath. You can then copy and paste this shape to cover up other areas or draw each shape individually if the situation is more complex.

The second approach is to actually break the infographic into separate graphics that can be built one-by-one on the slide. To save a portion of the infographic as a separate graphic, you can use the built-in Paint program in Windows. Open the infographic in Paint, use the rectangle or freeform selection tools to select the area you want as a separate graphic. Use the Crop function to remove the remaining parts of the infographic and save this portion as a new name (so you don’t overwrite the original file). Use the same steps to create a new graphic file for each portion of the infographic you want to build on the slide. Then insert each new graphic file on a slide and animate them to appear in the correct order.

Infographics are complex visuals that can be used on a PowerPoint slide if you take care to reveal the graphic one portion at a time to help guide the audience during your explanation. If you haven't seen the video that shows this makeover, you can see it here.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #66: The downside of SmartArt

2010-12-11T20:41:00.001-05:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. SmartArt is supposed to make creating visuals easy, but too often presenters use it without considering whether the pre-made diagram is effectively communicating their message. This makeover shows an example of how a SmartArt diagram can be replaced with a more effective simple visual.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: Finding high-resolution logos and research graphics for your presentation

2010-11-30T11:45:00.001-05:00

If you have ever had to put a logo on a slide, you know some of the challenges that exist. If it is your own logo, you probably have a high-res image easily available from your marketing department. But if it is a client or supplier logo, now you’ve got problems.

You can go to their web site and grab the logo from their home page, but it is usually small and low resolution. When you try to resize it to be large enough for the slide, it looks chunky, and not a good representation of that organization. You could search for the logo on Google Images, but you might end up with the old logo and be embarrassed during the presentation when they point that out.

How do you get a high-res logo from their web site? You need to know where to look. Some organizations actually have a logo download page, but most do not, and you need to be a little more crafty in your approach. In this tip, I’ll outline a way to find the high-res logo you are looking for and use it on a slide.

The key is to find the logo on the company’s web site embedded in a PDF document. PDF documents almost always have high-res graphics in them that look great in a presentation. Finding an appropriate PDF document could take hours of searching, or you can use Goolge’s advanced search tool to find it quickly and easily.

In the Google search bar, use a search phrase like this:
“annual report” filetype:pdf site:www.abc.gov
I use “annual report” as the primary search phrase because most organizations usually post their latest annual financial or other type of report on their web site. You could also try “press release” as another type of common document that gets posted.
The filetype:pdf narrows the search to only PDF documents so we aren’t using low-res web pages as a source for the logo.
The site:www.abc.gov narrows the search to only their web site (obviously you would replace www.abc.gov with their web site address). This means we are only using documents that they have posted and will reflect the official logo.

From the results of this search, select a recent report and open it to see if it has their logo (it almost always will). Zoom in to make sure the logo is clear and high-resolution. Save the PDF file to your computer and exit your browser.

Open the saved PDF file using Acrobat (the free Reader is fine). Zoom in on the logo so it fills the screen as much as possible. In Acrobat, use the Snapshot tool to capture the logo: Click Tools – Select & Zoom – Snapshot Tool. Use the crosshairs cursor to draw a rectangle around the logo. As soon as you release the mouse button, the logo is captured to the Windows clipboard (you may see a message notifying you of this).

Now switch over to PowerPoint and paste the logo on to your slide. You may want to crop it and you will want to size it to fit the usage on this slide. If you want it to have a transparent background, try the Set Transparent color tool in PowerPoint, which usually works quite well with logos.

Now you have a high-res, good looking, current logo on your slide. You can use this same technique to locate other graphics, such as diagrams or graphs from research firms who make them available in press releases. The next time you need a logo in your presentation, use this technique to make it look good.

A Black Friday/Cyber Monday Shopping List for Presenters

2010-11-25T11:31:00.001-05:00

The frenzy of shopping known as Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the US is almost upon us. If you are a presenter or have someone on your gift list who delivers presentations, here is a list of some gifts that presenters would love to receive this Christmas. I’ll start with some that are smaller and lower cost, but still very appreciated.

Presentation remote: not being tied to your laptop allows you to connect much better with your audience. My favourite is the RemotePoint Navigator by Interlink Electronics.

Wireless travel mouse: when travelling, a wireless mouse makes it easier to get work done in hotel rooms, and it doubles as a backup for a presentation remote. My current one is the Microsoft Arc mouse, which is small, light, and works well.

VGA extension cable: you never know where the projector connection will be, and a 12 foot VGA extension cable allows you to position your laptop where it is most convenient for you, regardless of where the connection is.

Now let’s move to some of the more expensive purchases that presenters would love to find under the tree this Christmas.

Apple iPad: if most of your presentations are one-on-one, an iPad is a great way to present. You can even hook it up to a projector for small groups. I’ve done a video on how you can present corporate PowerPoint presentations on an iPad here.

Data projector: even though many corporate boardrooms have a projector, there are still many rooms where a presenter needs to bring their own. Look for one that is light, but has at least 2,000 lumens and is a minimum of XGA resolution (1024 x 768).

Laptop: the number of laptop choices is overwhelming. Look for one that has a good processor (I suggest an Intel Core i3 or better), at least 4 GB of RAM, a good video card, and at least a 500 GB hard drive. Those specifications should make the laptop last for at least two to three years.

Of course you should always check your prices and shop wisely, whether it is at a store or online.

Happy shopping!

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #65: Using a common denominator for comparisons

2010-11-23T08:13:00.002-05:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. If you want your audience to understand a comparison of two or more values, you must make it easy for them to see the difference without having to do calculations in their head. This makeover shows how to use a common denominator to make the comparison easy to understand.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: Solve your presentation delivery problems

2010-11-17T19:19:00.001-05:00

After you have planned your presentation and created persuasive visuals, you need to prepare to present your presentation. In today’s newsletter, I want to share some of the delivery tips I most often use when answering questions from participants in my workshops.

I’ll start with a good presenter evaluation feedback form I featured earlier this year from Jim Endicott of Distinction Services that you can find here. As you look at the specific items that Jim suggests we use to evaluate presenters, pay attention to those parts of each item that are underlined. The underlined phrases are the measurement criteria you should pay attention to when practicing before you deliver your presentation.

The equipment we use to present still seems to give some presenters a challenge. Make sure you practice connecting your laptop to a projector if this is unfamiliar to you. The key connections to focus on are the video connection and your remote. Make sure you know how to toggle the display so that is shows on both the projector and your laptop screen (check your user's manual if you need to). If you are bringing your presentation on a memory stick, practice taking it to a different computer and running through every slide to make sure it looks and acts the way you expect it to.

A mistake I see too many presenters make is they talk to the screen when they are delivering their presentation. Please don’t do this. It disconnects you from the audience and gives the impression that the screen is more important than they are. I have two articles on my web site that have techniques to help you if you find this is one of your presentation habits: both are listed in this section of the article archive.

Moving through the slides also causes a problem for some presenters. If you don’t own your own remote, I suggest you get one. My favourite is the RemotePoint Navigator from Interlink Electronics (available at CDW.com and other retailers). It allows you to advance your slides without being tied to the laptop. You could also use a remote mouse to advance your slides, but be careful to not make the mouse run across the screen while you are holding it (press Ctrl+H in Slide Show mode to turn off the mouse pointer). Some presenters are now using an app on their smartphone to link across a wireless network to their laptop and advance their slides that way. Practice this to make sure it will work properly before you rely on it for a live presentation. If you need to jump to a slide in the presentation, press Ctrl+S in Slide Show mode and select the slide you want to go to. This is great for jumping to a detailed slide to answer an audience member’s question.

Remember that rehearsing your presentation using the equipment and room setting is the best way to be prepared to deliver an awesome message. Use these tips to raise your game for your next presentation.

Book Review: Using Resonate by Nancy Duarte to improve everyday presentations

2010-11-12T11:32:00.002-05:00

When I agreed to review Nancy Duarte’s latest book, Resonate, I did so with the desire to find nuggets that everyday presenters could use. Those who have to present regularly in small group settings such as sales presentations, team meetings, project updates, and budget reviews, don’t have the time or desire to use some of the techniques that main stage conference presenters have the luxury to use. So this review is written from that perspective, and I have structured it around the nine rules Nancy uses in organizing her book.

First, let me start by saying I think that almost every presenter can benefit from reading this book. Nancy and I agree that if a presentation does not have a good structure, the fanciest visuals in the world won’t matter. That’s why structure is the first thing I address in my workshops and it is why Nancy refers to this book as a "prequel" to her first book on creating visuals. Even if you have heard this before, you will see some new ways of thinking about the planning of your message by reading this book.

So let’s look at what an average corporate presenter can learn from the nine rules that Nancy shares in Resonate.

Rule #1: Resonance causes change
In this first rule, Nancy asks us to shift our perspective from self-centered as presenters to being focused on serving the audience and helping them along their journey. A good starting reminder for all presenters.

Rule #2: Incorporating story into presentations has an exponential effect on outcomes
This chapter is the core of the book and the one I found most insightful. On page 26 Nancy has a masterful illustration of the differences between reports, presentations and stories. Pay attention to the differences and see how each is unique. Then, on page 36 she introduces what I consider to be the most important concept of the book, The Presentation Form. It is not a form in terms of fields to fill in, it is a shape that shows how presentations move between "what is" and "what could be" in powerful ways. When I saw Nancy describe this in a live presentation recently, a light bulb went off that explained some of why my presentations have improved since making a few key changes. The form applies to all presentations even though the examples she gives are main stage keynote style presentations – not the ones most of us will deliver. For an everyday presentation, craft your message so you move between describing the current state and the state you want the audience to move to, flowing between the two as you move through your message. Reread this chapter a few times.

Rule #3: If a presenter knows the audience’s resonant frequency and tunes to that, the audience will move
This chapter is about knowing your audience, something that both Nancy and I feel is not done well by too many presenters. The diagram on page 71 is very insightful and illustrates well the desire to move the audience to share more of what we know and understand. Spend some time with this diagram and how it can help you see your role as presenter in a slightly new way.

Rule #4: Every audience will persist in a state of rest unless compelled to change
Once you have discovered characteristics of your audience, this chapter examines how important it is to craft a message that moves them from where they are to where you want them to be. Nancy gives some good ideas about what you need to consider when creating this path.

Rule #5: Use the big idea to filter out all frequencies other than the resonant frequency
I like Nancy’s idea of a filter and I have been talking about using a filter for a while now because it is a perfect analogy. You will want to put a lot in to your presentation, but you need to use a filter to strain out anything that will not be purely focused on the key message you want to communicate. I think the story section on page 108-111 is a particularly good guide for presenters in crafting focused stories that do not ramble on without making a clear point.

Rule #6: Structure is greater than the sum of its parts
Once you have all the ideas, you need to arrange them in a coherent structure or else the message is confusing. Nancy gives some good advice on different ways to organize your information on pages 128-129. Keep these pages close when deciding on the structure of your presentation. Use the great process recap on pages 142-143 as a quick reference guide when collecting and organizing all the ideas you have that may be part of your presentation.

Rule #7: Memorable moments are repeated and retransmitted so they cover long distances
In main stage keynote style presentations, Nancy shows how you want the audience to take away something that they will never forget. This is the toughest idea in the book for everyday presenters to apply in their hurried work life. Most presenters don’t have time to carefully create these “over the moon” ideas. For most presentations that happen every day, I think this is really an extension of defining the goal of the presentation. You’ve thought about what you want the audience to do, know, understand, feel, etc, at the end of the presentation. Make sure you clearly state that during the presentation.

Rule #8: Audience interest is directly proportionate to the presenter’s preparation
This chapter is all about delivery and preparing for your time at the front of the room. Entire books are dedicated to delivery, and Nancy hits some key points in this chapter. The advice to screen your presentation before others is great advice for high-stakes presentations, but probably not practical for most regular everyday presentations. You should rehearse before you deliver, but if that can only be done at home in front of an empty room or cooperative family, that’s fine in my opinion.

Rule #9: Your imagination can create a reality (James Cameron)
Nancy leaves us on an inspirational high by showing how presentations have literally changed the course of history through a number of case studies. It highlights the importance of crafting an effective presentation. If you want to be a successful communicator, you need to make every presentation count.

Is this book valuable if you are an everyday presenter? Absolutely. Look past some of the examples that may not be from the world you live in, and focus on the key ideas that are applicable to all presentations.

If you want to watch a webinar that Nancy did introducing some of the key concepts in the book, she’s put the video online at http://blog.duarte.com/2010/11/that-resonates-with-me-video-recording/

To purchase your own copy of Resonate by Nancy Duarte, you can buy from Amazon in the US by clicking here and Amazon in Canada by clicking here.

Why I suggest you choose a boring font for your PowerPoint slides

2010-11-11T13:58:00.001-05:00

Recently I’ve read a number of articles or online comments that exhort presenters to abandon boring fonts like Arial or Calibri. The argument is these fonts are overused and instead, you should search for and use a cool font that makes you stand out. One article even suggested what search term you should use to locate an appropriately cool font.

This may be a good idea for a main stage conference speaker who has complete control of all the technology parameters and will never have these slides shown on a different computer or e-mailed to anyone else. In my opinion, it is bad advice for the vast majority of presenters who deal with the real-world situation of having to present on different computers and e-mailing their presentation as a follow-up or to those who couldn’t attend.

For the presenters who live in the corporate arena, choosing a cool downloaded font is a bad idea. Why? Because you run the risk of your text being unreadable or gibberish. Here’s why I say this. When you use a downloaded font, it resides only on your own computer and doesn’t travel with the presentation file unless you’ve specifically set the option to do this (hands up if you know where this option is hidden). When that presentation arrives on another computer, PowerPoint doesn’t recognize the name of the cool font and so it substitutes another font it does know about. You don’t get to choose the substitute font, it does it for you.

And what happens to your carefully designed slides? One time I saw it select a font that made most of the text run off each slide and text boxes ran on top of each other, making the presentation look like a mess. Another time PowerPoint selected Webdings as the substitute font and all I saw was gobbled gook. Is that what you want a key decision maker to see when they open your presentation? I didn’t think so.

So my suggestion is stick with a boring font like Arial or Calibri. When your presentation arrives on another computer, it will look exactly like it did on your computer. Will the recipient of the file think poorly of you for using a boring font? If your message is well crafted and supported by persuasive visuals, I don’t think they will even notice.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #64: Breaking the addiction to bulletizing a single point

2010-11-09T05:58:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. In an effort to fill a slide, too many presenters break one point into multiple bullet points. This makeover shares lessons for breaking this addiction and creating visual slides that help you communicate more effectively.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: Tools for working with audio or video to include in your PowerPoint presentation

2010-11-02T12:52:00.000-04:00

The latest version of PowerPoint (PowerPoint 2010) includes built-in audio and video editing tools that make it almost like a media editing software program. But what about the vast majority of us who don’t have the latest version? Today I want to share some of the tools I have used that will help you edit, convert and show audios or videos during your presentation, no matter what version of PowerPoint you have.

The first tool is used to convert videos into the preferred PowerPoint format of WMV (Windows Media Video format). It is called Any Video Converter and is available at www.any-video-converter.com. When you go to download it at their web site, make sure you go to the free downloads page in order to get the free version. I like this software because it is no cost, and does a great job of converting many different formats. It even allows you to convert online videos from YouTube as well. This is important if you are showing a YouTube video when you won’t have Internet access.

If you can’t install software on your corporate computer, I’ve just discovered a new online conversion tool that looks very promising. The web site is www.online-convert.com and audio and video conversions are two of the many conversions it will do. I’ve tested this site with a couple of videos and was impressed with the results. It allows you to convert a file from your system or it will go grab a YouTube or other online video. You can instantly download the converted file or e-mail it to someone (if the file isn’t too large). It also allows you to change the video parameters, including capturing only a certain portion of a video.

Once you have the video converted, you may need to edit it. You can use Windows Live Movie Maker, which is a free download from Microsoft’s web site. It works with and outputs WMV files, so it is ideal for videos you want to use in PowerPoint. You can also use the online video editing tool I mentioned last issue at www.jaycut.com.

If the video you want to use is not in a format that PowerPoint accepts and you don’t want to convert it, you can use the VLC Media Player that plays video clips in almost every format I’ve ever heard of. You can download it for free at www.videolan.org/vlc/. One way I’ve used VLC is to play QuickTime MOV videos. I associate the MOV file type with VLC in Windows so that it knows to open MOV files using VLC. Then, on my slide, I’ll create a hyperlink from an image to the video file on my computer. When I activate the hyperlink, it automatically starts playing the video in VLC. I like VLC because it plays so many different formats and its player window is nice and clean.

To record or edit audio, the utility I mentioned last time, Audacity, is the best. You can download it at audacity.sourceforge.net. If you are recording an audio track, use a microphone, like a USB headset mic you might use for video chatting with friends. It gives much better quality than a built-in computer mic. Any distortions in quality are more noticeable when amplified in the meeting room, so get the best audio quality you can. If you need to get an audio track from a video clip, you can use the Any Video Converter utility mentioned above to convert the video to an MP3 track and then edit it in Audacity.

I know this tip is a long one, but I hope you now have a number of new tools to use when creating audio and video to use in your PowerPoint presentations.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #63: Presenting organizational charts

2010-10-26T16:55:00.002-04:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. It is common in corporate settings to present an organization chart to show the different roles in a department. Instead of overwhelming your audience with an unreadable chart, use the lessons in this makeover to create a clear set of slides.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: Creating a video of your presentation from your slides and an audio recording

2010-10-19T08:36:00.000-04:00

Today’s tip comes from some work I’ve been doing coaching a couple of professional speaking colleagues on how to create a movie of a presentation for use by their client on the web for ongoing training. It is also one of the topics I’ll be covering in my Presentation Summit session today.

To create a movie from your slides, you can go the high-end route and use software like Camtasia to record the slides and audio from the presentation as it is going on and create the movie. But this is software that you may not have and you may not be allowed to purchase and install it on your computer.

Instead, I’ve been showing them how to create a movie from an audio track and the images of their slides. It starts with recording the audio for the movie. The easiest way to record audio is using Audacity, a terrific free audio editor available here. Save your audio file as an MP3 file using the Export function in Audacity.

Next, you need to create images of your slides. This is simple enough in PowerPoint as you can use the Save As feature to save the slides as PNG images. Select to save all slides and it will create a folder of sequentially numbered slide images. The one potential issue with this method is that animation builds get removed, as the image saved is the state that you see when editing the slides. If you have used animation, you have two options. First, you can create sequentially numbered images using a screen capture utility like Lightscreen. Or, you can create your own series of slides for each animated slide. If you do this, first remove all animation from the slide, then copy and paste the slide the required number of times. Finally, remove elements as needed to create a series of slides that, when shown in sequence, appear as the original animated slide. Now when you Save As PNG images, you will get a series of images that appears as if it was animated.

The final step is to create the movie in movie editing software. If you have Windows Movie Maker already installed on your computer, you can use it. You can also download the latest version from Microsoft’s web site. I find the latest version hard to use for this purpose because they removed the timeline view. If you don’t want to install software, you can use one of the free online video editing sites, like the one I use called Jaycut.com. You add the audio track to the timeline, then place each slide on the timeline and adjust the length of time the slide is shown based on the audio track. Output the finished video to a movie file and you are ready to distribute it or post it to your web site.

Creating a video of your presentation allows you to distribute it in new ways and it will run on web sites, local computers, and even mobile devices. Use the steps above to create your first presentation video.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #62: Designing slides for use in signage situations

2010-10-13T08:35:00.001-04:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. If you use PowerPoint to design slides that will be shown on an electronic sign or on an internal TV information channel, use the ideas from this slide makeover to keep the slides clear and easy for the audience to understand.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: An alternative to using video in a web presentation

2010-10-06T05:44:00.000-04:00

Earlier this year a professional speaking colleague called on me to help her with an upcoming webinar. It was her first significant webinar for clients and she obviously wanted it to go well. One of the elements she wanted to include in her presentation was a video clip that illustrated some of the ideas she wanted to communicate. Today I want to share with you the approach I recommended that will allow you to get the benefit of a video clip without actually showing it during a webinar.

Why not just embed the video on a slide and show it like you do in a live presentation? On all the webinar platforms I’ve used video seems to be a big problem. In my experience, video over the web does not work well when embedded on a PowerPoint slide. It works better when played in a media player outside PowerPoint, but it still suffers from stutters due to the limitations of the bandwidth on a live transmission. The reason watching videos like my YouTube or Brainshark slide makeover videos works well is that your local computer downloads a portion of the video first so that it plays smoothly from your local computer. Live video in a webinar can’t do this.

So how can you get the benefits of using an illustrative video clip in a webinar? You use a series of screen captures from the video to make your points. Let’s start with the planning first. When you are showing any video clip, you are using it to illustrate specific points. You may be showing a demonstration of a technique or process or you may be using a video testimonial to reinforce a claim you have made. There are specific images or words you want to emphasize. Make a list of those specific spots in the video.

Play the video at the highest quality possible and pause it when you reach one of the spots you’ve made note of in the planning stage. Take a screen capture of that image using Alt+PrintScreen and paste the image on a PowerPoint slide. Make the image as large as you can without distorting it too much and crop out the controls of the video player so you are just left with the image. Once you have the image on the slide, add a callout so the audience knows what they are supposed to look for in this image. It may be an arrow and text to point out something in the image or it could be a specific quote that a person is saying that is reinforced with the expression on their face.

Keep capturing images from the video and creating slides until you have all the spots on your planned list in your presentation. When you are presenting the slides during the webinar, you can introduce the section by saying that you want to show a series of images from a video clip that illustrate the point you were discussing. You can go through the images fairly rapidly, as quickly as one every 8-10 seconds if necessary. Remember that there is a lag between when you show the next slide and when the audience sees it, so you can’t advance through the images as rapidly as you could in a live presentation.

By using a series of screen capture images instead of a video during a web presentation, you increase the quality of the experience for your audience and still use the video to illustrate the points you want to make. If you are new to web based presentations, you may want to get a copy of my one-hour video program on using web presentations effectively, which contains other ideas based on my years of using web technology to present for clients. All the details are here.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #61: Making multiple messages easier to understand

2010-09-28T08:59:00.001-04:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. When you put multiple messages on one slide, it confuses the audience. This makeover shows how you can deliver an effective message by having one message per slide.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide
If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: How less on your PowerPoint slides makes it easier for you to communicate your message

2010-09-21T08:26:00.000-04:00

I was speaking with a new client recently about how they felt "free" when using the type of persuasive visuals that I suggest presenters create and use. Here is her story and lessons that all presenters can learn.

My client is a senior executive at a large firm and is regularly speaking to fellow executives and staff. The typical slides used at this organization are packed with text, as are too many slides I see. Bullet paragraphs detail almost everything the presenter is going to say. When she presented with these slides, she said she felt fearful. I wasn’t surprised.

You see, when you have slides packed with information, it puts you in a cage as a presenter. You have boundaries of what you can say based on what is on the slide. The audience can see all these points and expects you to cover each point in the order it is on the slide and to the level of detail shown. These slides set an expectation in the audience that is only fulfilled by reading the slides. You feel the expectation, and, fearful of disappointing the audience, you comply by reading each slide. Unfortunately, reading your slides is the most annoying thing you can do according to the audience surveys I have done.

A persuasive visual has a headline that summarizes the point you want to make and a visual that illustrates that point. With less on the slide, you are free to cover this point in whatever way you need to. You can tell the story behind the point, go into as much detail as you think is needed, or skip a portion based on audience reaction. The audience doesn’t have this rigid expectation of what you must say, so they are free to listen and engage. You end up having more of a conversation with the audience, which is a much more comfortable way to present your message.

When my client tried presenting with persuasive visuals, she felt a freedom she had never felt before. She thought her presentation went much better than previous presentations, and the positive comments and audience reaction confirmed that it was an effective presentation. Now I’m getting the chance to share these ideas with her colleagues in a full-day workshop.

How are your slides setting audience expectations that constrain you as a presenter? Would using persuasive visuals free you to be more natural in your delivery and be a more effective communicator? If you’d like to learn a five-step method for creating your own persuasive visuals, check out my book The Visual Slide Revolution.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #60: Using animation to help audiences understand

2010-09-14T08:19:00.002-04:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. Animation is a good way to build each point as you discuss it. Instead of animation that confuses the audience, this makeover shows how to make sure you use animation properly to make your message clearer.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.
To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: Deciding what data to show in your presentation

2010-09-09T10:42:00.000-04:00

When a presenter dumps data on their audience and expects the audience to figure it all out, they are setting themselves up for disappointment. The “data dump” presentation is not effective communication. So if you’ve done a lot of analysis and the research to back up your points, how much of it should you put in to your presentation?

Let’s start with why too many presenters think they need to include every piece of data in their presentation. I think it comes from when we were in school. Remember the teacher always saying, “Make sure you show your work.” In school, the teacher needed to see all your work so they could evaluate whether you understood the material or not. If you just show an answer, they don’t know how you got the answer and can’t be assured that you grasped the concepts they were teaching.

But the workplace is different. As professionals, our presentations are not an attempt by our bosses to check if we know our job. They do that evaluation before they ever hire us. If we couldn’t do the work, we wouldn’t get the job; it’s as simple as that.

Your presentations are to present the results of your work in a way that enables others to use the information to make decisions or use the knowledge to be more effective and efficient in their own work. If you show all the background and data, you lose the audience because it is overwhelming. There is so much coming at them, they don’t know what the most important point is. And they give up trying to figure it out, or, even worse, come to a different conclusion than the one you wanted them to reach.

Instead of a data dump presentation, I suggest you start with your conclusion. By putting the result of your analysis at the start, the audience knows where you are going and how to interpret the backup that you will show. If they don’t know where the presentation is headed, they won’t be able to ask appropriate questions during the presentation.

Once you have presented your conclusion, get their agreement on assumptions, inputs and methods so they have confidence in the basis for the analysis. This builds the credibility of your work. You can show the key assumptions you made, explain how you think they are reasonable assumptions and get agreement from the audience. Discuss the data sources and inputs used so they have confidence in where the inputs came from. Finally, discuss work methods (general approach only not in detail) so they have confidence in how the work was done. With the foundation of agreement on assumptions, then inputs, and finally method of analysis, the audience can see how the conclusion you presented first clearly flows from the work you did.

The level of detail you include will depend on the audience, which can be different every time you present. Most audiences will only want to see the final calculation or formula used to reach your conclusion. If they want to get in to the details, you can hyperlink to the spreadsheet or analysis software to drive down deeper. If you feel you need to present more details, use a break-down and zoom-in approach to show a summary of the data and each portion of the detail one at a time.

When you are making a decision about the level of detail to present, do not overlook the emotional side of the decision. You are emotionally invested in the work you have done and will feel a need to present it all, in order to show how well you have done. Resist the urge. Instead, step back and see it from the audience’s viewpoint. They trust that you have done the work. They are only interested in what the results mean to them. Most times, a presenter thinks the audience wants more detail than the audience actually wants to hear.

When deciding on the level of detail in your presentation, don't follow the rule from school. Consider each situation uniquely and deliver the amount of detail that audience truly needs.

The Corporate Approach to Presenting PowerPoint on an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch

2010-09-05T08:15:00.002-04:00

When the iPad was announced, presenters immediately thought they had a new option for doing one-on-one presentations. Instead of lugging their laptop around, they could simply bring their iPad. With the higher resolution of the new iPhone 4 and iPod Touch, presenters saw an opportunity to further reduce the size of the equipment they carry for those presentations to one other person.

Unfortunately the reality is that converting PowerPoint to a Keynote format for presentation on an iPad or using an expensive third-party Office substitute application on any of the devices has proven to be disappointing. The conversion does not work as well as expected and presenters are embarrassed when “surprises” show up during the presentation.

Other challenges have also arisen. The corporate IT department doesn’t want to approve all sorts of new software that they have to support. With many people using a home computer to sync their device for their media files, it becomes a big hassle to try to get a new presentation on the device in a hurry. The promise of an easy solution for corporate presenters has not proven to be the reality for most.

Since my focus is on business presentations, I decided to see if there was an approach that gave reliable results within the constraints of most corporate environments. And I discovered that there is a way to reliably present corporate PowerPoint presentations on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. The video below explains the method, and the Table of Contents allows you to jump quickly to any step in the process when you are reviewing the video later. The video is 20 minutes long, but I wanted to show you enough detail to make it easy for you to use it on your own iOS device. Let me know how it works for you.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #59: Making Excel spreadsheets meaningful - Part 2

2010-08-31T07:25:00.001-04:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. This makeover continues the discussion of ways to make financial figures from Excel more meaningful. It shows how to create a graph that clearly communicates the message and how to use a hyperlink to the spreadsheet in order to answer detailed questions that may come up.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: Options for using Data from Excel on PowerPoint Slides – Part 2

2010-08-24T08:16:00.001-04:00

In a previosu post we discussed options for pasting a summary table of results from Excel on a slide to present numerical information. While showing a table of numbers is one option for presenting this type of data, it is not the only option, nor is it the best option in many cases. Today I want to explain other best practices you can use to present numerical information from Excel.

If you are showing a trend in some data or comparing a few figures, use a graph in PowerPoint instead of a table of numbers. If you show a table of numbers and expect your audience to do the math to figure out the difference in magnitude between the numbers, they won’t. Audiences won’t do the math. Instead, use a graph to illustrate the differences in the numbers. Don’t feel that you have to re-type the data and risk making a mistake. Just copy and paste the data from Excel to the PowerPoint graph data table. If you want to see this done, watch the video on creating graphs in PowerPoint at www.PPtHowToVideos.com. To determine which type of graph might work best for your message, use the decision tree in this article as a guideline.

I rarely suggest showing a full table of numbers, but if you must show a table of numbers, you need to make sure it is not overwhelming for your audience. There are two techniques you can use to make a table easier to understand. First, if the table is small, use a callout to focus attention on the one or two numbers that are the most important. Put a circle around the number and add some text beside it to explain why this number is significant.

If the table is large, and you need to explain each area separately, use the break-down and zoom-in technique. Start by showing the entire table for context, but explain that there are different regions of the table that you will explain in detail and show the regions by semi-transparent overlays on the large table. This gives the audience an overall context for the organization of the data and how the different regions relate to each other. Then, you can show a zoomed-in portion of the table to explain each region individually, using the callout technique to focus attention on the one or two numbers in that region that are most important.

The final best practice I want to cover is one that allows you to get audience input into the calculations. This makes it very personal to their circumstance and raises the level of engagement of the audience. This technique can work well when you have a situation where you have calculated a general example in Excel and show the results to illustrate a broad concept. The idea is communicated, but the applicability to an individual situation might not be clear. In this case, hyperlink to a pre-created Excel spreadsheet that allows you to ask the audience for their exact inputs. Let the spreadsheet do the calculations using their inputs, giving results that are tailored to their exact situation. Now you have involved the audience and demonstrated your point using inputs that exactly match their situation, engaging them in the message you are delivering. You also now have an example you can e-mail them right after the presentation that demonstrates their exact scenario, reinforcing the message you delivered in the presentation.

Just because you use Excel to calculate data for use in a presentation doesn’t mean you have to copy and paste a large table of data on to a slide. Use the techniques above to present a more visual message that communicates more effectively with your audience.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #58: Making Excel spreadsheets meaningful - Part 1

2010-08-17T05:58:00.001-04:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. When financial figures need to be included in a presentation, too often an Excel spreadsheet is copied on to a slide. It overwhelms the audience and the message is lost. Use the ideas in this makeover to focus the audience on the few key numbers they need to know in order to understand your message.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: Options for using Data from Excel on PowerPoint Slides – Part 1

2010-08-10T06:23:00.001-04:00

Excel is commonly used to perform calculations or financial analysis. I use it frequently for these purposes, as I am sure you do. While Excel is a great tool for performing numeric analysis, it is not intended to be a presentation tool. If you show a large spreadsheet on the screen, people get overwhelmed quickly and tune out.

In a two-part series, I am going to share my best practices for using the information from our Excel analysis in a presentation. In today’s first part, we’ll talk about using a table of numbers from the spreadsheet on a slide. Next time, I’ll cover ways to use the data other than the copy and paste approach we’ll cover today.

If you shouldn’t just copy and paste the entire spreadsheet on a slide, what should you do instead? Create a summary table. Any analysis we do should result in us answering a question that prompted the analysis. How are this year’s results compared to last year? How are results compared to our forecast? What do projections show for the next three quarters? What factors contributed to the rise or fall in results? There are many more questions that we could be wondering about that give rise to numerical analysis in Excel.

Your audience does not want, or need, to see all of the analysis. They only need to see the results that answer the question. So in Excel, create a summary of the results from your analysis. It could be on a portion of the existing worksheet or on a new worksheet. This summary table is what you will use on your slide. It should be a few rows by a few columns at most. This makes it easy to understand and big enough when displayed on the screen.

When you copy this small number of cells to your slide, I suggest you use one of four options. There are more that PowerPoint allows, but I think these are the four that are most useful for you to consider. I’ve listed the options below along with an idea of what the result will be in your slide. Three of the four are accessed by using the Paste Special command, which opens up a dialog box that gives you more options than the default Paste command.

Option 1: Simple Paste using Ctrl+V: This inserts your Excel cells as a PowerPoint table. PowerPoint tables can only be animated as “all on” or “all off”, so you can’t build the rows or columns individually unless you use the exit animation reveal technique. This option does not link to the source Excel file, so any changes in the Excel file will not be reflected in your presentation automatically.

Option 2: Paste Special; Excel Worksheet Object: This embeds the current version of the Excel worksheet into your PowerPoint slide and displays the last editing view of the worksheet. The advantage to this method is that it allows you to access the entire sheet on your slide. The disadvantage is that the last view is shown, so someone can accidentally open the object and what shows up on your slide will be what they last looked at, perhaps not what you wanted the audience to see. This method also uses the limited table animation and does not link to the source Excel file.

Option 3: Paste Special; Unformatted text: This creates a PowerPoint text box of the entries in the cells, using tabs to create the columns in the text box. Because it is a text box, you have more control over formatting the text and you can animate it like any other text box, including by row. There is no link to the source data.

Option 4: Paste Link; Excel Worksheet Object: This embeds a link to the Excel file on your slide and displays the last view in Excel. When you edit this object on your slide, it actually opens Excel to do the editing. For animation, it treats it as a single object, so you only have the “all on” or “all off” options. This link does update your slide as data in the Excel sheet changes (you will be asked to update the data when you open the PowerPoint file). This option is great if you have a regularly updated spreadsheet and only want to create one presentation that will always have the latest data.

None of these options is the best in all situations. Consider the purpose and future use of the summary table of numbers, then select which option will work best. Next time, we’ll talk about alternatives to using a table of Excel data in your presentation.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #57: Revealing infographics one portion at a time

2010-08-03T07:59:00.002-04:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. Infographics are a popular way to illustrate information, especially for print publications. When used in presentations, they can sometimes be overwhelming. Use the ideas in this makeover to reveal the portions of the infographic one at a time to keep the focus of your audience.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: Using quotes effectively on your slides

2010-07-27T15:48:00.000-04:00

You want to use a quote to illustrate your point, so you type it out on a PowerPoint slide. Like most presenters, you show the slide and immediately start talking about how this quote illustrates your point. Unfortunately, the audience is still reading the quote while you are speaking, so they don't hear your insights. They come up with their own interpretation when they are reading the quote, which may not match what you wanted them to get out of it.

When you are using a quote, you need to give the audience context before you show the quote. They need to know the background, such as when it was said, under what circumstances, where was it said, who is saying it, why is this person important, what happened just before it was said, or why the person said it. Giving context prepares the audience to interpret the quote in the right way.

When you show the slide with the quote, pause, turn towards the screen and stay silent for the few seconds that it takes to read the quote. I usually read the quote to myself to approximate how long it would take someone to read the quote. Then, turn back to face the audience and start your interpretation. If it is a short quote, you may read it to the audience, but it is not always necessary. Always give the audience time to read the quote when it appears on the screen. They naturally want to read it, so allow them to do so without interrupting them with your speaking. The reason for turning to face the screen is that people will look where you look, so if you look at the screen, they will look there as well and read the quote. When you turn back to face the audience, they have finished reading the quote and are ready to hear your insight.

If there are a few words or a phrase that you consider to be the key part of the quote, highlight those words so they stand out for the audience. You can do this when the quote first appears, but it is usually more effective if you highlight the key phrase as you are explaining why the audience should focus on those words. This way, they reconsider the key words as you explain their significance. I have found the most effective technique to emphasize words is to use a highlighter effect so it looks like you are actually using a highlighter over the words on the screen. I’ve got a quick video on this at www.PPTHowToVideos.com if you don’t already know how to create this effect, or if you want to see that technique along with many other effective tips, you can see it as part of the recording of my PowerPoint How-To Webinar at www.PPtHowToWebinar.com.

Quotes can be wonderful additions to your presentation if you use them effectively so that the audience sees the clear connection to your point and why the quote reinforces what you are saying.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #56: Emphasis in a diagram image by shading out a portion

2010-07-20T07:19:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. When a diagram comes to us as an image, it is more difficult to focus the audience's attention because they can see the entire image. Use the techniques in this makeover to emphasize a portion by shading out the areas you don't want the audience to focus on.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #55: Using a table to organize information

2010-07-06T10:14:00.001-04:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. If you want the audience to understand results or numeric information, don't use text on your slides that reads like your speaker notes. Use the ideas in this makeover to create a table that makes it easy for the audience to understand what the numbers mean to them.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: Break Your Addiction to Ineffective PowerPoint Presentations One Presentation at a Time - Part 2

2010-06-30T05:42:00.002-04:00

Last time I gave the first six steps in a twelve step program for breaking the addiction that many presenters have. They have become accustomed to packing their slides with text and data and mostly reading the slides to their audience. They know others have somehow managed to use visuals effectively in presentations, but they need some help to break the habit.

I hope these steps will help you or someone you know to start to make the changes that will help improve your presentations, and lead to even greater success. These first six steps dealt with making a decision to change and committing to the work it will require, and you can read them here. The next six steps, which is the focus of today’s newsletter, address how to make the change.

I have asked for assistance to address my shortcomings. Knowing that this will take time and effort, I have asked for approval at work and home for time and funding to get the training I need. I have made the time in my schedule for the required learning, better preparation of my presentations, and more rehearsal for each presentation.
I have made a list of the mistakes I have made using PowerPoint and am willing to correct them. From the fearless inventory of skills in step four, I have listed the areas that I need to improve on. I will seek out the training, books, and other resources that will help me improve in these specific areas. I will seek the guidance of coaches and others who can give me the expert perspective I need.
I will make my presentations better for future audiences. I know that the training and learning will be difficult at first to implement in my presentations. Change is difficult when you start it. I commit to the work required to make the changes and will push through the difficult times in order to make the changes I have committed to. I won’t give up when the going gets tough.
I will continue to evaluate my presentations honestly and admit mistakes when I find them. I will use checklists and rubrics to evaluate all aspects of my presentation, from design, to content, to delivery. I will be ruthless in my evaluations so that I don’t slip back into the practices I once followed. I will ask experts for their honest opinions to help check my progress.
I will continue to learn and develop my presentation ability with the goal to become the best presenter I can be. I know that this is not a one-time effort. I will need ongoing guidance and ideas in order to continue to improve. I commit to continuous learning through books, blogs, videos, courses, newsletters, conferences, etc. I will ask presenters I respect which thought leaders they follow and learn from them.
Having realized the errors of my presentations in the past, I have tried to share this message with other presenters and demonstrate better presentations principles when I present. When I see an article, video, blog post, tweet, or other item that demonstrates this better way to present, I will communicate it to my network through my personal and electronic communication. I will recommend to my colleagues, bosses, and friends, those resources that have helped me.

Now it is truly up to you. If you need the complete list of twelve steps for yourself or a friend, I’ve put the entire list in an article on my web site here. I know that changing from your old ways of presenting is difficult at first. I’ve done it and so have many fellow readers of this newsletter who have written to thank me over the years. You can do it too. I am here to help and encourage you along the way with articles, my blog, slide makeover videos, and many other resources. Now take that first step.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #54: Using a timeline instead of a list of dates

2010-06-22T05:03:00.001-04:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. When we want to talk about upcoming product launches or future events, the easy approach is to just list dates on a bullet point slide. This makeover shows a timeline visual that communicates the message more clearly and with greater impact.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: Break Your Addiction to Ineffective PowerPoint Presentations One Presentation at a Time - Part 1

2010-06-15T16:12:00.001-04:00

The twelve step program created by Alcoholics Anonymous has been used as a model for many people to break their addiction to alcohol, drugs and other destructive behaviours. It has been adapted to many situations to deal with different problems people have. I started thinking about these steps when I was considering how to stop people from creating and delivering PowerPoint presentations that are ineffective and damaging to their careers.

So today I am giving you the first six steps of my twelve step program for breaking the addiction that many presenters have. They have become accustomed to packing their slides with text and data and mostly reading the slides to their audience. They know others have somehow managed to use visuals effectively in presentations, but they need some help to break the habit they have.

I hope these steps will help you or someone you know to start to make the changes that will help improve your presentations, and lead to even greater success. These first six steps deal with making a decision to change and committing to the work it will require. Steps seven through twelve, which will be in the next newsletter, address how to make the change.

I admit that my abuse of PowerPoint has become unmanageable. I can’t seem to figure out how to stop inflicting overloaded text and data slides on my audiences. My audiences don’t find my presentations effective, even if they aren’t telling me that to my face.
I have come to believe that there is a better way that can save my presentations. I have seen other presenters deliver effective presentations with persuasive visuals, so I know there is a better way. I see that they start with structure, create and use visuals that illustrate their message, and deliver their presentation as if they are having a conversation with the audience. I’d like to be able to do this too.
I have made a decision to turn my presentations over to this better way of presenting. I believe that I can change my ways. I believe that it is possible and that it doesn’t require an innate design ability to do it. I believe that I can learn the skills I need to be able to create effective PowerPoint presentations.
I have made a fearless inventory of my skills at design, creation and delivery of presentations. I have used honest feedback from others and independent assessments to truly evaluate what I am good at and where I need to develop skills. I have been encouraged because now I know what I need to learn in order to become a better presenter.
I have admitted publicly that my presentations have not been as good as they should have been. I have committed to my family, friends, colleagues and my boss that I know I can create and deliver better presentations. I have done this publicly so that I can count on their support, guidance and encouragement through this process. I also want them to hold me accountable to make these changes. I look forward to celebrating with them as I see the changes result in successful presentations.
I am ready to address my presentation faults. I know this will involve hard work and I am willing to commit to the efforts that are necessary. I will allocate the time necessary to study and practice these new skills.

Next newsletter, I’ll cover the final six steps on how to make the necessary changes.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #53: Using a full screen photo to enhance a story

2010-06-08T05:58:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. Stories and analogies are important to increasing the impact of your message. Don't just type out the key parts of the story on a slide as bullet points. Use the ideas in this makeover to show a full screen photo that increases the impact of your story or analogy.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

"Show your work" is not needed in presentations

2010-06-03T07:57:00.000-04:00

At a recent workshop, one of the participants raised the point that the reason so many people put all the data on their slides is that in school we were always told to "show your work." Our kids are just finishing their school year and I agree that it is important in school to show your work. Otherwise, the teacher can’t evaluate whether you really know the material or not. If you just show an answer, they don’t know how you got the answer and can’t be assured that you grasped the concepts they were teaching.

But the workplace is different. As professionals, our presentations are not an attempt by our bosses to check if we know our job. They do that evaluation before they ever hire us. If we couldn’t do the work, we wouldn’t get the job, it’s as simple as that.

Your presentations are to present the result of your work in a way that enables others to use the information to make decisions or use the knowledge to be more effective and efficient in their own work. If you show all the background and data, you lose the audience because it is overwhelming. There is so much coming at them, they don’t know what the most important point is. And they give up trying to figure it out, or, even worse, come to a different conclusion than the one you wanted them to reach.

Instead, present only the conclusions from your work and in a way that clearly shows the meaning of the analysis to this audience. Always be thinking about what the audience really wants to know from you. They don’t want to know all the work you did, they only want to know how the conclusion will impact them. Feel free to have backup or Appendix slides that contain more details in case someone wants to see the details, but don’t include those slides in the main part of your presentation.

PowerPoint Tip: Being too emotionally invested in your slides leads to less effective presentations

2010-06-01T09:37:00.000-04:00

I’ve spent some time thinking about the different reasons why presenters don’t create presentations that are as effective as they could be. One of the reasons is that too many presenters start their preparation by creating their slides. They spend a lot of time getting all the text and numbers just right on every slide. And when somebody suggests a more effective visual approach, they resist, and end up using the original, overloaded slides.

Why the resistance? Because they are heavily invested emotionally in the slides they spent so much time creating. It is human nature to resist changing something that we put a lot of time and effort in to. We think that since we spent so much time on it, there is no way we are just throwing it out and starting over again. Our emotions take over, and it has nothing to do with the rational logic that the new approach is better at effectively communicating our message.
To help prevent this from happening, I always suggest that presenters start their preparation away from the computer. Start by thinking about the goal of the presentation: what you want the audience to do at the end of the presentation. Think about where the audience is now, and jot down three to five steps that will move the audience from where they are to where you want them to be by the end of the presentation. Write down what proof, evidence, and support you have to back up your main points. This is the structure of your presentation, and can be done on a whiteboard, pad of paper, or, my favourite, sticky notes so I can move them around.

Once you have your message organized, check it with others to make sure it is sound. Ask colleagues if the structure makes sense for this audience. Check with your boss to make sure it covers the areas she wants it to address for this audience. Check with audience members to make sure it addresses their important concerns or areas that they most want to know about.

Only after you have a good structure should you begin developing the visuals that will support your presentation. The structure helps to focus the message and helps to reduce the tendency to put everything we know on the slide. Since we understand the structure, we can more readily use visuals that we will speak to during the presentation. We are not spending time trying to organize our thoughts during the creation of the slides, the organization is already done.

This approach actually cuts down the presentation preparation time since less time is spent revising slides due to the structure of the message being revised. In a typical presentation that does not start by creating a good structure, many of the revisions are done to improve the message, not to make the slides better. This time can be drastically reduced by starting with the preparation of a good message structure.

Remember that the goal is to communicate effectively what the audience needs to hear from you on this topic. It is not about how much time you spent carefully putting every word and number on your slides. Start with the structure, and reduce the emotional investment you have in your slides. You will end up with a more effective presentation.

Converting PowerPoint 2003 graphs to look good in PowerPoint 2007

2010-05-28T07:09:00.000-04:00

About two weeks ago I switched from PowerPoint 2003 to PowerPoint 2007 when I got a new laptop. I’ve now delivered a few presentations using PowerPoint 2007 and I’ve noticed that the graphs I created in PowerPoint 2003 didn’t look very good when I presented them. The text wasn’t clear and the lines or columns were not crisp. I did some tinkering and discovered that PowerPoint 2007 needs to convert your PowerPoint 2003 graphs in order to display them well. Just click on each graph in the presentation and when the dialog box comes up asking you to convert the graph, agree to convert it to the PowerPoint 2007 format. You will see a noticeable difference in the quality of the graphs when projected.

The other issue I found after I converted the graphs is that some of them did not print very well on a black and white printer. I always create black and white handouts instead of colour because it is so much cheaper to print. But I could hardly even see some of the graphs when I printed them using the Pure Black and White print option. I ended up having to change the Chart Style to one that has borders around the bars in order to get the outline of the bar or pie wedge to be visible when printed. I also ended up having to change some of the fill colours in order to make the printout visible. After you convert your graphs, take a look at what they look like in the Print Preview mode to ensure that the handout will be readable.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #52: Layering the discussion of detailed data

2010-05-25T08:59:00.002-04:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. Often we need to present detailed data that has come from analysis. Instead of overwhelming your audience by putting all the data on a slide, use the ideas in this makeover to layer the discussion of the data so it makes sense and the audience can understand and act on it.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

Is it honesty or is it clarity that makes this commercial so popular?

2010-05-24T07:45:00.001-04:00

Two respected presentation professionals, Jon Thomas and Garr Reynolds, have recently tweeted about how they think this commercial is a great commercial and they wish all advertising could be this honest. I agree that the commercial is good and it is honest. But many ads are honest. Not many are as clear as this one is.

The difference between clarity and honesty in my mind is that clarity makes things easy to understand and honesty is about level of truth. You can be honest, but be unclear and confusing. We see this often in presentations. The data is accurate, but they haven’t figured out the meaning for the audience, so what they present is unclear. These types of presentations are not effective.

Clear presentations, like this commercial, present information from the audience’s perspective. They are focused on what is going to help the audience make a decision or apply the ideas in their own life. Most people immediately recognize these as effective presentations.

I will always recommend that you be honest in everything you do. I would also ask you to be clear in your communication. When you are clear, you communicate effectively, and the audience, of one or many, understands immediately. As a business person, clearly communicating what problem I solve and who a potential client would be, is critical to attracting more business. So I recently wrote a page on my web site titled "How to know if we should chat". It is my attempt to be as clear as possible with prospective clients about how I can help them and whether we will work well together. The clearer we communicate, the more effective we will be. I’ll be discussing this business approach and many more ideas at my pre-conference workshop at the Presentation Summit. If you are a presentation consultant, you can participate in a survey that will help all of us - read more here.

Your takeaway: How can you increase the clarity of your communication?

Caution when animated PowerPoint graphs are delivered via Live Meeting

2010-05-21T12:57:00.001-04:00

I recently delivered a webinar using the Microsoft Live Meeting system. I had not used this system before and it is one of the systems where you upload your slides to their site. My usual system is one where I share my desktop, so you are seeing my desktop exactly as I am presenting. The difference with the Live Meeting system is that they do some conversion of your slides to fit their system. And I found one type of graph animation that doesn’t get converted properly.

In one of my slides, I show a bar graph that has text in each bar explaining what that bar refers to. The text is actually a text box placed on top of the bar because it fit better that way and gave the look I wanted. In the animation, I animate each bar of the graph to come on one at a time so I can discuss each item individually. To have the text come up at the same time as the bar, I animate the text box and have it appear with the bar. In the Custom Animation task pane, I move the text box animation effect in the middle of the graph bar animation so the builds happen at the right time. And apparently that causes the problem.

Any time you have an object animate in the middle of a graph animation, Live Meeting does not convert it properly. It can’t handle splitting up the graph animation apparently. It resolves it by animating all graph elements at once and then the non-graph elements based on the timing set on those elements. In the bar graph, because the text box timing is set to happen with the bars, all the bars and the text boxes came on at the same time. In another graph, since the other object was set to appear on a click, I had to advance to get the object to appear. In both cases, I had advance warning because in our practice session the issue had cropped up. So I spoke to the slide as Live Meeting decided to present it.

The lesson for you is that if you are using Live Meeting to deliver your presentation over the web, make sure that you do not animate other objects in the middle of a graph animation, because it will not work the way you expect it to. Redesign your slide, use exit animation effects to reveal each part, or use multiple slides with one build on each slide to get around this issue. Now I know better for next time.

PowerPoint Tip: How to create a consistent look when many sources are contributing slides to a presentation

2010-05-18T08:37:00.000-04:00

In a recent workshop, one of the participants raised the challenge they have when assembling slides from different sources in the organization into one presentation. They said that often you can immediately tell that the presentation has been drawn from different sources just by the look of the slides, even though they are all using the corporate template.

I asked them what tips them off when they look at the slides and we came up with a list of items I want to share in this article. Look for these formatting and content aspects of your slides to make sure you create a presentation that looks consistent and not like it has been thrown together from different presentations.

Length of bullet points: When some slides use a few words and other use full sentences, it is easy to tell that the source is different. Aim for an average of six words per bullet point and make sure that it is just a key idea, not a transcript of what you will say.

Punctuation on bullet points: If some slides have bullet points that end with a period and other slides have no punctuation at the end of bullet points, it is a clear sign of an assembled presentation. I don’t think that periods are necessary at the end of bullet points because they aren’t supposed to be full sentences or paragraphs.

Capitalization: When some slides use Sentence case (only the first letter is capitalized) and some slide use Title Case (the first letter of every word is capitalized), it is a giveaway. I suggest using sentence case for headlines and body text because it is easier to read.

Titles vs. Headlines: Having some slides with a two or three word title and some slides with a proper headline of six to ten words gives it away. I suggest you write headlines for each slide that summarizes the key point you want the audience to get from this slide (that is why writing a headline is the first step in the five-step KWICK method in my book The Visual Slide Revolution).

Look of the graphics: Some contributors will use simple graphics and others will use fancy graphics with shading, edges, and other effects. Standardize on one look and make it as nice as possible without it looking gaudy.

Pictures vs. ClipArt: When some slides still contain outdated clip art and others use high impact photographs, the difference is apparent. Replace the clip art that screams “outdated information here” with current photographs that make an emotional impact.

By paying attention to these aspects of the visuals in your presentation that is assembled from different sources, you can work towards having one consistent look for the slides. Some organizations have taken this further and created a style guide that sets organizational standards for these and other elements that give visual consistency to all presentations.

Calling all presentation consultants – survey now open

2010-05-13T09:39:00.001-04:00

At this year’s Presentation Summit (formerly known as PowerPoint Live), I’ll be conducting a pre-conference workshop designed to help people build or grow a presentation consulting business. In this workshop, we’ll look at the business side of running your own presentation consulting shop. To support the information at the workshop, I am conducting an anonymous survey of presentation consulting businesses. If you own or run a presentation consulting business, please take a few minutes to complete this survey. The survey asks questions about your business and your results so that we can get a true picture of what this industry really looks like. To my knowledge, this is the first time that this type of survey has been done and promises to provide valuable insight that can help new entrants and established businesses.

The survey does not ask you to identify yourself or your company, so none of the information can be traced back to any one firm. The results will be shown only in aggregate so that we can all learn. The survey will close on June 30th and I will then start the analysis over the summer. I’ll release some of the results at the end of the summer and the full results will be discussed during the workshop at the Presentation Summit.

It only takes a few minutes to complete, and it will provide valuable information for all of us in this industry. If you are in the presentation consulting business, please complete the survey and let others know about it so we can get the broadest cross-section of responses as possible.

Thank you for taking a few minutes to help your business and others in our industry.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #51: Combining multiple comparisons

2010-05-11T08:24:00.002-04:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. When we want to compare one items against two or more other items, we tend to put statistics on a slide to show each individual comparison. The ideas in this makeover show how to combine all the comparisons visually to make the point with greater impact.

This slide was submitted by one of the participants in a workshop - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: Use these two techniques to get the exact shape you want in a diagram

2010-05-04T08:54:00.000-04:00

PowerPoint has a wealth of drawing tools that allow presenters to create a vast array of diagrams to illustrate their points. It is clear from the questions I get in workshops that many presenters are under the mistaken impression that you need to use fancy graphics software or illustration package to draw diagrams. Not at all. PowerPoint has all the tools most presenters will ever need. In this article I want to share two techniques that can be helpful in creating the exact shape you want for an illustration.

The first situation is when you want to use shapes to illustrate the size of two items because you want the audience to see how much larger or smaller one item is compared to the other. Sometimes using proportional shapes is a better illustration than a graph. For example, you might want to show two rectangles that represent the size of a market in two different countries. You need the shapes to be properly proportioned because the illustration needs to be accurate.

You can create properly proportional shapes in PowerPoint by specifying the measurements for the shape. To do so, draw the shape first. Then select the shape and enter the exact dimensions (in PowerPoint 2003 you can enter exact dimensions in the Size tab of the Format Autoshape dialog box and in PowerPoint 2007 the dimensions are on the Drawing Tools Format ribbon). While you can enter the dimensions in inches, I have found that it is easier to do so in millimetres because you can scale the numbers more easily. For example, if I have one item that is 450 units and another that is 800 units, it is hard to convert those to inches that easily fit on a slide. But using millimetres that are a base 100 unit scale, I can easily divide by 10 and use 45 mm and 80 mm, which are good sizes for shapes on a slide. Just enter 45mm as the dimension and PowerPoint will convert the measurement to inches if that is your default unit of measure. Remember that if you are showing the area of a shape, you will need to go back to grade school math formulas to specify both height and width properly.

The second situation occurs when you are drawing a diagram that requires two or more shapes to fit together, like the pieces of a puzzle. One common example is using chevron shapes to illustrate a process. You want each chevron to fit together with the next one showing that the process flows smoothly from one step to the next. The problem with shapes that have angles or curves, is that PowerPoint uses default proportions that sometimes don’t allow your shapes to line up the way you need them to.

The secret is to use the yellow diamond handle on the shape. If you draw a chevron or a circular arrow shape, for example, you will see at least one yellow diamond handle. This yellow diamond handle allows you to drag it and alter the angle or curve of the shape. By doing so, you can make shapes fit exactly with the one next to them. I find it helpful to zoom in on the slide when making these adjustments to get the fit just right. What looks correct in the default zoom level sometimes is not actually correct when you display the slide on the large screen.

Instead of thinking that you need to learn a fancy graphics or illustration package, use these two tips to create diagrams that illustrate your point and make your presentation more effective.

If PowerPoint caused the war, Excel caused the financial crisis

2010-04-28T08:23:00.000-04:00

The big buzz in the presentation community yesterday was the front page article in the New York Times that referred to PowerPoint as “the enemy” and trotted out the familiar line that “PowerPoint makes us stupid”. Could this be tomorrow’s front page story?

Excel caused the financial crisis
Government officials today announced today that Excel, the spreadsheet program from Microsoft, was the cause of the recent worldwide financial crisis. “If you look at Excel, it forces you into cells, separate boxes that don’t recognize the interconnectedness of the factors”, said one official. The report outlined how financial professionals used Excel to make complex spreadsheets that analyzed various transactions and financial instruments. The authors concluded that the software forces you to create complex formulas that few understand or can explain. They dismissed the argument that Excel is just a tool and people who use it poorly or don’t understand complex formulas were really at fault. “The software should know better. The user is never at fault”, the study states. Academics have now called for a ban on Excel, urging the use of an abacus instead.

It is interesting that when we use the familiar logic of blaming the software for anything other than PowerPoint, the critics cry out that, oh no, it doesn’t apply to word processing or spreadsheets. Interesting logic. It is easy to trot out the familiar “Death by PowerPoint” argument, and that is what the media usually does. I guess criticism sells newspapers better than positive stories.

So I want to take the more challenging route and talk about some positive lessons presenters can learn from the visual that the article used as an illustration of a poor slide.

First, it is at least a visual and not an endless series of bullet points. Many presentations would be more effective if the presenter used diagrams, graphs, photos or other visuals to illustrate their ideas instead of endless slides full of bullet points.

Second, it is likely an overview slide that is shown to give context of what the presenter will talk about next. By giving an audience context first, we enable them to put the rest of what we say into a framework that makes it easier to understand. Anything we can do to communicate our message more effectively is a good thing.

Third, the diagram uses colors to organize the different groups of information: black for Coalition, Light Blue for government, Dark Blue for ANSF, and so on. Using colors or shapes to group like items or ideas aids the audience in understanding the information better. Presenters could apply this idea to many lists or visuals to better organize the information for the audience.

Fourth, the diagram uses different font sizes to indicate the major items and the minor items under each grouping. Varying text size is another technique used to indicate importance to an audience. When you are making a distinction between items in a hierarchy, text size is a useful indicator.

Finally, the diagram uses a sans-serif font. Research shows that sans-serif fonts are easier to read than serif fonts when projected, so at least the presenter is using a font that is going to be easier to see.

Does the visual have aspects that could be improved? Of course it does. I don’t think you would ever be able to find a slide that everyone would agree could not be improved in some way. Let’s stop looking for the worst in everything we see and look for the positive lessons that we can use in our presentations.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #50: Adding a visual to a quote

2010-04-27T20:12:00.002-04:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. Quotations are commonly used to illustrate a point in a presentation. Instead of just using the text of the quote, use the ideas in this makeover to add a visual that makes the quote come alive for the audience.

This slide was submitted by one of the participants in a workshop - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

How advice to those pitching VC’s applies to all presenters

2010-04-26T08:08:00.000-04:00

Rebecca Lynn wrote a very good article on what should be in a presentation to venture capital firms (VC’s) on CNET here. Now I know most of us don’t present to venture capitalists, but there are some lessons here for all presenters.

First, start with the conclusion. Research published in John Medina’s book “Brain Rules” reinforces Rebecca’s suggestion to start with “your best stuff.” Don’t wade through a lot of data or details before getting to the conclusion.

Second, everything else in your presentation needs to support the conclusion you started with. Notice how each slide Rebecca suggests goes back to supporting the first slide. Audiences want to see how the details support your initial statement.

Third, be prepared to go in a non-linear order. Rebecca suggests that if the presentation goes well, you probably won’t make it past slide 2 before they want to go off in another direction. If appropriate, let the audience drive the sequence of the presentation by designing it as a non-linear presentation or at minimum know how to jump to any slide in your presentation.

Good ideas to keep in mind for any presentation, not just those to VC’s.

Helping Presentation Consulting Businesses

2010-04-22T08:37:00.001-04:00

At this year’s Presentation Summit (formerly known as PowerPoint Live), I’ll be conducting a pre-conference workshop designed to help people build or grow a presentation consulting business. With all of the turmoil in the job market these days, many people have chosen to, or been forced to, set up their own business. For those with a design background, the presentation consulting business is one choice. We all know there are so many presentations that need help!

In this workshop, we’ll look at the business side of running your own presentation consulting shop. To support the information at the workshop, I’ll be conducting an anonymous survey of presentation consulting businesses in May and June. I’ll be asking questions about their business and their results so that we can get a true picture of what this industry really looks like. To my knowledge, this is the first time that this type of survey has been done and promises to provide valuable insight that can help new entrants and established businesses.

Here’s what I am planning to cover at the workshop:

Part 1: Defining your business
It would be easy to say all presentation consultants do the same thing, but that’s not reality. We’ll talk about at least six parameters that you should define in order to be clear about what your business offers to a potential client.

Part 2: The financial side
As much as you may not want to deal with the numbers, you will have to. We’ll talk about pricing models and how getting clear on your financial goals determines your daily activities.

Part 3: Getting clients
We all know that so many presenters need our services, but just opening your business does not guarantee a flood of paying customers. We’ll talk about numerous options for marketing your business, selling your services and managing this area.

Part 4: Running the business
Providing service to your clients is probably the part you enjoy the most. But there are many behind the scenes roles that you must take care of. We’ll talk about these so that you can thoughtfully manage your time each day.

I won’t be advocating one business model or way of running your company. There is no one correct way to do this business. We’ll explore options so that you can consider what makes sense for your unique situation. There will be lists, spreadsheets and other resources to download after the workshop to help you apply the ideas to your own business. And of course I and most of the other participants will be around the entire conference to continue the discussions.

If you are interested in attending, make sure you sign up at www.PresentationSummit.com. See you there!

PowerPoint Tip: So what’s all the fuss about the backchannel?

2010-04-20T08:47:00.000-04:00

A lot has been written recently about incorporating the backchannel into presentations. If you aren’t familiar with the term “backchannel”, it refers to comments people in the audience are sharing with the world via Twitter and other social media sharing sites. In my opinion, all this talk has little relevance for most presenters. Here’s why.

First, in order to consolidate the comments about a presentation, Twitter users attach a hashtag to their tweet. Usually it is a tag associated with the event as opposed to each specific presentation. For example, all of the comments at last year’s PowerPoint Live conference were tagged with the #pptlive hashtag. This is now common with many large conferences. But that’s the thing. Only conferences assign a hashtag. There is no way every project update presentation, sales pitch, or training program in an organization is going to have its own hashtag. So for most presentations, the mechanism for consolidating comments doesn’t exist. And I don’t see most regular presenters creating a hashtag for every presentation they do.

Second, if you don’t have a large audience like a conference does, it becomes pretty hard to be tweeting while the presentation is going on. In a room of six people gathered for a presentation, if three of them were constantly tweeting on their phone or laptop, the whole meeting would fall apart. They are gathered there to exchange information and make decisions, not tweet. There is no place in most corporate presentations for tweeting.

Third, in most presentations, if you have a question or concern, you put up your hand and ask. If you agree with something the presenter said, you nod your head. You don’t whip out your phone to tweet about it. Most presentations work on interaction between the presenter and the participants, and between the different participants as they discuss the topic at hand. If you have genuine interaction, there is no need for a backchannel.

And I guess that’s the big problem I have in thinking that the backchannel applies to that many presentations. It assumes that the front channel, what you say in front of each other, doesn’t work. In a conference setting with hundreds or thousands of people in the room, the front channel is a challenge. But in my opinion, the number of presentations done in corporate meeting rooms, a training room, or in someone’s office is far, far larger than the number of conference presentations. Sure, conference presentations get more glory perhaps. But the majority of the real work of presentations gets done in smaller settings amongst people who are there to get work done and make decisions. In those settings, you can interact with your audience and engage them with conversation, so there is no need for a backchannel to exist.

The bottom line for most corporate presenters: Don’t worry about the backchannel, it won’t impact the presentations you do every day.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #49: Showing differences in magnitude

2010-04-13T09:50:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. To many presenters, numbers are the natural way to show differences in magnitude; and the more numbers the better. Our audiences get overwhelmed by all the numbers and miss the point unless we use the lessons in this makeover to turn the numbers into a visual that shows the difference clearly.

This slide was submitted by one of the participants in a workshop - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

Does reading your slides work on video?

2010-04-09T10:07:00.000-04:00

A fellow entrepreneur just forwarded me a link to one of the “Internet Marketing gurus” latest venture. He’s telling people that video sales letters work much better than written sales copy. Now I’m not here to debate whether that is true or not. What caught my attention is that he suggests that you create video sales letters by creating text PowerPoint slides and reading them. He claims that in his tests, this type of sales letter works better than ones that include visuals.

So I spent the time to watch his entire sales video. And I found myself struggling with the same problem that happens when a presenter stands up at the front of the room and reads their slides. I can read faster than he can speak, so I am done before he is finished reading. And when I am reading, I can’t listen to what he is saying, so I tune him out and miss what he has said. I guess he missed the research that shows that people use the same part of their brain for reading and listening.

My surveys on what annoys people about bad PowerPoint presentations have consistently showed that the biggest annoyance, by far, is reading your slides. After reviewing this video, I am pretty confident in saying that reading slides as a video is almost as annoying as doing it live. (And when you have spelling and grammatical errors, it doesn’t help your credibility.)

When you don’t include visuals such as graphs, diagrams, and photos, you miss out on the opportunity to connect visually with the audience. Text on a slide is not usually your most effective visual choice. There were many times during this video that I thought of visuals that could have made the point come alive for the viewer.

Video is just a different vehicle for communicating your message. If you are creating a video of your slides, the same principles apply: clear structure, clean design, persuasive visuals, and effective delivery. Keep those in mind and you will communicate your message effectively.

PowerPoint Tip: "You know, it’s just like…"

2010-04-06T07:43:00.000-04:00

One of the reasons that presenters don’t use visuals instead of text is because they don’t know what visual to use to explain the point they are making. Business professionals tell me all the time that they aren’t graphic artists or designers, so how can they come up with a visual? In my book "The Visual Slide Revolution", I list 38 words or phrases and the clues they give as to what visual will work as a good replacement for all the text. Recently, I came up with an additional insight.

I was preparing a workshop for a client and I realized how powerful the following phrase can be when thinking about visuals. We often use this phrase, "You know, it's just like ..." during conversations when we are trying to explain a concept, idea, process, object, or pretty much anything that the other person is not familiar with. We use this phrase to frame the new item in a way that is easy to understand for the listener.

Let me break this phrase down into two parts to show the power it has. First, the start of the phrase "You know." By starting with these words, we put the listener on notice that we are about to explain something in a way that is familiar to them. Immediately they are put at ease knowing that the coming explanation will be easy to understand because it is coming from a perspective of familiarity. The second part of the phase, "it’s just like", lets them know that we are going to create a word picture analogy. This allows them to organize the coming information in a familiar way since it is similar to something they already know.

Here’s how this phrase can help you create visuals in your presentations. Whenever you are stuck wondering what visual would be better than paragraphs of text, place yourself in the position of explaining the idea to someone who has no background with what you are talking about. Start by saying, "You know, it’s just like …" and finish that sentence. Capture the word picture you just painted either by writing it out or recording yourself on your computer or cell phone. Turn that word picture into an actual visual on your slide.

I never suggest that we can eliminate all text from our presentations, that’s not the objective. Research shows that visuals are more powerful than text alone, so use the phrase, "You know, it’s just like …" to develop visuals for your slides that will make your presentation more effective.

How the ban on texting while driving applies to presentations

2010-04-02T07:35:00.000-04:00

In many jurisdictions they have now banned drivers from texting or reading e-mail while driving. The safety experts and statistics show that when a driver is distracted by reading, they are more likely to miss what is happening on the road and end up in an accident. Even Oprah has started a campaign to get people to pledge not to text and drive.

How does this apply to our presentations? If we put up slides full of text on the screen, we are distracting the audience just like drivers are distracted. Research has shown that our brains don’t do well trying to read and listen at the same time. The audience’s focus is over on the screen reading the text and they miss the important message we are delivering. When their attention turns back to us, they may find themselves confused as to what we are talking about because they missed what we were saying while they were reading.

Am I suggesting we should never have text on slides? No. We still have text on road signs, but they observe the rules regarding road signs. Those rules are designed so that a driver can glance at the sign, absorb the relevant information in under two seconds, and return their focus to the road. We should use the same principle when designing not just the text, but all aspects of our slides.

Here are some tips. First, build each element on your slides so that the audience can quickly understand what is new on the slide and return to hear you explain what it means to them. Second, after adding something new to a slide, pause about a second and a half before you start speaking. This gives the audience time to absorb the new part of the visual and return their focus to you. And third, design your visuals so that they are easy to interpret for your audience. This may mean different visuals for different audiences, even though the topic is the same, since their background and perspective may be different.

If you’d like to create more persuasive visuals, check out my book The Visual Slide Revolution for my five-step KWICK method.

Video required before you speak at conference

2010-03-31T11:16:00.000-04:00

Is this a sign of things to come for conference speakers? The National Speakers Association (NSA) in the U.S. is now requiring prospective speakers at their winter 2011 conference to agree to create a short (2-3 minute) promotional video to explain why an attendee should come to their concurrent session. What impact could this have if presenters at all conferences were asked to do this?

First, presenters would have to think through what the benefit of their session would be to the audience. They would have to map it out and be able to articulate what they will cover and how that will help the audience. I think this would be a good thing. Too many conference presenters throw their presentation together at the last minute. This would force them to think it through in advance.

Second, it would force presenters to truly have the audience in mind when developing content. If they are going to go on record as stating what they will cover and how it will be useful, they need to consider what their audience wants to hear on that topic. This would be a great improvement from the many presentations that are simply what the presenter wanted to say and leave the audience wondering what’s in it for them.

Third, we might see more and better use of video in presentations. Once presenters get comfortable with the use of video, they start to see how it could benefit their presentations. It is like anything new, the more we get experience with it, the better we become at using it, and the more we see how it could benefit us. Short video segments can really add to the effectiveness of a presentation.

And fourth, the attendees would make better choices about which concurrent sessions they want to select based on what will be covered and the speaking style of the presenter. Think of how many sessions you’ve gone to where the presenter did not stick to what they said they would cover or you discovered they weren’t a very good presenter. The probability of selecting a poor session would be reduced if you got to “test” the presenter via video before committing to the session.

It’s great to see this conference start to leverage web tools to build interest amongst potential attendees through using video. I outlined more ideas for conference organizers in an article published last year in Speaking of Impact magazine (see page 26 of this issue).

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #48: Comparing items that are proportional

2010-03-30T07:26:00.002-04:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. Don't randomly draw shapes on your slide if you are comparing them because audiences interpret the proportions of the items they see on a slide. Use the ideas in this makeover to give the audience an accurate interpretation of items that are proportional.

This slide was submitted by one of the participants in a workshop - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

Video of Interview on Professionally Speaking TV

2010-03-25T06:34:00.003-04:00

Last week I had the pleasure of appearing on Randall Craig's Professionally Speaking TV program broadcast over the Internet. We spent an hour talking about communicating effectively when using PowerPoint, my books, and how I got started in the business. I even showed a slide makeover so the audience could see the impact of what I teach. Here's the video:

I'd love to hear your comments on the program or what I shared.

PowerPoint Tip: Corrupted PowerPoint file

2010-03-23T05:51:00.001-04:00

I got a panicked call recently from a past workshop participant. She supports presenters who were out on the road doing a major presentation in venues across the country. Whenever they started the presentation, its gives them the Blue Screen of Death (BSoD as it’s known). It is likely that the PowerPoint file got corrupted. How could it have happened and what can you do about it? Here are some thoughts.

The problem may have occurred because they are running the file from a USB drive. I always suggest that you copy your presentation from a USB drive to your computer’s hard drive for two reasons. First, it runs faster. Second, the file can get corrupt if you pull the USB drive out of the computer without properly ejecting it. Many people don’t properly eject USB drives and it can cause major problems.

They also suggested that when they tested the presentation at the office, they had not tested it with the presentation remote. It is always a good idea to test with as close to the exact setup as you can. Plug in the remote, connect to the projector, and plug in the speakers. If you suspect that a piece of hardware is causing the issue, unplug it and try the presentation again. I have over 25 common problems and possible solutions on a special site designed for access by your mobile phone. Go to m.thinkoutsidetheslide.com to access the free site (it works with regular computer browsers as well, just don’t expect fancy formatting).

Sometimes drives or files do get corrupt. It has happened to me before. That’s why I always have a backup of the file with me or easily accessible. You can carry a copy of the file on a USB drive, on your phone, or on your MP3 player. I always back up my files to the web so that I am not reliant on physical media. You can e-mail the file to a web mail service such as Gmail or Hotmail, or you can copy it to a web repository.

How can you quickly access a web-based copy of your file? If you have a mobile phone that you can tether to your laptop, you can access the file from there. If you are in a hotel, you can likely go to the business centre and they will have Internet connected computers that you can use to download the file onto a USB drive.

What should you do to prepare for these unfortunate possibilities? First, always carry a USB drive. It can contain a copy of your file or you can use it to copy the file from another computer. Second, test as thoroughly as you can to catch problems before you go out on the road. Finally, practice recovering from glitches. Know how to reset the equipment and deliver the presentation if a piece of equipment stops working.

Running into problems during your presentation is never fun. But use these ideas to try to prevent issues and recover from them.

How does banning PowerPoint solve the problem?

2010-03-19T07:16:00.000-04:00

Here is an article about a conference that has decided to ban PowerPoint presentations: http://www.embedded.com/columns/esdeuropeeic/224000026. Why the ban? The writer explains that by banning PowerPoint, it will solve the problem of poor presentations. Instead, the presenters will use flipcharts and whiteboards to help the audience understand their presentation.

So let me get this straight. Instead of trying to help the presenters use the tool properly, we’re going to ban the tool and force them to go back in time and use tools that have, for the most part, been replaced by much better alternatives. That’s just like banning word processing software and making everyone go back to using pen and paper. Or banning e-mail and making people send memos in triplicate again.

It reminds me of a company I spoke to recently. In one department, they decided that the way to solve the problems with the PowerPoint presentations was to buy everyone a Mac and use Keynote. In the misguided belief that Keynote can’t possibly produce poor presentations. I am guessing that they now have fancier transitions between their text laden slides. Did that solve the problem?

The tool is not the problem. It never has been the root of the problem. The issue is that presenters don’t get taught how to properly structure their presentation and develop visuals that add to what they want to say. Banning the tool is the easy way out. But what happens when the resulting presentations are no better because the root issue was never dealt with? Then the cycle of finding the next scapegoat continues on. And audiences suffer through more boring presentations.

Only when organizations realize that the tool is not the problem will anything useful be done. The tool can be used well if you are taught how to use it properly. Check out my articles, past newsletters, makeover videos and tons of other great advice from many other commentators. We’ll help you use PowerPoint to create persuasive, engaging presentations. It can be done.

PowerPoint makes the Boss Button

2010-03-18T15:05:00.002-04:00

If you're watching the NCAA March Madness games at work over the Internet through the CBSSports.com feed, check out what you see when you click on the "Boss Button". That's right, you get a PowerPoint slide designed by Dilbert creator Scott Adams. You know you've made it when you get featured on the "Boss Button".

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #47: Showing choices instead of listing them

2010-03-16T05:41:00.001-04:00

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. If you are explaining what choices an audience has in a situation they are likely to encounter, don't just list the choices as bullet points. This makeover shows how a decision tree diagram can make the thought process clear and increase the probability that the audience will apply the knowledge when faced with the situation.

This slide was submitted by one of the participants in a workshop - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.

To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.