PowerPoint Anniversary - Not Old Enough to Buy Yet

PowerPoint celebrates its 20th anniversary this month. Of course, this means that PowerPoint has not quite yet reached legal age in the U.S.



Hmmm....the above retro-sign-on-the-wall indicates that incoherently grouped bullet points, bad grammar, strange fonts, and pointless clip art might actually have existed long before PowerPoint!

What do you think? ;)

Labels: fun

¶ 6/25/2007 11:04:00 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Why Hide a Slide?

I infrequently use the "Hide Slide" feature within PowerPoint. But I hid three slides in a presentation I gave last week, and I am glad I did. Why did I play "Hide the Slide"? Three reasons:

1. Smoothness
2. Peace of Mind
3. I value the interactive nature of storytelling.


Why Hide a Slide? In my rehearsals, I determined that three slides showed too much detail for my time allotment in front of a small audience. Like a film editor, I had to make some reasoned choices to move the story along. But instead of chucking the detailed slides on the cutting room floor, I simply hid them by selecting "Hide Slide" from the Slide Show menu bar. The results?

• Smoothness. After I gave the presentation, I opened up the floor for Q&A. The second guy to ask a question wanted more detail. I smoothly right-clicked my mouse, selected "Go To Slide" -- and chose the slide with the hidden graphic detail that helped me explain the point. It was easy to find -- hidden slides are neatly contained in parentheses.
  
  
• Peace of Mind. By hiding the slides instead of eliminating them, I gained peace of mind. When I gave my presentation, I didn't have any nagging doubts, "What if my stripped-down story isn't persuasive enough?" I had no doubts, because if I saw confusion on the faces of my audience members, I had a smooth contingency plan in place.
  
  
• Heightened Interactivity. I put a higher premium on the interactive (Q&A) part of a presentation than the lecture portion of the program. I'd rather have an audience "ask for more to build rapport" instead of potentially overloading them with too much detail in the lecture. Saving hidden slides for Q&A let me gauge interest and attention in the topic.

Other "hidden" benefits: If you use the "Hide Slide" feature, it means that you've rehearsed your presentation. It means that you've deeply thought about your audience and your topic. It means that you honor the art of conversation.

Honestly, I think I should use this feature more frequently!

Under what circumstances do you play "Hide the Slide?"

Labels: PowerPoint Tricks

¶ 6/25/2007 09:36:00 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  New Gmail PowerPoint Viewer is Weak

So Gmail has a new PowerPoint Viewer. If you send a PowerPoint attachment to a Google Gmail client, they see something like this at the bottom of their email:

When your Gmail recipient clicks on the "View as slideshow" link, a browser window pops up with forward and backward buttons. This lets those with Gmail clients click through the slide portion your ppt file -- without using PowerPoint or other viewing software.

And while that's kind of nice -- here's the downside. Sorry, no pptx files -- only ppt. And no sound, animations, or show notes either. Gotta Mac? Sorry, the new presentation feature does not work for Mac users.

The visual quality of the Gmail slide presentation is weak. In my test, the fonts ran completely amok.

If you'll recall, back in February the blogosphere was breathless with rumors of a Google "PowerPoint Killer". Four months later, this is all Google delivers (so far).

Let's see if Google can soon deliver a presentation product that really lives up to the hype!

Labels: Blogging, PowerPoint, Presentation Applications

¶ 6/15/2007 05:13:00 PM 6 Comments Links to this post

  Coordinate Your Speakers with a Visual Theme

Each speaker on your conference panel is presenting their part of the session's topic. How does the audience know that all the speakers are part of the same team?

1. Well, first, there's the program. The audience might have a playbill in their hands, telling them who'll be speaking, and what part of the story they'll be telling.
2. Secondly, there's the positioning. Many conference speakers sit at the head table or in chairs toward the front of the stage, waiting for their turn to speak.
3. And thirdly, all of the speakers are wearing the same uniform. Like a sports team, all speakers have perfectly coordinated clothing, clearly demonstrating that they've practiced together before and are prepared to deliver a unified, cohesive pitch.

Maybe not so much. Huh? OK, so maybe we don't see perfectly coordinated outfits that much at conference panel discussions. But we see the PowerPoint equivalent of a uniform quite often!

Conference speakers often show the spirit of collaboration by coordinating the look and feel of their PowerPoint presentations. They throw away their corporate templates, or modify them to show solidarity among their fellow presenters.

• Same font, same color. Sometimes, speakers unify their presentations by using the same font and font color. If the font and color is very unique, say Coolvetica and lime green, this may work quite nicely. But Arial and black are too common to offer enough distinction.
• Same backgrounds, same colors. Other times, speakers may decide to use the same backgrounds and colors in their PowerPoint presentations. This can work for very short panel discussions, but after a while, the same colors and backgrounds can be very visually monotonous.
• Similar graphics, different colors. Perhaps the most Garanimals way to coordinate speakers is to use a similar graphic theme to introduce each speaker. The graphics can be different colors, but like a logo -- the mere shape provides the visual consistency among speakers.

Here's a quickie example:









Now, apparently, florals like these are not manly! But the above backgrounds decidedly show a coordinated effort among the speakers while potentially shaking things up visually for the audience.

And while a floral arrangement of PowerPoint backgrounds isn't exactly manly, the above backgrounds are at least man-friendly for a mixed panel!

What's your favorite method for visually coordinating your conference speakers?

Labels: PowerPoint Background

¶ 6/08/2007 09:21:00 AM 0 Comments Links to this post