4.      The wrong design template : Templates are great, they can save you time and make you look prepared but they must be consistent with your topic, the situation and the audience.   6.      Multi layered graphs and charts: Small images, complex data graphs and infinitesimal text do not support easy access to your information. Tags: Part 1: The Seven Deadly Sins   During the last month I have seen some seriously challenged PowerPoint Slide decks.

Now the software background template can be seen just enough to become a bit of noise (4) Image is of poor quality (pixelated ) This is all too common. For the slide on the right below, the image is cropped for better balance, giving more space for the text to breath (and a transparent box is added to help the text pop out a bit more, though there are other ways to do this).   Text & images Text within images is but one way to use text/data and images harmoniously. As digital cameras have become ubiquitous, and cheap (or free) photo websites plentiful, more people than ever are using images in presentations.

Today, our current approach to PowerPoint is: - Overloading our audiences with too much information - Throwing in everything but the kitchen sink - Just doing a data dump - Usually not communicating a good story - Being too generic - one deck fits all - Not succeeding at helping an audience remember key messages - Creating decks that don't get used, or just one or two slides are pulled - Not producing a crisp communication package Where would we like to be is a place where we: - Find a better approach for internal and external presentations - Tell a clear story - Increase our audiences'

They worry about slide templates, images, movies, fonts, clothes, hair and the rest, forgetting to do the harder and more important work of thinking deeply about what points they want to make. If speaker evaluations have been gathered, ask the host for the data that shows how you compared to other speakers. Scott Berkun speaking at the Web2.0 Expo 2009.

But a lot of it is a product of software templates, which urge architects to create roofs with lots of little peaks, under each of which arched windows are now the requisite fashion. So where does Bill Patrick start, working unassisted by computer? "I start with the light," he says. "I also cant imagine seeing this house as a template for anything else. "Maybe I could have done the same thing with software," Bill says. "But I TS THE S TORY, S TUPID DONT LET PRESENTATION SOFTWARE KEEP YOU FROM GETTING YOUR STORY ACROSS By Doc Searls August 16, 1998 Companies hold meetings because they cannot actually masturbate. — Dave Barry Start with the light L ast year when we sought an architect for our new house, we followed the perfect advice David Ogilvy gave for selecting an ad agency: find work you love and hire whoever did it. So we found some houses we loved, and discovered they were the work of Bill Patrick, whose Midglen Studios were only a mile away, in Woodside, California.

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As one who has spent *a lot* of time in PowerPoint creating both master templates and custom presentations personally and for companies, I feel pretty confident about the argument I’m making. If you’re interested in the speak, then you want more insight, but if you are just there to learn and listen, then presenting with photos and simple data seems to work. view all 20 tips for better conference speaking ~ 16 February 2009 ~ View from on stage as I’m preparing to speak at An Event Apart New Orleans 2008. I’ll be straight up with you: I

My experience at conferences and meetings is the same as it's been for years and years: heavily bulleted slides featuring boring corporate templates, too many words, and cheesy clipart. Show data on your slides only if the charts or graphs are simple, clean, and data points large enough to be seen in the back of the room. Otherwise, put data into separate handouts. 2. Inspired by Laura Bergells' recent PowerPoint propaganda post about changing fashions in PowerPoint, Olivia Mitchell pulled together a group of bloggers to participate in a group writing project about what we'd like to see in PowerPoint slide design this year.

Even England’s Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, used slides that broke the “place title here, place bullets here” construct of Microsoft’s template defaults. There were several sessions that identified the narrative in the data; instead of just showing the statistics, they gave them human context. It’s nice to be an attendee this year instead of running around the bowels of the Long Beach Performing Art Center supporting speakers. I

B.      Put the bulk of your data in speaker notes AND Consistency is why there is a template , why you keep the same look and feel throughout, why you stay away from clip art and use photographs and why you strive for optimal structure and organization. On the Road: My Experience Teaching PowerPoint   This is a guest post from Kirk Mossing, PowerPoint™ Consultant and Trainer.