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Thursday, April 30, 2009
There’s a revolution in the design of PowerPoint slides, but not the delivery.
Here are five methods that will make the delivery of your PowerPoint presentation stand out.
Here’s an example of how I use this technique:
“Here’s the main thing that I want you to get. Most speakers still rely on their slides to cue them. They click, they talk, click, talk, click, talk…
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Tuesday, December 23, 2008
This is Your Brain on PowerPoint. When it comes to experiencing a PowerPoint presentation, there's only so much your brain can process. We're seeing more PowerPoint slides with simple images and minimal words. The current PowerPoint design fashion vogue is overly simplistic, and panders almost completely to the right side of the brain. Our brains have 2 lobes. Loosely speaking, the left handles data, facts, and analysis.
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Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Research carried out by Stephen Mahar, Ulku Yaylacicegi and Thomas Janicki found that students who were shown an animated PowerPoint slideshow learnt less than those that saw a non-animated slideshow.
When I first read of the research on Science Daily Could PowerPoint presentations be stifling learning? The PowerPoint custom animation they used
I thought that simple, non-distracting animations that brought in slide elements one at a time as I verbally introduced them was helpful. I
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Thursday, January 29, 2009
Using social media tools like Twitter , you can play a game of "Logical Fallacy Bingo" as you watch slick presenters play fast and loose with the rules of logic. Here's how to play: Just for grins, let's cover some examples of logical fallacies that we often hear about PowerPoint -- the tool many love to hate. You can either call out the fallacy as the speaker uses them -- or simply Tweet the hashtag with the correct fallacy technique. Use emotion to connect to your audience. It's important.
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Friday, January 9, 2009
"What would you like to see in PowerPoint design in 2009?" That's what Olivia Mitchell, who writes the fantastic Speaking About Presenting blog, asked me last month. Lots of great ideas!) My PowerPoint design wishes for 2009? The look and feel of social media techniques will transition into PowerPoint design. So what might this kind of PowerPoint design look like? Now, Olivia didn't ask just me: she also acted as community organizer, posing the question to a plethora of presentation bloggers. She asked us to write one post on this topic.
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Sunday, June 14, 2009
Many of you have probably heard of a variety of “methods” to creating a PowerPoint presentation. What I want to accomplish in this post is to simply expose you to a variety of PowerPoint design methods so you can choose which method (or aspects of them all) you subscribe to. I believe that effective presentation design is about freedom. PowerPoint templates have confined presenters for years to slides riddled with bullet points. I’ve often been asked, “What’s the best method?” Along those same lines I also hear, “How many slides should I have?
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Wednesday, October 21, 2009
On Monday evening, I ran a PowerPoint Karaoke contest at the Cape Communicators Toastmaster Club. We had about 10 people who were each given a random deck of PowerPoint slides, and they were given about three minutes to present a presentation using their slides. It is a great way to both practise your impromptu speaking skills, and to have some practise with PowerPoint.
This is the first one that I have ran, and it was a fantastic evening!
It was all in good fun, and we had some very interesting takes on the topics.
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Tuesday, November 17, 2009
It is imperative that presenters get training on the basics of communicating a clear message and presentation skills in order to understand that PowerPoint should just be a tool to support their message, not the message itself. Presenters not being prepared The second most commented area was presenters who were not prepared either on the topic or the slides. That is why I suggest using the break down and zoom in technique to explain complex visuals. Poor or non-existent template design The final issue that was popular in the comments was the impact template design plays on the
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Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Conference attendees frequently request PowerPoint slides as handouts. If your PowerPoint has so much text and data that it can be used as a handout, then you're doing something wrong. Your PowerPoint is most effective when it's image-based with minimal text and enhances your presentation, as I've mentioned here , here and here . You can also learn more about effective PowerPoint at Dave Paradi's blog and at the BBP (Beyond Bullet Points) blog . Instead, provide handouts that: 1.
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Tuesday, January 6, 2009
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. I could go on and on about how to make PowerPoint presentations more effective, but I'll stick to my top three suggestions for how I'd like to see speakers using PowerPoint in 2009 (you'll notice that I've strayed from the topic of "design" a bit). Check back at Olivia's blog next week (I'll remind you) for links to all the posts.
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