Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Use PowerPoint to support multi-sensory experiences

In Carmine Gallo’s recent BusinessWeek column, he talks about going beyond your slides to create a multi-sensory experience for the audience. He cites author John Medina and his book “Brain Rules” as the source for the idea of going beyond your slides to create an experience that connects at a deeper emotional level. People remember these experiences better.

In the article, he shares a full-out experience from the National Honey Board. I’m not sure you want to do that for every weekly team meeting. But his other two examples can be enhanced by slides relatively easily.

He suggests passing around something physical so audience members have a tactile experience. I think this can work well. I suggest you also add a video to your slide that shows people what you want them to notice while handling the product. This way, you direct them to the important parts of the experience that you want them to remember.

His third idea is to invite and capture audience input. I did this recently during my keynote at the PowerPoint Live conference and I have advocated it for years. Using a simple hyperlink on a slide, you can bring up an Excel spreadsheet to capture audience input and discuss the results of calculations that are relevant to your topic. With a hyperlink to a Word document, you can capture ideas or brainstorming and have a document that can be e-mailed to everyone immediately after the presentation. By engaging the audience in the presentation, they pay more attention and remember what you said.

As the article suggests, don’t restrict yourself to the features of PowerPoint, such as graphs and images. Look for ways to incorporate video and hyperlinks to content outside PowerPoint.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

PowerPoint Slide Makeover - Working with Graph Images

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 get graphs as graphics from other sources, we think there is nothing we can do with them. This makeover shows how to take a graph image and make it more effective using tools in PowerPoint.

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.

Monday, October 26, 2009

How does the H1N1 national emergency affect presentations?

This weekend the H1N1 influenza virus was declared a national emergency in the U.S. The pandemic is progressing and the government is taking more action to help stop it getting worse. How does this affect presentations? I have a past experience that can give insight into one potentially large impact this could have. I live close to Toronto, and a few years ago, we went through the SARS crisis here. The impact on presentations of all kinds was dramatic. Organizations could not risk entire offices being sick or quarantined, so they forbid in-person meetings where any travel, even down the street, was involved. Thousands of presentations were cancelled overnight.

It is quite possible that during this latest crises that involves person-to-person transmission of an illness, that in-person presentations will be cancelled due to the risk of having people in close proximity in a room. Whether you feel that this is an appropriate response or not, we must deal with this real impact on our presentations. What many organizations are, or will be, doing is starting to use web meeting services to conduct presentations where each person attends by watching the presentation on their own computer screen. Services like WebEx, GoToMeeting, Live Meeting and many others have grown in recent years partly due to this issue.

So is it as simple as firing up the service and running your PowerPoint slides just like you would if everyone was in the room with you? No, it is not that simple. In a virtual presentation, attendees don’t have a fear of being caught surfing the web or checking e-mail because you can’t see them. You need to design your presentation to be more engaging and interactive than you would for an in-person meeting. There are also some features of PowerPoint that work fine in a conference room that don’t work well through one of the web services. If you haven’t done web presentations yet, you need to know how to create and deliver an effective web presentation.

That’s why I worked hard over the weekend to create and record a 53 minute video training program that shows you what you need to know to create and deliver effective web presentations through WebEx, GoToMeeting, Live Meeting or any other service you are using. I cover when a web meeting is appropriate & when it is not, what equipment you’ll need, how to select the features of a service that will help make your presentation effective, how to plan and design your presentation to keep audience interest and work well through the web service system, and how to prepare for and deliver a great web presentation. You can purchase and download your copy of the video at http://www.EffectiveWebPresentations.com/. Here is a preview of the program.



In addition to learning how to create and deliver an effective web presentation, you’ll see how I engage the viewer on this video with regularly changing visuals – one of the techniques you’ll need to use in order to keep your audiences engaged when delivering web presentations. To get your copy of the video, go to http://www.EffectiveWebPresentations.com/.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Results of the Fourth Annoying PowerPoint Survey

The message from my biennial survey of what annoys audiences about bad PowerPoint presentations is that audiences are fed up with the overload of text on slides and how that text causes presenters to read the slides to them. A total of 548 people responded to the survey over a six week period. Can we trust those who responded? I sure do. Over 65% of them said they see more than 100 presentations a year, so they know what they like and what is annoying.

In the survey, I list twelve annoyances and ask people to select the top three. Here are the details of the top five things that annoy audiences about bad PowerPoint presentations. The percentages refer to what proportion of the responses listed that item and the percentages don’t add up perfectly since some people selected more or less than three.

The speaker read the slides to us 69.2%
Text so small I couldn’t read it 48.2%
Full sentences instead of bullet points 48.0%
Slides hard to see because of color choice 33.0%
Overly complex diagrams or charts 27.9%

It is no surprise that reading the slides came first again by a large margin. It has topped the survey every time I have done it. The next two issues are the same as the last survey, they just switched order in the results. All of the top three increased in popularity from two years ago, suggesting that audiences are getting even more upset about paragraphs of text being read from the slides. Audiences are just plain fed up and presenters who ignore this should expect poor results from their presentations. What can presenters do? Buy a copy of my book The Visual Slide Revolution and follow the five-step method for creating persuasive PowerPoint visuals. The method works, my clients keep saying they’ll never create a presentation the old way again.

The last two items in the top five are common issues that can be solved. If you are unsure whether your text color has enough contrast with the background color, check it using the two international standard tests for contrast. I’ve created a Color Contrast Calculator on my web site that is free to use and will tell you if the colors you have selected work or not. Overly complex visuals are caused by trying to pack too much on the slide. We can reduce the complexity by eliminating any data or graphics that are not core to the point we are making and splitting complex slides into multiple visuals that each illustrate a point on their own. If you’d like to see makeovers that show visuals and data being made clear, check out my new collection of makeover videos.

It is clear to me that I still have work to do in order to help presenters stop using annoying slides that poorly communicate what the presenter is trying to convey. If your organization is ready to move from overloaded text slides to using persuasive visuals, check out my workshops and seminars. Let’s all work together to help the audience understand and apply our messages. In the next few weeks I’ll be going through the comments that people wrote in and seeing what conclusions we can draw from them.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Are you following these thought leaders?

During my keynote presentation at PowerPoint Live this week I engaged the audience in coming up with a list of thought leaders in the area of effective communication using presentations. I started them off with three sites and they added twelve more. There are some on this list that I haven’t heard of and will be starting to check out. Here is the list of sites that they came up with:
www.bertdecker.com
The blog at www.duarte.com
Carmine Gallo’s column at www.BusinessWeek.com
www.presentationzen.com
www.ethos3.com
www.tonyramos.com
www.tlccreative.com – powerpoint blog
www.ellenfinkelstein.com
www.ted.com
www.indezine.com
blogs.msdn.com/powerpoint
www.xplane.com
www.tompeters.com
www.iabc.com
www.pptfaq.com

I was humbled by the comments from some of the PowerPoint MVPs that my web site should be added to the list, so if you haven’t visited already, it is at www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

I’d be interested to hear what thought leaders you are following that aren’t on this list. Add the sites in the comments section below so we can all learn from them.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

PowerPoint Slide Makeover - Showing forms so the audience understands

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. As presenters, we regularly need to show our audiences how to fill out forms. In this makeover, a text slide is transformed by showing visuals that explain where to find the form and how to correctly complete it.

This slide was one inspired by a consulting project, but many are 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.

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

PowerPoint Tip: Government Photos You can Use

In almost every workshop that I do, someone asks where you can get great photos to use in your presentation. I always mention Microsoft’s online library of images that is accessible through PowerPoint, stock photography sites such as istockphoto.com and pictures you take yourself. Today I’d like to discuss another source that is available free of charge in most cases.

Governments have staff who take photographs as part of their jobs, and many times these photos are quite good. Fortunately, these photos also belong to the government and the various departments and agencies have generously made a lot of these photos available for use without charge. You do have to read their licensing terms, but it normally just asks that you include a short source description at the bottom of your slide in small font. Here is a photo of a sunrise in Alaska from the NOAA Photo Library listed below (taken by Commander John Bortniak, NOAA Corps).


The availability of these photos varies from country to country, and today I’ll use the US government as the example of one that offers a vast collection online. Let’s look at some of the sites and what they offer.

Bureau of Land Management (http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/bpd.html) – amazing scenery photos with a search by state and keyword available; includes some photos of people engaged in activities such as white-water rafting; this pages has links to other government photo sites as a bonus

U.S. Department of the Interior (http://www.doi.gov/photos/gallery.html) – wide selection of topics including aerial photographs (some require payment) to photos of national parks, monuments and historical sites

U.S. Geological Survey (http://gallery.usgs.gov/) – in addition to photos, also includes videos; collections include climate change, geology, people at work, native activities and more

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (http://www.photolib.noaa.gov) – amazing photos of coastlines, aquatic animals, weather and more

How can you use these photos? Here are just a few ideas. Obviously if you are speaking about the environment or talking about an environmental aspect of your topic, these photos could be used. If you want to illustrate a point by using an analogy to weather or a particular animal, these photos can make the point visually. When speaking about a particular place, you could include a photo of a well-known location that is close-by to give your audience context. And if you want to show people at work, some of these photos will be just what you need.

Photos are one of the powerful ways to communicate our ideas. We can use the sources that we usually use, and we can add great public domain photos like the ones on the sites above to enhance our message. Check out these photos, bookmark the sites and discover the photos that governments make available for no charge.

Saturday, October 03, 2009

Creating new shapes in PowerPoint 2003

I was inspired by this blog post on using PowerPoint as a photo editor instead of Photoshop. The demo is shown in PowerPoint 2007 and the one aspect of the instructions that I was intrigued about was when he showed how to convert a rectangle to a set of points and then curve the sides. Unfortunately, you can’t do that in PowerPoint 2003 because it does not have the feature of converting a shape to points.

So I started playing with the tools that PowerPoint 2003 does have to see if I could achieve the same result. It turns out that you can create a rectangle and bend the sides to create a new shape. Here’s a quick screen capture video that shows how.



With the technique of automatically closing a freeform shape, you can create pretty much any shape you want. Then, by converting the points to corner points, you can use the Bezier curves to create new shapes that are more visually interesting. Try it out and see how it works for you.