(This is a
PowerPoint download - beautiful images and
thoughts)
From Ellen Finkelstein
(in case you've been living under a rock and missed it!!)
This has got to be good!!
Would you like to ask questions and get answers from top presentation, PowerPoint, and speaking experts?
Join my new Outstanding Presentations Workshop webinars, for free! Learn how to eliminate Death by PowerPoint and make your presentations come to life as you listen to guest experts share their best techniques and answer your questions!
Get all the details here => http://bit.ly/cgOd32
Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft PowerPoint to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate and Inspire
C. Atkinson
Atkinson shares his innovative three-step system for increasing the impact of your communications with Microsoft PowerPoint. He guides you, step by step, as you discover how to combine the tenets of classic storytelling with the power of the projected media to create a rich, engaging experience. He walks you through his easy-to-use templates, plus 50 advanced tips, to help build your confidence and effectiveness—and quickly bring your ideas to life!
FOCUS
Learn how to distill your best ideas into a crisp and compelling narrative.
CLARIFY
Use a storyboard to clarify and visualize your ideas, creating the right blend of message and media.
ENGAGE
Move from merely reading your slides to creating a rich, connected experience with your audience—and increase your impact!
Learn how to distill your best ideas into a crisp and compelling narrative.
Use a storyboard to clarify and visualize your ideas, creating the right blend of message and media.
Move from merely reading your slides to creating a rich, connected experience with your audience—and increase your impact!
Beyond Bullet Points takes a new approach based on telling a story with structure. But it also learns from other media - Newspapers - make your headlines meaningful. Movies, use a storyboard to plan your story before you think about visuals.
The book is available from Amazon
When making a presentation, it's all too easy to fall into the trap of relying on your PowerPoint slides to help get your message across. Although PowerPoint may be a great tool to help you present your information in a creative and interesting way, it's dangerous to rely on it fully as this will just turn your audience off from what you're saying.
Here are 5 tips to help make your presentation stand out from the crowd.
1. Be Compelling
PowerPoint is a great tool to put together eye-catching presentations, but remember that your audience has come to hear you, not look at a slide. So by all means make your PowerPoint presentation look professional and engaging but don't forget that your speech needs to be compelling too. Remember, your slides are there to support your spoken presentation, not the other way round!
2. Keep it simple
Don't overwhelm your audience with a mass of data, graphics and animations. The most effective PowerPoint presentations are simple - charts that are easy to understand, and graphics that reflect what the speaker is saying. It's been suggested that there should be no more than five words per line and no more than five lines per individual slide. Any images, graphs and animations need to back up the information, not confuse the audience.
3. Be Engaging
Many of us have sat through a presentation where we have spent the whole time looking at the back of the speaker's head! They have spent so much time reading off the slides, they don't engage with the audience. PowerPoint works best with a speech that augments what's on the screen rather than just reading off the slide. Remember, you need to interact with the audience in order for them to engage and listen to you.
4. Don't use PowerPoint!
There's a time and place for PowerPoint. It should only be used as an accompaniment to the presenter's script so let the screen go blank if you need to. This gives your audience a break, but also helps to focus their attention on what the presenter is saying, especially during the question and answer session.
5. Rehearse and edit
Once you've drafted your speech and slides then rehearse your presentation. Do this preferably in front of someone else to ensure that what you are saying and presenting can be easily understood. If something comes across as distracting or confusing then get rid of it. Remember to keep the needs of the audience in your mind at all times as they are the ones who will be the ultimate judge of how successful your presentation has been.
| Valerie Eaton is the owner of Smart VA Ltd, providers of virtual assistant support to small businesses and self-employed professionals. They specialise in providing a wide range of general administration support, as well as email marketing, website updates, document and presentation design and event administration. Find more information about our services on our website http://www.smartva.co.uk, and if you want to discover some great tips for small businesses then check out our free guides on the Free Resources page. |
(WEBINAR)
with Nancy Duarte
Why did Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” win an Academy Award? It was, in large part, how the information was illustrated that made it impactful. Nancy Duarte’s firm created those visuals. She’ll share how to adapt what worked for an Oscar-winning documentary to your presentations.
You have worked hard to prepare for your next presentation. You’re well-rehearsed and your concepts are brilliant. But maybe you should step back and take one last long look at your slides, because an audience can either listen to what you’re saying or read your slides — not both. Do you know if your visuals are overwhelming with too much information or do they help cement your concepts? Do you know the signal-to-noise ratio of your slides? Slides are supposed to clarify or amplify the message. Instead, they’re often a crutch for the presenter to remember what to say. Learn how to break that behavior and create slides that bring meaning instead of distraction.
In this webinar you will learn:
• How to create visuals that support your brilliance, not detract
• Why you have to understand the difference between a document and a slide
• How thinking like a designer will make your presentation memorable
• How to determine your signal-to-noise ratio and reduce the noise
• How to get your ideas to stand out!
Special note: To view this webinar, you’ll need to be in front of an Internet-connected computer.
________________________________________
More information => http://bit.ly/d8IQX3
Note: Everyone who registers for the teleseminar will get the MP3 recording of the session for free. Those who register or order the recording will get a link to a recording of the webinar.
I've just discovered this article at Microsoft Office. What a treasure trove they have there.
This one, by Robert Lane and Andre Vlcek is called Speaking Visually: Eight Roles Pictures Play in Presentation.
Including pictures in presentations is a simple and powerful way of expanding your expressive potential as a speaker. Pictures communicate at levels beyond the descriptive possibilities of words and bathe the brain in much desired visual stimulation. At the same time, not all pictures are created equally. Choosing the right images, and using them in the right ways, can greatly impact your effectiveness.
... and there are some powerful examples. This one under the heading "Getting Attention".
with Angelie Agarwal
At conferences, conventions and management/sales meetings, speaker after speaker shows PowerPoint or Keynote slides to illustrate their points. No matter how beautiful the backgrounds or images, they are pretty much same old/same old. Even the professional speakers’ visuals don’t stand out that much from the rest.
But there’s a new presentation tool in town and it’s blowing away the tried-and-true old slides. In fact, it’s a favorite tool of TED presenters who have entranced their audiences.
What is it? It’s Prezi — a new tool for creating presentation visuals that can lead you to a whole new way of thinking about your talks. It can help create better narratives and more persuasive presentations — what every professional presenter craves.
Angelie Agarwal, chief evangelist for Prezi, will show us how to integrate this new tool into our presentations to stand out among the other speakers on the program — or our competition. This special webinar will discuss how professional speakers, trainers and consultants can use this tool to create truly unforgettable presentations.
You’ll learn:
• how Prezi is very different from digital slide programs
• how you can use this tool to cement your uniqueness
• how Prezi helps you become a more persuasive presenter
• how to get started with the basics
• tips and tricks for advanced speakers on presenting in Prezi
This is a 13-Page eBook
The use of PowerPoint as a presentation tool is well acknowledged and accepted. However, Fripp and Prost believe it is frequently used as a crutch that often distracts your audience from the main messages of your presentation. If you are using PowerPoint®, why not learn the "inside secrets" of doing it the right way?
Get the eBook here
the team at m62 make some good points ...
Presenters are beginning to realise that their presentations don’t have to be boring, and it is inspiring to see that people are moving away from bullet points to more engaging visuals. Audiences are now demanding more, and presenters are rising to meet this.
Unfortunately however, a large number of presenters feel that the small improvements they have made to their slides are sufficient, failing to realise that there is so much more that can be done with them. And so we see the same mistakes made time and time again – without the presenters realising that they’re doing wrong.
and the article goes on to list 7 major mistakes made in powerpoint presentations and how to avoid them.
This great post from Olivia Mitchell
Are your slides ‘Visual Musak’?
I saw very few bullet-point presentations at the SXSW conference. Yay! But I did see a disturbing trend – the overuse of flickr photos and other interesting images. These photos sometimes feature stunning photography, they’re quirky and interesting. The problem is ...
.... http://bit.ly/beAIHa
