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Friday, April 11, 2008
posted by Geetesh
 
11:37 AM
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This exclusive book extract from Advanced PowerPoint 2007 is presented here with permission from Pearson Education.
The book, authored by Wayne Kao and Jeff Huang will help an intermediate PowerPoint user improve their skills to an advanced level. The book goes into deep technical detail about the Office 2007 theme engine and how color schemes, effect schemes, and font schemes work; as well as the new PowerPoint XML file format, showing you how to edit PowerPoint files without using PowerPoint at all.
Read the excerpts here...
Categories: books, powerpoint_2007Labels: books, powerpoint_2007
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Saturday, March 29, 2008
posted by Geetesh
1:22 PM
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 This guest post is by Daniel Park, author of Camtasia Studio: The Definitive Guide. Daniel has just launched a new screencasting newsletter, and this is an excerpt from the first issue -- make sure you subscribe to The Screencaster...
The other day, I got a solid lesson in good screencasting from a most unexpected place.
Most Americans, at some point in their academic careers (could be high school, college, or in my case, both), have an English composition class foisted upon them by the local administration. This is done with the supposed motivation of churning out graduates who can express themselves succintly and coherently in written form. Persons armed with this knowlege will be able to master business reports, research studies, doctoral dissertations, you name it.
Or, at the very least, have the most eloquently written MacDonald's employment application on the block...
One text that's basically regarded as standard issue in these courses is The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White, and has been thus since its initial publication in 1959. I bought my first copy back in 1989, when the book was a mere pup at the tender age of 30. In its nearly 50 years on the shelves, this tiny grey paperback has prevented millions of grammatical foibles the world over, defusing everything from awkward sentence structure to the careless use of non-words like irregardless.
I recently pulled my dog-eared copy of the shelf in an attempt to decide the correctness between "None of us were there" and "None of us was there" (it's the latter, by the way), when I came across an essay at the back that I hadn't remembered. It was called "An Approach to Style," and moved away from the specific prescriptivist "grammar police" ruleset that comprised most of the book, and instead just offered up a list of basic guidelines to bear in mind when communicating with words.
I was astounded by how many of these suggestions were readily applicable to narrated visual media as well, despite the fact that it was written a good 45 years before Jon Udell ever coined the term "screencast." I wanted to share a few of these with you.
Place yourself in the background. "Write in a way that draws the reader's attention to the sense and substance of the writing, rather than the mood and temper of the author."
This is a particularly sticky one for marketing screencasters. When crafting a video advertisement or marketing spot, it's vitally important to focus on your audience. Their lives, their problems. With luck, you can be there to offer the solution. There are instances (such as this newsletter), where it's appropriate for the author to be more "present" within the content. But you can't ever lose sight of your users and the benefit to their lives that you're attempting to bring to the table. More on this next month.
Do not overwrite. And this goes hand-in-hand with two other basic tenets of theirs, Write in a way that comes naturally and Avoid fancy words. "Rich, ornate prose is hard to digest, generally unwholesome, and sometimes nauseating."
As you write your narration script, you must take care to avoid the kind of thick, jumbled wordiness that makes your video impossible to penetrate without a dictionary in hand. Most people won't bother, so don't use a 75-cent word when a 10-cent one will do. This goes doubly for industry terms and other technical jargon. Only use a technical term when no other more common replacement exists, and when you're certain that at least 95% of your audience will understand it. Take a second in your narration to clarify the term if you're not sure.
Do not explain too much. "It is seldom advisable to tell all."
Amen, brothers. Amateur screencasters often make the classic rookie mistake of explaining every field and button. Even a comprehensive tutorial should exist to show completion of a given task or set of tasks. Clarify only those features and aspects of the application that are directly involved in getting the user from point A to point B. In screencasting, the hackneyed slang phrase "Too much information!" really does apply, so don't inundate your audience with a lot of extraneous info.
Revise and rewrite. "Revising is part of writing. Few writers are so expert that they can produce what they are after on the first try."
Revision is a necessity in the screencast production process. If possible, try to segment your revision as much as possible. What does this mean? Well, take a quick look at my workflow, which generally goes something like this:
Write narration > Craft storyboard > Record footage > Edit silent cut > Record and clean up narration > Produce final output
You should be giving the decision-makers (clients, managers, etc.) access to your work at nearly every point in this process. If there's an unnecessary paragraph in your narration, it's a lot easier to correct early on, when it's just words on paper. If something's destined to get the ax, you're wasting valuable time by coming up with visuals, recording clips, and cutting it all together.
Don't overstate. "When you overstate, readers will be instantly on guard, and everything that has preceded your overstatement as well as everything that follows will be suspect in their minds because they have lost confidence in your judgment or your poise."
Overstatements are dangerous territory, particularly for marketing screencasts. Yes, you want to convey the benefit of your product or service, and yes, those benefits should be as compelling as possible. Just don't promise them the moon. Or, promise them the moon, provided you're ready to deliver on that promise and you can provide good testimonials and other proof that you're not just full of hot air.
Good stuff. The advice of these two men from nearly a half century ago is as relevant as ever to those of us who create content for a living.
Categories: books, delivery, opinionLabels: books, delivery, opinion
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Monday, March 24, 2008
posted by Geetesh
4:18 PM
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Ric Bretschneider's newest podcast is now live on the Presentationsroundtable site.
In this podcast, Ric interviews Echo Swinford and Geetesh Bajaj about their new book, Microsoft Office 2007 Complete Makeover Kit. The discussion is essentially an enthusiastic and candid conversation on the state of makeovers today -- and how this book evolved.
The authors also explain more about the content of the book, and how readers can benefit from the makeover samples.
Make sure you put up a comment on the podcast page!
Categories: books, powerpoint_2007Labels: books, powerpoint_2007
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Sunday, January 20, 2008
posted by Geetesh
7:50 AM
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Here's a small excerpt from Tom Bunzel's review on PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit on InformIT:
There are, in my opinion, two different ways to get proficient in a computer, and more important, a professional discipline of some kind. One way is methodical, and the other way is to wing it.
I must confess that when I get a new program these days, I mainly try to intuit how it works and have little patience for methodical training.
But when I encounter methodical training, as I do in Echo Swinford and Geetesh Bajaj’s Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit, I am always reminded of how superior it is.
Particularly in a professional discipline like presentation coaching, consulting or authoring, and a program like the new PowerPoint 2007, taking a project oriented approach and then digging deep into the precise whys and wherefores helps to ground any end user thoroughly in techniques that are empowering and enduring.
Read more on InformIT...
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Saturday, January 19, 2008
posted by Geetesh
2:04 PM
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 Echo Swinford (pictured to the right) is a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP (Most Valuable Professional). When she's not working on new media, she is answering almost all the questions on the PowerPoint newsgroup. Echo is also the co-author of Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit, published by Que. The other author of this book is the owner of this blog -- so I thought it will be fun for one author to interview the other!
Visit Echo's site Echo's Voice to find several PowerPoint usability tricks...
Geetesh: How much ground does this new book cover for the everyday PowerPoint user?
Echo: Well, I think the PowerPoint 2007 Makeover kit actually covers most of the PowerPoint 2007 hills and valleys, at least enough to get you started walking through the woods!
Seriously, the book does cover almost all of the features in PowerPoint 2007, some to a greater extent than others. One of the goals was to teach users about PowerPoint 2007 while reviewing some basic best practices users can rely on to help make their presentations more polished. As a result, we talk a lot about leveraging themes and color schemes and slide layouts and the like to create consistency throughout a presentation. Because themes are new in PowerPoint 2007, and slide masters and layouts are not well understood (even though they do exist in previous versions of PowerPoint), even accomplished PowerPoint users should learn some helpful tricks.
I was really excited to do this book because I think it's important for people to see that even non-designers can make good-looking presentations.
Just because it's PowerPoint, it doesn't have to be ugly. There are a million design books out there, and there are a million PowerPoint books, but I don't think there's another "here's how to design in PowerPoint," with some practical things you can do to make your presentations look better.
Geetesh: What types of presentations do you cover, and why were these particular types of presentations chosen?
Echo: Well, we wanted to offer a good representation of the types of presentations we see every day, and of the types of presentations we're asked about frequently on the Microsoft PowerPoint newsgroup. So you'll see things like a couple of corporate presentations, a school report, a photo album with a background music track. This way, hopefully at least one makeover will be specifically relevant to most readers. Now, that doesn't mean the others won't be relevant -- they will be. For example, in the medical presentation makeover, we discuss using tabs instead of spacebar-spacebar-spacebar to align text on an agenda slide. But there are a gazillion other types of presentations that use agenda slides, and, for that matter, there are even more types of slides where you might use tabs to align the text. So the skills and best practices you learn about are transferable to any number of presentations.
Really, though, there seem to be some issues we just see repeatedly, no matter what type of presentation we're dealing with, and having a variety of presentation types allowed us to highlight those in different ways. To illustrate the point, I'll confess that I worry a little that readers will get sick of us harping on them to use the placeholders to ensure consistent text placement and formatting...but I'm telling you, that's one of the fundamental issues I see day in and day out as I clean up slides for various clients. If people only knew how to use the layouts and placeholders to their advantage, they'd save a ton of time -- and end up with better looking presentations to boot! I hope the book helps them realize that.
Categories: books, interviews, powerpoint_2007Labels: books, interviews, powerpoint_2007
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Saturday, January 05, 2008
posted by Geetesh
2:21 PM
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Ric Bretschneider is Senior Program Manager for PowerPoint at Microsoft, and he just had his 15th anniversary working on the project! Ric's put up a great podcast on the new Presentations Roundtable site -- this podcast is just first of the many more podcasts you can look forward to hearing and downloading from this site.
The premiere episode of the Presentations Roundtable podcast brings together:
- Presentation Zen's Garr Reynolds,
- Nancy Duarte of Duarte Design,
- Howard Cooperstein of Microsoft, and
- Ric Bretschneider, hosting the podcast
The discussion is in an easy conversation style -- the role of books in learning good design is investigated, along with some easy to follow hints on creating excellence in your own presentations.
Check out the podcast here...
Thank you, Ric.
Categories: books, case_studies, powerpoint, opinionLabels: books, case_studies, opinion, powerpoint
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Wednesday, January 02, 2008
posted by Geetesh
3:18 PM
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Get ready to add punch and pizzazz to your presentations and wow your audience using the latest PowerPoint techniques. This friendly book/CD-ROM combo covers all of the new features of Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, including interface changes, presentation themes, multimedia, the Slide Library, and more.
Read a free chapter here...
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Thursday, November 29, 2007
posted by Geetesh
3:30 PM
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This book, authored by Geetesh Bajaj and Echo Swinford is not as much about reading as it is about seeing and doing! That’s why it's called a kit. Full-color pages show you exactly how your slides will look as you follow the makeover steps, and all presentations in various stages of the makeover are on the accompanying CD.
Read a free chapter here...
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Friday, November 16, 2007
posted by Geetesh
10:57 AM
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 Carmine Gallo (pictured to the right) is a communications coach for the world’s most admired brands. His client list includes Intel, Chase, Barclays, IBM, Nokia, and many others. He is an Emmy award-winning journalist and former anchor, host, and business correspondent for CNN, Fox, CNET, and CBS.
Geetesh: Tell us more about Fire Them Up!, your new book, and what motivated you to do this book that helps motivate others.
Carmine: Americans are uninspired at work, in school and in their communities. At work, only 10% of employees look forward to going to work. Believe me, you don't want to be in the other 90%! In school, 7,000 U.S students drop out of the school system every day. In our communities, out of 172 democracies, America ranks 139 in voter turnout. We are discouraged, disillusioned and unmotivated. The same holds true for workers in many other countries as well. Leadership is in short supply. But it doesn't have to be that way. Each and every one of us has the ability, and I would argue, the obligation, to inspire, motivate and positively influence everyone in our personal and professional lives. You can do if you learn the language of motivation.
 For more than a year, I spent time with extraordinary men and women who are considered inspiring communicators. These people run companies like The Ritz-Carlton, Google, Travelocity, Cold Stone Creamery, Starbucks, 24-Hour Fitness, Cranium, Virgin and many others. Some of the participants sketched ideas on napkins and through their power of their presentations, convinced investors to follow their vision. Some leaders transformed their company from one of the worst places to work to top of the Fortune list as the best place to work in the country. One man became a famous teacher for taking a class of underachievers and helping them outscore the gifted classes despite seemingly insurmountable hurdles. His story was turned into a movie but he offers his techniques for readers of Fire Them Up.
You will never be a leader unless you inspire those around you. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be." Imagine what life could be like if you satisfy that chief want? Recruiters will want to hire you, customers will want to buy from you, investors will want to back you, employees will want to work with you, and everyone will feel energized by your presence!
Geetesh: If you had to explain your book in a generic paragraph to a prospective reader, how would that read?
Carmine: Fire Them Up reveals the 7 simple secrets of motivation as practiced by the world's most inspiring business leaders, entrepreneurs and educators.
Categories: books, interviewsLabels: books, interviews
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Saturday, November 10, 2007
posted by Geetesh
10:34 AM
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Can you create a PowerPoint presentation without using bullets? This chapter shows how adding visuals and using fewer words can spruce up your presentations. Read this excerpt from my new book PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit at InformIT.com...
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Saturday, October 20, 2007
posted by Geetesh
10:54 PM
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Ellen Finkelstein recently interviewed me on her site where I discuss my Cutting Edge PowerPoint books.
Here's the interview link...
Being interviewed on Ellen's site means so much to me -- she provided a huge amount of encouragement when I started my first Cutting Edge PowerPoint book, thanks Ellen.
Categories: books, powerpointLabels: books, powerpoint
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Wednesday, August 08, 2007
posted by Geetesh
10:24 AM
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Shelfari is a new site that lets me create, update, and share my virtual book shelf. So I started with putting all books I have authored on a shelf! Naturally, if you see this blog post after a while, you might find other books as well.
You can also become my friend, create your own shelf, and track what's on my shelf by using this invite...
Categories: books, powerpointLabels: books, powerpoint
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Tuesday, July 17, 2007
posted by Geetesh
11:45 AM
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Ellen Finkelstein is the author of How To Do Everything with Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 and the upcoming PowerPoint for Teachers: Dynamic Presentations and Interactive Classroom Projects. Ellen maintains a web site that offers PowerPoint tips and a selection of free backgrounds. There, you can sign up for her monthly PowerPoint Tips Newsletter to get free tips, tutorials, and techniques.
Read the interview here...
Categories: books, interviews, powerpointLabels: books, interviews, powerpoint
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Saturday, June 23, 2007
posted by Geetesh
3:08 PM
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This exclusive book extract from How To Do Everything with PowerPoint 2007 is presented here with permission from McGraw-Hill/Osborne.
The book, authored by Ellen Finkelstein is the ideal resource for anyone who wants to create rich presentations with PowerPoint. You'll find out how to use all the features of the software and get coverage of key topics, such as creating a well-written outline, the fine points of graphic design, and tips for delivering the presentation in front of an audience.
Read the excerpts here...
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Tuesday, June 05, 2007
posted by Geetesh
3:31 PM
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Carmine Gallo is a communications coach for the world’s most admired brands. His client list includes Intel, Chase, Barclays, IBM, Nokia, and many others. He is an Emmy award-winning journalist and former anchor, host, and business correspondent for CNN, Fox, CNET, and CBS. Gallo writes a bi-weekly column on the subject of business communications for Businessweek.com and he is the author of two books aimed at business professionals who want to become better speakers and presenters.
In this interview, Carmine discusses his work, his books, and PowerPoint specific communication skills.
Read the interview here...
Categories: books, interviews, powerpointLabels: books, interviews, powerpoint
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Saturday, June 02, 2007
posted by Geetesh
5:10 PM
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This exclusive book extract from Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 on Demand is presented here with permission from Pearson Education.
The book, authored by Steve Johnson is in full color, and explains common PowerPoint procedures using a series of numbered steps with tons of screenshots that are captioned.
Read the excerpts here...
Categories: books, powerpoint_2007Labels: books, powerpoint_2007
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Saturday, May 26, 2007
posted by Geetesh
1:55 PM
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 Rick Altman (pictured to the right) is a presentation consultant based out of Pleasanton, CA. Rick is well known as the host of the annual PowerPoint Live event and has a strong sense of the needs of the presentation community. In this conversation, Rick discusses his new book called Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Suck -- and goes on to explain what goes wrong with many presentations.
Geetesh: Tell us more about your new book, and what prompted you to do such a book.
 Rick: I have had the idea for this book in my head for over three years, and candidly, I could have authored it years ago, from a big publisher, with a lot of marketing muscle behind it. But each of the publishing houses that I spoke with wanted the book to contain introductory material, and I was unwilling to do that. There are plenty of books that cover PowerPoint basics and rudimentary presentation skills training. Too many, in fact! What is there for the more seasoned user? I wanted this book to pick up where the others left off, and I wanted it to be uneven, full of bias and commentary, and not be afraid to be inflammatory. As I say in the introduction, "you are invited to disagree -- in fact, if you agree with everything I say in the book, its value is probably diminished."
The best way to accomplish these objectives was to publish the book myself, and today there are plenty of resources to support that. I might not sell a half-million copies in the first year, but I'm confident that I'll get it out there to the people who might be interested in the message and that the message will strike a respondent chord with them.
Geetesh: What are the most common mistakes that PowerPoint presenters and presentation designers do, and how can this book help them?
Rick: If I had to boil it all down to just one thing, I would cite the popular sentiment that the PowerPoint file is the presentation. I have colleagues who even refer to the resultant effort as "a PowerPoint." This is way off. A collection of images projected behind you is not the presentation; you are the presenter and what you have to say is the presentation.
Once you approach from that point of view, then tactics around use of the software can begin to make some sense. If the PowerPoint file is not the presentation, then for heaven's sake, don't dump your entire speech there.
And if it is to remain subordinate to you, then don't fill it with a bunch of attention-getting devices that undermine you.
Projected slides should not work so hard and they shouldn't make the audience work so hard. If that dramatic photo takes too much attention away from you or the text on your slides, then it performs a disservice, no matter how beautiful it is.
My hope is that through all 278 pages, this book never loses sight of the primary role of presentation software - to support the presenter - and the most effective way for it to play that role.
Categories: books, interviews, powerpointLabels: books, interviews, powerpoint
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Friday, May 18, 2007
posted by Geetesh
12:49 PM
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This book extract from Special Edition: Using Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 is a full chapter on Working with SmartArt that I authored -- it has been put up on Indezine.com with permission from Pearson Education.
The book, which I co-authored with Patrice-Anne Rutledge and Tom Mucciolo is probably the most detailed volume on PowerPoint you'll find anywhere -- in addition it also looks beyond PowerPoint to design sense, presentation and speaking skills. The book has been completely updated for PowerPoint 2007 and includes a free CD that contains software that you can use.
Read the free chapter here...
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Monday, May 14, 2007
posted by Geetesh
3:58 PM
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Voice-over artist Rodney Saulsberry has put up some great voice-over warmup excercises on YouTube -- these vocal warmup videos will help you tone your voice before that important presentation you need to deliver -- or an important meeting.
Take a look here...
There are also excerpts from Rodney's books available on Indezine.com:
You Can Bank on Your Voice
Step Up To The Mic
Categories: books, soundsLabels: books, sounds
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Saturday, May 12, 2007
posted by Geetesh
12:19 PM
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This book extract is from Relational Presentation: A Visually Interactive Approach by Robert Lane, a book describes all aspects of a presentation style known as Relational Presentation.
Relational Presentation methods completely change the way speakers use presentation software such as PowerPoint. With this approach, a presenter does not simply advance from slide-to-slide, or bullet point-to-bullet point, as is the case with standard performances. Instead, he or she has dynamic access to potentially thousands of slides, any of which can be displayed at any time, in any order, within seconds.
Read the excerpts here...
Categories: books, powerpointLabels: books, powerpoint
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Monday, February 26, 2007
posted by Geetesh
12:57 PM
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An excerpt rom my new book on PowerPoint -- Special Edition: Using Microsoft Office PowerPoint 207 is now available on the InformIT site.
Check it out here...
Categories: powerpoint_2007, booksLabels: books, powerpoint_2007
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