Life moves on to a full circle -- and so does technology. I was just reading this blog post on 8 Ways to Use a Whiteboard in Your Home Office -- and it struck me how often I like to use a whiteboard (or even a piece of white paper) to sketch out my ideas for a slide.
We have a large whiteboard in the office here at Indezine.com that's always running out of white space! We add our list of things to do, our workflows, contact info that we may need very often, and then we need to find some white space to create a visual representation of a slide (or a set of slides). Maybe there's something about whiteboards (or white paper) and a pen that no computer peripheral or software can match. Not even a Tablet PC! And as they say, when some things work so well, let them remain the way there are.
It's true that there are several amazing examples of PowerPoint usage that up the ante on what you can do with slideware -- and it is equally true that the slides that most presenters come up with do almost nothing to help their presentations since these slides tend to confuse rather than help an audience.
That's the reason why Jean-luc Doumont's podcast on Creating Effective Presentations provides you with several interesting observations. Although Doumont has not come up with something I haven't heard before, the fact that he explains this so well, and in such a small podcast is something I'll call awesome.
I just read this inspiring article by Max Kalehoff on how conferences can be made better. It doesn't look like you to need to do much to make attendees happy; and yet many conference organizers won't even do that much!
And yes, I did observe Max's comment on halting PowerPoint abuse: "I’m shocked at how many conferences will charge thousands of dollars for a ticket and then subject attendees to boring presentations made excruciating by PowerPoint abuse".
This is among the most interesting and original uses for PowerPoint that I have read about.
Jill White, who has finished 10 years of teaching with Memphis City Schools uses PowerPoint with first graders so that they can add their poetry to PowerPoint slides with a picture. This works great because it's the first time the children use PowerPoint -- so it's nice to start with simple stuff. These poetry slides then make great presentations to show at Open Houses, parent meetings, school meetings, and even district-wide meetings.
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.
Mike Pearce teaches social studies at Ellison High School in the Killeen Independent School District in Texas, USA. But Mike is not just another teacher -- he uses PowerPoint presentations to deliver a successful teaching system that has shown a phenomenal improvement in the results and passing rates.
Mike Pearce says the best history teachers in today's schools will tell stories, make students relate to the people and events and use technology in order to do both. Starting in 2001, when he was teaching eighth grade, Pearce began integrating his own lesson plans into a PowerPoint system. "It hits every learning style. We live in an electronic age and kids are now very impressed by instruction that is more contemporary," he said.
Carmine Gallo, author of 10 Simple Secrets of the World's Greatest Business Communicators wrote a nice feature for BusinessWeek recently. He sent me this link, and it makes great reading -- he's discussing Duarte Design, a design firm based out of Mountain View headed by Nancy Duarte.
As Carmine says:
"Former Vice-President Al Gore raised the bar on presentation skills with An Inconvenient Truth. But he didn't do it alone. I wrote a column about the movie when the DVD was released because it demonstrates some very good techniques that we all can apply to our own presentations. At the time, however, I was unaware of the firm behind the presentation: Duarte Design, based in Mountain View, Calif. I sat down recently with one of the firm's principals, Nancy Duarte, and a group of designers to learn how to turn any presentation into a multimedia powerhouse."
I came across this interesting article on creating a good PowerPoint presentation. Written by Jon Newsome, this short article explains how planning can help you create better PowerPoints.
Stas Kravets (pictured to the right) is COO of worldwide markets at KsanLab, a multimedia design company. Stas has worked in IT since 1997, acting as a product engineer, project manager and marketer. He has an MA in Applied Mathematics, and writes for online marketing media and for KsanLab's E-xperiential blog.
Geetesh: Tell us more about yourself and your work.
Stas: I am COO of worldwide markets at KsanLab and responsible for defining and implementation of worldwide marketing and sales strategy of KsanLab's products and services. KsanLab is an international interactive agency with specialization in multimedia tools for marketing, PR, IR and HR communication. At the moment we work on US, German, and Russian markets and have many world famous clients. As a COO, I participate in planning, business development, negotiations with clients and partners and project management.
Geetesh: How do you decide if PowerPoint is not suitable for a particular job - and then, which program do you normally use?
Stas: Well, the first time I understood that I need something different was on my previous job, when we needed an introduction movie and a document shell for a corporate CD business card. The introduction had to be a movie -- not a video, but rather cartoon with music, animation and finally with an update-able guide of PowerPoint presentations written on the disc. PowerPoint's animation capabilities are well geared for slide presentations with schemes and diagrams, but not for movies or cartoons, so we made a request for a Flash reel with support of an external XML file that contained links and descriptions of files stored on the CD.
KsanLab started as a small web design studio and later, reacting to market demands switched from static design to interactive multimedia products. Macromedia Flash is a de facto standard for multimedia information tools -- it possesses all necessary capabilities for rich graphic design, animation, integration of various kinds of info (video, sound) and interactivity. Now it is used all around the world for development of product demos, internet games, banners, trainings, and so on. I want to highlight that it is not comparable with PowerPoint -- it is always a question of selecting the right tool for your task. In some cases, Flash is a pure excess that will eat the time and money and in some cases a PowerPoint presentation will be just boring, and give you a back eye.
My article for MarketingProfs contains several criteria when you should switch to Flash (or other technology such as Apple QuickTime, Java, etc) from PowerPoint. I've chosen them basing on our expertise from projects we've done for our clients in the past. Those projects are mature ones -- so we were able to analyze their impact and potential. In short, the cases when you need to consider multimedia are:
When you need to impress. Flash gives you a great deal of opportunity to make your message look great and different from others.
When you need to catch and keep attention of your audience. Sometimes information is too complicated or the audience is too passive to read and understand every single word. With multimedia you can show this using images and animations -- of course this becomes much more comprehensible and interesting to see.
Sometimes you have a lot to say. 80 slides -- are you sure that everyone will get all of them? Instead, you can have something absolutely different, the series of dynamic reels with professional voice over. Note, that such presentation can be used even without your personal attendance.
Multimedia presentations can put together pieces of information of different nature -- video, audio, music, 3D, interactivity and animation, without losing of control of them.
Very important topic is that with multimedia you can transfer not only information -- you can transfer emotions. Multimedia product is capable to express your feelings, express the spirit of your company or product. This feature is used by virtual tours -- the best way to present the beauty of resort or atmosphere of restaurant.
When you need interactivity. Think about quizzes, trainings and games (educational or advertising).
In all cases, a multimedia product delivers on several goals simultaneously. For example, a virtual tour not only conveys lots of information, but also creates a great impression and attracts attention of customers.
