PowerPoint and Presenting Blog: May 2008

Shawn Toh (pictured to the left) started creating PowerPoint presentations since secondary school and his interest in PowerPoint animations kept growing. Shawn loves to do advanced animation tricks using PowerPoint.

In this conversation, Shawn discusses animation in PowerPoint and his PowerPoint Heaven site.

Geetesh: Tell us more about yourself and PowerPoint Heaven.

Shawn: I have graduated from the Singapore Polytechnic with a diploma in Business Information Technology with merit and has enrolled into the National University of Singapore. During my free time, I work as a freelance presentation consultant where I do project consultations, conduct workshops, trainings and speaking engagements with companies and schools.

I have been actively participating in the Microsoft Office Discussion Group for PowerPoint (under the alias "tohlz") and has been working closely with Korea's PowerPoint Expert Club.

Geetesh: PowerPoint Heaven is distinctly different from other PowerPoint sites since it looks more at drawing and animation in PowerPoint – what made you choose this direction?

Shawn: PowerPoint Heaven is both an entertainment and educational site that offers you with advanced animations and PowerPoint works. You will be able to find works such as PowerPoint games, artworks, anime, and even web-comics. On this site, the goal is to show users that PowerPoint is not simply a presentation tool, but is also capable on leveraging into other areas such as creating games, artworks and animations comparable to those created in Adobe Flash and Photoshop.

The aim of this site is to create the WOW factor and go beyond the capability of PowerPoint, where visitors entering PowerPoint Heaven will get amazed by the works featured on the site. And through this site, users can get to learn how these advanced works are done by accessing the tutorials section.

PowerPoint Heaven started off as a personal site, where I published my tutorials and works. Being more animation and entertainment focused, PowerPoint Heaven started off with showing works that are unique from other PowerPoint sites and has greatly shown the differences. Thus, the site began receiving more exposure, and has attracted people who are interested in contributing to PowerPoint Heaven.

Categories: animation, interviews, powerpoint

Labels: animation, interviews, powerpoint

ShowLogic, a presentation platform designed for sales and marketing professionals, was announced as a winner of the Meeting TechOnline Top Technology Suppliers 2008 Awards. The awards honor innovative technology suppliers in the meetings and events industry that have shown outstanding leadership and advancement in technology tools.

Indezine interviewed Christina Deatherage of ShowLogic earlier this year.

The press release detailing this award can be found on ShowLogic's site...

Categories: delivery, powerpoint

Labels: delivery, powerpoint

The NJBIZ site has a very interesting and inspiring interview with Steve Adubato, author of "Speak from the Heart" and "Make the Connection." In this interview, Steve discusses how PowerPoint can be a huge communication crutch. I may not agree with him all the time since I know that it is possible to make statistics look interesting in PowerPoint slides as well -- but I do agree with him that PowerPoint by itself is no help at all unless it is accompanied by a good speaker (and good slides).

Read the interview here...

Categories: interviews, powerpoint

Labels: interviews, powerpoint

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.

Categories: case_studies, inspiration

Labels: case_studies, inspiration

SmartDraw.com today announced that Virginia Tech has selected SmartDraw software for business graphics. According to Phil Lambert, Technology Business and Contract Analyst with Virginia Tech, SmartDraw will be available university-wide to help faculty, staff and students create polished, professional charts and graphics in minutes.

Read more here...

Categories: graphics

Labels: graphics

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.

Hear and download the podcast here...

Categories: case_studies, powerpoint

Labels: case_studies, powerpoint

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".

Read more on Max's blog here...

Categories: case_studies, delivery, powerpoint

Labels: case_studies, delivery, powerpoint