Presentation Summit 2016: Conversation with Troy Chollar

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Troy Chollar is President and co-founder of TLC Creative Services, Inc., a graphic design studio team that specializes in presentation design and visual communication projects. He is very active in the PowerPoint and presentation community through his blog and a presentation industry podcast. He is a Microsoft MVP for PowerPoint, annually awarded since 2004, and has only missed one Presentation Summit since the inaugural event.

In this conversation, Troy discusses his sessions at the upcoming Presentation Summit 2016 series.

Geetesh: You are doing three sessions this year: Metamorphosis!, What’s on Your QAT? and PowerPoint and Video. What can audiences anticipate as takeaways from sessions on these important topics?

Troy: I am very excited about the session topics I have been asked to present this year!

The Morph transition (Metamorphosis!) is something my entire design team has been using non-stop since it was introduced. This transition is the best animation tool PowerPoint has. I have many client presentations to use as examples of Morph in use, and lots of tips and tricks for everyone to make this incredible new animation/transition tool a part of their project workflow.

What’s on your QAT? is one of the quick 20 minute sessions. I have compiled a fast-paced presentation on why to use the QAT, how to cheat and setup a custom QAT in under 3 minutes—and a comparison of QATs from several presentation designers. Anyone who spends time formatting slides will find this information valuable.

I am big a fan of integrating multimedia into presentations. For the PowerPoint and Video session, I am taking a more advanced approach. I am overviewing the technical gotchas like video formats, file sizes, resolution, and including my recommendations for each. But what I am really excited about is sharing some amazing example files showing great ways of integrating video into a presentation. Also, when to use a presentation to create a video is going to be a fun topic. Everyone should walk away with plenty of ideas on how much more can be done in PowerPoint than just add a video to a slide.

Geetesh: You are also doing a live episode of The Presentation Podcast, featuring Rick Altman, the host of the Summit. What sort of involvement do you expect from the audience during this recording? Do you have a message to share?

Troy: Yes, audience involvement is definitely part of the plan! And the message may be amazing —but that depends on the audience.

So the background is that all three of the co-hosts on The Presentation Podcast; myself, Nolan Haims, and Sandra Johnson, are going to be at The Presentation Summit. We talked about recording an episode with the three of us physically in the same room – something we have never done. Our design studios are scattered across the country and we meet virtually for the podcast. We asked Rick if the conference would let us do a recording somewhere. That expanded into doing a live audience recording. And that expanded into Rick graciously accepting an invitation to be on the host panel with us – and inviting all conference attendees to be guests on a special Presentation Summit episode. It is going to be amazing!

To make this opportunity happen, I am leveraging my live, corporate show site experience, and having some friends’ companies lend some additional audio equipment, and then doing a quick turn around edit to get the episode ready to drop the Tuesday after the conference close.

Everyone in the audience will be part of the podcast as we toss around a mic for an open Q&A time, which is the bulk of the session (and we are literally tossing the mic with the awesome mic enclosure called a CatchBox). We do have an outline for the episode, but after the first 15 minutes, the audience will be in charge of the episode conversation. So join us for a live podcast recording, think of a great presentation related question, and it definitely will be one of the most fun things we do all week!

Troy with the TLC Design Team