PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Learn PowerPoint: Slides/Outline Pane in PowerPoint 2003 for Windows

In the PowerPoint 2003 Interface page, I already showed you the different parts of the program interface — in this page, we’ll focus on one particular area of the interface: the Slides/Outline pane, and it is normally placed on the left side of the interface. The Slides tab is normally active, but to get to the Outline tab, all you need to do is select the second tab shown in the pane.

Learn more here.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2003
Tagged as: Outline, PowerPoint, PowerPoint 2003, Tutorials

Learn PowerPoint: Text Placeholders vs. Text Boxes

Aren’t text boxes and text placeholders the same? Are they really different? And why should I bother even if they are different? All these are valid questions, and the answers to them form one of the most important foundations in learning to create more structured presentations.

In PowerPoint slides, text can be found in many places: text placeholders, text boxes, tables, charts, Notes pane, and more places. However, the text within a text placeholder has characteristics that set it a class apart from all other text. So what exactly is a text placeholder, and how is it different from text within a text box or anywhere else?

Learn more here.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2003
Tagged as: Outline, PowerPoint, PowerPoint 2003, Text, Tutorials

PowerPoint Cool Stuff: Create a Slide Show That Really Slides!

Ellen Finkelstein is the author of 101 Advanced Techniques Every PowerPoint User Should Know. This book contains several, cool PowerPoint tips, and one of them is excerpted on Indezine as an exclusive. Recently, it occurred to Ellen that the words “slide show” came about because early presentations looked like they were sliding as the slides were moved on and off the screen. Here’s a technique that makes your presentation look as if it’s sliding.

Learn more here.

Filed Under: PowerPoint All Versions
Tagged as: Animation, PowerPoint, Techniques

Dump that Text! Transform Your PowerPoint Slides into a Visual Feast

Oh, no, not again! Don’t tell me I have to sit through another boring meeting staring at line after line of text on a wall, she mumbled.

Why can’t these people learn how to make their PowerPoint presentations more interesting?

We’ve all wondered the same thing, but monotonously bullet-pointed, text-filled slides continue to be the norm in most presentation venues. Be different: Show, don’t tell.

This article by Robert Lane and Dr. Stephen Kosslyn provides you with better options that will allow you to dump so much text!

Learn more here.

Filed Under: Guest Posts
Tagged as: Guest Post, Opinion, PowerPoint, Robert Lane, Stephen Kosslyn

Brainshark Insurance Network: Conversation with Irwin Hipsman

  Irwin Hipsman is the director of customer community at Brainshark, a leader in on-demand presentations. He has more than 20 years of experience in the cable, conferencing and collaboration industries, and has worked with communications technologies including with multi-point video conferencing; audio, video and Web conferencing; and distance learning via satellite. Prior to Brainshark, Irwin was involved in the management of public access cable television stations.

In this conversation, Irwin talks about the Brainshark Insurance Network.

Geetesh: Tell us about the Brainshark Insurance Network, how it is set up, and whom it is geared to?

Irwin: Sure. We’re very excited to have recently launched the Brainshark Insurance Network. It’s a central site for life insurance carriers and their distribution partners, such as brokerages, and enables everyone to tap into the benefits of Brainshark on-demand presentations. Using the site, life insurance carriers can equip their distribution channels with pre-approved multimedia presentations, which the distributors then use for internal product education, as well as their own sales and marketing outreach.

As background on Brainshark, our technology enables businesspeople to easily create voice-enhanced presentations that are available online, on demand. You can easily turn content like PowerPoint presentations, marketing collateral, and Web pages into interactive Flash-based presentations, incorporating animation, video, survey and quiz questions, and more. Because your audience can view the presentation at any time and have the full benefit of both seeing and hearing your message, it leads to greater reach and knowledge retention.

Now, with the Brainshark Insurance Network, life insurance carriers have a trusted network for communicating effectively and productively with their distribution channels via Brainshark presentations. From within their own Brainshark application sites, carriers can easily publish selected presentations to the Network and update them anytime, so keeping content fresh is a cinch. In addition, by letting their distributors access and send out content from the Brainshark Insurance Network, life insurance carriers can rest easy that their offerings are being communicated in a consistent and high-impact way.

Now if you’re a distributor, you can access the Network, and view and send Brainshark presentations for free. No more combing through e-mails, scouring individual portals and searching back through newsletters for your carriers’ content – everything you need from all the carriers you work with is right here, in this central, secure Network. For a monthly fee, you can also get access to advanced features, including the ability to personalize carrier content – adding in an intro and closing that includes your own voice, as well as a photo or logo to convey the value of your brand. Additional options include using Brainshark’s authoring tools to create your own presentations in a private site, and accessing best practice tutorials from Brainshark. Check out this overview presentation which goes into more detail.

Life insurance carriers and their distribution partners can also take advantage of Brainshark’s tracking capabilities. Carriers can see, for instance, which of their presentations are being used and which distributors are using them – letting them know how content is resonating. Distributors get even more granular info and receive instant notification of individual viewing activity for free – showing who watched a presentation, how much content was consumed, how any questions were answered and more – enabling them to prioritize follow-up. Distributors can also provide direct feedback to the carriers in the form of comments and ratings of content.

We’ve seen a lot of enthusiasm around the Network and already have an impressive roster of life insurance carriers participating, including American General Life, American National Insurance, Jackson National Life, Lincoln Benefit Life, Liberty National Life and United American Insurance, with others joining weekly. There’s a lot of traction on the distributor side as well – with more than 100 brokerages participating.

Geetesh: So in effect, this is a subset of the entire Brainshark content selected and geared towards a vertical industry?

Irwin: That’s a good question – the answer is yes, and much more. The Brainshark Insurance Network is an extension of what we’re doing today and what life insurers have been doing with Brainshark for several years now – using Brainshark-delivered presentations to train and educate distributors and to help them sell using multimedia presentations to tell a compelling and consistent story. And now with some unique capabilities of this new Network, participating carriers are able to increase their reach to distribution partners they haven’t done business with before and better enable distributors by providing them with the technology and content to do their own marketing and selling. In addition, both carriers and their distributors are able to measure the impact of their communications more than ever before.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Brainshark, Interviews, Irwin Hipsman, Online Presentations, PowerPoint