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Thoughts and impressions of happenings in the world of PowerPoint and presentations, continuously updated since 2003.
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PowerPoint and Presenting Notes
PowerPoint and Presenting Glossary
Rick Altman of PowerPoint Live has launched the PowerPoint Live Template Contest for this year’s event to be held from October 11 to 14 in Atlanta. Winners of the template contest will get a free trip to the fall event!
For those of you who want to see how the winning entries look like, head to this exclusive page we created last year that shows you all the winners over the years.
Also exclusive is this small conversation with Rick.
Geetesh: So the PowerPoint Live template contest enters its fifth year — I know you cannot say what you are looking for in a winner, but you could say what you are not looking for?
Rick: I can say both. We are looking for an intelligent and elegant design that will remain as attractive on Day 3 as it was on Day 1. We are not looking for something that shows off a person’s knowledge of PowerPoint features. That is the job of our presenters.
Geetesh: Tell us more about what the winner gets.
Rick: Free pass to the conference and round-trip airfare from any city in the United States that Delta Airlines flies to.
And who judges the entries? The entries are judged by a panel of conference regulars, including “yours truly”:
Ric Bretschneider is Senior Program Manager for PowerPoint at Microsoft and he celebrates many years as a Microsoft veteran, having joined the company in 1993 to work on PowerPoint for Windows and the Macintosh. Over the years, he’s contributed to the design and direction of the application and been awarded three PowerPoint-related patents.
Nancy Duarte has been a Principal of Duarte Design since 1990. Her firm is in the heart of Silicon Valley, and the client list is loaded with Fortune 500 companies. Her passion for business communications that are clear, meaningful, and attractive has opened doors for her in a business world full of cluttered and complex visual communications.
Julie Terberg develops custom presentation solutions—unique for every client and purpose as owner and principal designer at Terberg Design. She co-authored a book on crafting medical presentations. Julie also conducts training sessions for those who want to expand their skills, and is a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for PowerPoint.
Geetesh Bajaj has been a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for PowerPoint since 9 years now, and is currently authoring his fifth book on the program. Based in India, Geetesh also runs the popular Indezine website.
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:
Events
Tagged as: Events, Interviews, PowerPoint, PowerPoint Live, Rick Altman
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James Ontra, co-founder of PPTshare, has been developing presentation management solutions for over thirteen years. His company’s software products range from the high-end Ontra Presentation Management solution, known for its ability to play rich animations and video, to applications that enhance and help manage PowerPoint. In this conversation, James discusses the new PPTshuffle product.
Geetesh: James, please tell us about PPTshuffle, and what does it do?
James: Find the slide you need, when you need it. PPTshuffle is a browser-based PowerPoint slide library that lets you preview slides and then drag & drop them into another presentation. It’s a presentation management solution that helps companies with thousands of PowerPoint presentations manage and organize all of that content, so individuals can find the slide they need, quickly and easily. Companies can use it on their Intranet behind a firewall or use it online as an on-demand service.
Features include:
Geetesh: Who is the potential user of PPTshuffle, and what benefits will a user achieve from this product?
James: PPTshuffle is made for organizations that have hundreds, even thousands, of PowerPoint files that no one can seem to find.
It works on two levels.
First, for individual users, it is a library where a user can preview individual slides and then drag and drop them into a new presentation. They can do a keyword search for individual slides based on file name, title, speaker notes, and content, preview the slide, and then decide whether or not to drag & drop into a new presentation. Or they can click on a PowerPoint file and quickly preview all of the slides within that file. No more hunting and pecking through their e-mail, networks, and hard drive looking for the great pie chart or latest sales figures. It saves hours of time preparing presentations.
Second, for managers and administrators, PPTshuffle serves as a repository of approved presentations and manages access through user groups. Therefore, it ensures that everyone in the organization has the most up-to-date, branded, and compliant presentations.
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: Add-in, Digital Asset Management, Interviews, James Ontra, PowerPoint, Presentation Management, Slide Management
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Scott Schwertly is from Ethos3 Communications, an internationally renowned and award-winning presentation design and training company located in Nashville, TN. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of SlideMagnet, an online portal for the presentation space. Scott works with a wide spectrum of clients that includes Fortune 100 companies, Silicon Valley start-ups, and various other organizations throughout the world. He may live in Nashville, TN with his wife and three dogs, but he calls San Diego home – the place of his beloved San Diego Chargers. Scott has a B.A. and M.B.A. from Harding University.
In this conversation, Scott discusses his new SlideMagnet site.
Geetesh: Tell us more about SlideMagnet, and what is its raison d’être?
Scott: SlideMagnet is an online portal/magazine for both novice and professional presenters. It provides presentation tips and advice as well as the latest presentation technology news. The site features articles to help maximize the effectiveness of presentations through improved design, content, and delivery methods, and includes an ask-the-expert section. There’s also a community forum that encourages discussion on related topics.
When I first started Ethos3 close to 3 years ago, I found very limited online resources to build presentation knowledge. Thus, I found myself taking lessons from classics like the works of Dale Carnegie. The unfortunate reality is that I had to rely on books written from the 1930’s since I couldn’t find anything on the web. Today, the resources remain limited. There are, without doubt, some fantastic blogs and tools, but the overall resources are still lacking. My hope is that SlideMagnet will help fill that gap. With sites out there like SlideShare, SlideRocket, Presentation Zen, Slideology, and now SlideMagnet, 2009 will surely be the year of presentations!
My dream is that SlideMagnet will empower presenters. It’s a shame when people inquire with presentation design firms, but due to budget cuts or limited capital, they can’t afford solid presentation design services. Hopefully, SlideMagnet will serve as an alternative by providing tips, tricks, hacks, etc for the entrepreneur with a shoestring budget or the Marketing Director who is unable to receive corporate buy-in regarding presentation services.
Geetesh: What sort of content do you plan to make available on SlideMagnet, and whom is this targeted towards?
Scott: SlideMagnet has lots of great features including items such as:
SlideMagnet is for everyone. Most importantly, it’s for presenters. It is my hope that SlideMagnet will be the catalyst for everyone’s next great presentation.
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: Design, Interviews, PowerPoint, Scott Schwertly
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3-D Options seems like something that should work with the 3-D Rotation effect in PowerPoint 2007, yet it also works with other effects such as Bevel and Presets. In simple terms, 3-D Options let you format the bevel style of a shape with many more options that are available in the conventional Bevel gallery. You can customize options such as contour, contour color, depth, depth color, and materials. This detailed tutorial explains every option within the 3-D Options gamut.
Explore 3-D Format options for shapes in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows.
Filed Under:
PowerPoint 2007
Tagged as: Effects, PowerPoint 2007, Shapes, Tutorials
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We have already covered all Shape Effects available in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows, except 3-D rotation. In this tutorial, we remedy that omission and show you how you can add a 3-D Rotation effect to a selected shape in PowerPoint 2007 (or higher version).
Apply 3D Rotation effect to shapes in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows.
Filed Under:
PowerPoint 2007
Tagged as: Effects, PowerPoint 2007, Shapes, Tutorials
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