PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Presentations Roundtable with Ric Bretschneider

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:

1. Presentation Zen’s Garr Reynolds,
2. Nancy Duarte of Duarte Design,
3. Howard Cooperstein of Microsoft, and
4. Ric Bretschneider, hosting the podcast

Their 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.

Check out the podcast here.

Filed Under: Thoughts
Tagged as: Books, Case Studies, Garr Reynolds, Howard Cooperstein, Nancy Duarte, Opinion, PowerPoint, Ric Bretschneider

Focus on Office:mac 2008

The release of Office:mac 2008 is less than two weeks away, and already there’s plenty of coverage on the product:

Stephen H. Wildstrom on BusinessWeek.com does not believe that “Office 2008 will cause many people to switch from Windows to Macs, though there are plenty of other reasons to do so. But it does give Mac users—especially creative professionals, students, and home users who are the core of Apple’s market—an office suite that’s superior to the Windows version in many ways”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2008
Tagged as: Office for Mac, PowerPoint, PowerPoint 2008

Book Excerpt: Cutting Edge PowerPoint 2007 For Dummies

Get ready to add punch and pizzazz to your presentations and wow your audience using the latest PowerPoint techniques. This friendly book/CD-ROM combo covers all of the new features of Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, including interface changes, presentation themes, multimedia, the Slide Library, and more.

Read an exclusive book excerpt from Cutting Edge PowerPoint 2007 for Dummies.

Filed Under: Books
Tagged as: Books, Office 2007, PowerPoint 2007

Pecha Kucha

Designers worldwide are resurrecting the slideshow and trying to elevate it to a form of poetry in a new movement called Pecha Kucha, an open-mic night for creative types to show off their projects. And the business world is starting to pay attention.

Born in Japan, Pecha Kucha has two simple rules. First, a slideshow must consist of 20 slides that last 20 seconds each, for a total presentation time of six minutes and 40 seconds. No more, no less.

Read more on the Gazette site.

The Phenomenon That’s Making PowerPoint Presentations Bearable (Even Enjoyable?) @PechaKucha @EdSurge https://t.co/mtrtEhYBUH pic.twitter.com/mI4v9laOfr

— Geetesh Bajaj (@Geetesh) December 18, 2019

Filed Under: Miscellaneous
Tagged as: Delivery, Pecha Kucha, PowerPoint

Jupitertunes: Conversation with Mike Bielenberg

Mike Bielenberg is general manager/musician for Jupitertunes, a division of Jupitermedia Corp. He is the original founder of BBM, an online music library created for Flash, PowerPoint and web professionals. He is based in Atlanta.

Geetesh: Tell us more about RoyaltyFreeMusic and its music collection.

Mike: With over 8,000 instrumental songs and 10,000 sound effects, RoyaltyFreeMusic.com is currently the world’s largest online collection of what is called “buyout music” or “stock music”. “Royalty free” means you only pay once and can use it again and again in commercial projects.

Although our subscriptions are a great bargain, anyone and everyone can listen to the tracks in our library, use a credit card or PayPal to buy a single track, and download it in either WAV or MP3 format. Our friendly staff is available by day to help people with their purchases and choose music for them.

Geetesh: In your opinion, what genre of music works best in PowerPoint presentations?

Mike: You can never go wrong with an upbeat classical piece or an ambient electronica track. So few PowerPoint users actually employ music I think you’re already ahead of the game by having music at all (as long as it’s legal!)

But really, it’s not about genres. That’s too limiting. It’s more about tempo and emotions. Many online music libraries now let you search for music based on both tempo and/or emotion. I think that’s much more liberating than limiting yourself to just classical or techno.

If I’m watching a PowerPoint presentation, I’m there to learn something. That’s a very state of mind for me than passively watching television. So, for PowerPoint, the music really has a different job to do. It has to:

1. Prepare minds for learning and
2. Tell those people how to feel about the subject matter.

Satisfying #1 usually means picking something with a fairly brisk tempo. Satisfying #2 completely depends on your subject matter, but I find it’s usually something positive and inspiring.

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: Interviews, PowerPoint, Sounds