PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Puzzle Pictures in PowerPoint

This tutorial shows you how you can create a full slide puzzle effect in PowerPoint. Although we use PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 in this tutorial, the basic technique works the same way all the way back to PowerPoint 97.

Learn how to create puzzle pictures from jigsaw shapes in PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint All Versions
Tagged as: PowerPoint, Tutorials

Perspector 4: Conversation with George McCaskill

  George McCaskill was a founding investor in Perspector and currently enjoys the role of Chief Technology Officer. George is responsible for product strategy and development. He earned his startup stripes by joining QSS in 1993 where he was one of two developers building the market leading requirements management tool DOORS.

Geetesh: Tell us more about the new features in Perspector 4.0.

George: The major new feature in Perspector 4.0 is 3D lists. You can convert from the bullet lists in your existing PowerPoint presentation into 3D list images, or you can start from scratch with our library of list images and fully featured 3D list editor. This presents PowerPoint users with a first easy step in the journey of breaking free from bullet point paralysis towards acquiring a much more visual style.

Perspector 4.0 now uses the presentation color scheme to give your images colors that match the rest of your presentation. This is a real time-saver compared with earlier versions of Perspector.

Professional Edition users can now add their own Perspector images to the Library so that they can save their 3D work for reuse in future presentations.

More information on Perspector 4.0 is available here.

Geetesh: Can you share some case studies on the use of Perspector?

George: Many Perspector customers are consultants and other communicators working with commercially sensitive information, so their presentations often cannot be shared with a wider audience, much as we would love to work with them on case studies. The other thing we have noticed from conversations with customers is that they like to keep Perspector as their ‘secret weapon’ that gives their presentations a distinctive edge when compared with their competitors’ (or even other colleagues’!).

Our website has some example presentations which have come from the Perspector community. Community resources and case studies are areas we are actively seeking to improve, so if any Perspector users are reading this – please consider sharing your work with us if that is possible!

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, Interviews, Perspector, PowerPoint

Road to Mac Office 2008

Just read this informative article and in-depth comparison that explores PowerPoint 2008’s improvements and limitations alongside Keynote 4.0’s design-centric approach, highlighting user interface tweaks, slide views, themes, transitions, and table/chart functionality—offering insights for presentation pros navigating Office for Mac and Apple’s iWork suite.

Read it here.

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

PowerPoint Live: Conversation with Rick Altman

    Rick Altman is a presentation consultant based out of Pleasanton, CA. Rick is well known as the host of the annual PowerPoint Live User Conference and has a strong sense of the needs of the presentation community.

In this conversation, Rick discusses the PowerPoint Live in New Orleans that was held in October 2007.

Geetesh: Rick, having held five PowerPoint Live events in as many years, can you share some retrospective thoughts?

Rick: I can speak on behalf of the entire team that we had a simply terrific time in New Orleans, and judging by the feedback that most patrons shared with us, so did they. The keynote addresses were perhaps the strongest we have had in our five-year history. Breakout seminars represented high-water marks, as well.

The Birds of a Feather discussion groups were well received, as was the Expo, which saw almost 20 vendors set up for an entire day. Even the fluff stuff, like the PPTLive Trivia Contest and the Killer Slides competition, were popular.

I was especially gratified to see how well the patrons mixed. Sometimes, conferences that have several years of history can spawn cliques of attendees, and that is their right. We can’t legislate how they choose to interact. So it was particularly pleasing to see how well they met, mingled, bonded, and became friends.

And Bourbon Street was just downright insane…

Geetesh: You announced that the next PowerPoint Live will be held in San Diego in 2008. Tell us more, and do you want to share some secrets?

Rick: September 21-24, and the secret stuff is so deeply classified and sensitive, that even I don’t know what it is yet…

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, Presentation Summit, Rick Altman

PowerPoint and Photography: Conversation with Rikk Flohr

A refugee from 18 years in corporate management and marketing, Rikk Flohr turned his attention inward to his 20-year love affair with Photography. He founded his design firm Fleeting Glimpse Images in January 2006 and divides his days between various print and screen design projects, presentation consulting and, of course, photography. He lives in Apple Valley, Minnesota.

Geetesh: Tell us more about yourself, your work, and how you got started with photography.

Rikk: My first serious camera arrived in the form of a wedding present. I still remember it-Minolta XGM. I still have it. It still works. Within months, I was burning through a dozen rolls of film a month and spending my free time packing my burgeoning gear around they Wyoming countryside. I ran the gamut, shooting weddings, graduations, fine art, landscape and anything I could think of. It gave me a good grounding in the basics. Soon I graduated to Medium Format and things got really expensive.

At the same time, my career with a diesel engine distribution company took off and I found myself having little time for photography any longer. My degree was in Computer Science back in the day in which personal computers were a dream and mainframes the reality. But, as the PC revolution hit the corporate world, I found I could leverage myself into the graphics end, eventually taking over marketing, print and web development and presentations for my company. I still remember my first presentation program, Applause II from Ashton Tate. I did a lot of amazing things with that on that lowly 286.

In 2005, I dusted off my photography passion and invested in the new-fangled digital gear. Eight months later I relapsed and spent all my spare time in the field shooting. My company received a letter of resignation and I founded my design firm to leverage my hard-won marketing and design skills and pursue my twin passions of writing and photography. My firm now works in capture, high-end digital stills or high definition video; design, for prepress, web or other media; and present, building presentations and coordinating events. Photography is where I like to be and when I am not shooting, I am conniving ways to teach photographic skills or teach image editing. Recently, I had the good fortune of serving as Artist In Residence for the National Park Service spending 35 days in the field perfecting my craft.

Geetesh: How can PowerPoint users benefit from using their cameras?

Rikk: PowerPoint users have a unique opportunity to leverage digital photography. Presentations, visually at least, consist of essentially three elements: Words, Illustrations (Including Charts) and Photographic Images.

For content creators, the immediacy and ease of digital capture is a great benefit. An image of a person for the next slide deck is just a digital photograph away. Whether that person needing photographed is in the office next to you or across the country, today’s digital imaging, coupled with email, puts that image into your next slide in the next ten minutes. That was something film could never deliver. The low resolution nature of presentations means that any camera is capable of creating acceptable content for PowerPoint. With a little imagination, modest amount of technique and some basic understanding of image editing software, you can create a photo of your company’s latest product and have it into a slide before the film could be taken to the developer. No longer are slide jockeys limited to the canned clipart or the antiquated photos gathering electronic dust in lost folders on the corporate servers-fresh content is always just a click away. Why use a cheesy clipart image of two hands shaking when you can take a picture of your company president shaking hands with a real live customer? Why settle for predesigned slide backgrounds when you can set your point-n-shoot on close-up (the little flower on most digital cameras) and find a real, contextually accurate image to use?

I feel one of the greatest ways a slide wrangler can enhance their capital at a company is to embrace digital photography and image editing as a way to enhance and distinguish their company’s presentations. Pictures are worth a thousand words-none of them bulleted.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Interviews, Photos, PowerPoint, Rikk Flohr