PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Presentation Procrastinators 02

By Kevin Lerner

This is part 2 of a series that looks at Presentation procrastinators. Read the first part here.

The Last-Minute Crunch Is Inevitable. Be Happy.

As terrific as this managed “presentation polyana” sounds, the reality is that there will inevitably be last-minute edits, high-stress crises, and countless long hours as the clock counts down to showtime. Managers changing the whole deck around. Executives calling on you to update tables, graphs, and text. Presenters who are finally giving you the time, attention, and respect you had been begging for weeks earlier.

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Filed Under: Guest Posts
Tagged as: Guest Post, Kevin Lerner, Opinion, PowerPoint, Presentation Skills, Procrastination

Text Placeholders vs. Text Boxes in PowerPoint 365 for Windows

PowerPoint has three types of text containers: Text placeholders, Text boxes, and Shapes. We explain Shapes in our comprehensive section on Shape tutorials. Let us now look at the other two text container types. Aren’t Text Placeholders and Text Boxes the same? Are they really different? And why should we bother even if they are different?

Learn about the differences between text placeholders and text boxes in PowerPoint 365 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 365
Tagged as: Office 2016, Office 2019, Office 365, PowerPoint 2016, PowerPoint 2019, PowerPoint 365, Text, Text Boxes, Text Placeholders, Tutorials

Creating PowerPoint Outlines in Microsoft Word 365 for Windows

An outline encompasses the text content within your presentation slides. In many ways, this text is the story or the structure of your presentation and forms an ideal starting point for a bunch of slides. PowerPoint can import outlines created in many applications, and we have already shown you how you can create outlines for PowerPoint presentations in several versions of Microsoft Word.

Learn how to create outlines for presentations in Microsoft Word 365 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 365
Tagged as: Microsoft Windows, Office 2016, Office 2019, Office 365, Outline, PowerPoint 2016, PowerPoint 2019, PowerPoint 365, Tutorials, Word

Add Headers and Footers to Notes and Handout Pages in PowerPoint 365 for Mac

Unlike the slides which are primarily presented through a display device such as a monitor, TV screen or projector, the Notes and Handout pages in PowerPoint are essentially intended for printing. In this tutorial, we will explore how you can add Headers and Footers to make your printed Notes and Handout pages more professional-looking and useful.

Add Headers and Footers to Notes and Handout pages in PowerPoint 365 for Mac.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 365
Tagged as: Mac, Office 2016, Office 365, Office for Mac, PowerPoint 2016, PowerPoint 2019, PowerPoint 365, PowerPoint for Mac, Tutorials

crowdbeamer wins Best of Show at InfoComm: Conversation with Peter Ryckaert

    Peter Ryckaert has been active in the internet business since 1995, and has been recognized in 2006 as the Flemish Youth Entrepreneur. With his previous company DigiPoint he also won the Trends Gold Award for the innovative realization of a completely new remarketing platform for the automotive industry (used by General Motors). DigiPoint has long been among the top-3 internet companies in Belgium before being sold to Cegeka, a pan-European ICT group active in 11 countries. In 2015, he started the crowdbeamer venture, together with co-founder Hans Romaen.

In this conversation, Peter talks about crowdbeamer winning the Best of Show winner for Rental & Staging Systems at InfoComm 2019.

Geetesh: Peter, your product, crowdbeamer won the Best of Show winner for Rental & Staging Systems at InfoComm 2019 in Orlando, Florida. What do you believe convinced the judges about the crowdbeamer ProAV system?

Peter: Winners were selected by a panel of anonymous InfoComm members (CTS-certified) at InfoComm 2019.  On Day 1 and Day 2, the judges evaluated each product against multiple criteria including innovation; performance against category standard; richness/relevance of feature set; ease of installation/maintenance; network friendliness; and value/ROI. As crowdbeamer ProAV got the highest total points, it was designated as a winner.

We do believe that the judges were impressed by the whole crowdbeamer portfolio, which now provides a solution for any size of audience, and for any use case, whether it is a mobile situation (giving a presentation on the go), a fixed installation (meeting room or auditorium)or for a temporary event (a conference or other event). From crowdbeamer Go and Enterprise, to the newcomers Enterprise+ and ProAV, they are all compatible with one single crowdbeamer app which provides the same benefits to the participants: see the broadcasted presentation, take snapshots, zoom in to see the smallest detail, take notes and export to other business apps.

Crowdbeamer ES+ a solution for larger meeting spaces

Whereas the crowdbeamer GO and Enterprise models come with a built-in battery and antenna to provide a 100% mobile solution, the new Enterprise+ model is optimized for maximum Wi-Fi coverage.

It draws its power from an external power supply unit, or an external battery pack (optional). Thanks to its four dual-band 2.4/5GHz external antennas, Crowdbeamer Enterprise+ triples the WiFi range of the GO & Enterprise models (30+ meter radius). Crowdbeamer Enterprise+ therefore offers an attractive solution for education and training facilities at universities and in corporate environments.

Crowdbeamer ProAV a solution for AV Rental & Staging professionals

The brand-new crowdbeamer ProAV has been designed to serve the needs of AV Rental & Staging companies.  It is a ruggedized device that can be securely suspended to a stage truss, can easily cover any indoor or outdoor space by connecting multiple devices to support 1000+ simultaneously connected client devices over its built-in Wi-Fi. Its multiple networking and powering options (including PoE) deliver the flexibility, reliability, and scalability to support large-scale VIP events at challenging locations and international conferences.

“This was a rich field of submitted nominations, reflecting the breadth of engineering, R&D, and UX talent we have in this industry,” says SVC editor Cynthia Wisehart, “Congratulations to the winning team of crowdbeamer. I look forward to seeing their solution at work across our markets.”

Geetesh: We spoke earlier this year about crowdbeamer. Can you share some usage scenarios, and how you are evolving the product based on user feedback?

Peter: More and more crowdbeamer is being used in education (high schools, university colleges and universities), especially in circumstances where they want to give a presentation in a certain context (for instance an art course in a museum), in places where there is no access to classic presentation equipment (for instance outside the classroom), or when they want to give a presentation in a different way (for instance in a discussion group, a campfire session, …).

Related to this usage scenario, but from a corporate perspective, are the training rooms. Not only for classic training sessions, but also for hands-on setups, where people are trained to use specific equipment. The explanation is then given next to the equipment involved, and the presentation can be followed at the same location, directly on the personal devices.

Another market that we see trending is related to court rooms. There they present witness material directly onto tablets instead of printing out the material, saving valuable time and resources.

We also have great feedback from visually impaired people, who now have a close and clear view on the presentation. Again, ideal for education and organizers of seminars and conferences.

As crowdbeamer is a growing platform, we take great care in listening to the feedback we receive from customers. The firmware is continuously being improved. Latest additions are for instance the possibility for participants to keep a connection with the internet (even when connected to the crowdbeamer’s Wi-Fi signal), remote management of the crowdbeamer devices via an API, more available Wi-Fi channels to improve the broadcast quality, the possibility to use multiple crowdbeamers in a network to span larger areas (and hence the development of Enterprise+ and ProAV).

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

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Crowdbeamer, Infocomm, Interviews, Peter Ryckaert