PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Presentation Summit 2016: Conversation with Emma Bannister

  Emma Bannister has seen the shift in the culture of presentations over the years: endless bullet points don’t engage audiences. But does slapping stock images on slides change anything? Or is there a new way? With over two decades of Visual Design experience and ten years as founder and CEO at Presentation Studio, Bannister’s view is radically different. Passionate that powerful presentations consist of more than just visual design, she teaches a new way of thinking – Visual Thinking^TM.

In this conversation, Emma discusses her session at the upcoming Presentation Summit 2016 series.

Geetesh: You are doing a joint session with Jim Harvey called Is English EFL or ESL? In your thoughts, what do you think attendees will take away from your session?

Emma: I travel a lot and the world seems to be smaller every day. Our ability to communicate through social media to people around the globe in a matter of seconds is breathtaking. En masse, we share insights and influence others to create incredible change. However, when it comes to presentation content, it seems our thinking is still confined to a claustrophobic room with little regard to different cultures and values. Language barriers aside, there is real power and importance in understanding more about your audience.

Our presentation addresses the challenges different speakers face and the best way to overcome them. From the ‘slightly patronizing and sarcastic humor‘ of the English to the American assumption that everyone ‘thinks like them‘ to the laid-back Ozzie who is likely to ‘swear and use a language you never knew existed‘.

My vision is to ‘Transform the Culture of Presentations’. In our session, we discuss the benefits of a presentation that respects differences, honors different cultures, and communicates clearly in words, gestures, illustrations, and imagery. In a global society, I believe there will be lots to take away!

Geetesh: You are one of the attendees who will travel a long distance to be part of the Presentation Summit. What is it that draws you, all the way from Australia to Las Vegas?

Emma: My company Presentation Studio is now ten years old. In all those years, there has only been one place where presentation experts congregate and share thoughts, experiences, and challenges faced by other presentation experts. We are a small niche industry and I found it invaluable in the early days to surround myself with like-minded souls. I have made good friends and built a network around me who collaborate and support each other. We all have the same goal in mind—to raise awareness of what makes a great presentation. I love the events and I’m really looking forward to my first time in Vegas!

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: Emma Bannister, Events, Interviews, Presentation Summit

PowerPoint and Presenting News: August 23, 2016

30 million? Is there a better number for how many people use PowerPoint? How about 1.5 billion? Read more. We also bring you Simon Morton of UK’s Eyeful Presentations, who talks about presentation industry issues, standards, and trends. PowerPoint MVP and ex-Microsoftie Ric Bretschneider travels down memory lane, and shares thoughts, smells, and ideas behind the erstwhile AutoContent Wizard. And speakers at the upcoming Presentation Summit in Las Vegas talk about their sessions — we feature Echo Swinford, Julie Terberg, and Nolan Haims. Read what they say even if you won’t attend the conference!

Want to create your own Theme Fonts? We show you how you can do so in PowerPoint 2016, and also how you can edit existing Theme Fonts. And we also show you how you can code with XML to create custom Theme Fonts. Do you want to play around with bullet characters, even though bullets are not as popular nowadays? Why not? Go ahead and play with them! Finally, do not miss the new press releases and templates of this week.

Read Indezine’s PowerPoint and Presenting News.

Filed Under: Ezine
Tagged as: Ezine, Indezine, News, PowerPoint

My Sways in Microsoft Sway

Sway helps you create presentations that convey concepts quickly, easily, and clearly. All Sways you create are backed up and saved to the cloud, for you to access, view, and share as needed. But even in the cloud, there is a location where your Sways can be found. In this tutorial, we’ll locate where all of your Sways are saved.

Explore your My Sways page in Microsoft Sway.

Filed Under: Sway
Tagged as: Online Presentations, Sway, Tutorials

Re-Opening the Spicy Slide Pack for a Final 24-Hour Sale!

We heard many requests from all of you. You all wanted to get into P-Spice’s webinar where she will show you amazing PowerPoint animation tricks. And you also wanted her Spicy Slide Pack. To provide you all one last opportunity to get in, we are opening the Spicy Slide Pack and Webinar training bonus once again for a special 24-hour FINAL sale. Given this interest, P-Spice is jamming even more into her webinar, including a way to make jaw-dropping video puzzles to wow your audience.

This is your final chance to accelerate your presentation skills and stand out in a big way, with the latest animation and design techniques.

Filed Under: Ezine
Tagged as: Animation, Nuts and Bolts, Offers, P-Spice, PowerPoint, PowerPoint Spice, Webinar

Creating PowerPoint Outlines in Microsoft Word 2016 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. In this tutorial, we’ll explore the procedure of creating a structured outline in Word 2016.

Learn how to create outlines for presentations in Microsoft Word 2016, formatted for fail-safe import into Microsoft PowerPoint.

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