PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Practice Your Presentation: TJ Walker with Geetesh Bajaj

Last week, we released the first podcast that I recorded with TJ Walker. In today’s podcast, we will look at this topic:

Many presenters spend considerable effort and time to create their slides—but they do not get the time to practice. Did you know that PowerPoint has had a built-in practice tool?

Do note that the video embedded here contains the podcast content of two posts. This is the second post, and you can find the transcript of the first post in our Prepare Your Presentation feature.

Advanced PowerPoint Creation Tips August 5 and 6, 2016 from Geetesh Bajaj on Vimeo.

And here’s the second part of the transcript:

TJ: We are speaking with Geetesh Bajaj, who is one of the most renowned experts in the world on PowerPoint: PowerPoint slides, PowerPoint creation. This is a special coproduction between Speaking with TJ Walker and Indezine.

Geetesh, many people are constantly enamored with the latest special effects, dissolve, build, animation features on PowerPoint. There are a lot of older tricks, gizmos, buttons that can be even more helpful to people. Walk us through one of them—for example the Rehearse mode.

Geetesh: Sure. Now, that’s not a gizmo. The Rehearse mode has been there in PowerPoint for the last twenty years, or maybe more. And very few people have actually gone and looked at it, or are even aware that something of that sort exists.

So why would you want to go and rehearse? First of all what happens is, you have seen it and everybody has seen it—that when you have a 60-minute slot to give a presentation, and the speaker or presenter takes an hour and a half. That’s not very uncommon. The audience is not too happy about that, and they are not very interactive. They do not ask too many questions because the time is already up, and they don’t want to extend it by another half an hour. So essentially when you take too much time, you are sending your audience away, and making sure they don’t remember what you are trying to tell them because they are not “accepting” at that point in time.

Copyright: Image by StockUnlimited

TJ: Walk us through where is the button. What does it really do when…?

Geetesh: Sure. See, essentially what happens if you go to the Slide Show tab of any of the newest versions of PowerPoint, you’ll find an option there called Rehearse Timings and you will find a second option called Record Slide Show.

They are pretty similar. But what the Rehearse Timings button does is only records the timings, whereas the Record Slide Show option; what it does, it also records your voiceovers if you have a microphone connected. It also records your animation timings, and it also records when the next slides move in, timings and everything else.

So with that, you just go and sit in front of your computer, laptop and have a PowerPoint ready over there, play with your presentation. But make sure that you play with your finished presentation because you want to not really make too many changes at that point in time unless you find that you are going beyond your time allotted to you and, and then you want to cut-down on something.

Copyright: Image by StockUnlimited

So once you do that, what PowerPoint is going to do is it’s going to record all timings over there, animation, and everything else as I told you. So it’s a very good idea, at that point in time to open your presentation, and choose the Save As option. And save that presentation as a new presentation so the presentation that you have and the new presentation that you have saved at this point in time they are identical.

So you will leave the original presentation alone and then take the copy of the presentation and press the Rehearse Timings (option) if you only want to look at the timings, or the Record Slide Show option if you want to record everything else, and then at every slide you would actually imagine that there is an audience in front of you, and speak exactly how you want to speak about.

You know, this is very refreshing because, when you actually go across the presentation this way, a lot of things that you had never imagined before, you will actually think about them at this point in time. When you look at figures, you will go and substantiate them, and make sure that everything is accurate. And a lot of this stuff is something that the speaker actually encounters at the time of presenting to the audience. And he is not very well prepared for stuff like that. So that decreases his or her confidence level. So if they go and practice it at that point of time, they actually do a revision of everything they want to go and say. And, just proceed this way.

Go to the end of your slides, and you can hit the Escape key on your keyboard. And then PowerPoint may prompt you with the dialog that says, “Do you want to save your timings”, and you would say Yes. And then, what you will do is you will go to Slide Sorter view where you can see all the slides in one screen, and right below each of the slide, you will see a time slot mentioned over there. So that is the exact amount of time that you have taken for each slide. And you can go and study that, and find out where you take too much time, where you take little time. And if there’s something that you spend a lot of time above on, is it important enough to break it into more than one slide? And what are the slides where you don’t take much time about? What about… can you remove them? And also you can see the total time you spent over there. And you can play back this presentation. Your voiceovers are recorded, your animation timings are recorded. And your slide timings are recorded. You know exactly where you are doing well and where you are not doing well.

This is the process that can be repeated over and over again. Now, there is one thing that you have to remember, that you are not going to play the presentation, the copy of the presentation you created when you are actually going and delivering that. Because slide timings are recorded in that and you may be on slide number 2 and because they are automatic timings, it might go to slide number 3 or 4 before you know it. And that’s the reason I suggest you that you keep an original copy of the presentation unaltered without the timings.

TJ: Geetesh Bajaj, thanks for being our special guest. Fantastic insights today!

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: Thoughts
Tagged as: Geetesh, Podcast, PowerPoint, Prepare, Presentation Skills, TJ Walker

Format Font Attributes (Styles) in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

The appearance of text makes a huge difference to any presentation. The font typeface used within your slides is dictated by the active Theme or Theme Fonts set of your presentation. You can certainly override these defaults and choose another font typeface and also change the font size. However, there are times when you need to highlight a word or a phrase contained within your text so that it stands apart and commands attention. To do so, you can apply font styling attributes such as bold, italics, underline, etc.

Learn about applying various font attributes such as bold, italics, underline, and more in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2016
Tagged as: Fonts, Formatting, Microsoft Windows, Office 2016, PowerPoint 2016, Text, Tutorials

PowerPoint and Presenting News: August 8, 2016

How do you start creating a new presentation using PowerPoint or another program such as Keynote, Prezi, or something similar? Do you create a storyboard to start with? Learn more in this podcast by Geetesh Bajaj and TJ Walker. Chris Larson, Technical Product Manager of Techsmith Snagit discusses the new Snagit 13. And Rick Altman talks about the new Presentation Summit Cruise, 2017 conference, to be held in April 2017 in the Caribbean. We also bring you a conversation with Janet Giesen, who talks about the new Shutterstock add-in for PowerPoint on Mac. Finally, David Lin explores FotoJet, an online program for collage making, graphics design, and photo editing.

PowerPoint 2016 users can find out how they can insert dummy text with a few keystrokes, select text in various ways, and play with font types and sizes. PowerPoint 2013 users can explore Advanced Presentation Properties. 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

Presentation Summit 2016: Conversation with Nolan Haims

     Nolan Haims has over 20 years of experience in the fields of visual communication, graphic and presentation design. He runs his own boutique consultancy that trains organizations to communicate more clearly and with fewer words. He speaks at national conferences, writes about visual storytelling at PresentYourStory.com, is a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP and is one of the hosts of The Presentation Podcast.

In this conversation, Nolan discusses his sessions at the upcoming Presentation Summit 2016 series.

Geetesh: You are leading the Entrepreneur’s Round Table on Sunday. Additionally, you are doing four quick sessions: No More Trouble with Tables, The One-Second Chart, All About Icons, and No More Bullet Points! And to complete the circle, you are doing the longer All About Imagery session on Wednesday. What do you believe attendees will take away from these sessions?

Nolan: My hope is that people will take away concrete, actionable solutions for making better presentations. All of my trainings—whether for non-designers in the corporate world or for presentation pros at the Summit—have a healthy balance of theory and practical techniques. My sessions this year will definitely lean more towards instant gratification. I’ll go over the exact workflows, websites, and tools people to need to source and start using iconography in PowerPoint; I’ll show exactly how I take a text box of bullets and in under a minute transform it into a visual slide; I’ll go over the formatting I always apply to ugly tables to make them clean, readable and professional-looking; and in the longer Imagery sessions, I’ll dive into dozens of tricks and hacks for working faster and better with images including sourcing and resolution.

With this year’s Entrepreneur’s Round Table, we won’t be talking PowerPoint shortcuts, but we will be sharing incredibly valuable information on getting into and running a presentation business—be it as an individual freelancer or running a 100-person firm. We’ll have freelancers and owners of presentation companies (including Nancy Duarte) sharing their years of experience. Everyone always says about sessions, “If you only take away one thing…”, but for certain attendees, picking up just one tip from this late-night discussion could literally mean more money in your pocket and a better run business.

Geetesh: You love aesthetics in slides. So how do you feel when you see a slide that is poorly laid out? And what do you wish you could ask slide creators to do to create better slides?

Nolan: What aggravates me most is to see people—especially trained graphic designers—working differently in PowerPoint than they would in Adobe programs. In other words, a designer would pay attention to negative space, line spacing, hierarchy, and balance when laying out a poster or newsletter in InDesign, but once in PowerPoint, all those design best practices often go out the window, “because it’s PowerPoint.” PowerPoint or Keynote or Prezi are just tools, and all usual design rules should still apply. Often, I’ll tell graphic designers when working in presentations to just think of designing not slides, but a series of billboards.

And that last point is something I’ve been thinking a lot about. I think too many people get overwhelmed by the number of slides in a presentation and dumb down the overall design so it can fit across the entire deck—leading to poor templated design. I would like to see people think more about designing each slide individually according to what’s best for the specific content. Of course, keep the unity of font, color, and style throughout a deck, but loosen the template strings up a bit and let each slide be an individual.

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, Nolan Haims, PowerPoint, Presentation Summit

Prepare Your Presentation: TJ Walker with Geetesh Bajaj

TJ Walker and I recently recorded a podcast, both on video and audio via Skype.

So what is in this podcast for you? We look at two main areas:

1. How do you start creating a new presentation using PowerPoint or another program such as Keynote, Prezi, or something similar? Do you create a storyboard to start with? And do you create your own slides–or are you one of those fortunate beings who have a team to create your slides? And if you are indeed part of the latter group, how do you brief your designers? There’s a proper way to brief your designers, and we will explore that area as well.
2. Many presenters spend considerable effort and time to create their slides–but they do not get the time to practice! Did you know that PowerPoint has had a built-in practice tool, all these years? That’s what we will also look at.

Although the embedded video and audio contain the entire content, the transcript is divided into two posts. This is the first one.

And here’s the first part of the transcript:

TJ: Thanks for joining me today for this special edition, this special co-production with our partner Indezine. I am happy to share with you this interview with Geetesh Bajaj. He is the founder, creator, and head PowerPoint guru at Indezine, which is one of the most trafficked sites in the world, when it comes to PowerPoint, technology slides, aspects of delivery, and creation. Tune in, watch, observe, and I think you learn a lot as I did.

My special guest and co-host is Geetesh Bajaj. He is the owner and founder of Indezine, which is a well-known website and organization devoted to helping people all over the world to use, create and deliver PowerPoint slides more effectively. Geetesh, thanks for joining me.

Geetesh: It’s a pleasure being here today.

TJ: You have written books on PowerPoint and created thousands and thousands of decks. Walk us through your process; what do people need to know and how they work with someone like you or on their own to create more effective PowerPoint slides and presentations?

Geetesh: See, the first thing you need to do to create a most effective PowerPoint slide is to not start with PowerPoint. You need to really go and storyboard and decide what you are going to tell the audience? What is the message that they want to hear, rather than what you want to tell them? You know, there are two different things: what they want to hear, and what you want to tell. And, you’ll have to find a way to get something that’s going to work for both of you. OK.

Image: StockUnlimited

But you know, that’s not all. You may create a wonderful presentation, and you may have a wonderful storyboard, and everything is great. The slide looks good, but what after that? What after your slides are created? What do you do then?

TJ: What do people do? In my experience of working with corporate clients all over the world—that no matter how good people’s intentions are… Let’s have another trial meeting, let’s plan on our goals, let’s block out time for rehearsal.

As a practical matter, someone has been handed off an assignment to create the slide deck. And they start gathering more and more slides, more and more data, cutting and pasting, bullet points, gathering slides from similar presentations from six months ago. Before you know this thing has been created, it’s almost like a ball and chain where the speaker is now swirling, ambling across the stage with this heavy chain. And they feel like there is nothing they can do. They feel captive to the slide deck.

Geetesh: See, there are two reasons why something of this sort happens. And essentially let’s call them two scenarios:

1. Scenario One is when the person who has designed the slides, created the slides, is the same person who is going and presenting. But then, what this person could be doing is — he or she has a slide for everything. And have a slide for everything that he or she is not sure about, but might as well have it. OK? And, they have too much to cover. And they have a little time! And, they haven’t practiced! And, that’s one aspect, one scenario.
2. Scenario Two is that the person presenting is different from the person who created the slides. And this typically happens with the people at a higher level, a higher executive level, where they have people to prepare slides for them. And what would happen with these people is that they just expect someone else to do everything for them, but the other person can’t present for them—they actually have to go and present! And if they are not involved in the process right from the beginning, it’s something new to them. So they also need to practice and sync up with all their slides and content. Only then you will get a better picture.

TJ: Walk us through a moment about how you envision the idea of involvement. Let’s say I am Mr. Big Shot CEO of a huge company, and I have got a staff to open doors for me, and everything else. How can I, what shall I be doing when I am working with someone else creating a PowerPoint slide deck with me? Because I often tell people, “if you just try to delegate creating a slide deck, and you are given a slide deck, and that’s it, you are basically guaranteed complete utter failure as a speaker.” You may have a contrarian viewpoint, but let me hear for the audience what you think the proper role for engagement is?

Geetesh: See TJ, what will happen in that case, we have to respect the time of a CEO, or a person in very big position, and that he or she doesn’t have time to go and make slides, and we accept that. But you know, what is the message that they want to give across—they know that. And, they better know the message, because, at the end of the day they are the ones to go and deliver it. So what they need to do is, they have to be more involved right at the beginning of the presentation, and at the end of the presentation. And leave the in-between, longer time, creating the slides to someone else.

OK, so how they get involved in the beginning? The storyboarding process, the thinking process; they need to jot down the points about what exactly they are trying to say. I strongly encourage when I am doing a training session on storyboarding, for people to… it might sound somewhat spiritual, but you know, just close your eyes, think about your audience, and think about what you want to tell them. And what is it that they want to hear from you. And just take a piece of paper—a hundred words, two hundred words, write it down over there. And you will be surprised what people come with. They never imagined that this is what they want to say. And that’s what I would just call their macro-statement.

And then I would tell them to take out a headline, if you could call it that, between three and seven words. And that is the gist of everything they have put over there, within those two pages, and what they want to go and present about. And some people really have a tough time getting those three and seven words. So it should not be two words or one word—because you really can’t have a call to action with something so small. But between three and seven words; there is almost no presentation where you really cannot get the message across within that sort of content.

TJ: And then, how many total ideas? How many messages, how many numbers? How many facts do you really think is realistic for a CEO or any executive to communicate in a PowerPoint presentation? I am defining communication as not a way for an audience to just understand it, but they remember it. In my own research, I have found that audiences never, and I mean never, remember more than 5 ideas.

Geetesh: No, ideas may be little different than messages, but as far as the message is concerned, there has to be just one message for every presentation. You can’t have too many messages going around. There has to be one purpose, one reason why you are doing a presentation. And that is the single message that you get across.

TJ: How may separate ideas?

Geetesh: OK, now it’s good to term them ideas, but they have to to go (along), you know, and be in tune with that message. So there may be different ideas, but you have to put them all together and form one message out of that. You know, to tell you the truth, maybe you could call them one idea as well. They have to be so chained together to work. Because if you are trying to tell too many things, you are confused yourself. OK? A confused speaker will never have a convinced audience. So when you have to convince your audience, you yourself have to be convinced, and understand what exactly you are trying to tell them.

And you yourself said, a lot of people don’t remember what they have heard in their presentations. What is the purpose of going and telling them something that they will remember or not remember in the next few minutes? Step out of the conference room, and already half the content is forgotten! A day later, you probably remember 25%, and a week later you probably remember one or two slides, or may be nothing. So, is that what the CEO wanted to express himself or herself by? No, right?

So, what they have to do is they have to get a proper focus of the message over there. And that is the thing that you know, they have to give that brief to the person who is creating the presentation.

You know, this is the message that I want to get across to my audience.

And anything that you put on the slides, the content you put over there has to follow this message.

Anything that has got nothing to do with this message has no place to be in the presentation.

And you know, that sort of makes it a lot easier to the presentation designer, creator to go along with. And they end up creating something that the presenter, the speaker can identify with.

Image: StockUnlimited

At the end of the day, if they end up creating something that a presenter or a speaker cannot identify with, that is of no use. So the presenter, the speaker has to be involved in the beginning and at the end, at (the) least.

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: Thoughts
Tagged as: Geetesh, Podcast, PowerPoint, Prepare, Presentation Skills, TJ Walker