PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Eagle PowerPoint Silhouettes

An eagle is one of the symbols frequently used to represent the United States of America. The exact name of this symbol is “The Bald Eagle”, and it gained informal recognition when the Great Seal of the United States which shows this eagle was adopted on June 20, 1782. In this set, we provide you with 4 eagle silhouettes.

Download and use these Eagle silhouettes.

Filed Under: Presentation Bank
Tagged as: Eagle, Graphics, PowerPoint, Shapes, Silhouettes, Visuals

The State of Financial Presentations 2016: Conversation with Dave Paradi

  Dave Paradi has been recognized by the media and his clients as a presentation expert. He has authored eight books and four Kindle e-books on effective PowerPoint presentations. He consults on high-stakes presentations including one used to brief one of President Obama’s cabinet ministers. Dave is one of only fifteen people in North America to be recognized by Microsoft with the PowerPoint Most Valuable Professional Award for his contributions to the PowerPoint presentation community. His ideas have appeared in publications around the world.

In this conversation, Dave discusses his new State of Financial Presentations 2016 survey.

Geetesh: Dave, tell us more about your new survey. Also, how can exploring results from such surveys help us create more effective, financial presentations?

Dave: In 2014 I decided to do a more specific survey than my biennial survey on what annoys people about PowerPoint presentations. I chose financial presentations because my clients struggle with them more than other presentations. I wanted to know what makes those presentations so challenging to understand. By getting the audience perspective, it can help financial professionals make clear, understandable presentations. I am now updating that survey to determine the state of financial presentations in 2016. If you see financial presentations such as budget reviews, monthly financial results, cash flow analysis, capital project rankings, or any other presentations where the goal is to review and discuss financial analysis and decisions, please take the survey (link no longer exists).

Why did I want to update the survey? Because I saw how much the results of the previous survey helped professionals who present financial information. I have seen my clients go from using spreadsheets with hundreds of numbers on a slide to clear graphs that tell the important story senior executives need to know. This leads to quicker decisions and better results. Financial presentations are important to all organizations and are required to be delivered regularly. By adopting the best practices that we learn from the survey, professionals can reduce the time they spend creating these presentations and increase their effectiveness.

Geetesh: You have been regularly creating these surveys which explore reasons for and returns from business presentations. From the findings, what is one thing that has been consistent, and what is it that evolves?

Dave: The unfortunate consistency in the results from all of my surveys is that the major issue in presentations today is information overload. Professionals have difficulty focusing their content down to just what the audience needs to hear. Whether it is a slide full of product features when only two or three are important to this prospect, or a slide full of numbers when only the trend is an important metric illustrates that urgent action is needed, or a slide with a complex process diagram when only a high level of the process is needed, professionals tend to put too much on slides. It leads to audience confusion and delayed decisions. This is probably the key issue I address in my customized workshops.

What I have seen change is organizations starting to see the bottom-line impact of poor presentations. In the past, poor presentations were tolerated. I see that changing. Executives who have to summarize the presentations of their staff to present to senior levels are fed up with the hours they spend at nights and on weekends away from their families trying to figure out what the key messages are from the overwhelm of information they have been provided. They want clear, focused presentations that they don’t have to redo when presenting to the next level up.

Senior decision-makers have also run out of patience with overloaded presentations that they have to try to figure out. They need to make quick decisions in today’s competitive market. They can’t be spending time hoping they figure out slides full of numbers. They pay their staff to figure out the conclusions and they expect a clear conclusion from the analysis that has been done.

Organizations are seeing that delayed decisions and executive overwork have a clear bottom-line impact. They know they need to improve their presentations. Surveys like the one I am conducting now give insight into what audiences think and what they want presenters to do better.

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: Dave Paradi, Financial Presentations, Interviews, PowerPoint, Survey

Screen Tips for Hyperlinks in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

We have explored several hyperlinking tutorials in PowerPoint 2013. However, what happens when you hover any of these hyperlinks before you actually click the anchor? Typically PowerPoint just uses something for the Screen Tip (screen tip) when you hover over a hyperlinked slide object. PowerPoint defaults to showing the path to your hyperlink. This can work most of the time, especially if you are presenting and you know what you must click. However, if you need to distribute your slides, it looks more professional if you have a proper screen tip added to your hyperlink.

Explore how you can add screen tips for hyperlinks in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2013
Tagged as: Hyperlinking, Microsoft Windows, Office 2013, PowerPoint 2013, Screen Tip, Tutorials

POPcomms, and the Morph Transition Effect in PowerPoint

Microsoft has added an amazing new transition effect called Morph. In many ways, you just need to design slides and PowerPoint automatically determines changes in the following slides and morphs elements between the slides!

To understand how powerful Morph can be, take a look at this YouTube embed:

This video shows a PowerPoint presentation created by POPcomms, a presentation design firm based in Bristol, UK. You can read more about why and how they created this sample presentation.

I asked POPcomms‘ Damjan Haylor: What do you folks at POPcomms think about the new PowerPoint Morph feature, and what possibilities does this new feature bring forth?

Here’s Damjan’s answer: PowerPoint’s new Morph feature is a powerful transition tool that will allow companies to create ever more visually engaging and persuasive stories.

It allows you to create fluid animations that go well beyond Prezi’s capabilities and when combined creatively with PowerPoint’s interactive features you can create desktop, mobile, and touchscreen presentations that just weren’t possible before.

You’ll be able to create multi-layered interactive diagrams allowing the user to drill down from top-level overview to the smallest detail and back, seamlessly. For events, you can create looping videos that will easily match motion graphics videos created in AfterEffects. And for that all-important keynote presentation or pitch, you now have a tool that allows designers to explore full motion and captivating storytelling to help sell your ideas.

With all presentations the message is key but how you present and visualize that message is just as important and the morph tool allows you to do this in ever more compelling and persuasive ways.

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: Damjan Haylor, Design, Interviews, Morph, POPcomms, PowerPoint, Presentation Design, Transitions

Add Dubsmash Videos in PowerPoint

In our Sharing Dubsmash Videos tutorial, we showed how you can export your Dubsmash videos on iOS devices to your Photos folder. In this tutorial, you will learn how you can insert these videos within your PowerPoint slides. Do note that this tutorial will look at using Dubsmash videos in PowerPoint for iOS devices such as iPhones and iPads. If you want to use Dubsmash videos in other PowerPoint versions, you will have to forward such videos to yourself as an email attachment – and then insert within PowerPoint as a regular video clip.

Learn how you can insert Dubsmash videos in your PowerPoint slides.

Filed Under: PowerPoint All Versions
Tagged as: Dubsmash, iOS, iPad, iPhone, PowerPoint, Tutorials, Video