PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Presentation Summit 2015: Conversation with Alan Hoffler

    Raised around America’s Space Program, Alan Hoffler has earned degrees in aerospace engineering and applied mathematics, but his true passion is teaching. At some point in his 25 years of training technical corporate audiences, instructing in the college classroom, teaching public high school, and speaking nationally to pilots about flying safety he became passionate about helping others communicate with excellence. With a coach’s passion, a teacher’s heart, and an engineer’s mind, his blog reveals his desire to improve himself as well as his clients.

In this conversation, Alan discusses his keynote at the upcoming Presentation Summit 2015 series.

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Filed Under: Events
Tagged as: Alan Hoffler, Interviews, PowerPoint, Presentation Summit

Presentation Summit 2015: Conversation with Echo Swinford

   A Microsoft PowerPoint MVP since 2000, Echo Swinford began her PowerPoint career in 1997. She holds a Master’s degree in New Media from the Indiana University School of Informatics. Echo is the owner of Echosvoice, a PowerPoint consulting firm specializing in custom template development, presentation creation, makeovers and cleanup, and training for large and small corporate clients. Echo has written and co-written five PowerPoint books, developed a number of video publications, and has a string of tech editing credits to her name.

In this conversation, Echo discusses her sessions at the upcoming Presentation Summit 2015 series.

Geetesh: Echo, you are doing two sessions this year at the Presentation Summit called Template Creation Workshop: Secrets and Recipes for building awesome PowerPoint templates and Sync Animation to Video: All you need are triggers and bookmarks. Can you tell us more about these sessions, and what takeaways can the audience expect?

Echo: Co-conspirator Julie Terberg and I have led the template workshop for a number of years, but it’s different every time. We ask that the attendees provide us with their templates and specific questions and we use those as a framework for discussion. We end up tackling various design and technical issues and give strategies for overcoming them. The goal is for those in the audience to walk away with practical advice they can apply to their next template project.

I’m really excited about the session on synching animation to video. First, the short format is new, and I’m looking forward to a quick, down-and-dirty session. But more importantly, multimedia is becoming more reliable in PowerPoint, and I’ve seen a definite increase in the use of short video clips in presentations. But nobody annotates them, ever! I think it’s so cool that we can add drawings and text to video to point out things people should pay attention to or add captions or whatever. And the fact that we can control when those things appear is a huge bonus.

Geetesh: You’ve been part of the Presentation Summit for several years — can you share your thoughts about how this event benefits new attendees, and also how it helps repeat visitors?

Echo: I’ve actually been a part of Presentation Summit since it was just an idea, and I haven’t missed one yet. It’s like a family reunion – but one where you actually like all the relatives! Seriously, our community is wonderfully cooperative and welcoming. I find the interaction incredibly inspiring, and I learn something new every single year. It’s amazing to see new attendees as they start to realize they’re not just attending a conference and learning new techniques, but they’re taking the first steps to participating in a true community. That’s a very cool thing.

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: Echo Swinford, Interviews, PowerPoint, Presentation Summit

Heading Card in Sway

A Sway you create comprises of Sections – these Sections play one after the other when you view the Sway. However, before any Section, you encounter the Title Card, which is akin to the cover page of your Sway. Similarly in Sway, Heading Cards are cover pages of individual Sections!

Explore how Heading Cards work within Microsoft Sway.

Filed Under: Sway
Tagged as: PowerPoint for the Web, Sections, Sway, Tutorials

PowerPoint and Presenting News: September 22, 2015

We first present an interview with Matteo Cassese, who discussed his then-upcoming webinar. We also bring you interviews with celebrated speakers who will be part of the Presentation Summit in New Orleans later this month. This week we feature Nolan Haims, Bethany Auck, and Mike Parkinson.

We continue with four more tutorials that will help you understand Microsoft Sway better. We also explore the Remove Background option in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac. Finally, don’t miss the new discussions and templates of this week!

Read Indezine’s PowerPoint and Presenting News.

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

Naming and Reordering Sections in Sway

Sections hold any of the content that is placed within your Sway other than the main cover of your Sway – which is held attached to the Title Card. We have already explored the relationship between a Section and a Heading Card – and how you can add Sections within our Sections in Sway tutorial. If you want to delete the entire Section along with all the Cards it contains, click the Delete icon, shown highlighted in green within Figure 1. Do note though that you can also delete just the Section by deleting just the Heading Card. Doing so moves all other Cards to the preceding Section.

Explore how you can work better with Sections in Sway.

Filed Under: Sway
Tagged as: PowerPoint for the Web, Sway, Tutorials