PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Chart Area

Everything on a chart within PowerPoint 2013 is placed on top of the Chart Area — this essentially is the entire area that encompasses your chart. Thus, the Chart Area is that part of your chart which is placed beneath all other chart elements. By default, the Chart Area doesn’t possess any fill or any kind of formatting unless you have used a particular Chart Style. Even though this default status works well, you can opt to format as required. You can change the fill, border, and effect of the Chart Area, change the size and properties of the chart, and also change the font attribute.

Learn about the Chart Area in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2013
Tagged as: Charting, PowerPoint 2013, Tutorials

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Drawing Connectors

Connectors are lines that link different shapes, and yet they are somewhat different from conventional lines because – connectors, as the name implies stay connected to the shapes they link — even if you move the actual shapes. You have already learned about connectors, and the types of connectors in previous tutorials. In this tutorial, you will learn how you can draw connectors that link shapes.

Learn how to draw connectors in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2013
Tagged as: PowerPoint 2013, Shapes, Tutorials

Presentation Summit 2014: Conversation with Rick Altman

Rick Altman is a California-based presentation consultant who has been helping organizations communicate better in public since before Microsoft developed PowerPoint. He has been hosting end-user conferences since 1989, and is the host of the annual Presentation Summit, now in its 12th season. He has authored 17 books on presentations and graphics, including the now-notorious Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Suck.

In this conversation, Rick discusses the upcoming twelfth edition of his Presentation Summit conference, to be held in October 2014 in San Diego.

Geetesh: You’ve been holding the Presentation Summit for a long time now — tell us what can patrons expect to experience in the upcoming season of the conference? What’s changed? And what’s not?

Rick: What has changed: More and more, people are showing an interest in exploring other software applications. They’ve heard about Prezi, but how might it fit into their workflows? They need to present from their iPads, but what’s better the way to go, the new iPad version of Office or SlideShark? What about Haiku Deck or eMaze? There are lots of solutions today, not just PowerPoint, and knowing as much as you can about the industry’s offerings makes you more valuable in your role as presentation professional.

What hasn’t changed: As we have since 2003, we cover the whole of the presentation experience: message crafting, presentation design, software technique, and delivery. No one of those skills is sufficient by itself and we take a holistic approach to the process of presentation skills development.

Not to make it sound too mystical — the other thing we do is focus sharply on relationship building. Presentation professionals make up a tight community and in many cases, the most important resource you could hope to have are the peers who can support your efforts. We consider that to be one of the greatest contributions the conference makes: putting you in touch with like-minded, caring, and supportive individuals whom you would be proud to call your colleagues and your friends.

And we’re returning to San Diego, regarded by many to be a favorite destination. It has been four years since we’ve been back there and it will feel like returning home to many. And those joining us for the first time will get to experience one of the nicest cities during its nicest time of year.

Geetesh: Among the various experiences at the Presentation Summit, there’s something about the Help Center that evokes different emotions. Tell us what prompted you to create a Help Center at this conference?

Rick: The Help Center is a direct reflection of Microsoft’s MVP community and its culture of sharing and helping others. It’s no coincidence that the Help Center is staffed almost entirely by members of the MVP team and that the planning for the inaugural event took place at an MVP dinner. It’s like a match made in heaven: we bring in inspirational speakers and we develop provocative seminar topics, and then we fill in all the gaps with a completely free-form and 100% hands-on experience. Included in their admission, patrons can visit the Help Center at any time and for any reason.

No question is too menial, no challenge too small, and at the same time, no issue is too large. I don’t think it is hyperbole to proclaim that the Help Center offers the finest instruction on the technical aspects of presentation that you will find anywhere on the planet.

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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, PowerPoint, Presentation Summit, Rick Altman

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Quick Layouts for Charts

While working with charts in your presentation, you may want to move the location of the legend, or you may need to add a Data Table. Or perhaps the default layout doesn’t work well for you. If you find any of these scenarios familiar, you can always choose from different layouts for your charts using the pre-defined Chart Quick Layouts feature. This essentially is a collection of some pre-arranged layouts containing various chart elements. With just a couple of clicks, you can change the entire look of your chart, as explained in this tutorial.

Learn how to apply preset Quick Layouts to your charts in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2013
Tagged as: Charting, PowerPoint 2013, Tutorials

Speaker, Leader, Champion: Conversation with Jeremey Donovan

    Jeremey Donovan is Group Vice President of Marketing at Gartner Inc., the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company with $1.6 billion in annual revenue. During his career, Jeremey has led successful teams focused on market research, new product development, marketing, acquisitions, and product management. He is a three-time TEDx organizer, a TEDx speaker, a coach for many TED and TEDx speakers, and long-time member of Toastmasters International. His other books include What Great Looks Like, How To Win the Toastmasters World Championship, and How To Deliver A TED Talk: Secrets Of The World’s Most Inspiring Presentations.

In this conversation, Jeremey discusses his new book, Speaker, Leader, Champion: Succeed at Work Through the Power of Public Speaking.

Geetesh: Tell us about your new book, Speaker, Leader, Champion: Succeed at Work Through the Power of Public Speaking. What was the motivation behind this book. Also tell us about your co-author.

Jeremey: As a student of effective communications, I’m always on the hunt for examples of inspiring storytelling. After deconstructing TED Talks, I turned my attention to the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking. While there are countless speeches delivered in clubs every week, I figured the winning speeches represent the pinnacle of the Toastmasters experience. However, when I started writing what became “Speaker, Leader, Champion,” I got completely stuck. You see, I had been a Toastmaster for over a decade, but I had avoided the competitive part of the journey.

For help, I decided to ‘phone a friend.’ Ryan Avery, the 2012 Toastmasters World Champion, and I had traded some emails mostly in admiration of each other’s work. Ryan, despite the fact that he was only 25 when we met, has an unparalleled wealth of public speaking knowledge that he gleaned from self-study, practice, and the best mentors on the planet. It did not take me long to ask if he would team up with me to write the book.

During the process, we actually wrote three completely different books but ended up throwing away the first two. We are pretty proud of the end result. It uses Toastmasters world championship speeches as examples of the kinds of techniques that people can leverage in work presentations to share their ideas and accelerate their careers.

Geetesh: Your book has many examples of Toastmasters speeches yet all the advice can be used in any speaking scenario including business presentations. Please do share some thoughts.

Jeremey: You hit the nail on the head. Every type of speech I write about, be it Toastmasters, TED, The Moth, whatever…, has techniques that can be applied in personal and professional settings.

The key is to remain authentic to the situation. Take storytelling for example. In Toastmasters, storytelling is often dramatic and highly theatrical. That level of performance would not be suitable for most corporate settings. However, the fundamental structure of stories is the same. One of my favorite personal storytelling frameworks is the Pixar Pitch. It is a 3-act structure that goes like this:

Act 1 is: Once upon a time and every day… Until one day…

Act 2 continues with: And because of that… And because of that… Until finally…