PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2012: Conversation with Shawn Toh

Shawn Toh is the founder and webmaster of PowerPoint Heaven. He is a Microsoft MVP for PowerPoint (Most Valuable Professional) and a certified Microsoft Office Specialist. He is a presentation consultant and has worked with various companies such as Hewlett-Packard and eBay on project consultations and has conducted several PowerPoint workshops for the education sectors. Shawn is based out of Singapore, and runs the PowerPoint Heaven site.

In this discussion, Shawn discusses the PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2012.

Geetesh: Why did you organize the PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2012 – and what does this online event mean for the participants?

Shawn: PowerPoint Heaven eConvention is an annual online convention where PowerPointers get together to discuss, review and submit their latest PowerPoint works. The purpose of the eConvention is not only to showcase magnificent works from the international PowerPoint community, but also to further reach out to local communities in China and Korea.

This year, we have also appointed our own Korea-PPTH and China-PPTH ambassadors who will be responsible for bridging the communications and building a closer ties among these communities. By participating in the eConvention, participants are therefore allowing their submissions to be seen on both local and international levels thus gaining a broader exposure. Similarly, such exposure will also be highly beneficial to all communities in learning and development for the long run.

Geetesh: You did mention that you were blown away by the creativity of some entries – can you share your thoughts?

Shawn: This year’s eConvention is by far one of the largest submissions pool that we have received. The PowerPoint community in China for instance, has improved tremendously in recent years in both skills and the number of members. We are also able to see several breakthroughs in PowerPoint works which were achieved via collaboration. An example would be the 8 months collaboration work, ‘My Photo Album’ by Xing Yu and his members, which tells the heartwarming story of him and his mother. At the same time, it also demonstrates how a large scale PowerPoint work could be put together and made possible thanks to different people, each with their own specialized talent. Another example of breakthrough would be the strategy game, ‘Future: Escape from Xope’, which showcases a movie-styled introduction and comes packed with sophisticated mini-games which took several months to complete.

Likewise in the Korea communities, we can also see breakthroughs such as Touhou Project artworks by Zzangdol, which went viral few months back, as well as new PowerPointers who have several ingenious works to showcase. These works that have been submitted, along with other individual contributions from PPTH, thus made this year’s eConvention one of the most breathtaking ones so far.

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: Contest, Interviews, PowerPoint

Working with Custom Groups in Ribbon Tabs in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

All Ribbon tabs in PowerPoint 2013 may have any number of buttons that represent commands but they are not scattered all over the tab area. In fact all of them are neatly arranged together in Groups. Each of these Groups has a name that describes what the commands within that Group do — for example, the Slide Show tab in the Ribbon has a group named Set Up — this contains all commands that help you set up your slide show, such as changing show settings, hiding slides, rehearsing and recording slide shows, etc. It is only sensible to imagine that you should use this Group concept while creating custom Ribbon tabs. In fact, PowerPoint will not let you add any command anywhere else other than within a Group.

Explore working with Custom Groups within Ribbon Tabs in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows.

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

A Dozen Ways to Be a Confident Speaker

By Sandra Schrift

In today’s environment, it is important that you are confident and comfortable in front of your audience. And while many speakers believe that being confident is difficult, it needs to be!

Image: Yay Images

In fact, here are a dozen ways to be a confident speaker:

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Filed Under: Guest Posts
Tagged as: Guest Post, Presentation Skills, Public Speaking, Sandra Schrift

Learn PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: Applying Slide Masters to Individual Slides

We already showed you how you can add a new Slide Master to your presentation — and yes, you can make that task even easier by possibly duplicating the existing Slide Master. You can then format it to change its look by applying a Background Style, add a custom background, add new Slide Layouts, etc. But why would you do all these tasks in the first place? There needs to be a compelling reason to do so. This reason leads us to the next logical step — that is to apply the new Slide Master to selected slides in your presentation.

Learn how to apply Slide Masters to individual slides in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: Masters, PowerPoint 2010, Templates, Tutorials

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Reposition and Hide Axis Labels

Do you like the default locations where PowerPoint places your axes’ labels? Yes, we do believe that the defaults do work best most of the time because audiences expect these labels to exist at these familiar locations. However, there may be times when you probably don’t even need labels for your axes — or you may want them placed in another location so that your charts look cleaner. Whatever your motive may be, it is indeed possible to change the position of axis labels vis-à-vis the axis.

Learn how to hide the axis labels and also how to reposition them in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2011
Tagged as: Charting, Office for Mac, PowerPoint 2011, Tutorials