PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Twitter for Presenters: Conversation with Kelly Vandever

Kelly Vandever works with organizations who want to take their strategic business presentations from Lame to Fame! An award winning speaker herself, Kelly helps organizations crank up their content to connect and interact with their audiences using old school and hi-tech techniques all while annihilating bullet points and making this world a better place for business audiences everywhere.

You can contact Kelly at her Speaking Practically site or @KellyVandever.

We already featured Kelly in a very popular interview, where she discussed how presenters can use Twitter. In this conversation, Kelly builds upon her earlier conversation to discuss tools that make Twitter easier to use for presenters.

Geetesh: We discussed using Twitter in presentation scenarios in an earlier conversation – can you tell us about your favourite Twitter tools?

Kelly: Rather than trying to work tweeting into my day, when I’ve got something that I want to get attention for, like your article and an upcoming open enrollment training class, I will schedule tweets using a couple of tools:

HootSuite: If I want to be very specific and strategic in scheduling a group of tweets, I use HootSuite. It’s a free site that allows you to schedule tweets in advance. So if I have an event coming up, and I care about what time of day the event gets tweeted for best chance at exposure, I go to HootSuite and just start putting the posts into the appropriate fields pushing the little button that looks like a calendar and scheduling them. In addition to scheduling tweets, you can also schedule Facebook and LinkedIn posts too. HootSuite has the ability to do bulk uploads at an additional fee. I’ve used it in the past but found it cumbersome. You have to create a .CSV file and get the formatting exactly right. Then sometimes, it still didn’t import into the tool as I was expecting. So for as often as I need it, I just find it easier to schedule the time manually through the tool.

I also often use HootSuite to reply or retweet when someone mentions me in a post and I’m near my computer. I’ve set up a specific column for mentions with my Twitter name and I find it easier to find, reply, RT or modify a RT so that I can add my comments than trying to do the same tweets within Twitter.com.

Timely: I also use a free site called Timely. I use Timely when I want to schedule a group of tweets but I’m not as concerned with when they go out. I’ll create a list of tweets, then copy and paste them into the field and push the button. Timely automatically picks the time of day to send the tweets. You set the number of tweets per day you want to send and it does the tedious part about scheduling the day and times for you.

Echofon: I use Echofon for tweeting from my phone when I’m away from my desk or tweeting at an event. I just find it easier to use than some of the other Twitter apps I’ve tried. I use Echofon for tweeting, replying to a mention or a RT but not for scheduling tweets.

Geetesh: What other benefits does Twitter bring – does it help in SEO? Also do you have any resources to recommend that will help presenters use Twitter better?

Kelly: I’ve been active on Twitter for a couple of years now, and it’s hard to say if it really drives SEO or not. I know I’ve gotten some exposure through Twitter and it gives me more web presence. I guess from a marketing perspectives, since I’ve yet to find one thing that works perfectly all the time, I’m trying multiple ways to get my name out there.

For presenters, I do recommend taking a look at a free ebook by Olivia Mitchell on Twitter for Presenters. I think it’s great. It’s what got me started in using Twitter in earnest. Here’s the link. I also recommend Cliff Atkinson’s book The Backchannel.

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: Interviews
Tagged as: Interviews, PowerPoint, Presentation Skills, Twitter

Businesspeople Silhouettes for PowerPoint – 02

This sample presentation that you will download contains some businesspeople silhouettes ready to use within your PowerPoint slides. You will find these silhouettes in both black and white colors, contained within two separate slides. To help you to start with, we have also included one more slide that contains some variations of these businesspeople silhouettes, that are pre-applied with some PowePoint fills, lines, and effects. Try applying some other fills, styles and effects to these businesspeople silhouettes and see which one works best for you.

Download and use these silhouettes in your slides.

Filed Under: Presentation Bank
Tagged as: Graphics, PowerPoint, Presentation Samples

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Motion Path Animations

The three basic animation types in PowerPoint: Entrance, Emphasis, and Exit animations are something we have already explored. The fourth animation type is called Motion Path animations, and this is something more advanced in nature than the basic animation types explored so far. Motion Path animations play on a path that determines the direction in which the animated slide object moves across or around on the slide area. For example, you can move the slide object up, down, right, or left — or on any preset or drawn motion path.

Explore Motion Path animations in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

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

iSpring Converter’s PowerPoint to HTML5 Conversion: Conversation with Yury Uskov

Yury Uskov is the founder and CEO of iSpring Solutions Inc. an international software company focused on providing professional e-Learning authoring tools based in PowerPoint. Yury has a Masters degree in Software Engineering, and since 2001 has been working in the rich media industry inspired by the idea of making the best solutions for online presentation delivery. iSpring products are widely recognized as robust, effective, and extremely easy-to-use software with an outstanding price/quality ratio. iSpring is headquartered in New York, NY.

In this conversation, Yury discusses the new iSpring Converter that does PowerPoint to HTML5 conversion.

Geetesh: The new iSpring Converter now creates HTML5 output from PowerPoint presentations. What motivated the move from Flash output to HTML5 output? Was it the iPad? Tell us more.

Yury: Yes, the decision to start up PowerPoint to HTML5 conversion was triggered by the Apple iPad. As you may know, iPad doesn’t support original PowerPoint presentations, and it doesn’t support Flash presentations as well. Obviously, for millions of iPad users, this is very inconvenient that they can’t use their top-notch devices to play and share presentations.

It is expected that the HTML5 technology will replace Flash in rich media. This aroused the need in a PowerPoint to HTML5 conversion tool that would keep the interactivity and look of a PowerPoint presentation as precisely as Flash did. At iSpring, we have received countless requests for such tool by our customers, aware of the high engineering level of iSpring’s PowerPoint to Flash solutions.

For now the HTML5 technology is far less mature than Flash: it provides poor cross-browser support and lacks security. Nevertheless, we did our best developing iSpring Converter, and managed to provide excellent performance. I believe that our PowerPoint to HTML5 solutions will perform as solidly as our time-proven PowerPoint to Flash products.

Geetesh: How does the HTML5 output created by iSpring Converter fare compared to the original PowerPoint content – can you tell us more about the fidelity and the faithfulness to the original content?

Yury: When it comes to PowerPoint to HTML5 conversion accuracy, we honestly feel iSpring Converter stands in a class by itself. It accurately preserves even the most advanced elements of a PowerPoint presentation.

Firstly, the converter preserves virtually all animations and transition effects, including complicated 3D transitions and trigger animations. Secondly, it supports embedded audio and video while converting PowerPoint to HTML5. By the way, iSpring Converter allows you to specially configure embedded video to play on a larger range of devices and PCs. Finally, the converter maintains all PowerPoint styles, keeping the original PowerPoint look in HTML5.

What’s even more important is that iSpring Converter keeps the presentation’s interactivity. It features strong support for triggers, on-click animations, and hyperlinks, which allows users to interact with your HTML5 presentation.

See Also: Brandon Hall Award for iSpring: Conversation with Yury Uskov

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: Interviews
Tagged as: eLearning, Interviews, Online Presentations, PowerPoint

Learn PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: Video Compression Options

PowerPoint 2010 has better video capabilities, accepts more video file formats, and can do a lot more with videos, including trimming of video clips. However, it also embeds all inserted video clips by default — and this can result in huge presentations that contain huge video files! This ultimately occupies oodles of disk space and may also make PowerPoint work a wee bit slower. To tackle this problem, you can explore the new media compression abilities built right inside PowerPoint 2010 — you no longer need any third-party media compression tool since PowerPoint’s native Media Compression options make this task very easy indeed.

Learn about Video Compression options in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: PowerPoint 2010, Tutorials, Video