PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Learn PowerPoint 2010: Video Correction Adjustments

Once you insert a video clip on your slide in PowerPoint 2010, you might find out that the clip is too dark or light in terms of appearance. This is similar to what you may see on your television, especially a new television where you have to make a few adjustments to get the picture just right. Similar corrections can be made in any of the video clips you insert within your PowerPoint slides. It’s very important to understand that such adjustments may not only be necessary for the appearance of the video clips on your computer, but also for how they show when projected onto a screen or even on a connected TV. Projectors are typically not as bright as computer screens, and some adjustments may help. The other reason to make any video clip light or dark through corrections is so that it can compensate for problems with the original video clip.

Learn about the Correction adjustment options for videos in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

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

Presentation Process Creative Diagram Contest: Conversation with Arte Ranganathan

Arte Ranganathan owns the website Presentation-Process, along with her husband Ramgopal. Their mission is to help business presenters create more visual and creative presentations. The duo won the Presentation Horror Story Contest on SlideShare in 2010.

In this conversation, Arte discusses their Creative Diagram Contest.

Geetesh: Arte, tell us about your Creative Diagram Contest and what motivated you to organize this contest.

Arte: Geetesh, first off thanks for letting us share our thoughts on this forum with your readers.

Over the years, we’ve seen that many presenters just display a set of data or information on their slides and expect the audience to do all the processing. The presenters don’t take the effort to make their message interesting or memorable. Naturally, the audience of such presentations either ignores the slides completely, or interprets the information wrongly.

Creating visual presentations is definitely worth the effort to improve message effectiveness. Providing a good analogy, metaphor, or comparison makes a presentation interesting. It provides a hook for audience to remember the presentation. We recommend representing business concepts using simple diagrams.

Our website Presentation-Process helps business presenters think more visually and creatively. This initiative of launching the Creative Diagram Contest is aimed to further the cause. We want people to know how easy it is to create visual presentations. It’s the first time ever we are running this contest, and we are really excited about it!

What we want the contestants to do is to take a simple idea, and make it over visually in a slide, and tell us why it is better and how they did it. Here is an example of a creative way to represent the 3 stages of Ideation.

For those who wish to participate in this contest and showcase their creative skills, here is the link to the contest. Contest entries have been accepted since May 23rd, 2012 and will continue being accepted until June 20th, 2012.

Geetesh: How will you judge these entries, and is there a prize for the winners?

Arte: The initial round of finalists will be decided by us, the team at Presentation-Process. The finalists will be evaluated by a panel of judges who are presentation experts. Geetesh, it’s a pleasure to have you on-board as a judge as well.

There are a number of grand prizes for the best visual concept, best visual design and most popular entry online. There are other prizes for well-written tutorials as well as early bird prizes. Top prizes include our PowerPoint Charts CEO Pack worth $299.

We look forward to a lot of entries that will help other presenters make better presentations!

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: Contest, Interviews, PowerPoint

Indezine News: iPad Presenting Again

We talked about philosophy in last week’s issue of this newsletter — and this week, let’s discuss the improvements happening in presenting your PowerPoint content using a tablet, especially the iPad.

Apple’s refusal to allow any sort of Flash to play on iOS devices, including the iPad has meant that none of the prevailing PowerPoint presenting technologies work on the iPad since most of these were created using Flash. This means that newer technologies need to be used to fill in the vacuum, and you can already see new updates and new products being announced.

Read the newsletter here.

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

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Format Slide Background

Apart from selecting one of the twelve default slide Background Styles available in PowerPoint 2011, you can also change the default slide background to something else such as another solid color or gradient, a pattern or a texture, or, even a picture. In this tutorial, you will learn about these options, that can be accessed within the Format Background dialog box. All these options can be used to change the look of the slide background in PowerPoint.

Learn about different options available to format the slide background in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

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

Learn PowerPoint 2010: Poster Frames for Videos

When you insert a video in your presentation, you might see that the placed video clip displays a blank or black screen on the slide, as shown in Figure 1 below. Until the clip actually starts playing in slide show view, your users will see this black rectangle, which doesn’t look professional at all. With PowerPoint 2010’s new Poster Frame feature, you can easily overcome this limitation, and change the black rectangle to an image by selecting a frame from the video itself, or even a picture from a different source. Also, the Poster Frame feature presents a good option for displaying a company logo or a picture of a speaker in the video. The Poster Frame that you add or insert to a video is a frame that appears first when you view the containing slide in a slide show.

Learn how to add a Poster Frame for your video clips in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

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