PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Drawing Lines

PowerPoint is also a great drawing program with a feature set that rivals top end graphic programs. Yes, you have learned how you can use readymade shapes in PowerPoint to place rectangles, circles, and hundreds of other shapes. In addition, we have explored how you can create new shapes by combining one or more shapes. If these are not capable enough for you, PowerPoint includes the ability to create your own shapes from scratch by drawing them. These drawing tools are essentially the Line shapes that can be found within the Shape gallery.

Learn how to draw a line in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

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

Indezine News Released

The power of simplicity pervades everywhere — and is the key to conceptualizing, creating, and delivering any type of presentation. The need to weed out the unrequired, the aim to keep things as uncomplicated as we can, and to clearly understand what the audience wants — these are all objectives that any presenter will associate with. And the best way to attain these objectives is with simplicity.

Read more in this week’s newsletter.

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

Learn PowerPoint 2010: Slide Transitions

Transitions between slides cover much more than some movement between one slide and the next — you can actually do a slide transition that is abrupt without any effect or you could look at any of the transition effects, all the way from simple fades and wipes to something that can cause a vertigo! In addition, transitions in PowerPoint can have set timings, and also be accompanied by transition sounds. Clearly, there is plenty to learn, and unlearn!

Learn how to add transition effects to the slides in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

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

Brainshark’s Annual Sharkie Awards: Conversation with Irwin Hipsman

Irwin Hipsman is the director of customer community at Brainshark, Inc. Brainshark’s cloud-based software lets users create online and mobile video presentations -– using simple business tools like PowerPoint and the telephone –- and then share and track their content. Thousands of companies use Brainshark to improve the reach and results of their business communications, while dramatically reducing costs.

In this conversation, Irwin discusses Brainshark’s annual Sharkie Awards, which are now open for submissions.

Geetesh: What exactly is the annual Sharkie Awards, and who can participate?

Irwin: Brainshark is hosting the fourth annual Sharkie Awards to recognize and celebrate excellent presentations. Users of Brainshark’s enterprise products, along with users of our free myBrainshark.com site, are eligible to submit their work. There’s no cost to enter, and the deadline for submissions is February 3. On March 21, we’ll be holding an online awards ceremony to announce and honor the winners.

We’ll be recognizing the best presentations across a wide range of categories -– from training and marketing presentations to those best suited for mobile delivery to users’ first-ever presentations and more. We’ve added three new categories this year too: “Best Agency-Created Presentation,” “Best Short Presentation” (for those less than one minute) and “Best Presentation for a Charitable Cause.”

As your readers may know, Brainshark provides an easy way to add voice to PowerPoints and other business documents to create trackable, online video presentations. So, in addition to celebrating our winners’ achievements, the Sharkie Awards also provide a great resource for our users at large. The program showcases standout presentations and best practices, so others can pick up helpful tips and tricks via real-world examples. You can view our previous winners at www.brainshark.com/gallery.

Geetesh: How will you decide who the winner will be? Are you doing voting, or will there be judges?

Irwin: Brainshark employees will be judging presentations to select category winners. As they evaluate the presentations, they’ll be looking at the introduction, quality of the script and audio delivery, visuals, use of animations and incorporation of Brainshark features, among other criteria.

Category winners will receive a Sharkie trophy and will be eligible for the “Presentation of the Year” award. This award is selected by our customers, who vote for their three favorite presentations from the category winners. The top vote-getter for “Presentation of the Year” will receive a grand prize (such as a trip, team outing, or iPads) valued at $2,000. The second and third place finishers will also receive prizes valued at $1,000 and $500 respectively.

We’re very excited to host this awards program to celebrate and showcase examples of presentation success. For more information, please see our rules page here, or click to view the brief Brainshark presentation below:

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: Brainshark, Interviews, Irwin Hipsman, Online Presentations, PowerPoint

Animated Slide: Cube Perspective

This slide uses several squares that were applied 3D styles to end up as cubes. Each cube is of a different size, is rotated at a different angle, and also uses Theme colors – so if you add this slide to another presentation, the cubes will sport colors coordinated with your presentation. Each cube has more than one animation added so that it diminishes in size as it moves to an imaginary perspective point located off the top right part of the slide. All animations are set to repeat indefinitely so that the cubes keep moving until you navigate to the next slide.

Download and use this slide in your presentation.

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