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Thoughts and impressions of happenings in the world of PowerPoint and presentations, continuously updated since 2003.
See Also:
PowerPoint and Presenting Notes
PowerPoint and Presenting Glossary
SmartArt graphics in PowerPoint are so versatile — once you insert a SmartArt graphic (or convert some bulleted text to SmartArt), you can add more shapes with just a click or two. This lets you expand your graphic as required. You can also go in the opposite direction and delete shapes from any existing SmartArt graphic with the same ease.
Learn how to delete shapes from an existing SmartArt graphic in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
Filed Under:
PowerPoint 2011
Tagged as: Graphics, PowerPoint 2011, SmartArt, Tutorials
Even if you are not aware, every presentation you create has its own Slide Master. This Master governs the default attributes like slide background, font choices, colors, and even the positioning of the placeholders in your slide. Thus if you end up with a 50 slide presentation that uses center aligned titles that you want changed to left aligned titles in a larger font size — then you need to make this change only once within the Slide Master, and all 50 slides update at once with your new Title formatting! Also, the icing on the cake is that you do not have to format individual slides – this saves you loads of time, and you also end up with slides that are consistent in look.
Learn about the Slide Master in PowerPoint 2003 for Windows.
Filed Under:
PowerPoint 2003
Tagged as: Masters, PowerPoint 2003, Templates, Tutorials
While many of PowerPoint’s SmartArt graphic variants are so usable, there may be times when you want to add an extra shape or two to your SmartArt — at this point of time, we are assuming that you already know how to insert a new SmartArt graphic or convert existing bulleted text to SmartArt. Fortunately, SmartArt allows you to make these additions and edits with just a click or two. You can add one or more shapes to your existing SmartArt graphics either from within the SmartArt graphic itself, or through the Text Pane. Whether you can add a new shape to a SmartArt graphic or not depends entirely on the SmartArt variant that you are using — some variants offer more options than the others.
Learn how to add new shapes to an existing SmartArt graphic in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
Filed Under:
PowerPoint 2011
Tagged as: Graphics, PowerPoint 2011, SmartArt, Tutorials
After Nigel Holmes‘ morning session, the next keynote was conducted by Carmen Simon, who spoke about the power of remembrance.
Carmen emphasized that it’s important to understand what your audiences remember, because audiences can only act upon what they recollect. During several past sessions, Carmen has asked her audiences about which of her slides they remember. And results can depend on various factors.
Based on her psychology background, Carmen opined that audiences seem to remember the opening or closing slides in a presentation the most. They also distinctly remember something that is out of the ordinary. Holding attention is key to remembrance, and Carmen provided an analogy when she compared holding attention to the concept of an American supermarket where 50,000 products vie for your attention at any given time. And the typical shopping trip may be just 30 minutes long!
Attention is mandatory to memory. And statistics can make you feel the pain, face the reality, and understand the facts better. Whatever may be the case, we live in a world where an accessory can cost more than the product itself. Some iPad cases for instance retail at over 1500 dollars and even more. These accessories sell because people will remember that someone had a very expensive accessory, even if this certainly overestimates capabilities.
On to another aspect altogether, Carmen asked the audience to ponder over this question: What kills the beginning of a training session? Is it the giving away of long handouts? Or a long self-introduction of the speaker? Or even a boring slide that distracts the audience’s attention?
She asked the audience about good presentation titles. And questions often make good titles. Audience members gave these suggestions:
Carmen added: He who has the best story wins. Someone in audience said that when he is presenting, he has the privilege of an audience.
Carmen provided several amazing quotes:
More thoughts from Carmen. The words may not be exactly what she quoted, but what I thought she said:
She then gave the audience 4 minutes to ask as many people within the audience their names, and remember those names. One of the audience members remembered 6 names.
We still had a few minutes left. Carmen said that other than distinctiveness, the quality that brings forth remembrance is emotion. Emotion causes both desire and pleasure. Also emotion can be both positive and negative. Generally, including negative emotions in a presentation leads to more detailed memories while positive emotions are prone to more errors. Carmen cautions us that if gist-based memory is sufficient, then pictures or words associated with positive emotions are appropriate.
Dr. Carmen Simon‘s presentations and workshops help business professionals to use communication and presentation skills to increase revenue, train or motivate others, and overall to stand out from too much sameness in the industry. A published author, Dr. Taran is frequently invited as a keynote speaker at various conferences. She is co-founder of Rexi Media, a company that helps business professionals from all fields improve their presentation skills, whether they deliver content face-to-face, online, or create ondemand presentations..
Filed Under:
Events
Tagged as: Carmen Simon, PowerPoint, Presentation Summit
Every slide that you see in PowerPoint has its own unique look — it has a slide background, and the same fonts typically are used on all slides. You really don’t have to do anything other than adding new slides and typing in your text — all the formatting is taken care of by some magical behind-the-scenes intelligence within PowerPoint. Also if you print notes pages or handouts from PowerPoint, you will find that these are also formatted to synchronize with the look of your slides. Ever wonder how you can control all this intelligence? Well, the answer is the Masters that are contained within every PowerPoint presentation.
Filed Under:
PowerPoint 2003
Tagged as: Masters, PowerPoint 2003, Templates, Tutorials
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