PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Learn PowerPoint 2003: Title Master

When PowerPoint 2003 is launched — or when you create a new presentation — you typically see the first slide of the presentation. This slide is known as the Title slide — it contains placeholders for the slide title and the slide subtitle. Note that this layout is different from other slides which typically have a title placeholder with another placeholder for bulleted text (or a chart, graphic, etc.). All these other slides are influenced by the Slide Master, which governs their appearance and layout. The appearance and look of the Title Slide is influenced by the Title Master — this is a separate Master that is a subset of the Slide Master.

Learn about the Title Master in PowerPoint 2003 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2003
Tagged as: Masters, PowerPoint 2003, Templates, Tutorials

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Delete Shapes from an Existing SmartArt Graphic

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

Learn PowerPoint 2003: Slide Master

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

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Adding New Shapes to Existing SmartArt

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

Carmen Simon at the Presentation Summit 2011

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:

• So why do voice-overs?
• Hungry after Chinese food?
• Saving private clients?

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:

• Also do not treat your endings lightly.
• Sometimes you do not have to say anything. Just a picture can make an impact.
• Include a great message at the ending and you increase the longevity of your audience’s remembrance.

More thoughts from Carmen. The words may not be exactly what she quoted, but what I thought she said:

• Repetition does not lead to memory. But people do remember something that is not cliche, or is different.
• Audiences also remember dramatic shifts in the sequence of slides.
• Sharp contrast between slides, and not gradual change is what people remember.
• Bizarreness is a trait that you can attach to your visuals to make remembrance more dramatic. The more bizarre the pictures are, the better the remembrance.
• Even though you want bizarreness, the images you use must be original and familiar. This is important to the brain since original and familiar stuff gets encoded easily within the brain. It also has a quicker retrieval rate.

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