PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Beyond Bullet Points 3rd Edition: Conversation with Cliff Atkinson

  Cliff Atkinson is an acclaimed writer, popular keynote speaker, and an independent consultant to leading attorneys and Fortune 500 companies. He designed the presentations that helped persuade a jury to award a $253 million verdict to the plaintiff in the nation’s first Vioxx trial in 2005, which Fortune magazine called “frighteningly powerful.” Cliff’s bestselling book Beyond Bullet Points was named a Best Book of 2007 by the editors of Amazon.com, and it expands on a communications approach he has taught at many of the country’s top law firms, government agencies, business schools and corporations.

In this interview, Cliff discusses the release of the third edition of this book, Beyond Bullet Points.

Geetesh: Now in its third edition, your book “Beyond Bullet Points” has been such a big success – tell us more about what it means to move beyond bullet points?

Cliff: In the conventional approach to presentations we tend to create lists of facts, and simply show and tell those to our audiences thinking that will get the results we want. Time and experience shows that this approach falls flat, when our audiences walk away bored, confused and frustrated. Moving beyond bullet points means tapping into the power of story structure to make an emotional connection with your audience at the start, and then making your main points as clearly and memorably as possible.

Cliff: In the conventional approach to presentations we tend to create lists of facts, and simply show and tell those to our audiences thinking that will get the results we want. Time and experience shows that this approach falls flat, when our audiences walk away bored, confused and frustrated. Moving beyond bullet points means tapping into the power of story structure to make an emotional connection with your audience at the start, and then making your main points as clearly and memorably as possible. This shifts our approach from using PowerPoint as a typewriter for our notes, to using the same tool as a filmmaker uses a storyboard to tell a story visually.

Geetesh: What’s different in this third edition compared to the older releases of your book?

Cliff: Where the second edition was a major revision of the first, the third edition is a streamlined version of the second, featuring new presentation examples that show you the BBP approach in action.

Geetesh: Do the users who move go back to their old way of using PowerPoint?

Cliff: Anyone who wants to use PowerPoint more effectively has to face the reality of PowerPoint culture – even if you manage to tell a clear story and get to the point, your boss may say “That’s fine, but that’s not the way we do things here, so put the bullet points back.” In the face of a particularly strong PowerPoint culture, people are finding success when they shift focus away from the slides and to the results of the slides. When one presenter used BBP in the courtroom and told a powerful story while his opponent used dry bullet points, he got the results he wanted – a dramatic verdict in his favor.

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: Books, Interviews, PowerPoint

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Drawing a Perfect Circle

Drawing shapes in PowerPoint is drop-dead easy with the vast repertoire of readymade shapes available in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac. You can easily insert these shapes with a click or two, but some tricks can help you take these shapes further — in this tutorial, I’ll show you how you can draw a perfect circle.

Learn how to draw a perfect circle in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

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

Learn PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: Insert an Organization Chart

First of all, an organization chart in PowerPoint 2010 is not another option on the Insert tab of the Ribbon. It is just one of the many variants of SmartArt graphics you can insert in your slide in PowerPoint 2010 (and PowerPoint 2007). An organization chart graphically represents the management or hierarchical structure of an organization. If you want to illustrate the reporting relationships in your company or organization, you can create a SmartArt graphic using the Organization Chart variant.

Learn how to add an organization chart in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: Org Chart, PowerPoint 2010, SmartArt, Tutorials

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: File Types that can be Opened

We already learned about the file types PowerPoint 2011 for Mac can save — but when you go and look at the file types that PowerPoint 2011 can open, you’ll find that the list of file types is not exactly the same. Several file types may be common — when you access the Open dialog box in PowerPoint 2011, you can choose the file type you want to open.

Learn about various file types which can be opened in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

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

MightyMeeting: Conversation with Dmitri Tcherevik

Dmitri Tcherevik is the CEO and founder of MightyMeeting, a mobile collaboration and social sharing company. Prior to starting MightyMeeting, Dmitri was the CTO at FatWire, the largest independent web experience management company. FatWire acquired Infostoria, an Enterprise 2.0 company that Dmitri started after he left Computer Associates, where he was responsible for technology strategy and a number of innovative products and initiatives.

In this interview, Dmitri discusses MightyMeeting, and how end users can benefit from this mobile meeting platform.

Geetesh: What exactly is MightyMeeting, and what possibilities does it present to the end users?

Dmitri: MightyMeeting is a mobile presentation tool for every smart phone or tablet user. It is often used for presenting on-the-go, sometimes at a moment’s notice.

Users can put their presentations and demo videos in the cloud and access them anywhere from any device. One can connect a mobile device to a projector and present to a room full of people. One can also start an online meeting and present to the whole world directly from a smart phone or tablet.

MightyMeeting is popular with executives, entrepreneurs, sales people, college professors, doctors, and other professionals who need to present when away from the office.

Our focus on mobility and the mobile user differentiates MightyMeeting from other web conferencing services, such as WebEx, GoToMeeting, and others.

While other services may have iPhone or iPad applications, the reach of their technology is limited by the legacy infrastructure that was designed for fast and reliable office networks. For instance, many such apps can be used to attend a meeting but cannot be used to host a meeting or share a presentation from a mobile device.

In contrast, we built MightyMeeting from the ground up to work with mobile devices and unreliable wireless networks. Dropped calls and slow networks are not exceptions. They are part of the picture. This makes a big difference.

Geetesh: MightyMeeting works with existing technologies such as PowerPoint, iPhone, etc. – can you tell us more about these features?

Dmitri: MightyMeeting is available for the iPhone, iPad, TouchPad, and a range of Android phones and tablets. We also offer a lightweight HTML-only web application that runs on any device with a web browser.

When a user creates a free account on our site, they receive a unique email address. MightyMeeting users upload presentations by simply emailing them to this address from any device or any application. In a matter of minutes, a presentation is available to be viewed online or shared in a meeting. Presentations can be emailed in Microsoft PowerPoint or Adobe PDF format.

We also make it super easy to join an audio conference. There are no dial-in numbers or passcodes to remember. You tap one button, and MightyMeeting calls your phone and joins you into the meeting. This feature will be making its debut on the TouchPad next month, when the device is launched by HP.

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, iPad, iPhone, Online Presentations, PowerPoint