PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

YawnBuster Connect: Conversation with Seema Chaudhary

Seema Chaudhary helped establish the US headquarters of Harbinger Group in Redmond; created innovative and effective marketing campaigns to launch several products in the international market; and developed crucial long-lasting relationships with prominent and influential experts in the e-Learning industry.

In this conversation, Seema discusses YawnBuster Connect.

Geetesh: What exactly is YawnBuster Connect, and what does it do?

Seema: Last week we released YawnBuster Connect, which comprises our next generation of online audience response systems (ARS). YawnBuster Connect will allow teachers, trainers and business presenters to easily and affordably engage and interact with their audience.

The product is a cutting-edge ARS that combines YawnBuster, our award-winning presentation software, into a new program. The advanced response system lets presenters and speakers collect, view and instantly share audience responses in real time without the need for traditional audience clicker pads or any software installation for viewers.

YawnBuster Connect works for both online meetings and webinars as well as in-person seminars and lectures. Attendees need just a mobile device or a laptop to become an active part of the session. The audience can interact with the presentation by simply visiting a URL on their mobile phone or laptop’s web browser.

For presenters, YawnBuster Connect is a significant step forward from what has been available until now. Traditional hardware-dependent audience response systems – slammers or clickers that look like a remote control – are very expensive and are limited to only face-to-face meetings, and software keypads can only be used in virtual meetings.

Geetesh: What is unique about YawnBuster Connect, and is it available as a subscription or one-time purchase?< Seema: YawnBuster Connect truly connects presenters to their audiences like never before. The system not only allows presenters to adapt their material as they go along to make it more relevant for viewers, but they can review reports afterwards to improve their presentations the next time.

Our goal was to provide a cutting-edge ARS that is powerful and yet simple to use. We think we’ve done just that with YawnBuster Connect. Because it’s so easy to operate, teachers and other presenters can focus on what they do best – present the content, rather than spend their time managing the hardware or software part of an audience response system.

Every YawnBuster Connect session is given a unique id and a unique URL, which the presenter can show on the big screen in the room or via web meeting software. The attendees can answer questions, participate in a poll or game, and even type in free-form text to chip in with their opinions.

YawnBuster Connect is available in a periodic subscription model from the YawnBuster website.

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: Add-in, Interviews, PowerPoint

Learn PowerPoint 2010: Working with Guides

You have learned how to make guides visible on your PowerPoint slide, and how you can add multiple guides in PowerPoint 2010. You can consider guides as grids that can be moved, added, or deleted. Guides has snap options turned on by default — so you cannot turn snapping to guides on or off. Once the guides are made visible on the slide, all objects that venture close enough to them snap. Along with rulhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifers and gridlines, guides help you position your slide objects with more precision

Learn how the guides work in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

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

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Slide Sorter View

Probably the most used editing view after Normal view is the Slide Sorter view which displays thumbnail sized representations of all slides in your presentation. To access the Slide Sorter view, you can choose either of these options: Click the Slide Sorter button on the status bar, or choose the View | Slide Sorter menu option. Here are some guidelines for selecting slides in Slide Sorter view.

Learn about Slide Sorter view in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

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

Duarte Diagrams: Conversation with Nancy Duarte

Nancy Duarte has been a Principal of Duarte Design since 1990. Her firm is in the heart of the Silicon Valley and the client list is loaded with Fortune 500 companies. Her passion for business communications that are clear, meaningful and attractive has opened doors for her in a business world full of cluttered and complex visual communications.

In this conversation, Nancy discusses the several diagrams that Duarte is creating as part of the Duarte Diagrams initiative.

Geetesh: Tell us more about the ten free Duarte diagram slides that you are giving away.

Nancy: My firm is in the process of creating an application that has 3,000 diagrams similar to the ones we gave away. Giving 10 of them away (link no longer exists) was a test in a sense to see if people thought they were valuable.

Based on responses, we can’t wait to launch our new app this winter!

Geetesh: How can diagrams like these help audiences and presenters visualize better?

Nancy: Many times in business we use text to describe relationships. Many business relationships are invisible. Like what it looks like if your department needs to merge with another, how your software products fit together in a suite, what the status of a project is, how your team works together. What you’re really talking about are things that connect, things that flow, things that merge, things that overlap. The best way to visualize information like that is through diagrams. It helps your audience visualize how your pieces of information relate to each other which will help your audience both remember and understand your content.

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Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Design, Duarte Design, Graphics, Interviews, Nancy Duarte, PowerPoint

Ribbon Hero 2: The Indezine Review

Ribbon Hero 2 is an interactive game for Microsoft Office 2010 and 2007 for Windows (Word, PowerPoint, Excel and now OneNote) designed to help you boost your knowledge and skills in using Office applications. Ribbon Hero 2 is the new version of the game and is upgraded with new animations, multiple levels, upside-down Clippy, and a ton of useful Office features.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Read the Indezine review of Microsoft’s free Ribbon Hero 2.

Filed Under: Reviews
Tagged as: Add-in, PowerPoint 2007, PowerPoint 2010, Review