PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Successful Preparation is the Basis for a Successful Presentation

By Ellen Finkelstein

In this guest blog post, Ellen explains why you need to prepare for any successful presentation.

When you find out that you need to give a presentation, you need to prepare. Here’s a condensed list of preparation steps:

1. Complete a planner form: It should include your goal, main points, and conclusion.
2. Brainstorm ideas for the presentation: Then hone your ideas into 3 main points.
3. Research your audience: Find out what your audience needs/wants to know. What is their current level of knowledge and interest? What problems are they experiencing?
4. Figure out how long your talk should be: Let’s say that you’ve been given 30 minutes to present. Set up and say hello to everyone=5 minutes. Leave 10 minutes for questions and answers. After the Q&A, ask for approval, say thank you and pack up=5 minutes. That gives you 10 minutes to present!
5. Get the supporting data you’ll need: It’s important to back up what you say, so do the research!
6. Write out your talk.
7. Speak out your talk: Record and time it.
8. Listen and edit: Ask yourself if the presentation sounds convincing and professional. Did you leave anything important out or put too much in? Will this meet the wants/needs of the audience?
9. Storyboard the presentation: A storyboard is a bunch of boxes, each representing a slide. Use the Tell ‘n’ ShowSM Method. Just write each new concept or thought as the title of a new slide. Then sketch out a graph, diagram, or photo that will show your point. All-text slides will hinder your audience from understanding and remembering what you say; they aren’t very persuasive either, according to research.
10. Get approval from your boss, if necessary.
11. Open PowerPoint and create your slides: I won’t go into detail here about design, but you can get part of this knowledge — slide layout — in the free trial of my Outstanding Presentations Course. View a 1-hour training video on slide layout.
12. Put the text of your notes in the Notes pane and print out Notes pages to use for practicing. If you need notes to present with, create a condensed version, so you won’t be tempted to read. (boring!!)
13. Practice often: Do your first practice in front of the computer. Do your second practice standing up and get feedback from colleagues, if possible: ask your test audience what they understood and remembered. Do a third practice in the final location with a projector, if possible: This is your dress rehearsal. Practice until you think you’re ready!

Ellen Finkelstein is a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP and author of several PowerPoint, Flash, and AutoCAD books.

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: Guest Posts
Tagged as: Guest Post, Opinion, PowerPoint, Presentation Skills

Learn PowerPoint 2010: Edit Points for Shapes in PowerPoint

When you use any of the shapes available in PowerPoint, you are not limited to what their default appearance looks like. You may want to change a rectangle to a rhombus, or even edit a curved or freeform line differently. The good news is that you can do this by using the Edit Points option — this almost makes PowerPoint a drawing program that provides you the option to play with vertexes (points), handles, etc. — very similar to what you would do in Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW.

Learn how to reshape a shape in PowerPoint 2010 by using the Edit Points option.

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

Neuxpower NXPowerLite 5: The Indezine Review

NXPowerLite 5 is the newest version of Neuxpower’s file optimizer product that we have reviewed in the past. Like in the past, NXPowerLite 5 reduces the size of PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, JPEG images, and PDF files (PDF is new for this version). All the optimized files retain their original format, with almost no loss of quality.

Read the Indezine review here.

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

Learn PowerPoint 2010: Advanced Shadow Effect Options In PowerPoint

In this series of tutorials on Shape Effects in PowerPoint 2010, you have already learned to apply a shadow effect to a shape. This detailed tutorial goes beyond the default options, and shows you how you can work further with shadow effects.

Learn how you can work with advanced Shadow effect options in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

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

VaySoft PPTX to EXE Converter: The Indezine Review

Many users like you share their PowerPoint files in their native PPTX (or older PPT) formats — yet not many realize that these files can be converted to EXE files with custom splash screens. I need to add here that many such EXE files still need PowerPoint or the PowerPoint Viewer to be installed on your system — and that holds true for the product I am reviewing today as well. VaySoft’s PPTX to EXE Converter creates EXE files that automatically check whether Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, 2010 or the PowerPoint Viewer 2010 is installed on your user’s computer.

Read the review here.

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