PPT - Powerful Presentation Techniques

PPT - Powerful Presentation Techniques Service Offerings

ConnectingDots, Principal Consultant Paul Gibler offers your organization a range of services to improve presentation development, delivery or overall management.  Among the services that are offered are the following:

• Professional Development - presentation and/or PowerPoint skills coaching or training
• Presentation Strategy Assessment & Development - evaluation of presentation templates, slide databases, slide preparation tools, photo libraries and other slide assets.
• Presentation Delivery Assessment - evaluation of individual presenter delivery
• Presentation Guideline Development - creation or enhancement of guidelines for internal and external presenters
• Presentation Skills Keynotes - online or live presentations on best practices in presentation skills or the effective use of PowerPoint.

These services can be customized to meet your organization's needs.  Please review the service offerings description (Download PPT-PowerfulPresentationTechniquesDescriptionRev2.pdf) and contact Paul Gibler for further information.

Quotes Worth Sharing

"It is better to be quotable than to be honest."

Tom Stoppard

Quotes Worth Sharing

"Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done."

Andy Rooney

PowerPoint Nibblets - PPT to Flash, Keynote vs. PPT

PPT to Flash
PowerFlashPoint has introduced a "free" tool to convert PowerPoint 2002, 2003 or 2007 presentations to Flash.  The free version adds a PowerFlashPoint logo to each of your slides according to their recent press release.  The paid version is available for download for $199. 

According to the company one advantage of the software is that it keeps all your special effects while reducing your file size by 98%.

PPT vs. Keynote
PCWorld contributore and expert Franklin Tessler writes about a match-up between PPT 2008 and Keynote 2008.  In the comparison, the author states "PowerPoint has caught up to Keynote in many areas and surpassed it in some".  He also took a look at the Presentation development tools in Open Office, NeoOffice and Google Docs.

Presentation Guideline Attacked

In a recent Sales & Marketing Management column, Communications Consultant John Windsor attacks the "sandwich model" of presentation advice, (i.e. tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them and tell them what you told them) as being among the worst guidelines to follow.  His critique is an interesting one and one well worth evaluating as you think about the structure of your presentations.  Here's what he has to say:

• your signals about what your going to tell them, could lead them to immediately shut you out
• your presentation should be a dialogue not a monologue
• it can lead to "talking down" to your audience rather than engaging them

Quotes worth Sharing

"Good speakers do two things well: they let their personality come through and they have a wide range of emotional expressiveness."

Nick Morgan, "Give a Speech, Change the World"

Photo Resources - SnapVillage, PictureNation and PhotoShelter

I haven't posted on low cost online photography sources for awhile.  One of the newer ones is SnapVillage, a microstock photography company owned by privately held Corbis.  They allow the "amateur" photographer to upload images, select their selling price from $1 - $50 and go to town.  The site allows you to search by price, recency, snappyness and relevance.  Here's a fact sheet on the site.

Another photo resource that I've come across is PhotoShelter.  They also offer a marketplace, although their pricing is significantly higher than SnapVillage.  On a less costly note you can buy web quality photos at UK-based PictureNation on a subscription or per image basis.

I'll be adding SnapVillage to version 8 of my resource listing for presenters.  If you have other photography or presentation related resources that you feel should be part of this resource listing send them to me.

Note: this is one of my photographs taken at the Bean in Chicago last summer.

New Article in Wisconsin Technology Network - Big Brother is Watching

I've written a new article in the ongoing series of Buzz Network articles in Wisconsin Technology Network.  The article "Big Brother is Watching; Privacy Barriers are Falling Down" examines some of the recent government and industry intrusions into consumer privacy along with providing suggestions for ways that businesses can avoid problems with their customer's privacy.

AuthorSTREAM joins the online presentation party

Joining the online slide sharing game is AuthorSTREAM.  The service allows you to upload your PowerPoint presentations and share them on blogs, YouTube or your iPod.  Here's one of the presentations on the site that I found with some striking images.

Quotes worth Sharing

"No more than six words on a slide. EVER."

Seth Godin

Private Beta Launch - SlideRocket, web-based presentations

Tech Crunch reported on the private beta launch of SlideRocket "a presentation app that wants to recreate PowerPoint in the browser and take advantage of the web's sharing and mashup capabilities."  SlideRocket is scheduled to launch this summer. 

I took a look at their online demonstration and capability descriptin to see that they are touting a wide range of features and benefits across a wide range of presentation phases including creation, delivery, managment, analysis and community.  In the demo show they reference the following:

• online libraries for styles and presentation assets
• effects, builds, transitions and animations (including several not available in PowerPoint)
• presentation asset tagging, searching and sorting
• hyperlinks within presentations
• stylizeable charts & graphs
• ability to share presentations online

I've submitted a request to be invited to test out the application and once I have more to report I'll do so here at PPT - Powerful Presentation Techniques.

Paul Gibler