PPT - Powerful Presentation Techniques

Presentation Tidbits - Geeks to the Rescue

ReadWrite Web has an interesting post "Geeks Makes Presentations Fun Again" that references some of the interesting tools that are being used to defeat death by PowerPoint.  Among the techniques referenced are:

• Pecha Kucha (20 slides in 20 minutes - something I've covered before)
• PowerPoint Karaoke (another topic I've covered before)
• Presentation Tennis Using Slideshare

Presentation Design Tennis

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: tennis design)

Audience Interaction with Text Messaging

Many of us have heard of or experimented with audience response systems (ARS) or as a commenter on Techcrunch called them "classroom clickers", to generate interactivity in a presentation.  (see my Audience Response System posting from 2006 for more on his subject)  These systems allow the presenter to integrate polling questions into a PowerPoint presentation while the audience is given a chance to respond through the use of a wireless keypad that is handed out during or prior to the presentation.  While this technology can be a useful way to generate interaction, it also can be expensive given the investment cost in the proprietary software, keypads, wireless access and the time spent familiarizing both the presenter and the audience with the use of the tool in their presentation. 

Now technology has come to the rescue with an alternative to the ARS through the use of a ubiquitous tool that is becoming more and more comfortable for many audiences - SMS messaging or text messaging.  Two interesting solutions that address this technological capability are the integration of Twitter into presentations and the other is SMS polling using a tool like that from SMSPoll.net or PollEverywhere. 

Let's look at these two tools as they specifically integrate into PowerPoint.

KillerStartups referenced SMSPoll.net tool with a quote from the SMSpoll.net web site:

"SMS Poll is the easiest and fastest way to find out what your audience is thinking. Requiring no special hardware or software, you can create a poll in just a few seconds. Your audience votes by sending an SMS to a local phone number and the results are updated right before your eyes, in real-time, in your PowerPoint presentation or on your website.”

Techcrunch technology guru Jason Kincaid featured Poll Everywhere in a recent posting had this to say about the service:

"Instead of using a proprietary device, users simply send a SMS message to a specified number. This data can then be displayed on a dynamic PowerPoint slide, allowing users to watch the results change on the fly."

The limitations to using this type of polling include the  following:

• Although 52% of cell phone subscribers have supposedly used text messaging, there are still many cell phone users, including many high income professionals and older demographic segments who do not have, know how to use or use text messaging
• Text messaging often costs the user, unless they have a cell plan with unlimited text messaging service

Let me know what you think about these services.

iSpring Free PPT to Flash Conversion Test

I decided to test out iSpring Free for creating Flash (.swf) versions of a demo PowerPoint presentation file that I have for showcasing different ways to animate a concept.  The demo is related to some presentation concepts that presenters should be familiar with like the communications process, recency vs. primacy in message recall, etc.

 On my first try with the conversion I left the animations as they were, which was with presenter activated advancement through parts of the animation, while others advanced automatically on a timed basis.I also had some automatic animation slides where the entire animation was timed without presenter intervention. 

With this first file conversion I found that the user activated animations did not convert. 

  I went back into PowerPoint and re-did the animations to automatically advance on a timed basis or else immediately following the prior one and was able to generate a flash file that did a pretty good job of demonstrating the converted files that I was referencing.

The presentation is available for downloading below.  The net result was a positive conversion that creates some flexibiltiy in distributing a compressed PowerPoint presentation as a Flash file.

Download powerpoint_presentation.swf

Awesome animation...

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

The Disgruntled Employee, PowerPoint and Viral Marketing

Philebrity and The Globe and Mail have coverage of a PowerPoint presentation that was put together by a Comcast Customer Service agent explaining the "What doe CQE (Comcast Quality Experience) Really Mean" that highlights some of the significant problems that are being experienced by Comcast customers.  Philebrity actually posts the PowerPoint show, while Toronto's Globe & Mail comments on it.  While the presentation doesn't follow guidelines I'd suggest for an effective live presentation, it certainly serves as a tool for creating a story that you can read about CQE.

This story reminds me of other ways that PowerPoint and YouTube are being used to spread a message of dissatisfaction not only by employees, but even more importantly by customers.  One example of this that I saw several years ago was in a PowerPoint presentation ("Yours is a Very Bad Hotel")that a disgruntled customer created trashing their experience at a specific hotel that was part of a big chain in 2001.  Given that this PowerPoint presentation was created before the days of slide sharing tools like Slide Share and Authorstream the distribution occurred through e-mail and viral marketing of the slide show as it was re-mailed over and over again. 

Two points of interest - 1.) you can still find this PowerPoint presentation by doing an Internet search and 2.) when I gave a presentation in early 2002, I referenced this as an example of "negative viral marketing" and asked if anyone had seen or heard of this presentation.  In that audience of around 100 people 4 - 5 people had heard or seen the presentation.

Do you have examples of how PowerPoint has been used in this fashion that you'd like to share?

New Article published on Wisconsin Technology Network - "Nowhere to hide"

I've written another article for Wisconsin Technology Network in the ongoing series in the Buzz Networks series of columns.  The article "Nowhere to hide: buyer behavior in a connected world" discusses the impact of the Internet on buyer behavior.

Paul Gibler

PowerPoint & Presentation Tidbits - Guides, authorSTREAM, PPT2Flash

TechRepublic author Susan Harkins has a good reminder on using Guides in PowerPoint.  The shortcut of grabbing a guide and using the Ctrl key to replicate the Guide is explained in this recent article .

Mashables reports on how authorSTREAM, an online slide sharing tool like SlideShare now has the capability for direct server-to-server transfer of AuthorSTREAM presentations to YouTube.  In addition to YouTube transfer, the authorSTREAM site refers to the ability to  transfers a presentation format that can be displayed on your iPod.

Conaito offers PowerPoint to Flash conversion software called PPT2Flash SDK.

Enhancing Your Meetings and Conferences With Web 2.0 Tools

Are your meetings and conferences fully utilizing web 2.0 tools to connect and engage with customers?

I had the pleasure of presenting a keynote on ways to incorporate these tools into your meeting armamentarium at the 2nd Annual National Conference on University and College Conference Centers that was held earlier this week in Tuscaloosa, AL. I've posted the slides here using SlideShare to showcase one way that your meetings can be enhanced i.e. osting and sharing your meeting slides using a slide sharing tool like this. Beyond online slide sharing, there are many ways that your meeting and conferences can be enhanced using web 2.0 tools like online video, photo sharing of meeting attendees, blogs, wikis, social network site groups, etc.

If you'd like help with figuring out how to incorporate these concepts into your next conference, drop me a line or call me in the U.S. at 608 255 4092.

Buzz Networks:conference engagement with social computing tools

View SlideShare presentation (tags: social computing conference tools)