PPT - Powerful Presentation Techniques

Presentation Zen Author Garr Reynolds Presents for Authors@Google

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Hat Tip to Branding Blog for the YouTube video.

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.

Upcoming Presentation - Enhancing Your PowerPoint Presentations

I'll be conducting a web seminar for Magna Publications early next year.  The web seminar is part of a series of live and online presentations that Magna offers to the higher education market.  My seminar "Enhancing Your PowerPoint Presentations" would be of interest to faculty in higher education that are looking for tips and techniques to bring their presentations from boring to engaging using PowerPoint. 

You can hear a preview audio clip of the presentation (Download magna_ppt_presentation_preview_clip.mp3 ).  If you are interested in this specific web seminar, please contact Magna Publications for further details and pricing information.

If you'd like to talk to me about your organization's presentation training needs using web seminars or other live training sessions, please give me a call in the United States at 608 255 4092 or via e-mail.

I'm also available for keynotes on presentation skills and PowerPoint, executive coaching on presentation skills and for reviewing your current PowerPoint strategies for internal and external audiences.

Paul J Gibler

Webcast - How to Prevent PPT Overload

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending a webcast sponsored by Microsoft's Leadership Forum titled "How to Prevent PowerPoint Overload" presented by Cliff Atkinson from Sociable Media.  Cliff is the author of Beyond Bullet Points, Microsoft Press, 2005.

Cliff did a great job of presenting some research data, tips and techniques to make your PPT presentations more effective. 

Among the research that he referenced was data from Richard E. Mayer, an educational psychologist and author of Multi-media Learning, that claims that learning retention increases by 69% when extraneous information is removed from the screen and that transferance or the ability to make use of the information increased by 105%.  His research also shows that retention increased by 28% when the presenter does not read the information on the slide and that transferance increased by 79%.  All the more reason not to read your slides!

Presentation Zen had a blog posting on this topic early last month.

Cliff's premise is that a presentation and presenter should see their role as a storyteller.  As a storyteller, Cliff suggests that presenters follow a 3 step process to craft an engaging story:

1. Write a script
2. Storyboard the script
3. Produce the script in an engaging fashion

Cliff used storytelling during this presentation with some excellent metaphors like the eye of a needle, through which the story has to get from the presenter to the audience without overloading short term memory.  He suggests that you use your slides with the title summarizing the story, the visual illustrating the story and the notes as your narrative to tell the story.  This ties in nicely with Mayer's research on their being two key learning channels - auditory and visual.  Cliff suggests that reducing overload between these two channels enhances learning.