I’ve recently read the helpful online book from fellow presentation/blogger colleague Ellen Finkelstein entitled 101 Tips Every PowerPoint® User Should Know and I want to share with you one of her tips - Quickly replace one font with another in your PowerPoint slides:
Choose Format> Replace Fonts. In the Replace box, choose the font you want to replace. In the With box, choose the new font that you want to use. Click Replace and then click Close. (In PowerPoint 2007, choose Home tab> Editing group> Replace> Replace Font. You may get a message asking you to select a [click to continue…]

Q: As I’m doing a corporate presentation, do you think I should put the logo on each slide?

A: This is a tricky question and not easy to answer. Many times, corporations will have overloaded templates that have colored elements and logos on each slide. And oftentimes you will be obligated to use these templates when creating slides.

But in my opinion, big logos and elements will clutter the slides and might get in the way of content. So for [click to continue…]

Then it began. I won’t give you a presentation-to-presentation review, but to give you an idea on what the topics are, here is a short line-up:

The first preentation started and it was about Cologne’s Klüngel Society… nepotism society would be the best phrase to describe it, I think. The person presenting it had written a doctoral thesis about it.

The second presentation was about laughing. Of course, this presentation would already score some points just by having this subject. The actual subject was about how laughing compares to physical activity (crunches / sit-ups) for muscle-building. He showed some clips of people laughing, which then made people in the audience laugh (it took half a minute to [click to continue…]

Today was finally the first Science Slam in Cologne! After anxiously waiting for a couple of weeks for the event to finally take place - right after work I went to this cool event which took place under the tracks of the Cologne Main Station (it’s a really cool location - coincidentally, I have spent some late party nights there in the past few months).

Science Slam is a presentation format, where scientific research (such as a bachelor thesis or a research project) can be presented. The presenter has a maximum of 10 minutes (with an option of a 3-minute extension if approved by the audience) and should show his research/science subject in an entertaining way.

Since I didn’t know how crowded [click to continue…]

This is a guest post written by fellow presentation blogger Ellen Finkelstein from ellenfinkelstein.com who I respect very much. She has published numerous books related to Presentations and Powerpoint. She has also started an initiative to banish bad presentations (read until end).

A recent article in the New York Times, We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint, has brought to the fore (again) the phrase “Death by PowerPoint.” Everyone who attends presentations knows what Death by PowerPoint is, because they’ve experienced it. But presenters often don’t realize [click to continue…]

While I was browsing on the internet on “What’s happening?” in my city of Cologne, Germany, I happened to stumble across the pages of “Science Slam”. Apparently the first Cologne Science Slam is going to take place next week! When I read up on what it’s about on the Science Slam Webpage (German only), I found out it’s about 10 minute presentations on science issues - it’s supposed to be a mixture of technical stuff and humor. Science meets Stand-up comedy, if you will. [click to continue…]

Were you ever in a presentation and thought “What the **** is this person talking about?” That this person is doing a monologue on something completely not of interest for you?

In order to create an effective and stimulating presentation, it’s important that you create a dialogue with your audience. That you ask questions during the presentation. That you get feedback from the audience. That you include the audience in the presentation. This is a great thing to do in order to keep the audience involved and active. This will also increase the effectiveness of your presentation. When creating a dialogue with your presentation, here are 3 tips you should consider [click to continue…]

There’s a new trend that has emerged in the last few years - the slideument. This is a mixed breed of slide and document; you can see it as slides with lots of text or a text document with half-sentences, but it serves neither very well. It’s so common now, that we’ve come to expect slideuments at a regular business presentation and get a printout of the slides after (or worse, before!) the presentation. And the slideuments - full of half-sentences - already have [click to continue…]

Kamara asks

Question
I’m suppose to present the project management plan to the project sponsor. I cant seem to think of a core message but I know the supporting pieces would be to tell about the budget, schedule, scope of the project, risk management, quality management, deliverables and project exclusions.
What would be the core message of such a presentation? [click to continue…]

Today I want to present a short presentation I found on SlideShare regarding simplicity and I’ve been an advocate for using simplicity (e.g. focusing on one core message or reducing clip arts use in presentations). The author has sent me a message quite a while back but I only got around to checking out the presentation quite recently. I liked the presentation, and seems like he’s also one of “Garr’s disciples” judging from the style and some of the contents he’s used. But it is refreshing to see that there is a small wave of people picking up on good design and presentation styles. [click to continue…]

The question is: How do I open/view/edit a PPS file in PowerPoint?

The Simple Answer: PPS files - technically speaking - ARE PowerPoint files. The only difference here is that PPS opens automatically in a different mode and shows you in presentation mode and in full screen. There’s a quick solution to this: In Windows Explorer, just edit the filename from something.pps (or something.ppsx if you have a newer version of Microsoft PowerPoint) to something.ppt (or something.pptx, respectively). [click to continue…]

One of my fellow presentation bloggers Ellen Finkelstein recently found an article from the Guardian on why students are so bored in their lectures. Quite an interesting article, but to no surprise one of the common problems found:

One of the main contributors to student boredom is the use of PowerPoint. [click to continue…]

I’m usually against state-of-the-art, awesome, look-at-what-THIS-can-do slide transitions. Usually they are unnecessary and distract from the content. Even letters flying in to form a word I find very superfluous.

For me, simple, easy-to-digest slide transitions are great. I think unique slide transitions should only be used if they add some sort of value to the slides and the presentation. And this is the case if you want to present something that doesn’t fit into a whole slide. Perhaps you want to show the human anatomy, so maybe you start at the feet, and slide higher to the legs, thighs, abdomen, chest, face. [click to continue…]

People, when faced with the challenge to do a presentation of 5 minutes or less first look in disbelief. Is it possible to fill so much information into a 5-minute-presentation? My answer: Definitely! I have seen many great presentations in 10 minutes or less. And I think the first step to realizing that this is very possible is that we need to let go of the notion that presentations are boring PowerPoint-based 60 minute lectures held in stuffy office rooms. Presentations don’t need to be like that!

Presentations are there to communicate a message. They are not there to show one nice slide after the other. And once that idea has settled in, it is easy to see how presentations can be 5 minutes. [click to continue…]