One saturday morning I had a funny idea for a presentation, so I took the time until noon to create these slides. The idea came to me, when I thought that Einstein is quoted a lot, and many of his quotes revolve around similar themes, e.g. life, science, ethics. What if I can connect all the quotes? So I did that. In the presentation you will see a series of quotes - and starting at the second quote, every quote contains a phrase from the previous quote. [click to continue…]
Caution: Lots of buzz words in this post!
I just discovered this really cool geeky tool to create stunning presentations, it’s called Prezi. In essence, it’s a presentation tool with which you can move around on one big slide. So instead of changing slides, you just move from one spot to the next, zooming in, zooming out, turning (I imagine you can easily do some cool motion typography with this thing). I suppose you can do most of the things with Flash as well. But then again, you can also update each other via Facebook, but people still use Twitter. So who knows. [click to continue…]
Often enough I will see a presentation where on the 3rd or 4th slide I will see a table of contents with 6 or 7 bullet points and I think to myself: “Sigh, I hope I can stay awake”. People will try to cram as much information as possible into a presentation, the problem is, the listener will probably remember only a little bit of it. If the presenter has 6-7 equal points that he or she wants to talk about, I will most likely remember 1 or 2 points only. And every other listener will probably remember different points. [click to continue…]
There’s a new website based on the TED conference, the web site is called TEDify. I’m not sure what the long-term aim is, but the first 2 articles include video mashups of several speakers (mashup just means different parts of talks are cut together) that is shown via motion typography (”moving text”).
This is one of my favorite YouTube clips on presentation. If you haven’t seen it yet, take an evening to go through the 72-minute clip. It’s really insightful, especially since the second half of the clip is in Q&A Format. I’d suppose usually you would have to pay a bundle to get this sort of material! Thanks Talks@Google, thanks Garr. [click to continue…]
In this presentation I have listed 3 quick fixes which you can use in order to significantly improve the presentation slide design in a very short amount of time. Hope you enjoy the (slide)show! [click to continue…]
The Power of restraint
It’s not rare that rules and limitations will spark creativity. Being bound by limits that you cannot cross, one tries to use all the creativity possible within those limits. And it’s sometimes really exciting to witness what comes out of this. Just look at the Webby Awards speeches that are limited to 5 words – some people get very creative, e.g. the fashion site style.com chose the words “Guess we’re still in fashion.” (awesome, I think) or Stephen Colbert with “Me, me, me, me, me!!!” (wouldn’t have expected anything else!). How about the new micro-blogging Twitter culture (or should I call it Twulture?) that limits the messages to 140 characters at a time. Who would have thought [click to continue…]
This YouTube video clip is from a so-called life coach; the presenter shows that PowerPoint is a tool and not the presentation itself and she shows it in a strong and funny way, that’s why I’ve decided to included it in my blog. This 3-minute clip is about how PowerPoint and how it is not the enemy, but the way people use it makes it work against the presenter. Have a quick peek if you have some spare time! [click to continue…]
Images are important for presentation slides, they invoke emotions, they are excellent visual aids and there are plenty of them on the internet. But using Google Image search or just downloading some photos from Flickr might get you into trouble because they have different licenses and for most of them you will probably have to ask the owner for permission (and hope that they write back). [click to continue…]
Geoff asks: Should I be using headings/titles in my slides? I’d like to see your view on this, I’m currently fence-sitting on this issue.
Hi Geoff, thanks for your question. Like so many questions there is no easy yes/no answer to this one. My preference is to start with a blank white page and work with that. You can use up the whole space that is provided by PowerPoint (or Keynote) and utilize it fully for your photos or other visual aids.
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Tired of presenting all day long? Here’s a short video clip from one of my favorite tv shows The Office (UK version) to lighten your mood :-).
Some people somehow have the ability to make a 90-minute presentation. I think my longest good presentation was 25 minutes. I’ve had some longer presentations, but unless they have an interactive component or a workshop atmosphere, they’re usually quite boring. Even talk show hosts will only have a 10-minute monologue before they will have other elements (such as talking with the band or in the third segment of their show they will conduct an interview). [click to continue…]
Presentations sometimes being somewhat of a serious (but really fun!) subject, I’ll try to sprinkle in some things from the “Lighter Side of Presentations”. Here’s a funny clip from YouTube that I found ages ago. If you have a few minutes to spare, make sure to take a look :-).
The handout is an amazing thing. It frees your mind, it (can) improve your slides, it makes your audience happy! How so, you ask? Well, writing a handout with the main points of your talk summarized in one page, including references (and maybe links to further reading material) and your contact data relieves you of the necessity of writing down everything on your slides. So your presentations are de-cluttered and you don’t have to have that much “stuff” and text on your slides. And should it accidentally happen that you forgot to say something during the presentation… hey - it’s in the handout! [click to continue…]
Neha asks: Sometimes I just get time of only one day to draft an entire presentation. I would like to ask for your help on how to make presentations if I only have a day to create it.
Hi Neha, thanks for your question. Well, if you only have one day to work on it, I’ll admit, it’s a challenge to create a great presentation, but it’s not impossible. The first thing you need to do is prioritize the preparation time. Where do you want to invest the time to create the presentation? Under such short time pressure I would suggest using three steps:
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