In this issue
1. Latest Slide Makeover
2. One-on-one personal consulting
3.
Drawing on top of graphs
4. Have you got your copy of The Visual Slide Revolution yet?
5. From the Blog
One
of the
Top 10 Business Books of 2008
Click on the cover to learn more
Book Dave to do a live program
for your group:
1) Transforming Text Slides into Persuasive Visuals
2) Hands-on Creating Persuasive PowerPoint Visuals
3) Cutting Presentation Preparation Time by Using Content Templates and
Creating a Slide Library
4) Creating and Delivering Effective Web Presentations
Click
here to learn more and book Dave.
Dave's Travel Schedule
February 17
- London, ON (project managers/engineers)
March 10
- London, ON (project
managers/engineers)
March 23
- London, ON (Communicate More Effectively Using PowerPoint public
seminar)
March 24
- Mississauga, ON (Communicate More Effectively Using PowerPoint public
seminar)
March 25
- Ottawa, ON (Communicate More Effectively Using PowerPoint public
seminar)
April 13
- Boston, MA (technology company - tentative)
May 12
- Everywhere (Intercall/ Brainshark webinar)
May 17
- Mississauga, ON (Purchasing managers)
May 27
- Ottawa, ON (DPI-PDW conference)
June 24
- Toronto, ON (Institute of Chartered Accountants)
September 13
- New Jersey (Emergency medicine professionals -
tentative)
Connect with Dave
  
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February is
shaping up to be an exciting month. Tomorrow
I should receive the printer’s proof
copy of my latest book titled 102 Tips to Communicate More Effectively
Using
PowerPoint. I plan
to have it on sale by
the end of the month and will let you know when it is ready for you to
buy. I’ll also be
announcing the start of a series
of public seminars related to the launch of the new book. We start March 23-25 with London,
Toronto,
and Ottawa
and expand from there. Stay
tuned for more details on how to register
and attend.
Latest
Slide Makeover Video
In
too many training and teaching presentations, the definitions of key
terms are read verbatim from text on the slides. This makeover shows
that defintions can be interesting if you connect with the audience and
leave them with a definition they will remember. Click
on the
video below to play it in your browser via YouTube (or watch it on Brainshark or my web
site at
www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/podcasts).
One-on-one
personal consulting to dramatically improve your PowerPoint
presentations – in 90 minutes from the comfort of your office
None of us have the time to do everything on our “would-love-to-do”
list. We are too busy preparing tomorrow’s presentation to be
able to take time to attend a course or read a book on how to improve
our presentations. And besides, those courses and books deal
with generic situations, not the real world you live in. I’m
here to help with a new personal consulting service that gives you the
customized one-on-one attention you are looking for in 90 minutes while
you sit in your office. I am now taking a select number of
appointments to help presenters make a significant improvement in their
slides and their skills. Learn more about this one-on-one
personalized session.
PowerPoint
Tip: Drawing on top
of graphs
Web content is
becoming more and more important to include in our
presentations. Whether it is traditional research we do or
new content like blogs and Twitter, we need to use our access to a
broader range of information to bring the latest perspectives to our
audience. I’ll be doing a program in May for the DPI-PDW
Conference in Ottawa that includes ideas on how to find and incorporate
content from the web. Today’s tip deals with how to
effectively use a graph that you have as an image, whether it is from
the web or an internal source.
The problem with
graphs that are images is that you can’t animate
them. They are a static image and can’t be broken into series
of data like you can with a graph created in PowerPoint. With a
PowerPoint graph, you can build it piece by piece to explain the data
one at a time. A graph image can't be built piece by piece.
You could try to recreate the graph in PowerPoint,
and I have done that on occasion, but some graphs are too complex to
recreate in PowerPoint. So what can you do?
In October last year I showed an effective way to deal with this
situation in one of my slide makeover videos (to see all the
videos, check out my YouTube channel). Some people followed up with me after that video and asked how I had done that makeover, so let me explain.
First, I decided on
the most important point the graph was making. In
the case of the makeover graph, it was about showing a decline in the
measured value over time. In your case it may be a trend line
that shows financial data or it might be one of the lines already on a
graph that you want to highlight as the key focus of the data.
Second, I placed the
graph image on the slide and made it as large as I
could. This may involve cropping out excess room around the
graph or cropping out the title of the graph (since the slide title
will be the headline). After cropping, I can resize the
graph, making sure to hold down the Shift key as a drag a corner handle
so the graph does not get distorted.
Third, I used the
freeform line tool to draw a multi-segmented line
through the data points in the graph to show the trend.
Depending on your need, it may be a simple straight line or another
shape, like a rectangle to go over a bar or column. With this
shape, I can set the color and thickness so it is easy to see.
Finally, I animated
the line so it built in the direction I wanted and
in the sequence I needed to deliver the message.
When you are faced
with using an image of a graph, use these steps to
make your delivery more effective.
Have
you got your copy of The
Visual Slide Revolution Yet?
A reviewer on Amazon.com titled their review of my book "Excellent for every business
professional" and said:
"The concepts in this book are excellent and long overdue in the
corporate world where muddled PowerPoint is the norm. Most PowerPoint
books teach you how to create lovely-to-behold slides that contain very
little data. Paradi tosses that paradigm upside down, with slides that
even the artistically-challenged can create and that are rich with data
- perfect for business managers.
The concepts are clear and practical, and demonstrated with actual
examples from Paradi's consulting and training practice."
"... the content in this book is better than you'll find in books like
Beyond Bullet Points or Your PowerPoint Sucks..."
"Bottom line is this
deserves a place on every business professional's bookshelf."
If you haven’t got your copy yet, go to www.VisualSlideRevolution.com
today.
From
the Blog at PPtIdeas.blogspot.com:
Training sessions don’t need to be boring
How will the iPad impact corporate
presentations?
See all
blog posts and add
your comments at http://pptideas.blogspot.com
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