******************************************************************* Dave Paradi's PowerPoint Tip Issue #130 March 20, 2007 Published & Copyright by Dave Paradi of ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com Circulation 8,542 *******************************************************************
Please forward this newsletter to anyone you know who wants to strategically use PowerPoint visuals to enhance their presentations. If this newsletter has been sent to you by a friend, sign up to get your own copy at http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/newsletter.htm .
******************************************************************* In this issue: Investment Management Session in Toronto April 10th Public Workshop in Toronto April 20th PowerPoint Tip - Ideas for more visuals Best of the Blog - How ambient light affects your slides Dave's Travel Schedule *******************************************************************
Investment Management Session in Toronto
On April 10th I'll be doing a special morning session for the Professional Association of Investment Management Resources (PAICR). Topics will be of interest to those who create or deliver presentations in this industry. The session is open to those in the investment management industry only, so if this describes you, get more details at http://www.paicr.com/events/roundtables.asp . Not in the investment management industry? Forward to this to a friend who is and read the next item for your opportunity to see me live.
------------------------------------------------------------------- Public Workshop in Toronto
Registrations have been rolling in for the public workshop being held in Toronto, ON on April 20th. It is in conjunction with the Health & Safety 2007 conference and will cover key issues such as presentation structure, slide design, best practices for individual slides, using more visual slides, multimedia and delivery. To register, go to http://www.iapa.ca/conference and sign up for the post-conference workshop (you don't have to sign up for the conference to attend the workshop). More details on what my workshops cover is on my site at http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/powerpointseminars.htm .
------------------------------------------------------------------- PowerPoint Tip - Ideas for More Visuals
I have been talking recently to more and more clients about how to get away from text or number filled presentation slides and move towards using visuals to represent the ideas we are sharing. This ranges from sales staff to finance professionals to admin assistants. Today's tip is a web based resource that can help stimulate your thinking about what visual could represent the point you are making.
The web site is a project from some academics who are studying ways to represent concepts visually and it is an interesting site. The specific page I suggest as a resource is at: http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html . This page contains a large number of potential visual ideas organized into categories based on the periodic table of elements (there's the academic influence showing through).
Notice that they have organized the visual methods (as they term them) by color to represent what you are trying to visualize (data, concept, strategy, etc.) and they have added letter colors and symbols to further categorize the methods on the basis of process vs. structure, detail vs. overview and divergent vs. convergent thinking. I know this may seem a little too academic, but stay with me.
By rolling your mouse over any of the boxes in the table, you will see a popup example of the visual relating to that method. It is interesting to see some of these examples. There are some common ones like pie charts, line graphs, venn diagrams and timelines. There are also some less common ones such as the data flow diagram, concentric circles, iceberg and performance charting. Almost all I could see being valuable in certain situations. Spend a few minutes rolling your mouse around the page and consider whether each visual you see could be a good idea for an upcoming presentation.
What's missing is a list of best practices for each of these diagrams. My fear when using diagrams or visuals is the tendency to make them too complicated that the audience can't understand them. That's why in my ebook "Transforming Text Slides into Visual Slides" I demonstrate 15 of the most common situations you will encounter in business and how to take a normal text slide and create a visual slide from it. The ebook also include a list of best practices for each visual so you know how to create it correctly. You can get your copy from http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/transformtext.htm .
------------------------------------------------------------------- Best of the Blog - How ambient light affects your slides
At a recent conference I realized the impact that ambient light can have on how the audience views your slides. It was a small conference, about 50-60 people in all and the room had two sides with windows. At the start of the day, it was bright outside and the room was bright because of the light coming in from the windows. The white background of the speaker's slides wasn't distracting. Well, during the day, it started to rain and the ambient light coming into the room decreased dramatically. The room lighting wasn't turned up, so what happened is that the white background slides appeared even brighter and drew the focus away from the speaker. It is natural for us to focus on the brightest object in the room and in this case it was the slides on the screen. Because the rest of the room was quite dark, the speaker got almost lost in the background. In "Guide to PowerPoint", we suggest that using a white background is not a good idea for just this reason. I prefer a dark background because it has worked better for me in the varied lighting situations I find myself in when presenting. Consider this the next time you select colors for your slides. Get a copy of "Guide to PowerPoint" at: http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/guidetoppt.htm .
Other recent blog posts at http://pptideas.blogspot.com : Graphics for the jury Are your presentations delivering valuable information?
Thanks for all the great comments about last issue's posting on Presentation Lessons from "An Inconvenient Truth". If you missed it, check out http://pptideas.blogspot.com and look for the link in the list of past postings on the right side of the page.
------------------------------------------------------------------- Dave's Travel Schedule
If you have been sitting through too many presentations that did not relay the key information needed to make critical decisions, you should schedule an in-house or web based seminar or workshop. You can save money by booking me to speak to your organization or conference when I am close to your area for other clients. Here's where I will be in the next few months:
March 22 Mississauga, ON March 29 Huntsville, ON March 30 Toronto, ON April 10 Toronto, ON (2 hr session for professionals in the Investment Management industry only, details at http://www.paicr.com/events/roundtables.asp) April 16 Toronto, ON April 19 Toronto, ON April 20 Toronto, ON (1 day Think Outside The Slide(tm) workshop that you can register for at http://www.iapa.ca/conference ) May 26 London, ON July 6-12 San Diego, CA July 13-16 Los Angeles, CA September 7-9 Winnipeg, MB October 25-26 Huntsville, ON E-mail me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com to discuss how my Think Outside The Slide(tm) sessions can help your organization be more productive and improve communication throughout the organization.
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