CUT Newsletter by Dave Paradi of ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com Vol. 5 Issue 6 Mar 21, 2006 Published & Copyright by Dave Paradi
In this issue: Participate in Infocomm Presentation Professional survey Public seminars in Chicago May 31st PowerPoint Tip - Web Presentation Delivery tips New York City meeting/training location recommendation
Infocomm Presentation Professional Survey As part of the Infocomm Presentations Council, I am pleased to open an invitation to all of my subscribers to participate in a survey currently being conducted. I have already participated and I think the survey results will be very interesting to anyone who prepares presentations. Here is the intro from Infocomm: Take a 10-minute survey and learn how you compare with your peers, from the work you do and the expertise you have, to the challenges you face. Are you similar to others, or charting your own course? Find out for yourself in InfoComm International’s Presentation Professional Survey. All participants will receive the survey results by e-mail and their choice of a collection of PowerPoint templates, or a Corel Presentations master or an Apple Keynote theme. And you may win one of five $50 Amazon gift certificates. The survey is available at http://www.surveypro.com/TakeSurvey?id=18853 until April 28, 2006. Contact marketresearch@infocomm.org with questions.
See me live May 31st in Chicago On May 31sy I'll be delivering two short seminars as part of the Medical Marketing Association conference in Chicago. They have agreed to allow any of my subscribers to register for the seminars without having to register for the conference. If you want to get more great ideas on PowerPoint usage, check out the info at: http://www.mmanet.org/program_events/conference.cfm .
PowerPoint Tip - Web Presentation Delivery Tips Last issue I shared some tips for doing presentations remotely. This time I want to focus on tips for a presentation delivery method that is gaining momentum quickly - the web presentation or sometimes called a webinar. I have held these and now have a web meeting facility that I use to train individuals or groups without the expense of travel (e-mail me for more details or visit http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/webtraining.htm). As I defined last time, a webinar is where the audience sees your slides in their browser and listens to you on a conference call. You are controlling the slides while you are speaking on the phone. You do need a service to present in this way and a few of the big names in this market are GoToMeeting, WebEx and Live Meeting. When doing a web based presentation, keep these tips in mind. No matter how fast your connection is or how fast your participant's connection is, there will be a slight delay between when you "push" the slide to the service and when the participant sees it on their screen. This means you need to keep talking on a slide until the next one appears. But how do you know when the participants have got the slide? Here's one trick I use. I connect a second computer in my office to the presentation as a participant. Then, after I change slides, I can glance over at the participant computer to see when the new slide arrives on the screen. This delay in transmission also means that you should refrain from using animation or transitions, as each one will be delayed, causing your presentation to be disjointed, and any movement does not transmit smoothly due to the delays in the system. Take advantage of the polling tools that many of these systems include to take the pulse of your audience before or during the presentation. You may even want to use a poll to determine what topics you cover next if you are using a non- linear delivery approach (to learn more on non-linear delivery, which I think is the next wave in presenting, check out the web tutorial I did on this topic - visit the web page at http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/webtutorials.htm). Finally, most of these services offer an option to record the video and audio together so you have a record of the presentation. Be cautious with this. My experience with a few of these systems suggests that the quality of the recording is far worse than if you record locally using a product like Camtasia. If you have not tried web based presenting yet, or if you do it regularly, keep these tips in mind for a more successful presentation.
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NYC Meeting/Training location recommendation The intensive one-day Think Outside The Slide(tm) workshop last week in New York City was a success, with one participant commenting, "There was not one topic discussed that I will not be able to use to improve my PowerPoint presentations!" And I must say that one factor that contributed to the success was the Coleman Center facility. If you are looking for a top notch meeting facility, I suggest you contact the Coleman Center at http://www.colemancenter.com. Their location is very convenient, they have discounts at local hotels, the rooms have everything you need for a great meeting, the staff is very helpful, the food is superb (and I mean really out of this world) and the pricing approach is more than fair. Highly recommended.
Dave's Travel Schedule 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: April 13 Toronto, ON May 17-18 Chicago, IL May 19-21 Hanover, NH May 31-June 2 Chicago, IL June 9-11 Detroit, MI/Windsor, ON June 16-20 Toronto, ON July 20-25 Orlando, FL E-mail me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com to discuss your upcoming event.
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