PowerPoint Tip: Getting the audience excited before your presentation This is the description for the session I will present at the Annual Conference of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) next month in New Orleans: “Too many HR presentations look like the text of a manual was copied onto the slides. How can you…
Author: Dave Paradi
Handout that is not a slide printout; Issue #184 May 5, 2009
PowerPoint Tip: Handout that is not a slide printout Recently I delivered a one hour concurrent session at a conference. Obviously I can’t deliver the same amount of information in one hour that I can in my customized full-day workshops for organizations. When I do a shorter presentation, I also consider whether I need to…
Being prepared for computer failure; Issue #183 April 21, 2009
PowerPoint Tip: Being prepared for computer failure Last month I had an experience that I wish you never have – my computer operating system got corrupted. Of course, this happened a few days before I flew to Los Angeles to do a post-conference workshop at an association conference. I caused the problem by disconnecting an…
Plan the follow-up to your presentation to increase the impact of your message; Issue #182 April 7, 2009
PowerPoint Tip: Plan your follow-up Is your presentation done when you stop speaking and the audience has left the room? It shouldn’t be. Research published in the book “Brain Rules” by John Medina shows that people remember the information better if they are re-exposed to it after your presentation. This means that your presentation should…
Issue #181 March 24, 2009
PowerPoint Tip: Different uses for the tool PowerPoint is used as a tool to create many different outputs: projected slides, flipbook presentations, reports and even memos. Last week during a session in Los Angeles, I suggested that although there are different outputs from the same tool, there are a number of things that are common…
Handling mistakes on slides; Issue #180 March 10, 2009
PowerPoint Tip: Handling mistakes on slides Last week I made a mistake on a slide and someone noticed during the session. I had typed the 13th of the month instead of the 10th in a visual. How did they know I was wrong? Because the explanatory text on the slide and what I said were…
Issue #179 February 24, 2009
PowerPoint Tip: Using FLV videos in PowerPoint There are two types of video files that do not work well in PowerPoint for Windows: MOV QuickTime files and FLV Flash video files. In a previous newsletter I dealt with how to play QuickTime videos in PowerPoint (if you missed that issue, click here to read it…
Issue #178 February 10, 2009
Don’t misinterpret Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint: In a blog post at http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html, Guy Kawasaki says: “Before there is an epidemic of Ménière’s in the venture capital community, I am trying to evangelize the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes,…
Using Motion Path Animation; Issue #177 January 27 2009
PowerPoint Tip – Using Motion Paths One of the features of PowerPoint that has the potential to annoy the most is the animation feature, where you can make elements of the slide move. It is annoying when the animation does not add to the message being delivered. Having every bullet fly in may look “cool”…
Issue #176 January 13 2008
PowerPoint Tip: What’s in your Deleted Scenes special feature? Recently I was watching a movie on DVD with my family. As with many DVDs today, it included a special feature with Deleted Scenes. As the director usually explains, these scenes were originally shot with the intention of being in the movie, but during the editing…