Latest posts

Below are the most recent articles or resources I’ve published. If you are looking for help on a specific topics, it would best to look at the topics in my Articles archive as I have grouped my recent and best articles by topic there.

  • Learning from a video of your presentation; Issue #404 December 12, 2017

    When my workshop participants ask how they can improve their presentation skills, I often suggest videotaping a presentation and watching it. You don’t need any fancy equipment these days to do this, your smartphone will give you a good quality video. In presentation skills training they videotape you presenting and a coach reviews it with…… Continue reading

  • 6 ways to save time creating a presentation; Issue #403 November 28, 2017

    As my latest survey indicated, professionals are creating and delivering more presentations each year. In a recent survey of incoming MBA students at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, two-thirds of the respondents said they presented on a daily or weekly basis. If professionals don’t figure out how to create effective presentations more efficiently, they will…… Continue reading

  • Creating a Monthly timeline Gantt chart with Milestones in Excel or PowerPoint

    How do you create a Gantt chart in Excel? You can create a Gantt chart to show project tasks and timelines in Excel using a stacked bar chart. You can include milestones if needed. By using a chart in Excel, when the dates of the tasks change, the Gantt chart is automatically updated. In this…… Continue reading

  • Why it costs so much to professionally “fix up” or “clean up” a PowerPoint presentation

    Every day business professionals look for people to help improve an important presentation they have developed. They’ve created the slides and are looking for someone to “fix them up”. They contact a professional presentation designer and are sometimes shocked at the cost they are quoted. They just need minor changes to their slides, why does…… Continue reading

  • 2017 Gift ideas for presenters; Issue #402 November 14, 2017

    The holidays are just around the corner and if you are looking for a great gift for a presenter in your life, I have some suggestions for you. I regularly get asked what equipment I use, so I’ve put together a list of the items I have found most useful when presenting. With Black Friday,…… Continue reading

  • Significant trends over the last 10 years of the Annoying PowerPoint Survey

    After I released the results of the latest survey on what annoys audiences about PowerPoint presentations, I was asked if there were more insights from a deeper examination of the results. I had already reported on all the results from the latest survey, so I looked back over the last ten years to see if…… Continue reading

  • Showing breakeven analysis; Slide Makeover #89

    Show the breakeven analysis on an investment visually instead of a spreadsheet or table of numbers. Continue reading

  • Creating a Gantt chart with Milestones using a Stacked Bar Chart in Excel or PowerPoint

    When you need an accurate Gantt chart, you can use a stacked bar graph in Excel to create it Continue reading

  • Document or Presentation? How to choose; Issue #401 October 31, 2017

    One of the key results from my latest survey on annoying PowerPoint presentations was that too often professionals are presenting a document on the screen as a presentation. This overwhelms the audience, leaving them confused and upset. Professionals feel they need to include more and more content in their presentations to satisfy the requests of…… Continue reading

  • Another option for diverging bar charts; Issue #400 October 17, 2017

    Use a diverging bar chart to compare two data series that are related Continue reading