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.

  • Timeline Visuals; Issue #278 January 22, 2013

    In a presentation where you have to share with the audience when some events happened or are planned to occur, don’t use a list of dates and descriptions. While accurate, a simple list does not help the audience to understand the time span involved and when the events occur within that timeframe. Instead, use a…… Continue reading

  • Conference call presentations; Issue #277 January 8, 2013

    Last year a client asked me for some ideas on how to effectively present when your audience is attending via conference call. You have sent your presentation to the audience members via e-mail, and now you go through it while the audience listens to your over the phone. As the presenter, you don’t control what…… Continue reading

  • Sharing your presentation online; Issue #276 December 11, 2012

    Recently I offered some ways that you could turn your PowerPoint presentation into a video that could be sent to others or posted to the web (see article here). What if you want to just share the slides without the extra work to add an audio track? In this article, I want to share some…… Continue reading

  • Paperless Handouts; Issue #275 November 27, 2012

    Is it possible to replace the paper handouts we use for our presentations with a more environmentally friendly electronic version that the audience downloads in advance or just before we start? The answer is changing, and right now it would be a “maybe.” Electronic handouts can save money on printing, save the environment by using…… Continue reading

  • Transforming data dump slides; Slide Makeover #75

    It is too easy to jump dump a ton of data on a slide and hope the audience figures out what it means. This makeover shows what can be done with a huge table of data to make it meaningful to the audience. Click here to watch the video on slideshare (home or corporate viewers)…… Continue reading

  • Stand-alone presentations; Issue #274 November 13, 2012

    This summer one of my clients asked me how to make stand-alone presentations effective. They often have to send their PowerPoint file to a prospective client without ever getting the opportunity to deliver the presentation in person or via web meeting. Since PowerPoint slides are supposed to be used to enhance the speaker’s message and…… Continue reading

  • Don’t start with an apology; Issue #273 October 30 2012

    It happens at too many conferences every day. A speaker starts with an apology, and by doing so, sets the wrong tone for their presentation. Apologies destroy your credibility with the audience and put you in the wrong frame of mind, which leads you to not deliver the presentation you had hoped. I see it…… Continue reading

  • Presenting legal/regulatory quotes; Issue #272 October 16, 2012

    Yesterday I spoke to a conference of real estate and legal professionals about how to create more effective PowerPoint slides when giving training sessions. They commonly show quotes or regulations from legal documents in their training sessions. Often presenters end up just reading the text of a paragraph because there doesn’t seem to be any…… Continue reading

  • Repurpose your presentation as a web video; Issue #271 October 2, 2012

    Presentation Tip: Repurpose your presentation as a web video If you read the statistics about online video, you will see that online video is growing dramatically. And it is not just people watching funny cat videos. Executives and professionals are watching video online and making decisions based on the content and quality of what they…… Continue reading

  • Presentation resource: Presenting PowerPoint on an iPhone

    My recommended solution for presenting PowerPoint presentations on the iPad has now come to the iPhone! SlideShark is now available for your iPhone as well as your iPad. Both use the library of presentations that you load to the SlideShark website, so you can access all the presentations on either device, a great time saver.…… Continue reading