From the category archives:

Powerpoint

5 steps to effective Powerpoint Presentations

November 25, 2008

Stepcase Lifehack just published a blogpost on tips for more effective PowerPoint presentations. I was surprised to see some outdated and unhelpful advice. Here are my five steps to create an effective PowerPoint presentation. I’ve written about many of these steps before, so I’ve provided links to more detailed posts if you’d like more information. [...]

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Are you stuck within the Overhead Projector Paradigm?

November 22, 2008

In the days of overhead projectors, we’d slide a piece of paper down the transparency to reveal information step-by-step. That’s the Overhead Projector Paradigm. When you’re stuck in this paradigm, you’re not using the full power of PowerPoint. What are the signs that you’re stuck in the Overhead Projector Paradigm? You bring on elements one-by-one [...]

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5 ways bullet-point slides damage your brand

November 16, 2008

Your presentation style is part of your personal brand. If you’re still clinging to bullet-point slides, it doesn’t matter how dynamic you are as a presenter, your personal brand will be damaged. That’s because when you use bullet-laden slides in your presentation, your audience will make five decisions about you and your presentation: 1. This [...]

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New scientific evidence for banning bullets from your PowerPoint slides

October 17, 2008

Many of us know intuitively that having lots of bullet-points on our slides isn’t effective. But it’s useful to have some scientific evidence to back up that intuition. New research on multitasking may provide that. In the research carried out at the University of Michigan and reported on the NPR website, subjects were asked to [...]

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The 3 steps to creating a PowerPoint Diagram

October 7, 2008

When you see that a diagram might be useful to explain the concept you’re talking about – don’t go straight to PowerPoint. Doing this is as bad as trying to design your whole presentation in PowerPoint. Two things can happen: You try and squish your concept into an unsuitable diagram type. You get caught up [...]

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Robbery at Bullet-Point

October 2, 2008

This is a guest post from Tony Burns, my life-partner and co-trainer at Effective Speaking. Every so often an audacious robbery occurs in full view – yet nobody notices. Late last year, Dublin Police launched a new crime prevention program called Freeflow. On the very same day a lone man drove a truck into Dublin’s [...]

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The Top 10 PowerPoint slides from Slideshare

August 22, 2008

Slidesharing sites like Slideshare and Slideboom are a great place to get inspiration on PowerPoint slide design. You can see different ideas and adapt them for your own presentations. Slideshare is currently running the World’s Best Presentation Contest (see footnote) which has some great examples of PowerPoint slide design. To save you time I’ve picked [...]

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Stop being a slave to your PowerPoint slides

August 16, 2008

In my last post The lost art of notes I suggested that you have your own set of hard-copy notes so that you’re no longer reliant on PowerPoint for your notes. The second step to break free of PowerPoint as your autocue is to have a printout of your PowerPoint slides. The benefits of a [...]

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The lost art of notes

August 14, 2008

In my post The PowerPoint Revolution hasn’t gone far enough I said that PowerPoint should be an equal partner in our presentations. There’s a major obstacle to implementing this principle. That’s using the PowerPoint slides as your notes. If you use PowerPoint as your notes, PowerPoint always cues you. You click, you speak, click-speak, click-speak. [...]

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The PowerPoint Revolution hasn’t gone far enough

August 13, 2008

We’re in the midst of a PowerPoint revolution as more and more people take on the ideas of Cliff Atkinson and Garr Reynolds. That’s great – countless people are being saved from death by bullet-point. But many presenters still see PowerPoint as a visual aid, as an adjunct to their presentation. A take-it or leave-it [...]