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Hands On PowerPoint 2000
by By Konrad King, Review by Libby Albright—NOCCC , libbyincal@mindspring.com - February 22, 2001 at 14:06:47:
Have you been hearing the sound of snoring in the darkened meeting rooms of your company? Businesses are finally cracking down on boring, time-consuming, PowerPoint presentations. Let’s try something unusual, a presentation that clearly conveys ideas and fosters lively interactions instead of catnaps!Conrad King’s book can help you create a shorter, more concise PowerPoint show, putting ideas ahead of pretty graphics. PowerPoint 2000 aids in this process with the new split screen view, which allows you to keep the topic points in sight as you edit slides. However, the techniques King gives you work as well with PowerPoint 97. This thick, 628-page book is a great reference, combining beginning, intermediate and advanced topics.
Dangers Of PowerPoint — A slide show should illustrate, support key verbal points, involve people emotionally or spark intellectual interest. However, some speakers feel every point is important and they must fill screens with text that begins to blur by the 20th of 60 slides. Know that listeners would rather have your voluminous PowerPoint note sheets, nicely formatted, if all those facts are truly important!
Another danger is the startling or jarring technical effects that can displace your ideas. Now, add to these techniques a computer incapable of handling smooth animation transitions. You’ll find that all people remember are the disruptions of irritating, jerky or slow visual effects, if they can bear to watch!
What hazards should you look for when taking a show to another PC? (Unfriendly computers or missing fonts can make hash of your file.) Which is the better alternative—e-mailing a PowerPoint show to the convention, publishing it to the Internet or carrying a laptop? Running the show as a net meeting, instead, can save many hours of wasted airport time.
An Interactive Approach — Insulted audiences have been known to interrupt in self-defense-asking some, any, question just to get to the point. They are angry at time consuming, flashy tricks replacing substance. If you engage the group in a dialogue, responding to questions when they occur with drill-down slides revealing the facts when the group is asking for them, you are established as knowledgeable and concerned with listeners’ needs. Sophisticated looking (but easy) hyperlinks to an Excel or Word file or to other presentations (with a different visual style) can energize the dialogue and satisfy the need for documented, relevant answers.
King describes how to make these hidden slides (“branching slides”) to let you show a subset of slides only when they are needed to answer client concerns. You can use the technique to customize a single presentation, showing only what is appropriate for different occasions. You save time—there is no need to create additional shows.
Have you tried pertinent sound/video files and links to Internet pages? (Those files are saved on your PC, of course, to prevent the typical technical problems of a live Internet connection.) Interaction can continue after the show. Do you get more mileage from your work by e-mailing the file to attendees, after the speech? They might show it back at the home office, as well as listen more closely since they don’t have to take notes! After all, your goal is to affect motivation, not turn listeners into repositories of facts!
King’s instructions for techniques at varying levels of difficulty make it easy for you to graduate to a higher skill level. Few books attempt to cover as much useful information, or offer a CD with demo files.
TIP: In conjunction with this book, go to www.presentations.com for more cool tricks with PowerPoint. While there, sign up for the free magazine-and really blow them away with your next presentation. Jamsa Press Available at local bookstores $34.95
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