Life by PowerPoint

My study of presentation design began in 2007.  The first books I read were Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds and Slide:ology by Nancy Duarte.  Both these books focused on slide design, so, to apply what I was learning I began to re-work the slides I use in my corporate presentations. This led me to discover the many capabilities of PowerPoint. (I believe that most people use the templates provided and do not have the time or opportunity to explore the vast array of options available to them.) I discovered that PowerPoint is such a useful/powerful tool that I began to use it to do posters and promotional materials for a… Read More

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What is the cost of a presentation?

“You get taught a lot of things in the world of business, but presenting is rarely one of them” Terry O’Reilly – CBC Under The Influence Presentations can persuade, inspire, enlighten or clarify, OR they can have no impact at all, and even waste the most precious resource – time. What if, at a corporate meeting, there are 400 employees each with an average wage of $30 per hour who attend an hour long presentation. The “cost” of this presentation in terms of time is $12,000 (number of employees x hourly wage).  What if the main point or message of the presentation isn’t communicated effectively?  Then the organization did not get value… Read More

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“_______, we have a problem.”

Should the name of your organization fill in the blank? On April 14th, 1970 during the Apollo 13 mission, astronaut Jack Swigert uttered the famous words “Houston, we’ve had a problem”.  In the movie Apollo 13 (1995) it was changed to “Houston we have a problem”.  Either way you word it, I think that many organizations may have a presentation problem. This was highlighted to me earlier this summer.  I had the opportunity to give a presentation skills workshop to a group of corporate communications professionals.   Before the session I sent out a pre-workshop questionnaire (see my previous post). The response rate was excellent – 21 of 35 people responded.… Read More

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