Comfort Zones are Overrated
This is the greeting that I offered in the published proceedings from last year’s conference. In the run-up to this year’s Presentation Summit, we think it makes for interesting reading…
My daughter Jamie is a capable and confident softball player, having just completed a third consecutive all-star season. This fall, she tried out for a competitive traveling team, comprised of highly-skilled eighth- and ninth-graders, and in her own words, “I used to be one of the best players on my team—now I suck.”
I’m not sure if she was angling for sympathy, but if so, she didn’t get any from her dad. I think this is one of the best things that she could have possibly done. The humility, the wake-up call, and the realization that she now has to work harder will all serve her well. Perhaps we’ll look back and see that the comfortable little bubble of being the big fish in a small pond was holding her back.
We aren’t suggesting that you use the S word to describe your proficiency with presentation development, but we love to watch our patrons leave their own comfort zones. “I can’t believe I called myself advanced when I signed up,” one woman said last year. “There is so much I don’t know. Can I please change that to beginner?”
Oh, the parallels I can draw, watching Jamie bunt for the first time. She can’t just stick the bat out there any longer; now she has to read the motion of the shortstop to determine where to bunt the ball. Now she can’t just hit; she needs to know how to hit the ball to the right side of the infield to move a runner from second to third. Now she must know to hit the cutoff or throw through to a base. She had no clue about any of that before she was pushed.
Lest you think you have signed up for boot camp or something, we won’t bark at you as Jamie’s new coach does. We find that our patrons supply their own motivation to further their skills, and we consider it pure joy to be witnesses to it. We love watching you make your first custom show, identify an “audience-centric” message, post your slides online for sharing, and a couple hundred other pearls and nuggets that together we will uncover across these four days.
So many in the presentation community are content with the skillset they have now, comfortable knowing that they meet their deadlines and perform their tasks.
Comfort zones are overrated. Stepping outside the box is where the action is, and we are so incredibly pleased and grateful that you have chosen to take that journey with us.
We promise to make you dizzy with new ideas and to encourage you to rethink everything you took for granted about presentation design, creation, and delivery. And we promise to do it without once telling you that you suck or making you run the bases blindfolded.
Top Ten Reasons to Attend the Presentation Summit
With apologies to David Letterman, here is the Top Ten List of reasons to attend the 2010 Presentation Summit, the preeminent conference for presentation professionals, to be held Oct 17-20 in beautiful and sunny San Diego.
1. INCREDIBLE LEARNAGE: You can’t possibly imagine how much you’ll learn at this conference, with dedicated tracks of seminars for PowerPoint technique, presentation design and delivery, and our Special Delivery track, focusing on all forms of presentation delivery. Check out the schedule of seminars.
2. UNPARALLELED EXPERTISE: It’s one thing to know PowerPoint; lots of people know that. It’s another thing to know about creating a compelling presentation; far fewer people know that. And it’s yet an altogether different thing to be able to teach these concepts; only a select few know how to do that. How few? Let’s see…Nancy Duarte, Garr Reynolds, Rick Altman, Julie Terberg, Carmen Taran…what a coincidence, they’re all on the conference team…
3. AWESOME HELP: The conference’s Help Center is quite simply the finest opportunity for support with presentation software and technology anywhere on the planet. It’s free, it’s drop-in, it’s all hands-on, and it’s open from morning ‘til night. Some come to the conference just for the Help Center.
4. BECOME PART OF A COMMUNITY: At the Presentation Summit, you do more than learn; you develop contacts within the presentation community that you’ll keep for the rest of your career. When you put 200 passionate people together under one roof, the bonds created go way beyond that of a webinar, a discussion forum, or a faceless trade show. People who have met at our conferences have gone into business together, hired one another, visited each other during trips, and have even married.
5. MEET THE DEVELOPERS: Microsoft’s PowerPoint development team never misses this event. They take copious notes, they schedule late-night schmooze sessions, and they attend all of the seminars. They know the value of having so many earnest users of their product together at once and they place extraordinary value on your input.
6. THE EXPO: You’ll be the kid in the candy store when you visit the Summit Expo on Tuesday of conference week. Over a dozen vendors, all of them offering goods and services dedicated to the presentation marketplace. Lots of show specials, lots of giveaways, lots of opportunity to meet the people who make the products that make your life easier as a presentation professional.
7. SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL: This is not a huge, faceless trade show — nobody enjoys attending those. The Summit limits enrollment to 225 so everyone is assured of receiving personal attention. Conference organizers are experts at hosting events of this size — they know exactly the type of programming and scheduling that fits.
8. YOU RUN THE PLACE: You pick and choose which seminars to attend; you do not have to commit to any one track ahead of time and you can cross tracks at will. Furthermore, several of the sessions could feature you! Submit work that you are particularly proud of or believe needs work and you could find yourself being showcased or made over. Sign up for the Trivia Contest and you could be part of a team participating in a unique blend of Jeopardy and Family Feud. Sign up early and you could venture out for an exclusive digital photography field trip to a San Diego landmark.
9. YOU WILL BE WELL FED: You’ll get robust continental breakfasts each morning and a fully-catered sit-down lunch on Monday and Tuesday.
10. YOU’LL HAVE AN AMAZING TIME: The Presentation Summit is like summer camp for adults; you would not have thought it possible to have such a good time at an event where you also learn so much. With relaxing meals where you don’t have to scurry out to the restaurant, evening socials, and a fabulous resort hotel perfectly situated on San Diego’s Mission Bay, you will remember the four days that you spend with your colleagues probably for the rest of your life.
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Why the Summit is Different (video)
How to convince the boss to let you attend
Images by Committee
There will be times in the life of any content creator when the desired image doesn’t exist and needs to be created. Those are the times when it’s good to know about objects—photographic images that consist only of a central foreground object, removed entirely from its background.
Our quest is to create an image of a healthy woman working out. Despite scouring all of my standard stock photo houses, we were not able to find the perfect image. But we did find the perfect woman:
She is an object; she has no background. And once we imported her into our image-editing program of choice, with one click of the automatic selection tool, we had her being sent out as a PNG file, the format that supports transparent objects like this one. Then we searched through traditional photographs for a dance studio or a clean, well-lighted gym, and found a great one. And by marrying the two photos, we ended up with this:
We had succeeded…and we had failed. The woman came in transparently atop the studio, all right, but she appears to be floating, as if she doesn’t really belong.
This is a common problem when trying to integrate an object into a photo that it didn’t come from originally. The room is pretty well lit, but where are the shadows? They need to be added, and for that you would need to return to your image-editing software…or be using the current version of PowerPoint, 2007.
Version 2007’s upgraded graphics engine offers support for realistic shadowing of any image or object. By applying a soft shadow to the woman and then a slightly darker shadow where she would be touching the floor, we have done a much better job of faking this scene:
This effect can be produced in any version of PowerPoint that can import transparent PNG files, with the help of your image-editing program of choice. But this is an instance where the edge clearly goes to Version 2007 for its built-in ability to shadow an object.
Your eye is probably drawn right to the vulnerable parts of this photo (shadow underneath the ball is perhaps not dark enough) and that is always challenging when trying to create realism: you’re your own worst critic. Pretty good chance, however, if you didn’t know what to scrutinize, you wouldn’t notice anything wrong. Your goal is not accuracy but plausibility and realism.
Download the version 2007 PowerPoint file to see how shadows are handled natively within the application.
Thriving with Animation
Animation might be single-handedly responsible for more PowerPoint annoyance than all the other annoyances combined. Between Edward Tufte and Dilbert creator Scott Adams, PowerPoint animation is publicly flogged more often than our politicians are.
And at the same time, when done correctly, animation isn’t noticed at all. It’s not unlike being a major league baseball umpire, who gets no respect for doing a good job.
Indeed, good PowerPoint animation is so seamless that you are unaware of it. It reaches its zenith when it allows audience members to become lost in the story you are telling.
I approach this posting with the same fear and trepidation that I do our seminars on the topic at the Presentation Summit, our annual conference for the presentation industry. I know that your appetite for the subject is insatiable, and that your zeal could send you across the bounds of good taste a few times. And when that happens, it’s my fault. I’m helping you commit Death by PowerPoint. So please repeat after me:
- I will use custom animation wisely and appropriately.
- I vow not to offend the sensibilities of my audience.
- I promise not to use an animation technique simply because I just discovered it.
- I swear never to make stuff move on screen just because I like to watch my audience members’ heads bob and weave like zombies.
Wisely and Appropriately
Good animation promotes increased understanding and appreciation of a topic. It calls attention to the topic, not the tool. I sometimes wish that the function were called not animation, but “sequencing,” as that is more descriptive of the higher purpose of animation.
The image below shows a chart that can greatly benefit from well-conceived use of animation. This chart looks at the time requirements of an email campaign and the relative merits of doing it yourself or using an outside service to assist you.
This is a simple chart, but it is still too much data to give to your audience all at once.
There are two things that are noteworthy about this data: 1) If you use an outside service, the time required is the same, irrespective of whether you send out a handful or an ocean full of emails; and 2) the time required to send out 10,000 emails by yourself is literally off the charts—we created that bar outside of the graph to illustrate that.
Proper animation of this chart can make a world of difference to your audience’s appreciation of the point you are trying to make. Most content creators recognize that something should be done to charts like this, but they don’t think it through—so instead, they give the entire chart some weird animation, like a box in, or diamond out, or those Venetian blind thingies.
Calling attention to the chart is not necessary; it’s the only thing on the slide. What is needed here is to direct attention, and that requires more thought. If using an outside service requires 10 minutes irrespective of quantity, that becomes the baseline for the point to be made. Show all of those at once, instead of showing the data in pairs across the five quantities.
Once that point has been driven home, then you can turn the audience’s attention to the task of sending out the emails without outside assistance. Each of those five bars in the graph can be introduced on a click, the last one set on a long slow wipe from bottom to top for drama and comic relief.
Several good things happen when you use animation this way:
Your audience really gets it: I’m a big believer in separating form and content to promote understanding. Offering up the empty chart is a great way to prepare your audience for what they are about to see.
You control the pace: Charts are usually displayed too quickly, leaving audience members with the feeling that they’re drinking from a fire hose. If you suspect that members of your audience are not clear on what it is you’re about to show them, you can wait until they understand before continuing.
You become more confident: You have control of your audience in the palm of your hand (perhaps literally, if you use a wireless remote). Without being too crass about it, this position of advantage will likely manifest itself in a positive way.
You create trust: This is a great way for you to bond with them, by assuring them that you are not going to hurry them through data-heavy content. PowerPoint audiences are so often on guard in case a presenter does something ridiculous with animation or obnoxious with content, it’s amazing that they remember anything. Give them a soft landing with a heavy slide and they’ll remember it. They’ll relax and be more receptive to your ideas.
With that example under your belt, think about how you might animate the infographic below, a progression of prices based on level of service.
Can you use animation to better deliver this information?
If you throw it all out there at once, you jeopardize potential impact, understanding, and appreciation. Furthermore, you will have to play catch-up and will likely find yourself explaining the slide more than sharing your ideas.
Instead, show your audience the continuum of pricing first, without offering any specifics. They’ll get it right away: it’s going to be a comparison of services, based on price. Now bring in each price point, one by one, speaking to it as you go. This is the kind of pace that promotes understanding and appreciation.
Oh, and once you determine how best to sequence your data, don’t blow it by choosing some screwball animation choice. Pick Fade, Wipe, or maybe Ascend, but resist all temptation to pick one that causes objects to move across the slide. That commands attention to a degree that has you crying wolf. Just use Fade and call it a day.
“Must I?”
With any project that offers dense content, your use of animation must pass a litmus test of necessity. Is it needed, is it helpful, will there be benefit? If you can’t answer yes to these, the animation fails the litmus test and shouldn’t be used.
Even if it passes this litmus test, continue to scrutinize its use, asking yourself repeatedly what would be the best sequence, the best pace, and the best animation choice to create a blended and seamless presentation of an otherwise complicated topic.
You do that and you use animation in the best way. And if you do that, you distinguish your presentation visuals from just about all others out there today.
PowerPoint Live Design Contest Ending July 1
Our annual user conference has a fun and storied tradition of essentially putting out for bid the designing of our conference slide template. We invite all comers to participate, with the creator of the chosen design being awarded with a free conference passport and round-trip airfare from a U.S. city.
All of the details are at the conference website, and they are worth reading. This is not a typical design project or audition, in wlhich one of the goals is to create pizazz and be noticed. This template needs to serve as a soft and graceful backdrop, in front of which our team of experts will prepare to showcase their own brilliance. It's an interesting challenge, and at the website, you can see how others have approached it.
And you've still got 10 days left. We'll close entries on Friday, Jun 26 (but we'll let you roll over that weekend until July 1. We hope you enter…and we hope to see you in Atlanta this October…maybe on our dime…
7,000 miles away…feels just like home
I am enjoying my first-ever trip to Scandinavia, having been asked by the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Norway to give a one-day workshop on presentation skills. It stays light until past 11p in Oslo this time of year — which is just as well, seeing how it felt like I began the workshop at midnight, given the nine-hour time difference from California.
It was comforting to have found common ground with my northern European counterparts. When I began my introduction — remarking on how most people learn PowerPoint in about 30 minutes and then declare themselves proficient — many heads nodded with recognition, amid comments like "That's me" and "I know what you mean."
Too much text…slides doubling as printouts…templates too rigid…last-minute changes…misappropriation of animation — I felt right at home addressing the same issues that my clients in the States wrestle with. Having said that, many of the slides that I saw showed very good instincts for blending words and imagery. Those tasked with creating content for the government clearly feel as if there is more to life than title, bullet, bullet, bullet. If I'm being honest, this sense was more evolved here in Oslo than back home.
Then, a few moments later, I would enounter a slide with four full paragraphs and underlines and red type for emphasis and I would be snapped back to reality. <g>
All in all, I am enjoying my visit here very much — the people are gracious, accommodating, and full of life and spirit. They seem to know as much about American politics as we do, regularly wanting to engage in discussion about President Obama. And the seafood here is extraordinary.
I hope I'll be invited back…
Pretty Slides = Good Presentation…NOT.
Forgive the radio silence over the past four weeks; I have been busier than ever before. I was involved extensively with a defense contractor that I an not allowed to identify, a pharmaceutical company that I am (Bristol-Myers Squibb), a foreign country that I cannot name, and an upcoming trip to one that I can (Norway).
In all cases, I note two phenomena that have a potentially profound impact on how our professional community moves forward:
1) Few of my clients understand what the word "design" means.
2) Most of them equate the set of slides that they create with their "presentation."
I accept and forgive the first tendency; I bristle at the second. And together, they comprise a healthy challenge for those who hope to advance the state of the art within our profession.
Most of my clients confuse "designing a presentation" with "making slides look pretty." If something is well-designed, does that mean that it is attractive? Maybe, but not neessarily. Design should refer more to function than appearance. If something is well-designed, it should mean that it is properly constructed, has benefitted from forethought, and is part of an effective system. A well-designed presentation is one that delivers the right message in the right way. A pretty slide can guarantee neither.
An equally common occurrence is the client who gives me a printout of their slides and says "Here is my presentation." This grates on several levels, most notably how willing these people are to denigrate their own value statement. What does that say when presenters thinks that their slides are more important than their words? Where is the priority when the product of PowerPoint rates higher than the product of a person's thoughts?
Pretty slides = a good presentation. That is the simple equation that these two misconceptions create. It is incumbent on all of us to raise our consciousness around these points to a higher plane.
American Idol Meets Slide Design
As our annual user conference enters its seventh season, it also begins the fifth iteration of the Design-a-Template contest. From several dozen entries, we will award a trip to the event (Oct 11-14, Atlanta GA) to the person whose work is chosen as most appropriate to serve as the conference template.
Over the past four years, we have created a tradition that includes: brilliant work by exceptionally talented people; a bit of comic relief; the discovery of a unique challenge when creating a template that is to be used across many dozens of seminars; and spirited debate between our own versions of Randy, Paula, and Simon.
To see entries from year's past, including the winners, visit our Editorial Archive.
Who’s Going Mobile?
With my daughter’s all-consuming bat mitzvah now in our rear-view mirror, I will return, with renewed vigor, to semi-regular blog postings. Let’s see if I can actually accomplish bi-weekly…
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For the second edition of what we affectionately refer to now as my Sucks book, I would like to hear from PowerPoint users who are preparing content for presentations outside of the conventional notebook / projector / screen environment.
Webinars
Mobile Devices
Blackberrys
iPhones
YouTube
SlideShare
FaceBook
If you have had any experience with these or other mobile environments and would like to share those experiences with our readers, I would love to hear from you.
Email me at thebook@betterppt.com
Or comment here and we can discuss. Many thanks…
The Lunacy of the Leave Behind
I am a pragmatic being. At my core, I understand the values of efficiency and expedience. I embrace the art of compromise and understand that life often gets in the way of ideals and theories. Reality is often harsh and not adjusting to it often harsher.
Yet there is one principle relevant to the presentation community on which I do not yield. One ideal to which I hold stubbornly. At this windmill, I gladly tilt: it is the notion that a presentation content creator can create one set of slides that will function ably for the projected content and for the printed material.
This is an impossible notion. Everything else in life might be possible if you work hard, but not this one thing. In my 15+ years as a presentation consultant, I have not once seen it done successfully.
Not once!
When you set forth to create content for a presentation, you work with two forces that are fundamentally at odds with one another. You want to create projected content that is compelling and you want to provide information that is complete and useful. The pragmatic being in you usually prevails, and in the interest of time, you look for a happy medium.
Unfortunately, that twain shall not meet. Nary.
As discomfiting as it may be for content creators, a properly-prepared set of visuals for a presentation will fail as leave-behind collateral. Your slides are supposed to be incomplete; they are supposed to be no more than the tease for the words that you will speak. If they say too much, they inhibit your ability to tell the story.
Read the full article at our Editorial Archive…
