Many of my clients, friends, and readers (including you) are super busy these days! And in between these busy days, you need to create slides, practice them, and deliver them to an audience. Very often, your work does not end there -- you then need to remove any extra meta-information from these presentation slides and mail it to clients and colleagues. Of course, you may have to do this so often for the multiple presentations you need to deliver -- and presenting may be just one of the tasks you do in your job role!

Read more in this issue of Indezine News.

Categories: ezine, powerpoint

Do you have a presentation that contains text that needs to be spell-checked in more than one language? Or do you and your client or colleague work with different localized versions of Microsoft PowerPoint? It may be that you use English (US) and color is a perfectly valid spelling -- but someone else in another part of the world uses English (UK) and their spell checker suggest that the word color be changed to colour. Or if they use the French version of PowerPoint, then both spellings of color/colour would be flagged as incorrect -- they use the term couleur. You first need to have the proofing tools installed for all or any of the languages that you need to work within PowerPoint.

Learn how to set proofing language for selected text containers in PowerPoint 2010.

Categories: powerpoint_2010, proofing, text, tutorials

Three snowflakes that move randomly with the breeze in PowerPoint – actually a clever combination of multiple animations and setting their timings make this look so random! We used the Spin, Grow and Shrink, and a Spiral motion path to create the effect. All colors used are Theme aware – so if you move this slide to another presentations, the colors may change! We used PowerPoint 2010 to create this presentation, and it works best in either that version or in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.



You can download and use this slide for your own presentations -- but please do let our credit link remain so that others can also know where the slides originated from.

Categories: animation, powerpoint, presentation_samples

The Shape gallery in PowerPoint contains an assortment of shapes, both open and closed. Most of the shapes in this gallery are closed shapes (rectangle, ellipse, and triangle are some of the closed shapes). There are also a few open shapes such as the straight point to point line. Line drawing tools let you create your own shapes -- these can be both open and closed. These line drawing tools are Freeform Line, Curve, and Scribble. In addition, you can convert any closed shape to an open shape and vice versa, as you will learn in this tutorial.

Learn how you can open and close paths for shapes in PowerPoint 2011.

Categories: office_mac, powerpoint_2011, shapes, tutorials

This heart-full slide has several heart shapes that come onto the slide area, one after the other and then gradually become smaller until they drift into a perspective oblivion. All heart shapes are of a different size, are rotated at a different angle, and also use Theme colors. In addition, each heart has a 3D style applied that has more than one animation added so that the shape diminishes in size as it moves to an imaginary perspective point located off the top right part of the slide. All animations are set to repeat indefinitely so that the hearts keep moving until you navigate to the next slide.



Download and use this slide in your presentation.

Categories: animation, powerpoint, presentation_samples

Don Brittain is CEO and a founder of Instant Effects, a California company that develops software to visually enhance presentations, communications, and collaboration. Dr. Brittain has designed commercial interactive graphics software for more than two decades, having been VP Research at Wavefront Technologies and one of the principal architects of 3dsmax from Autodesk prior to helping found Instant Effects almost a decade ago.

In this conversation, Don discusses 3D-Hub, a new 3D initiative spearheaded by Instant Effects (USA) and White Space Productions (UK).

Geetesh: What is 3D-Hub – and how can it benefit presenters, educators, or anyone else who wants to show interactive 3D content?

Don: 3D-Hub was designed to meet a rising need in classroom education. The basic goal is to promote 3D software and media to improve learning while maintaining the advantages a traditional classroom learning environment already offers. This means that the media should be interactive (so that the teacher can easily respond to questions and encourage exploration), compelling (to keep the attention and interest of the students), and allow for animation (so processes, flows, and interlinked components become visually obvious). Furthermore, since many classroom-based studies have shown that using stereo 3D displays improves understanding, 3D-Hub is also able to take full advantage of stereo 3D projectors and 3D TVs wherever and whenever they are available.



Finally, since all of this is on the leading edge, we have also built 3D-Hub to be an online community where people can go to discuss teaching techniques, request additional 3D models, and ask for improvements to current material to help improve its effectiveness. As such, the goal is for 3D-Hub to play a key role in moving classroom education forward in a meaningful way.

Geetesh: What are the 3D models that work with the 3D-Hub Player – what is available now, and what else can we look forward to in the near future?

Don: For our initial launch, 3D-Hub offers approximately 30 interactive models in the fields of biology, geography, space, and engineering. Many, many more models are under construction, and a key tenet of 3D-Hub is that users can ask for new models and we will custom create them and quickly make them available on the site. This allows us to meet the needs of real teachers and real students in a timely manner, with the models having the level of detail and interactivity most needed to achieve the best results in classroom education.

Another aspect of 3D-Hub is that we actively encourage others to offer content through our site. People with 3D content right now can offer it for download to the 3D-Hub community. Our media experts will make sure the models have been placed into a consistent presentation environment (designed to work with mouse interaction as well as with interactive white boards) so that navigation of the material will be consistent and easy to follow no matter which model is loaded. And for the small subset of content that is best presented in “movie form” (e.g. a film of a live event), the 3D-Hub player also supports 3D videos directly.

One other point that may be of interest is that 3D-Hub benefits from the confluence of 3D special effects techniques, as used by the film and game industries, coupled with techniques honed by professional presenters designed to direct audience focus and provide efficient transfer of knowledge. The 3D-Hub models are built using our authoring toolkit plugin for 3dsmax (from Autodesk), and the user interface and interaction components are all originally authored in PowerPoint.

By interviewing hundreds of teachers, educators, and IT professionals working in schools, we have tailored our offerings to augment and complement traditional education techniques. We want to keep what works well while also moving education forward in a manner consistent with the high expectations of today’s students with respect to their media experiences.

Categories: 3D, interviews, powerpoint

Typically when you select any text container such as a text placeholder, shape, or text box -- then you may (or may not) see which language is specified for the text container on the Status Bar within PowerPoint 2010. It is quite possible that you may not be seeing any language specified on the Status Bar -- and this can happen for one of two reasons.

Learn how to make the Language Option visible on the Status Bar in PowerPoint 2010.

Categories: powerpoint_2010, proofing, text, tutorials

This combo package gets you three amazing options that will let you create better presentations quickly:

1. New Ebook: Slide Design for Non-Designers by Ellen Finkelstein
   
2. New Templates / Themes / Backgrounds set: Spots of Success from Ppted
   
3. Another New Templates / Themes / Backgrounds set: Urban Textures from Ppted

Your price for a limited time during this joint promotion is $50 for all 3 products! Get all details here.



Categories: ezine, powerpoint

Any given shape in PowerPoint is essentially an electronic drawing that is composed of both segments and points (vertexes). Think of a “connect-the-dots” drawing and the dots would be points, and the lines you draw between the dots would be segments. Both segments and vertexes are only visible as distinctly different drawing elements only in Edit Points mode. We discuss more about segments in a subsequent tutorial but for now, let us help you explore the different types of vertexes (points) in PowerPoint 2011. Essentially, these are of three types: Smooth, Straight, and Corner.

Learn about different types of points (vertexes) in PowerPoint 2011.

Categories: office_mac, powerpoint_2011, shapes, tutorials

Do you want to be more influential in your meetings and presentations? Consider doing these behaviors so that you are on top of the content as well as your presenting style.

1. Get approval of the content: Talk to people who know the audience, and find out the interests of the audience. Talk to at least two people just to be sure you are getting accurate advice.
   
   
2. Organize data in a systematic flow: Make your messages and story easy to follow by putting the information in a logical sequence. Be sure to logically organize your thoughts when speaking in a meeting—do not ramble.
   
   
3. Cut out unnecessary slide details: Be ruthless and cut out the details this particular audience does not need to know, or have heard so many times that they will be bored to hear about them one more time. Speak 5 minutes less than the time allotted. If you are only asked to speak for 5 minutes, then make it 4.
   
   
4. Use an executive summary: Use a slide at your opening that summarizes the major points of the presentation. You can also give an executive summary in a meeting, without a slide, that summarizes the key aspects of a project.
   
   
5. Show a summary slide after questions & answers: Use a summary wrap up slide or speak without a slide after answering all questions. Do not answer the last question and then sit down. You want to summarize your presentation’s key message and present a vision going forward.
   
   
6. Do a real rehearsal: Rehearse the talk out loud and time it. If possible, rehearse in the room or some room similar to the one you will be presenting in. Rehearse the opening and closing. You may also want to rehearse your short overview you are giving in a meeting. You will sound more in charge when you rehearse even if it is an informal meeting.
   
   
7. Use a remote: Do not stand next to the computer and keep looking down to press the key that advances the slides. When you use a remote, you are more professional.
   
   
8. Plan your clothes: First, dress for the role. It’s still true, dress for the role you want. Wear the clothes at least once already so you know they stay buttoned, zipped, etc.
   
   
9. Practice all the time certain presentation behaviors: Have someone critique several of your talks and specify the types of behaviors you need to enhance. These could include standing still, talking directly to each listener for at least for the count of three, pausing instead of saying "um," talking not too loud or too soft.
   
   
10. Manage your attitude: Get enough sleep and exercise the day before the speaking. Be sure you rehearse so you can feel confident and give yourself positive feedback before, during and after the presentation.

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Claudyne Wilder coaches executives, managers, and salespeople on how to deliver presentations that get to the message. Her clients give compelling, passionate presentations. Her company has an ongoing contract to give her Get to the Message: Present with a Purpose workshop at a Fortune 100 Global Pharmaceutical Company. Claudyne brings a unique and invigorating perspective to her work from her years of studying the Argentine Tango.

Do visit Claudyne's site at Wilder Presentations to sign up for her blog, her tweets or to download some free presenting tools.

Categories: delivery, guest_post, powerpoint, presentation_skills