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Posts Tagged ‘Presentations’

This site offers a multitude of free information on all types presentations from speaking to slide preparation. They are many articles that offer helpful tips such as “target segment charts“.

Topics include:

• Presentations – Essential Presentation, Skills, Nerves, Ideas, Tips, Topics, Secrets, & images
• Speeches – Persuasive, Informative, Famous, Wedding, Retirement, Funeral, & Nerves
• PowerPoint – Free Templates, Ideas, Tips, Maps, Sound Effects, Free Download, & Open Office
• Templates – Business, Animated, Maps, Template Builder, Medical, Open Office, & Seasonal
• Public Speaking – Presentation Skills, Nerves, Ideas, Tips, Topics, Secrets, Images, & Sales Presentation
• Forum

Presentation Magazine website

When it comes to PowerPoint presentations, there are hundreds of sources of information on the internet. I have recently run across this Top Ten Slide Tips by Garr Reynolds that presents some very good tips, some of them, I highly recommend. Of the top ten these few are ones you should incorporate into you tool kit:

1. Keep it Simple & 2. Limit bullet points & Text – See my post on 10/20/30 Rule of Powerpoint by Guy Kawasaki, which talks along a similar line. Strive for telling your story in as few as words as possible. It takes practice to get this down. I believe for most folks, it is easier to start with the detailed versions and then begin to reduce the words. A general rule of thumb, if you already have said it in the presentation, don’t repeat it unless it is your summary slide. An even there strive to reword it to convey the same meaning.
4. Use high-quality graphics – This may be easier said than done, especially if you have limited funds. Resist the urge to put a graphic that is blurry because it is the only one you have. You will lose your audience!
6. Use appropriate charts – Several great examples are given by Garr. I would also add pictures where possible, especially when you have a product offering that can be shown via picture easier then trying to describe it with words. One tip I use is to create the graph in excel then using a screen capture program like HyperSnap, I make a jpg image that I can insert into PowerPoint. What is nice is the jpg scales, so I can make it larger or smaller and the text will resize nicely. If you do a copy and paste from excel you will find that when you resize the text does not cooperate. In a future post I will demonstrate this tip!
8. Choose your fonts well – Going back to the 10/20/30 Rule of Powerpoint strive to use the 30 pt font size or larger. This forces you to reduce the number of words. It is a great rule and you can learn to apply this with practice.

Go here to see the entire Top Ten and look at the examples:
Garr Reynolds/Presentations.

Very interesting addition you can add to your excel models to emphasize a particular variable.

To quote the creator, S Anand, “Creating a slider-based model is quite useful. You can download a US Treasury yields example to see how this is done. As you move the slider, the yield curve moves over time, showing how it has fluctuated. The trick is to:

1. build the entire model based on a single cell. Cell H1 in this example acts as the index to the dates.
2. create a slider. Go to View – Toolbars – Control Toolbox and add a slider.
3. and link the slider to the cell. Right-click on the cell in design mode, select View Code, and type Range(“H1″).Value = ScrollBar1.Value in the Scrollbar change event.

Excel – Make your model visually obvious | s-anand.net.