Hans Rosling’s famous lectures combine enormous quantities of public data with a sport’s commentator’s style to reveal the story of the world’s past, present and future development. Now he explores stats in a way he has never done before – using augmented reality animation. In this spectacular section of ‘The Joy of Stats’ he tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers – in just four minutes. Plotting life expectancy against income for every country since 1810, Hans shows how the world we live in is radically different from the world most of us imagine.
The winning entry was created by Empowered Presentations
SMOKE – The Convenient Truth
View more presentations from Empowered Presentations, Honolulu, HI.
I love Slideshare – it is always an inspiration. But I am left so dissatisfied, because what I want to see is the speech that went with the visuals.
Still there is always lots to learn about design. What did you think of this one?
When making a presentation, it’s all too easy to fall into the trap of relying on your PowerPoint slides to help get your message across. Although PowerPoint may be a great tool to help you present your information in a creative and interesting way, it’s dangerous to rely on it fully as this will just turn your audience off from what you’re saying.
Here are 5 tips to help make your presentation stand out from the crowd.
1. Be Compelling
PowerPoint is a great tool to put together eye-catching presentations, but remember that your audience has come to hear you, not look at a slide. So by all means make your PowerPoint presentation look professional and engaging but don’t forget that your speech needs to be compelling too. Remember, your slides are there to support your spoken presentation, not the other way round!
2. Keep it simple
Don’t overwhelm your audience with a mass of data, graphics and animations. The most effective PowerPoint presentations are simple – charts that are easy to understand, and graphics that reflect what the speaker is saying. It’s been suggested that there should be no more than five words per line and no more than five lines per individual slide. Any images, graphs and animations need to back up the information, not confuse the audience.
3. Be Engaging
Many of us have sat through a presentation where we have spent the whole time looking at the back of the speaker’s head! They have spent so much time reading off the slides, they don’t engage with the audience. PowerPoint works best with a speech that augments what’s on the screen rather than just reading off the slide. Remember, you need to interact with the audience in order for them to engage and listen to you.
4. Don’t use PowerPoint!
There’s a time and place for PowerPoint. It should only be used as an accompaniment to the presenter’s script so let the screen go blank if you need to. This gives your audience a break, but also helps to focus their attention on what the presenter is saying, especially during the question and answer session.
5. Rehearse and edit
Once you’ve drafted your speech and slides then rehearse your presentation. Do this preferably in front of someone else to ensure that what you are saying and presenting can be easily understood. If something comes across as distracting or confusing then get rid of it. Remember to keep the needs of the audience in your mind at all times as they are the ones who will be the ultimate judge of how successful your presentation has been.
| Valerie Eaton is the owner of Smart VA Ltd, providers of virtual assistant support to small businesses and self-employed professionals. They specialise in providing a wide range of general administration support, as well as email marketing, website updates, document and presentation design and event administration. Find more information about our services on our website http://www.smartva.co.uk, and if you want to discover some great tips for small businesses then check out our free guides on the Free Resources page. |
Love this article.
If you are up against entrenched insistence on death by PowerPoint, this could be a good place to start the conversion. (Especially if the insistence is your own!!)
Using visuals of any sort in a presentation has to be as unobtrusive as possible.
The first step here is being prepared.
If you can practice beforehand, do so.
Organise physical objects so that you can reach them when they are needed, without having to search, and without having to fumble. This may mean arranging them in the order in which they will be presented. It may mean practising the presentation so that you know automatically where to reach for something. This can apply to objects you want to display, the remote control for projecting equipment, the pens for flip charts or overhead projectors or a whiteboard, or to slides or overhead transparencies.
During these practice sessions, work out how you will move around the visual supports and equipment. Where will you place the objects you want to pick up – on a table, or another piece of furniture? Where will this, or the equipment, be so that you can move around it and communicate most easily with your audience – in front of you, beside or behind you? Always consider the least distracting way of accessing your material and the greatest ease of movement.
If you are using projection equipment, visualise its placement. Think about how you will work with the laptop or the overhead projector – standing beside, or behind? Do you want your silhouette projected on the screen as well as your visuals? Walking in front of the screen will also obscure them.
If you cannot organise the positioning of your equipment, then try to become familiar with it before the presentation and then visualise how you will use it best.
I’ve just discovered this article at Microsoft Office. What a treasure trove they have there.
This one, by Robert Lane and Andre Vlcek is called Speaking Visually: Eight Roles Pictures Play in Presentation.
Including pictures in presentations is a simple and powerful way of expanding your expressive potential as a speaker. Pictures communicate at levels beyond the descriptive possibilities of words and bathe the brain in much desired visual stimulation. At the same time, not all pictures are created equally. Choosing the right images, and using them in the right ways, can greatly impact your effectiveness.
… and there are some powerful examples. This one under the heading “Getting Attention”.
Even if you’re severely artistically challenged, you can add content and excitement to your presentations by creating wonderful, memorable cartoons in real time. Anyone can do it and Mike will show you how.
Why create your own cartoons instead of using clip art? Because you can make them appear as your audience watches. You can customize them specifically to your audience’s industry or application and you can draw them in response to audience input and feedback. You will stand out as not showing overused “bean” people or other clip art some audiences consider hokey. The result: an audience that is engaged, informed and entertained.
Mike will walk you through some simple images and have you draw along with him real-time. He’ll show you easy-to-draw people (not stick figures) and how to adjust their facial expressions to match the emotion you want to convey. You’ll draw as he demonstrates so you walk away with new tools to integrate your drawings into keynotes, trainings, facilitations, and even webinars.
In this webinar you’ll learn how to:
- visually represent concepts such as leadership, cutomer-centric, diversity, and empowerment
- integrate industry jargon, keywords, and cliches to make your points visually
- use visual humor to surprise and delight your audiences
- apply these cartoons to sales, marketing, production, HR, customer service, finance
- enhance your audience’s problem-solving skills by helping them change perspective — literally!
- draw simple cartoons to help people/groups communicate better with each other
- utilize these techniques to break down rigid thinking and bad assumptions
- access a $100 tool for you to draw on your PowerPoint slides
Special note: To view this webinar, you’ll need to be in front of an Internet-connected computer. You don’t need anything else but a pad and pencil to draw along with Mike.
More information? Click here
Give Participants Something to Flip Over
Let me start off by saying that I do NOT like toys or other distractions in training. I’m NOT one to provide little widgets to keep participants’ hands occupied or provide cutesy pens or such trinkets. I’ve always viewed them as distractions that shouldn’t be necessary if your training is engaging and relevant. I recently “discovered” a technique that simultaneously:
- Provides motivational, upbeat phrases for participants
- Reinforces key concepts
- Ensures that everyone is paying attention and following along
- Allows the instructor to tell whether each participant grasps the concept
with Angelie Agarwal
At conferences, conventions and management/sales meetings, speaker after speaker shows PowerPoint or Keynote slides to illustrate their points. No matter how beautiful the backgrounds or images, they are pretty much same old/same old. Even the professional speakers’ visuals don’t stand out that much from the rest.
But there’s a new presentation tool in town and it’s blowing away the tried-and-true old slides. In fact, it’s a favorite tool of TED presenters who have entranced their audiences.
What is it? It’s Prezi — a new tool for creating presentation visuals that can lead you to a whole new way of thinking about your talks. It can help create better narratives and more persuasive presentations — what every professional presenter craves.
Angelie Agarwal, chief evangelist for Prezi, will show us how to integrate this new tool into our presentations to stand out among the other speakers on the program — or our competition. This special webinar will discuss how professional speakers, trainers and consultants can use this tool to create truly unforgettable presentations.
You’ll learn:
• how Prezi is very different from digital slide programs
• how you can use this tool to cement your uniqueness
• how Prezi helps you become a more persuasive presenter
• how to get started with the basics
• tips and tricks for advanced speakers on presenting in Prezi
Get more information here …
This is a 13-Page eBook
The use of PowerPoint as a presentation tool is well acknowledged and accepted. However, Fripp and Prost believe it is frequently used as a crutch that often distracts your audience from the main messages of your presentation. If you are using PowerPoint®, why not learn the “inside secrets” of doing it the right way?
Get the eBook here