PowerPoint PowPowerPoint Live 2005 Conference |
|
Who among us has not been exposed at some point in their career to that often fatal phenomenon known as "Death by PowerPoint"? It typically consists of what a manager considers his or her "clever" last-minute compilation of random facts, figures, tables, irrelevant clip art, a hideous template, excessive use of logos, distracting animation, and bulleted text in Comic Sans that gets read to you verbatim, while you sit helplessly in your chair, trying hard not to fall asleep while still presenting the appearance that you are genuinely interested in the mission statement, sales forecast, or team building that the manager is trying to convey to you. Sound familiar? Until just recently, that was always the image I held of PowerPoint. I regarded it as a painful and usually unnecessary experience that I would try to avoid at all costs. I would even go so far as to ask my sister in advance to call me on my cell phone during such a presentation, and hurriedly dash out of the room while saying things in a frantic voice like, "Did the airbag deploy?" or "Has there been any word from the consulate?" loud enough so that several people could overhear me and immediately grasp why I did not return to the "Meeting from Hell" after my call was completed. Edward Tufte (www.edwardtufte.com), who makes no qualms about his complete loathing of all things PowerPoint, would have been very proud of me. Though I work for a huge, multinational corporation, I am the only writer in my division who works in the United States. So like many of you, I typically play the role of a one-stop documentation shop, writing and editing all types of technical information in various forms. I was quite surprised, though, when my two bosses told me that I would be required to edit and format PowerPoint presentations for my Israeli counterparts. I recalled my own apprehension at learning anything from a PowerPoint slide, and did not relish the thought of going over to the Dark Side, to become one of those PowerPoint writers who subjects his audience to the subtle torture of inexplicable font changes, irrelevant clip art, awful templates, and distracting animations. I decided at that point that I would only use my powers for good, and to do all that I could to inform the audience without causing them excruciating pain. If I were to be effective, I decided that I needed to know more about PowerPoint than the brief, 15-minute exposure I had to it three jobs ago. I bought myself a copy of PowerPoint 2003 Personal Trainer from That Technical Bookstore, and read through it to glean the information I needed. I then stumbled across a link to the PowerPoint Live 2005 Conference (http://www.altman.com/powerpoint/pptlive/), held right here in San Diego. I looked it over and found that it was a three-day intensive on nothing but PowerPoint, and while the conference topics genuinely intrigued me, I did not think that my employer would be willing to pay the $795 price tag. To my astonishment and gratitude, they did, and off I went to the Doubletree Hotel in Hazard Center. If you have ever attended an STC annual conference, like the one held in May of this year in Seattle, you would find the PowerPoint Live conference format to be completely identical, except of course that this entire conference is dedicated to nothing other than PowerPoint. Three different classes are taught during each session, and it is up to you to decide which one you want to attend. Each class had in its description the recommended skill level: Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced. The first day was mainly reserved for travel and registration, but some pre-conference half-day workshops were offered in the afternoon. I opted to take two primer classes, "PowerPoint from the Ground Up" and "Understanding Animations in PowerPoint." The first class greatly expanded upon my original 15-minute exposure to the program, and the instructor actually recommended that we get all of our information together before we ever opened PowerPoint, because we need to focus first on our content, and only then on our presentation. He suggested that we put all our ideas in outline form, using Microsoft Word, and then import that into PowerPoint using the template of our choosing and selecting "Slides from Outline" from the Insert menu. He showed us how the different heading levels in Word directly corresponded to the titles and bullets in PowerPoint. I have since tried this method on my own, and it is so much more efficient than adding the information slide-by-slide in PowerPoint. The second class showed us the good, bad, and ugly of animations, with the general consensus that most animations are distracting, but could be used effectively to let the audience pause to think or to reinforce a point. The general agreement I heard in the second class, and throughout the conference without exception, was that the most popular animation, Dissolve, is also the most distracting. If you must use animations, the instructors highly recommended Fade instead, which is the least intrusive. They also said that if you must use the Wipe animation, make it reveal the text from left to right so that it corresponds with the direction we read. They suggested that we immediately walk out of any presentation that uses the Bounce and Boomerang animations. The conference organizers did their best to make the conference fun for everyone. There were lots of social events during and after the presentations, including a hosted happy hour at the Guadalajara Restaurant in Old Town. For me to summarize all of the sessions I attended over those three wonderful days would far exceed the practical limits of this article, so I will summarize only those that I think would be of the most interest to the most people. "Presentations in Print" taught us how to make our presentations look best in their printed form, particularly when used as handouts. The easiest solution, of course, is to use dark text on a white background. If you are working with a template that uses a different color scheme, say that of an employer, they recommended using different masters that you could switch back and forth to as needed. One would be the standard presentation that meets with your employer's approval, and the other a "print only" version. PowerPoint XP and later supports multiple masters, making this task fairly easy. "Top Ten Add-Ins Nobody Should Live Without" talked about various third-party add-ins designed to streamline a process or to improve upon a technology already available in the program. When considering such a tool, we were told to first ask ourselves two things: (1) Does it increase my productivity? and (2) Does it do things that I couldn't ordinarily do? Below are some recommendations from the class:
"Visual Interactivity" showed us how to set up multiple presentations side-by-side to give the appearance of a truly interactive or relational presentation. The presenter used triggers on the screen known only to him to seamlessly launch other presentations related to the current subject matter, without losing his place in the original presentation. Some of his presentations were only a single page, so that if a meeting attendee asked a specific question, he could jump directly to that page or presentation that addressed that question, and go back again once the question was answered. If you are interested in exploring what could be a new trend in PowerPoint, you might want to contact Robert Lane of Aspire Communications from his website, www.aspirecommunications.com "Creating Concept Slides" was a very high-level presentation that talked about going beyond the standard bullet points that most people think about when they hear the name PowerPoint, and delivering content the audience can really use. The motto for the class was "What does the audience need to understand, not what you have to say." The presenter recommended using a train metaphor to keep the information we want to get across "on track," and told us to remember the letters BSIMG:
The presenter recommended that we start our presentations first with a summary, then go to the first level, and finally end up with the details. She highly recommended Beyond Bullet Points, by Cliff Atkinson:
"Online Presentations in a Flash" talked about exporting PowerPoint presentations into Macromedia Flash, to be used as online courses or computer based training. This session talked about what was needed to prepare our slides for export, but was primarily an advertising plug for PointeCast Publisher (www.pointecast.com), a tool that does the job quite nicely, and provides a superior audio embedding capability to add narrations as needed. Of course, it wouldn't be a conference without the vendors, and plenty of them were available to sell their wares, including the PointeCast folks. Hitachi was there to show their new LCD projectors, and other companies showed their add-ins and presentation devices. One company called Boom Bags (www.boombags.com) showed their luggage which has a built-in amplifier and speakers, so you no longer need to rely on a hotel's audio system for your presentations. After the presentations are over, you can listen to your iPod on it. All in all, this fun conference far exceeded my best expectations, and I hope to attend again in the future. I recommend it to anyone who ever has to work in PowerPoint. The next annual PowerPoint Live Conference will also be held at the
Doubletree Hazard Center on September 17-20, 2006. You can read all
about it and register for it here: http://www.altman.com/powerpoint/pptlive/.
|
| |
December 2005 |
Feature |
