Check out some of my presentation and PowerPoint predictions for the coming year in conversation with PresentationXpert.
2017 Presentation and PowerPoint Predictions
Categories: Interviews, PowerPoint.
Category Archives: PowerPoint
Microsoft MVP Again
For the 4th year in a row, I’ve been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award for PowerPoint. I’m honored to be one of just twelve in the U.S. (and a little over 30 worldwide) who work directly with the PowerPoint development team and serve as a bridge between Microsoft and their users. Learn more about the program here.
Categories: PowerPoint.
My Hourly Rate for PowerPoint is $2,000 an hour
My hourly rate for PowerPoint work is $2,000 an hour.
I realize that seems quite high—higher than the hourly rate of the country’s top-paid lawyer (rumored to be $1,800/hr.) But recently that’s what my hourly rate worked out to on a recent project when I charged $1,000 for 1/2 hour of work for the setup of the most basic of PowerPoint templates based on an existing design.
Read the full article at Presentation-Guru.com
Categories: PowerPoint.
Financial Slides: The Presentation Podcast Episode #15
Episode #15, Financial Slides is live.
Sandy is off this week and pinch hitting for her is fellow PowerPoint MVP and good friend Dave Paradi of Think Outside the Slide. Dave trains companies all over the world on how to present better with an emphasis on financial and business data and numbers. The kind of thing you would expect from a presentation expert with an MBA. Dave has written numerous books on the subject, and publishes an annual survey on the greatest frustrations people have with financial presentations. (Spoiler alert: the two most mentioned words are “Confusing” and “Boring.”) Take a listen as we talk about financial decks.
Don’t forget to give us a rating on iTunes if you like the Podcast and want to help spread the word!
Subscribe on iTunes and check out the show notes for more info.
Categories: PowerPoint, Showing Data.
Hack Bubble Charts to Create Proportional Shapes
Fellow Microsoft MVP Glenna Shaw and I recorded this quick tip last year on the Microsoft campus for their Channel 9 series.
Subscribers to my newsletter have access to a custom Excel tool to calculate size of proportional shapes, but you can let Microsoft do all the work for you by starting with a bubble chart and then breaking it apart. Take a look!
Categories: PowerPoint, Showing Data.
Microsoft Wants Your Input on New Charts
As a Microsoft MVP, I’m often given access to pre-release feature and information about where software is headed, but as I’ve written about before, Microsoft legitimately wants the input of its users in shaping the direction of PowerPoint and Excel. If you have new feature requests, they are genuinely all ears via powerpoint.uservoice.com.
Charts Are Getting Overhauled
If you’re on Office 365, you hopefully have noticed the addition of 6 brand new charts such as Waterfall, Tree Map and Histogram. These charts are built on a brand new engine which you also may have noticed can cause some compatibility issues.
As Microsoft starts migrating ALL charts to this new engine (which will bring with it new technical and design features), there will come a day when backwards compatibility with earlier versions of Office gets sticky. But, Microsoft WANTS YOUR OPINION on how to handle this transition and some other things.
Now’s the time to let Microsoft know exactly how these developments will affect you and to let them know what decisions they should make through a 5-10 minute survey. If you work with charts all the time, I would definitely encourage you to take part!
START THE SURVEY HERE
And here’s the official Microsoft Privacy Statement regarding the survey.
Categories: PowerPoint, Showing Data.
Presentation Guild Webinar on PowerPoint Zoom
One of the coolest new PowerPoint feature is “Zoom,” and The Presentation Guild hosted a webinar diving into Zoom with PowerPoint project manager, Derek Johnson.
Watch the replay above and start playing around with it! I certainly have.
Categories: PowerPoint.
Introducing The Presentation Guild
Presentation professionals can be a lonely sort. It’s not just that we’re often glued to our monitors late at night or holed up at the back of a dark ballroom, but that more often than not, our work engagements don’t involve other presentation professionals. We’re in a niche industry, and the fact is that we just don’t get out much and meet others who do what we do and share and gain knowledge like we should.
Enter The Presentation Guild, a non-profit trade organization created by some of the sharpest people in the world of presentation. Similar to AIGA (for graphic designers), The Guild aims to advocate for, support and benefit its members and the entire presentation industry.
AIGA and similar organization were not built overnight and right now, The Presentation Guild is in a soft launch phase, accepting members, but also working out some kinks and developing support and resources. The Guild will officially launch in October at the Presentation Summit in Las Vegas. You’re all going to the Presentation Summit in Las Vegas, right…?
Guild Benefits
Much of what The Guild currently offers and will offer in the future will be for members only, but there will be selected things available to the general public such as a recent webinar with Microsoft on the brand new “Zoom” feature that was a big success.
Currently, there is a message board where members can reach out for technical, business and other help. There will be events, both live and virtual. Regular webinars with Guild members and guests will be held, and yours truly is the moderator of “Inspired by Design,” a monthly 20-minute webinar with presentation design master, Julie Terberg. There will be job boards, portfolio pages, contests and all sorts of other networking and professional development resources.
And, member or not, you can sign up for their newsletter which will keep you updated not just on the world of presentation, but also on Guild developments.
The Guild is also running a survey to find out a bit more about who we all are. It will take only 5 minutes, and if you do fill it out, you’ll get a copy of the results when ready.
Why Join?
I didn’t sell The Guild enough above? Now’s the time to get in on the ground floor. Join today, or at least sign up for the newsletter and like the Facebook page.
Categories: PowerPoint.
Spicy Presentations
At least among designers, PowerPoint has a reputation as “not a professional program” in the way that Adobe software is. And while it’s true that Photoshop is a far more powerful image editing program than PowerPoint is, it is not true that PowerPoint can’t do some things just as well as PowerPoint. On a daily basis, I often edit imagery using PowerPoint’s built-in tools because it’s quicker, simpler and also non-destructive.
But the other day I heard a speaker make the case for using PowerPoint for video effects because “users shouldn’t have to buy and learn AfterEffects” if they’re not a professional video editor. And users also shouldn’t have to pay a professional video editor when they can get a usable result on their own using PowerPoint.
That speaker was P-Spice, someone I’ve known for a while and whose YouTube channel of “Spicy” PowerPoint tips, tricks and hacks has racked up almost 3 million views.
In tutorial after tutorial, P-Spice shows how PowerPoint can be used for business and for fun to create incredible animation and video effects—most of which I didn’t even know were possible.
If you’re into animation, or just want to check out some fun things you, check it out here!
Below is one of my favorite tutorials. For years when clients asked if PowerPoint could create a spinning globe effect, I always said, “no.” Well…guess I was wrong!
What is the Best Font Size?: The Presentation Podcast Episode #11
Episode #11, What is the Best Font Size? is live.
This week we get down and dirty talking about the issues around font sizing in presentation.
Don’t forget to give us a rating on iTunes if you like the Podcast and want to help spread the word!
Subscribe on iTunes and check out the show notes for more info.
Categories: PowerPoint, Visual Thinking.
