Episode #73, Presenting in a Non-Profit World (with Andy Goodman) is up! This week we ditch the corporate world to talk about presentation in the world of cause-based organizations. Andy Goodman of The Goodman Center joins us to talk about his career teaching storytelling and presentation to non-profits, NGO’s and foundations. And we dive into his seminal 2006 book, Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes which you can download for free here.
One of my favorite PowerPoint hacks is to hide page numbers in slideshow mode because really, who needs to see those on screen? This simple technique can also be used to hide unreadable source notes and any other content that should be visible in printouts and PDFs, but just isn’t needed or wanted on screen. Watch it here!
There’s a new(ish) conference dedicated to presentation out there, and I couldn’t be more excited to be a speaker at this year’s Click Presentation Design Conference, June 13-14 in Seattle.
Click is a part of Creative Pro Week, a larger gathering dedicated to Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator and other aspects of print design, run by CreativePro. Traditionally, those hard core Adobe print and digital graphic designers didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to the world of presentation, so I was thrilled to see the organizers of Creative Pro Week add a couple of days dedicated to presentation design at last year’s conference in New Orleans. And apparently, it was a hit, so they are again offering attendees sessions dedicated to the world of slides.
I’ll be giving two sessions (topics to be announced soon) and will be joining a number of other heavyweights including Julie Terberg and Richard Goring of BrightCarbon.
The complete list of speakers and more information is here, and the full conference agenda will be announced shortly. But you can register now for 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5-day passes depending on how much learnin’ you want. I’m hoping to arrive a day or two prior to the start of Click in order to deepen my InDesign skills.
If you’ve been on the fence about attending the Presentation Summit because it might be too much presentation and not enough design, Creative Pro Week might be for you! Or if you just want to soak up as much presentation stuff as you can, I would definitely consider heading out to Seattle in June.
And if you do decide to go, let me know as I would love to meet you!
Kerri is a top DC litigation attorney and probably the top expert in using visuals in the courtroom in the country. I reviewed her book a while back when I first learned of it, but now we get to dive a bit deeper and hear more about the psychology of visuals, what can and can’t be used in a courtroom and what the state of the trial graphics industry is.
Even if you never plan on working in this area of presentation design, this is a really good conversation in which you’ll learn a ton not just about how to convince juries with visuals, but how to convince your own audiences.
Troy, Sandy and I welcome Travis Thomas from LiveYesAnd for a discussion on how to live with presentation mistakes and what can be learned from the world of improv comedy.
10 years ago today, Steve Jobs introduced the Macbook Air—still maybe the best laptop ever and definitely one of the best uses of props in a presentation ever.
I speak and give trainings often, and it’s not unusual for me to have a 400-slide deck from which I need to pull 60 or 90 minutes of material. Like many presenters, I’m not always perfect at managing the time of my talks, and until now, I have relied on Excel to calculate the running time of my slides. But now, thanks to a brand new PowerPoint add-in called TalkTime, I know instantly the total time my slides will take to present even as I add or delete material. And you can too, because I helped develop it and we’re giving it away for free!
Jamie Garroch of YouPresent is one of the best add-in developers for PowerPoint around. He steps in and creates Office solutions for clients when Microsoft can’t quite get the job done. One of my favorite add-ins (which you can download for free here) is Text to Outline which can turn all of a given font in your presentation into outlines, allowing you to use non-standard fonts in shareable presentations.
It was at the recent Presentation Summit that I casually mentioned my desire for an add-in that could calculate the total time of a presentation based on times assigned to individual slides. Literally a few hours later, Jamie sent me a prototype that blew me away. We then spent the next couple of weeks going back and forth and dramatically improving the functionality well beyond what I thought possible.
The result is TalkTime, a free and simple add-in that adds a small set of tools to the transitions tab.
These tools let you copy PowerPoint’s rehearsal times into TalkTime, enter them manually for each slide, record timings from a normally delivered slideshow or even copy times from audio narrations. TalkTime keeps track of the total time you plan to spend delivering your presentation and even takes into account hidden slides. And it shows you the times of individual sections, letting you manage large chunks of content.
Watch the above tutorial video to see what it’s all about or visit Jaime’s page for more info and screenshots.
You can download TalkTime or grab it anytime from this site’s Goodies page which also includes tons of other great free tools and assets to make you a better presenter. You can access the Goodies page by subscribing to this blog.
We would love to know what you think and if TalkTime helps you stay on time. Use the feedback button in the “About” section of the add-in or drop me an email.
If you’re looking for other PowerPoint add-ins or customized solutions, definitely check out YouPresent. And, of course, if you’re looking for a speaker or presentation trainer who never goes over his time, call me!
Unlike other conferences, this will be far more hands on and designed for a small number of groups who will get personalized attention from a team of presentation experts.
Dave Gordon is an incredible speaker, speech coach and brand educator that I’ve worked with a lot in the past as a colleague and client. He has a great piece out on not getting discouraged by that portion of your audience that no matter what, will always be overly critical and in some cases, flat out hate you.
10% of the people will come up to you at the end of your talk and tell you in person how much your message meant to them. They will shake your hand, give you their card, or somehow make a connection.
80% will respond via survey that they enjoyed the presentation and got at least one thing out of it that they could do to advance their career.
10% hate you. For whatever reason, they didn’t like you, your message, your clothes, your hair, your accent. Whatever it was, they just didn’t connect.
Those who get nervous when they present, focus on the 10% that hate. You want everyone to love you and your message, but that’s not possible. The key is to remember “show and tell.” Get up and share something meaningful for you that you know over 90% of your audience will appreciate and enjoy. Find the friendly faces and nodding heads in the audience. They are the people you talk to. The other 10% aren’t really listening anyway, but that’s about them, not you.
I suppose it’s a bit like pricing your services in which if you’re not getting a small portion of clients saying you’re too expensive, then you’re not charging enough. If you don’t have a small portion of your audience “hating” you, maybe you’re doing something wrong.
In any case, read the piece here, and sign up for his newsletter which is always filled with good stuff.
