Category Archives: Presenting Live

Trends from the 2013 Presentation Summit

I just returned from the annual Presentation Summit, held this year in Ft. Lauderdale. The only conference of its kind, the Summit is a unique gathering of professionals who make their living in the world of slides and screen information. The event used to be called “PowerPoint Live,” and indeed there is a primary emphasis on PowerPoint: Representatives from Microsoft attend as do most of the PowerPoint MVPs—the top thinkers and champions of the program. But the name change also reflects a recognition that PowerPoint is just one tool (albeit the most prominent) in this world.

This year I again presented my “In The Trenches“ session on real-world presentation solutions to day to day corporate challenges, but I also presented sessions on data design and Apple’s Keynote software (my preferred presentation software.)

Here are some visual notes from my sessions taken by the attendee Stephy Lewis…


Emerging Themes

As both a speaker and an attendee, some themes emerged this year on the state of presentation including increased attention on data visualization and increased use of software that isn’t PowerPoint. And I am not just saying that because those were my session topics—two highlights for me were Danielle Jotham who spoke on the many presentation software solutions employed by her design team at TBS and Matt Stevenson from Fathom Creative who gave a killer talk on Prezi.

But by far the biggest theme for me was much PowerPoint was being used for things other than traditional slide presentations—specifically print layout.

PowerPoint for Print Documents

It has become clear that PowerPoint is the primary software tool of corporate America. Excel is still a powerful solution for working with numbers, but the relative ease of use of PowerPoint is leading many to abandon the bloated, clunky and buggy world of Microsoft Word in favor of the slideware’s greener pastures. 

At Edelman, we increasingly use PowerPoint for text-heavy documents and proposals. When we can’t use Adobe CS for various reasons, we’ll use PowerPoint to create white papers, proposals and all types of text-heavy documents (ultimately saving these out as PDFs.) At the Summit, I presented a number of our solutions for creating print-only presentations with PowerPoint. And I was pleased, but not surprised to see that I was not the only one pushing the software in this direction. Ric Bretschneider gave a session entitled “Insider Secrets for Paper Presentations.” I also spoke with numerous people who told me that their companies were abandoning Microsoft Publisher and Word in favor of PowerPoint as a layout tool.

PowerPoint will not replace design programs such as InDesign anytime soon. But I think the folks at Microsoft may be realizing that there are millions of users who require a basic (and inexpensive) layout tool for more visually dynamic print documents. And when those users choose from among the tools on their desktop, they choose PowerPoint.

Here’s hoping the PowerPoint dev team implements text box linking, image wrap, drop caps, grids and more layout tools in future releases…

* * *

Even though I now attend the conference as a speaker, I continue to learn a great deal from other presenters and attendees. I’ll be writing future posts on some of these things at PresentYourStory.com, so come on by and check the site out. There is a lot more on the site than what you’ll read in the newsletters!

And if I’m convincing you to attend the Presentation Summit, mark your calendars for next year: Oct 12-15 in San Diego!

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Categories: PowerPoint, Presenting Live.

The History of Apple Keynote

 

Quora has a nice history of Apple’s Keynote software, my favorite presentation solution.

We used it just a few weeks ago, as we always do, for Edelman New York’s annual all staff meeting. Here’s a pic from mission control…

And just a reminder that one of my three sessions I will be teaching at the Presentation Summit summit next month will be all about Keynote. Tickets are still available, and you can get a discount code for registration here.

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Categories: Keynote, Presenting Live.

Zimmerman Prosecutors Use Kindergarten-like PowerPoint Slides as Closing Remarks

Holy crap. If there’s anything that says, “incompetent, careless prosecution,” it’s the juvenile and horribly created PowerPoint slides that the Zimmerman prosecutors used in their closing arguments. There’s not much point in redesigning these or explaning the utter fail these are in terms of effective communication and persuasion. They pretty much speak for themselves.

Why not just bring your 6 year old in to deliver closing arguments for you?

Full set of slides here.

 

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Categories: PowerPoint, Presenting Live, Storytelling.

Presentation Summit 2013 & Discount Code

I am again speaking at the world’s only conference dedicated to presentation, the very awesome Presentation Summit.

This year we will be on the beach in Ft. Lauderdale, Sept 22-25, and I will be giving three sessions:

  • In The Trenches: Real-world and battle-tested techniques for maintaining best presentation practices in challenging corporate environments
  • Data Design: Effective and creative data design specifically for presentation
  • The Key to Keynote: All about Apple’s answer to PowerPoint

Check out the full schedule here.

And once again, the conference is extending a special discount offer for my readers. Just use “NH75” when you register.

If you’re on the fence or are wondering whether the Summit is right for you, just drop me a line, and I’ll be happy to tell you more.

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Categories: PowerPoint, Presenting Live.

Fewer Agencies Presenting with PowerPoint…

The good folks at Mirren in partnership with RSW/US have released a new report: New Business Tools: The Definitive Guide, which you can download a copy of here.

The survey of 300 agency executives shows that in the world of advertising, digital, marketing and PR agencies, PowerPoint isn’t as an entrenched tool as it is elsewhere in the business world—at least when it comes to pitching for new business. In fact, more agencies present with Keynote or Prezi (44%) than they do with PowerPoint (32%).

 There are a few more interesting tidbits in the report. Take a look!

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Categories: Keynote, Pitching, PowerPoint, Presenting Live, Prezi.

What Business Pitches and Sex Have in Common

What do business pitching and sex have in common? Well with certain exceptions, not a whole lot of people get to see you engage in either of them. Really, how do you stack up against the competition in the boardroom? (Or bedroom for that matter.)

You might have seen Facebook’s original ad sales deck from 2004 which is a fascinating archeological find.

But Business Insider seems able to get their hands on VC pitch decks fairly often, and I’m always interested to see how big and not so big names actually pitch and design their slides.

Here’s a recent one from Buffer, a social media startup. What it lacks in design and visual storytelling, it makes up for in simplicity and clarity.

 

And this 18 slide deck from Dwolla netted the founders $16.5 million in startup funds.

 

And finally, take a look at AirBnB’s investor pitch deck. Not bad…except for the incorrectly sized data bubbles…

 

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Categories: Pitching, PowerPoint, Presenting Live, Simplicity, Storytelling.

What Your Slides Say About Your Ad Agency

So, I attended the Mirren New Business conference last week. It’s an industry event for creative agencies, and it attracts the top players both as speakers and attendees. There was a lot of talent, a lot of big personalities and a lot of slides. 

And if you think that a creative agency’s slides are an indication of the agency itself, well…here were some highlights…

The Good, The Bad and the Cocky

Jordan Zimmerman is loud, cocky and owns one of the most successful advertising agencies in the world. That’s him below, and that was one of his slides in which he explained how his competitors’ indifference to client bottom lines has allowed him to make millions of dollars and buy expensive homes. You can watch his talk here.

And then there was one of the hot young agencies of the last decade, Droga5. Represented by Chief Creative Office Ted Royer and New Business Director Chris Wollen, Droga5 presented…well, I don’t really remember a thing they talked about. Some case studies and something about solving business problems, but this was one of their slides below. If one wants to equate art and copy with slide design and content, then…I think both Peggy Olsen and Sal ordered one too many martinis at lunch today. And not to pile on, but at one point they actually used the phrase, “This slide is meant to say…”   

But then there was Global Creative Officer Nick Law from powerhouse R/GA. He gave an engaging talk centered on the evolution of advertising to today’s participatory landscape. He warned of falling into the “It’s all about storytelling” meme and reinserted technical systems back into the equation. His slides were incredibly simple, used only shades of red (for some reason, people feel they need to avoid red in presentations) and at the end of the day required next to no design skills to create—just perhaps a design mindset. Below is my favorite which was the centerpiece of his talk.

Each of the above speakers showed their agency’s work in fancy video case studies and commercials. But it was the slides that seemed to tell me the most about the culture and approach of each agency. If I was looking to hire an advertising agency, whose business card would I have collected at the conference based solely on their slides? If I was a CFO, I’d run after Zimmerman. If I was a thoughtful and design-centered CMO, I’d want to talk to R/GA. And Droga5? Um…have they put the coffee and cookies out yet?

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Categories: Design, Presenting Live, Simplicity.
visual training presentation