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.

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Categories: PowerPoint, Showing Data.

Open Vector Maps For Detailed Vector Maps

OPENVECTORMAPS

 

I just ran across a cool project called Open Vector Maps which provides detailed and free vector maps.

They do request donations for commercial use. Unfortunately, the map I needed was yet available, but they’re growing. Check them out!

And don’t forget that PresentYourStory subscribers get access to a whole page of goodies including my stock image and graphic resource list that I try to keep updated.

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Categories: Imagery.

Presentation Summit 2016 Speaker Interviews

Indezine.com has been previewing this year’s Presentation Summit with a series of short Q+A’s with speakers. Lots of good stuff!

Emma Bannister on presenting to varied and international audiences

Julie Terberg on presentation design

Echo Swinford on templates and layouts

Troy Chollar on PowerPoint’s latest game-changing features

Mike Parkinson on presentation graphics

Jon Schwabish on data visualization

Heather Ackmann on remote presenting

Yours Truly on charts, tables, imagery and getting rid of bullet points

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Categories: Interviews.

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.

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Categories: PowerPoint.

Introducing The Presentation Guild

PRESENTATION GUILD HOME PAGE

 

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.

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Categories: PowerPoint.

RawPixel.com

Camera Photographing Traveling Digital Tablet Map Concept

RawPixel is a new free stock imagery site on the scene. True to name, it’s a little raw at the moment with no search, limited selection and an unexplained hint at “premium” images that presumably will turn the site into a freemium model similar to DeathToTheStockPhoto. Like a lot of new small sites, the curation leans more to a hipsterish vibe (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing) and a simplified user agreement basically letting you do what you want with the content short of reselling or otherwise exploiting it.

Take a look!

 

And stay tuned for an upcoming Presentation Podcast all about stock imagery. You’re all listening to and rating the Presentation Podcast on iTunes, right…?

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Categories: Imagery.
visual training presentation