Re: presentation

G'Day Karen,

At 08:28 pm 9/01/00 -0600, Karen Stafford wrote:
>I'm becoming quite Internet-savvy, but not really presentation and
>PowerPoint savvy yet! I have two afternoons of workshops to present and
>do have PowerPoint installed on my laptop. 

Rob and Gil have both given sound advice!

However, you state you already have your own laptop.  This decreases
concerns about reliability of your equipment, but not entirely.  It STILL
doesn't mean nothing can go wrong!!  After being all prepared, the CD on my
laptop turned belly-up less than 18 hours before a major presentation -
fortunately the wonderful people at Gateway lent me a spare CDROM from a
demo model in their showroom!! :)

The moral is: ALWAYS HAVE A BACKUP PLAN!!  Take transparencies - it's worth
it just for the peace of mind knowing you have a backup if something goes
wrong!

However, using your system means you should have the appropriate software
to display the presentation already installed - that's a bonus.  No need to
rely on someone else's dubious system and doubtful software!

Projectors should be able to cope with both Mac/PC input, but check that
they supply the relevant cable for your operating system.

The major technical problem I've encountered with older projectors is their
inability to display anything greater than 16 colours and 640x480
resolution - something to keep in mind if you have troubles.  Many
projectors won't go past 256 colours anyway!

Apart from that, the standard rules are:
* Use a sans-serif font for readibility
* Use large fonts - the people up the back of the room want to read the
words too
(I use 48pt for headings, 36 pt for 1st and second bullets - I know that's
excessive, but it's necessary for videoconferencing and old habits die hard :)
* Avoid dark backgrounds, rely on dark text on light backgrounds
* consider making your text bigger than your headings - the important stuff
is in the text, not the heading!!  Smaller headings mean more room for the
bulk of your text.

Gil mentioned that the speed of your computer can be a problem.  You can
get around this with careful planning - if you KNOW something will take
ages to load, click the button BEFORE you need it and talk about something
else until it loads.  It's all a matter of timing.

As for the special effects/animation - ditch the lot!!  There is nothing
more aggravating than watching bullet points "drive in from the side with
VROOOM sounds"!  Once is amusing, twice is interesting, but after that it
wears pretty thin.  After 30 mins it actively drives your audience away!
As Microsoft's own instructions tell you - the special effects should be
used sparingly to illustrate important points, not for every point you make.

Flash and Director are fine, but again, constant movement is a distraction
- it detracts from your presentation.  In the some cases a "Powerpoint"
presentation is actually better than a Director presentation - the audience
feel more comfortable with it and know what to expect.

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