It includes four men, three women and two children.  You could use them for mug shots, or an identity parade.  They could be used as placeholders for winners of a competition.

Keywords – Backlit, Head Shape, Human Head, Mug Shot, outline, People, Silhouette, Unrecognisable Person, clip art

Jes Breslaw, EMEA Marketing at Workshare, discusses why his company is delighted but unsurprised at the appreciation PowerPoint users are expressing on the launch of its new Comparison product, aptly named Compare for PowerPoint.

Last month’s launch of Windows 7 should remind us all of the ongoing ubiquity and power of Microsoft and just how much it has become an integral part of our working lives. Office 2010 is the next big release from Microsoft and will do things its Office ancestors could only have dreamed of. One change, unlike previous releases, is that PowerPoint is set to play more of a starring role. This is not surprising, given that these days it is used by many enterprises, organisations and even consumers, not just as a core presentation aid but as the means to create, distribute and share information. Yet even with all the fabulous new features Office 2010 will bring, one of the biggest bugbears with PowerPoint will remain – the editing and review process.

Word has been able to track changes for years and has a whole category of supporting products like our own Workshare Professional that enable efficient and detailed comparison between document versions. PowerPoint has never been able to offer its users this level of management control and productivity gains. The danger of missing changes and the time it takes to decipher comments and amendments seriously weakens one of our most useful and trusted tools.

Collaboration or contamination?

One MD of a London-based marketing services agency has first-hand experience of this. Over 90 per cent of his initial contact with clients involves the use of some sort of presentation or slide deck.  He recalls an occasion where a mismanaged approach to revisions made on his presentation caused him significant problems.

“I remember one example where I was pitching to a new prospect, and was totally thrown by two changes made by a member of my team that I didn’t see when I was doing a final review,” he recalls.   “We didn’t win that contract – and I still wonder if that’s because we let ourselves down with what they must have seen as a lack of professionalism.”

Maintaining integrity, improving productivity

If we have mechanisms in place to keep on top of changes in our word-processing work, should we not give the same courtesy to our presentations? Many organisations frown on allowing multiple instances of fiscal spreadsheets to float around. Yet until now we have been unable to take the same precautions with PowerPoint when communicating our expertise, value proposition, arguments and teaching.

To make the process of collaboration much more watertight without being overly time consuming, we need a better way of comparing and validating the work we do with other people’s content.

Co-authoring and collaboration tools such as Microsoft SharePoint can provide some capabilities for working on documents collectively within a group, but for situations where a document has to be reviewed by many, where greater control is a requirement or specific ownership needs to be applied to the review process, a different approach is called for.

This is particularly the case for the many users of PowerPoint in professional services, sales and marketing, or management positions, where maintaining ownership over authored documents is important for a whole host of reasons.  Audit trails may be a strict business requirement or part of a necessary compliance process.  Content being incorporated is also more likely to be of a confidential nature.  In these cases, ensuring data integrity is protected and that content remains accurate is important throughout the review process, as are stringent checks that the correct people have vetted any changes made to the document.

It is this requirement for greater control and management over document revisions that drove the development of Compare for PowerPoint. Where this differs from some of the other collaborative software solutions available is that it effectively treats collaboration as a workflow process rather than a free-for-all opportunity to participate in a working presentation.  As a result, authors have the ability to manage sequential versions and can compare changes that have been made and finalise amendments in a more structured fashion. The emphasis is on driving efficiency and making the process of document assessment as easy and as streamlined as possible.

By streamlining the review, check and comment procedures, those participating in the presentation review process can save considerable time.  This is especially beneficial where there are multi-party review cycles.  As a result the team operates more effectively and productivity is increased, proposals can be completed in faster time, the business can be more responsive to third parties and the time required by individuals to check documents can be significantly lowered.

By applying a more structured approach, businesses can alleviate risk by catching inaccuracies in presentations and can maintain quality control.  This provides additional protection over compliance responsibilities and safeguards the presentation of sensitive information, which is critical to business reputation and professionalism.

In short, we can finally apply the experience and best practice learned from Word comparison to PowerPoint. By adopting an automated way of managing changes in PowerPoint we can spend less time manually comparing presentations and focus more on the content. Move over Word and Excel – PowerPoint is finally standing up for its rights!

Isn’t it funny how technology can seem state-of-the-art one minute and clunky the next?

Anyone old enough to remember the original mobile phones will know what I mean. They were bulky, awkward to handle, the size of a brick and almost as heavy; a far cry from today’s streamlined dreams.

Videotapes seemed pretty cool when they first came out. But then there were DVDs, allowing you to go instantly to the precise scene you wanted, without laboriously winding or rewinding tape. They also never spilled their guts out or got caught in the machine.

The same evolution can be seen in presentations. First there was the blackboard, then the flipchart, then the overhead projector. (That probably seemed cool when it first came out, but it really wasn’t – especially if you were standing next to it.)

Next came PowerPoint, which was of course a mighty leap forward compared to all that stuff.

But there’s never a final word in technology. There’s always something else waiting in the wings. And in today’s world, it usually doesn’t have to wait long.

There’s a new piece of kit on the market called Prezi, which describes itself as the zooming presentation tool. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s worth checking out at www.prezi.com.

Harvard Business called it “Insanely great” (which I think is a compliment), while Technology Madness described it as “a wow” (which definitely is).

This raises two questions. What’s different about it? And will it make other presentation tools look as outdated as top-loading VCRs?

The first question is easy to answer. Prezi is a nonlinear tool that allows you to create presentations in a more interesting way. Instead of building up through slides, Prezi allows you to present an overview, go down to features and then further down to focus on details, all on one big ‘canvas’. And it can also let you publish your presentation on the web.

Link to http://prezi.com/oezslt5tzqub/

As to the second question, that’s much more difficult. We all know that the history of technology is littered with numerous electronic equivalents of the dodo. Some of these ideas looked good at the time, like Betamax video, for example. But for one reason or another, they ended up in the elephant’s graveyard.

Will Prezi be fit enough to survive, and even displace rivals like PowerPoint? It does have a lot going for it: in the hands of a boring presenter, PowerPoint’s linear approach, all boxes and straight lines, can be a turn-off. Prezi is eye-catching, and some students and audiences have really taken to it.

On the negative side, its controls are different, and although they can be learned in ten minutes, according to the makers, they do take some getting used to. And the way it whizzes around the screen could be distracting rather than enhancing for some messages.

Link to http://prezi.com/gxnef5on5xzr/

I don’t think Prezi will be consigning PowerPoint to history; PowerPoint is too useful for that, and in the right hands, certainly not boring. But Prezi does offer some interesting approaches that might be worth trying out.

In the end, of course, the users will decide. So why not check it out today and see what you think?

Thanks to Kevin McAllister at the University of Washington, Seattle who brought this to our attention.

By David Vickery

Perfect for your Halloween and Bonfire Night parties!

José A Bowen, a dean at Southern Methodist University near Dallas, Texas, found himself in the news in July when he challenged his colleagues to present ”naked”.

This might seem an unlikely cause for an academic to espouse (especially a Methodist).

It turns out, however, that he was merely calling for technology – laptops, handhelds and particularly PowerPoint – to be taken out of the lecture room. Such things are distracting, said Bowen, and get in the way of the message the teacher is trying to put across.

This idea has since gathered support, particularly in America. Bowen claimed that many professors were using PowerPoint as a crutch rather than as a creative tool. It was also discouraging debate and interaction in the lecture room.

Is Bowen right? And if so, should his prescription apply to business presentations too?

There’s no doubt that presentations can be dull. The chances are that you’ve sat through one of them in the not too distant past. But I don’t think it’s the fault of PowerPoint.

There’s an old adage in my profession that seems apt. It says that there are no boring subjects – only boring writers. In the same way, I’d claim that there are no boring presentations, only boring presenters.

PowerPoint is a fantastic and powerful presentation tool, and ejecting it from meetings really would seem to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. After all, if someone was playing the piano in a boring way, you wouldn’t ban pianos. But you might suggest that person could learn to play the piano better.

I think that’s the key. PowerPoint is a great tool, but nothing more than a tool. It won’t make boring presentations interesting. The answer is to use it more creatively.

For instance, some people have complained that they can’t see the faces of their audience when PowerPoint is running. Well, there’s no rule that says you can’t turn it off now and then, is there?

In the same way, it’s perfectly possible to move away from the screen, engage with the audience, ask them questions, have debates, and all the other things Bowen was advocating. These things will help make your presentation better – and so can PowerPoint.

PowerPoint can do things that older technologies couldn’t imagine. You only have to think of chalk boards or overhead projectors to appreciate that.

Perhaps the answer, then, is to keep PowerPoint but liven up the presentation in other ways. To use it as it was intended: as an aid, not a crutch.

In other words, maybe presenting “half naked” would be a better idea.

By David Vickery

Here is a selection of stars in clip art format.  They are all vector images, so they can be stretched and magnified.  They can also be coloured in.  We have some with rounded corners and some that are also 3d.  There is a Star of David clip art as well.

We have included at the end some large shapes so that you can get the kids to cut them out.  You could print them on coloured card and use them as star decorations.

PowerPoint reminds me a little of my electric piano. It’s got more sounds on it than I can shake a stick at – but I only use a handful of them. I might find a use for a few more of them, one day. But with most of those “voices”, I’d just get laughed at if I used them in public.

It’s the same with PowerPoint. You can do lots of different things with it. But just because you can, it doesn’t mean that you should. In fact, the smart presenters would never consider using certain of its facilities. Those tend to be the ones whose presentations are interesting, fun and absorbing – rather than those putting their audiences to sleep.

Take tables of data, for instance. There’s no difficulty putting the most complex matrix up on the screen. But it’s almost never a wise move.

People won’t be able to read the figures from the back of the room; and those who can read them will get lost trying to follow them. Tables are death to a presentation. If they’re vital, hand them out afterwards. Far better to summarise the key point that all those figures are making.

It’s equally easy to put screeds of words on each slide. So easy is it, indeed, that many amateur presenters do this without thinking. But this is another facility that’s best left in the box.

Why? Because if people are reading, they’re not listening. If you’re standing at the front reading something out while words are on the screen, the audience’s attention will be torn two ways. It’s a much better idea to have three words on the screen and talk around each one rather than having 30.

It’s also good to have no words at all on some slides. A graph, or a simple diagram, can make a more powerful point than any number of words. Contrast a presenter saying “Last year, our sales rose by 25.7 per cent, with March and September producing the best month” and presenting those facts in a graph. The key points are grasped almost instantly – and much more dramatically.

Another thing that’s best not to present is a long presentation. People have short attention spans: probably no more than 10 minutes for most of us. And as John Medina, author of Brain Rules, points out, we don’t pay attention to boring things. So if you have a 30-minute presentation, you’re likely to lose your audience a third of the way through. (Or sooner than that if your presentation is boring.)

There are ways round this, of course. The obvious one is to shorten your presentation. Almost everything benefits from being tightened up and pruned of irrelevancy. If it really can’t be shortened, break it up. After ten minutes or so, do something to catch your audience’s attention. Turn off the projector, walk around, ask them questions. Then you can resume with them interested again.

Many presenters seem to forget that audiences have more than one sense. Stimulate those other senses – so long as you remember that vision will always win out. PowerPoint is great for running short, impactful video clips, for example, complete with arresting sound.

Last but not least, what you definitely don’t want to present is an unrehearsed presentation. Reading a presentation through is not rehearsing it. Read it out loud, preferably to someone who can comment on any weaknesses. You might feel silly, or you might think you haven’t got the time. But the fact is, you will have to run through the presentation – either beforehand, or in front of your audience when it will be too late to fix anything that doesn’t work.

Used correctly, PowerPoint is a great tool. It can enliven presentations and make your points really stand out. All you need to do is be selective of its facilities and use them wisely. Because people don’t want tables of data, screens full of words or rambling presentations any more than they want Bach or Beethoven played on “Goblin Pad” or “Blown Bottle”.

By David Vickery

It could also be used for Friday the 13th or as a background for a project on a horror character like Count Dracula.

You may find this useful simply for a project on the environment.

It was designed by our Editor Jonty and is very striking.  The template contains a matching colour scheme (as do all of our PowerPoint templates).

Steve Jobs made a welcome return to the public eye last month at a special music event to introduce Apple’s 2009 holiday iPods.

“The September music event was classic Apple. It marked the return of the world’s greatest corporate storyteller,” says communications coach, Carmine Gallo, author of The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience.

Here Carmine Gallo breaks down his top ten presentation tips from Jobs’ latest speech.

1. Create memorable moments

Every Steve Jobs presentation has one moment that leaves everyone in awe. These “moments” are scripted ahead of time to complement Steve Jobs’s slides, the Apple website, press releases and advertisements. At Macworld 2008, Jobs pulled the new MacBook Air out of a manila inter-office envelope to show everyone just how thin it was. Bloggers went nuts and it was the most common photograph of the event.

At last month’s “Rock & Roll” event, the “water cooler” moment wasn’t a product at all. Instead, it was Steve Jobs himself walking onstage after a long, health-related absence. He told the audience he now had the liver of a mid-twenties person who died in a car crash and was generous enough to donate their organs. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for such generosity,” he said.

2. Stick to the rule of three

A Steve Jobs presentation is typically divided into three parts. The Rule of Three is one of most powerful concepts in dramatic writing—how many times have you seen a “two-act” play? The human mind can only retain three or four “chunks” of information and Jobs is well aware of this principle. He even has a lot of fun with it.

During Macworld 2007, he teased the audience with “three” revolutionary products: an MP3 player, a phone and an Internet communications device. Of course, he really only had one device — the iPhone.

3. Dress up the numbers

When Jobs introduced the iPod in 2001, he said it came with a 5GB hard-drive. Only the most technical audience would understand the implications of that number. Jobs broke it down by saying, “That’s enough storage for 1,000 songs.” He made the number even more compelling by announcing that all those songs could fit in your pocket. Apple presenters never leave big numbers hanging without placing those numbers into perspective.

For example, during the “Rock & Roll” music event, marketing head Phil Schiller announced that Apple had sold 220 million iPods to date. “That’s 73% of the market,” he said. Schiller took it one step further, and got a laugh, when he said Microsoft was “pulling up the rear” with 1% market share.

4. Think visually

Apple presentations are strikingly simple and visual. For example, there is very little text on a Steve Jobs slide. While the average PowerPoint slide has forty words, there were far fewer than forty words in the first dozen slides of last week’s event. When Jobs talked about the popularity of iTunes around the world, his slide showed twenty-three flags of different countries instead of country names.

When he said the iPhone app store was celebrating its first anniversary, a slide appeared with a birthday cake holding one candle. When he talked about lower iPod prices, the new price was accompanied by photos of the iPods. Psychologists call this picture superiority: ideas are more easily recalled when presented with text and images instead of text alone.

5. Create Twitter-friendly headlines

Apple makes it simple for the media to talk about their products — the company writes the headlines for them. Now, reporters will tell you that they like to come up with their own headlines, but why then did hundreds of them use “World’s thinnest notebook” to describe the MacBook Air? Because it’s the best way to describe it. It’s the world’s thinnest notebook. Period.

Steve Jobs always describes a new product with a concise phrase that fits well within a 140-character Twitter post. What’s an iPod? “One thousand songs in your pocket.” What’s Genuis Mix for iTunes? “It’s like having a DJ mix the songs in your library.”

6. Share the stage

Jobs rarely gives an entire presentation by himself. Instead he surrounds himself with a supporting cast. He had a large supporting cast at the September 9 music event, including Apple VPs Jeff Robbin and Phil Schiller.

In October 2008 Jobs introduced lead designer Jonathan Ive who gave the audience a tutorial about Apple’s newest line of aluminum MacBooks. Although few companies are more closely associated with their founder than Apple, a Jobs presentation is rarely a one-man play. He features supporting characters who play a key role in the narrative.

7. Practise, practise and practise more

According to some observers, Steve Jobs labours over every slide, each one “written like a piece of poetry.” Jobs has been known to spend hours upon hours over many days rehearsing every section of his keynotes. Nothing is left for granted. Jobs make a presentation look effortless because he has spent hours preparing it.

8. Sell dreams, not products

Steve Jobs is passionately committed to changing the world and his passion shows in every presentation. In May 2005, Steve Jobs told Stanford graduates, “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life… and the only way to do great work is to love what you do.” Anyone can learn the specific techniques Jobs uses to create visually creative slides and to craft an interesting story, but that message will fail to inspire an audience if there’s no enthusiasm behind it. Jobs has a nearly messianic  zeal to change the world. In your own way, so should you.

9. Introduce the antagonist

In every classic story, the hero fights the villain. The same holds true for a Steve Jobs presentation. In 1984, the villain was IBM, “Big Blue.” Before Jobs introduced the famous 1984 Ridley Scott ad to the Apple sales team, he painted a picture of Big Blue “bent on world domination” with Apple as the only one to stand in its way. Conquering a shared enemy is a powerful motivator, attracting fans and followers.

10. One more thing… Have Fun!

Jobs has fun and it shows. Despite relentless planning and hours of rehearsal, sometimes thing go wrong but Jobs doesn’t let the small stuff get to him. Jobs’ clicker failed to advance the slides during a portion of the iPhone introduction during Macworld 2007. Jobs paused and told a very funny story about the time he and friend Steve Wozniak would hang out in Wozniak’s college dorm with a device that would screw up TV signals. It was a glimpse of Jobs the prankster. Most presenters would have frozen. Jobs acted with cool confidence because he’s up there to have fun.  It’s not about the slides.

This presentation article first appeared on Cult of Mac.

Thanks also to Carmine Gallo for allowing us to publish this.