*The Presenter’s Hat (Barbara Braxton) I recently read and reviewed Luke, a wonderful addition to the wonderful Stuff Happens series which is “a contemporary reflected-reality fiction series for young boys aged 7 to 11 years old”. In this episode written by James Valentine, Luke suffers from glossophobia – the fear of public speaking. At the same time I was reading it, I was preparing a full-day presentation for newbie teacher librarians and I realised that while sharing my thoughts with others, either in person or in writing, is not difficult for me, there are many in the profession who are like Luke. As well, as the new Australian school term starts and northern hemisphere colleagues are thinking about the new school year, the listservs are again filling with requests for advice for undertaking tasks that ill-informed principals and administrators think we should undertake but which do not make the most of our specialist teaching expertise and experience. Know your audience Know your topic Know how to present
SlidesCarnival - Free Powerpoint templates and Google Slides themes for presentations Social Media Marketing Budgets on the Rise Recently, we looked at media usage trends, which showed the rising numbers of media consumers that are using social networking sites, reading blogs, and viewing Internet video, among other forms of digital content. Not surprisingly, as these new forms of media consumption grow, so too grows the number of marketing dollars being poured into them. According to a new study released by Aberdeen Group (published today by eMarketer), 63 percent of companies plan to increase their social media marketing budgets in 2009, despite the current weakness in the economy. While that sounds like incredibly good news, it’s worth noting that late last year eMarketer reduced their estimates for overall ad spending on social networking sites. But “social media,” according to the newest survey, encompasses more than just the likes of Facebook and MySpace, who still command the bulk of ad dollars, and includes things like blogs, wikis, and Twitter. Are social media budgets growing at your company?
30 Legendary Startup Pitch Decks and What You Can Learn From Them 7. MapMe pitch deck Click to view SlideShare MapMe allows users to create universally accessible (i.e., on smartphones, tablets, and computers) maps of anywhere they want with no coding required. This startup deck was used to raise $1 million in seed funding. Social proof almost always works. Favorite takeaway: The pitch deck has fewer than 13 slides but provides investors with knowledge of the traction the site got going viral on social media and its go-to-market strategy. 8. LaunchRock allows users to create landing pages and quickly get their startups known through social media, even before the launch of their full site. Favorite takeaway: As a more creatively designed pitch deck example, this pitch deck had only 15 slides but showed how the product works and the different ways it can be used. 9. Mixpanel is an advanced analytics platform for mobile and the web. Favorite takeaway: This pitch deck example started off with a problem: people guessing their analytics. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.
Software - Mouseposé Capture the Attention Mouseposé 3 is an essential tool for everyone doing presentations or demos. If turned on, it dims the screen and puts a spotlight on the area around the mouse pointer, easily guiding the audience‘s attention to an area of interest. Of course, there are other uses as well. If you have a large screen, it helps you quickly locate the mouse pointer when you return to your work after an interruption. Visually impaired people tell us that it helps them as well. Visualizing Mouse Clicks One of the most important aspects of presenting is for an audience to be able to follow what the presenter is doing. Hitting a user definable hot key turns on the Mouseposé effect, dimming the screen and putting the mouse pointer into a "virtual laserpointer" that makes it easy to locate. Highlight that Window New in Mouseposé 3: When the Mouse stays over a window for more than a configurable time, the focus automatically expands to highlight the window. Let it Speak for Itself
Top Ten Delivery Tips | Garr Reynolds Official Site 1. Show your passion If I had only one tip to give, it would be to be passionate about your topic and let that enthusiasm come out. Yes, you need great content. Yes, you need professional, well designed visuals. But it is all for naught if you do not have a deep, heartfelt belief in your topic. 2. You’ve heard it before: First impressions are powerful. 3. Humans have short attention spans when it comes to passively sitting and listening to a speaker. 4. Get closer to your audience by moving away from or in front of the podium. 5. To advance your slides and builds, use a small, handheld remote. 6. If you press the “B” key while your PowerPoint or Keynote slide is showing, the screen will go blank. 7. Try looking at individuals rather than scanning the group. 8. If you are speaking in a meeting room or a classroom, the temptation is to turn the lights off so that the slides look better. 9. 10.
How to Give an Online Presentation from Anywhere Advertisement Giving an online presentation can be a tricky endeavor if you don’t have the right tools. Thankfully, there are lots of online tools available to help. Whether you work with a global team or you’re just working from home, the ability to present material “in person” using the magic of the Internet can make the difference between a powerful presentation, or a boring one. The tools presented in this article all allow you to not only share your presentation via the Internet with others, but they all offer built-in tools that let you present in real-time, while others on your team are connected and viewing your material. Google Drive/Slides Any list of the best online presentation tools would be lacking if it didn’t include Google Slides, via your Google Drive account. To create your Google Slides presentation, go to your Google Drive account, click on the New button in the navigation menu, and select Google Slides from the list. GotoMeeting (With Drawing Tools) Zoho Docs Vcasmo Slides
The Faces of Mechanical Turk When you experiment with Amazon's Mechanical Turk, it feels like magic. You toss 500 questions into the ether, and the answers instantly start rolling in from anonymous workers around the world. It was great for getting work done, but who are these people? Last week, I started a new Turk experiment to answer two questions: what do these people look like, and how much does it cost for someone to reveal their face? Answer #1. Answer #2. Results Here's my original request: Upload a photo of yourself holding a handwritten sign that says "I Turk for I started the task at $.05, but only two people responded in the first 24 hours. The final results: 30 people total — 10 women, 20 men. Thanks for pulling back the curtain, Turkers.
Presenting Lessons I've Learned Up until a few years ago I'd never done any type of public speaking. I'm outspoken among friends, but generally shy around strangers. However, some opportunities presented themselves and I decided to take the leap into the world of presenting. I thought it might be helpful to document some lessons I've learned. Get Help - I took a class at Speakeasy (NYC). Almost everything I learned I got from Neal Ford, Jim Webber, and Dan North. Presentation Design 101 Keep audiences visually engaged with a slick, well-designed presentation. If you’ve ever had to present to a group of people, you know how intimidating it can be. You know things can go wrong. Your voice can give out, your laptop can fail, and your left leg can shake uncontrollably. These things can just… happen. This is the first slide of a bad presentation. Now, you might never have learned how to create a good presentation — one that’s guaranteed to engage any audience — or you might’ve been fed some bad advice over the years that’s led you astray. If that’s the case, we forgive you. But after you read this article, you’ll have no excuse. Why does this stuff matter? Simply put, an engaging visual presentation takes a lot of the pressure off you, the speaker, to deliver something people actually want to listen to. Give them the boring slides with Times New Roman and they’ll assume you’re boring before you even open your mouth. Close Not sure how to use this article? 01. 02. 03. 04. 05. 06.
7 Free PowerPoint Alternatives for All Your Presentation Needs Advertisement Microsoft PowerPoint is fantastic. There’s a reason why it’s the standard presentation tool used in schools and businesses all across the country: it’s good, it’s easy, it works, and it has a bunch of nifty features that make presentations simple. 7 Tips for Creating Professional PowerPoint Templates 7 Tips for Creating Professional PowerPoint Templates Nobody benefits from a boring PowerPoint presentation. Use these tips to make sure your efforts always grab their audience. But there are also reasons why you might not want to use it, the main reason being that you probably shouldn’t buy Microsoft Office these days. Why shell out cash when free alternatives exist? 1. LibreOffice is the highest quality alternative to Microsoft Office that you’ll currently find. Impress is the LibreOffice analog to Microsoft’s PowerPoint. And yes, Impress supports all PowerPoint formats — PPS, PPT, PPTX — and it also supports a handful of other open formats and standards. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Microsoft far campanha contra Google SÃO PAULO – Não é só a Apple que está na mira da Microsoft quando o assunto são campanhas publicitárias agressivas. Segundo o AdAge, a empresa de Ballmer irá gastar entre US$ 80 milhões a US$ 100 milhões para promover o próprio site de buscas. No artigo, o serviço de pesquisa online da gigante de software é tratado como Bing – o que pode ser o novo nome do Kumo. A campanha seria feita pela agência JWT, uma das maiores dos Estados Unidos, sediada em Nova Iorque. Os anúncios, que devem incluir publicidade online, comerciais televisionados e rádios, focarão na suposta incapacidade dos serviços de buscas atuais em informar exatamente o que se procura na internet. Por uma questão óbvia de mercado, o principal rival será o Google, mas também deve citar o Yahoo! A principal brecha a ser explorada deve ser a falta de refinamento nas buscas, uma das queixas dos usuários dos serviços do gênero.
*Brain Rules for Presenters We know that it takes you about 10 minutes to lose an audience if you’re just giving a normal talk. So at the nine-minute-and-59-second mark, you have to do something fairly radical. In fact, you should do it within 30 seconds of your first words, but certainly at nine minutes and 59 seconds. I think anybody who does speeches at all ought to really understand that the brain processes meaning before it processes detail. So at nine minutes and 59 seconds, you’ve got to address one of those six questions or you’ll lose your audience. More links:Attention Brain Rule Brain Rules for Presenters on SlideShare (thanks to Garr Reynolds, author of Presentation Zen)Get the Brain Rules (updated and expanded) eBookGet the Brain Rules (updated and expanded) audiobook on Libro.fm
5 Sites with Microsoft PowerPoint Templates, & Other Tools Advertisement Want your PowerPoint presentations to go better? Most of the work is going to be on you, but the right template can make a difference. Here are a few places to find them, and a few more tools that can help make your presentations just a little more engaging. There are all sorts of uses for PowerPoint that you haven’t thought of yet, like building presentations to present your photos with style. And we could go on and on about how to improve your presentation skills. 5 Creative Uses Of PowerPoint Presentations You Haven't Explored Yet 5 Creative Uses Of PowerPoint Presentations You Haven't Explored Yet Microsoft PowerPoint can do much more than boring presentations. But if your slides are ugly and not engaging, that’s going to undermine your point. Templates for PowerPoint: Collection of Templates Direct from Microsoft There are a staggering number of sites out there with mostly hideous PowerPoint templates. RemarkJS: Make Beautiful Presentations Using Only Markdown