Bad idea - live web pages in your PowerPoint presentation (LiveWeb)

A number of blogs posted about LiveWeb yesterday, a PowerPoint plugin that lets you open a fully functioning web browser inside your PowerPoint slide show. All links work and are active.

Any live demo in a presentation is very, very high risk. Live web browsing is no exception

• You need to get an Internet connection to work in a strange environment. If finding power lead extension can be difficult, and setting up projectors is not obvious while the audience is settling down, going online is a challenge of a whole different magnitude

• The momentum is gone. If you have 20 minutes to make your pitch, you cannot afford to break the carefully build up momentum in your presentation. Turning away from the audience, "Wait a minute, where is that link, it was there yesterday" will make your audience opens up their PDAs to check email.

• Unpredictable content. A large banner ad for a gambling site. A breaking news story about stock markets tumbling. A sighting of Britney Spears. Distractions that will not help your story.

There are obviously situations where you need live web pages on a projector to work together as a group. In an informal setting, why not open up a regular browser? The only exception for a browser inside your PowerPoint might people that run training courses, either on Internet use, or on using internal corporate intranets.

P.S. Not sure what stirred the blogging activity yesterday, LiveWeb seems to have been around for some time.

How to get the most out of stock images for your presentation

Stock image sites with affordable pricing schemes (iStockPhoto is one of them) have transformed PowerPoint presentations. While using a stock image instead of clip art will always lead to a better chart, there are many poor (and cheesy) images out there. How to pick a good one? A slightly random, rambling list of suggestions (resembling the creative design process):

• Start with the slide design. Brainstorm concepts. Write down chains of keywords. Think through what images could work. Only when you are happy with the short list of design ideas, start taking the limitations of PowerPoint or your design skills (i.e., making complicated 3D compositions) into account.
• Iterate, go back and forth between image sources. While a stock photograpy site might be the final source of an image, use Google Images as well to get ideas by seeing what sort of images are returned based on key words. Use Flickr for "real images", especially locations (check the license). Stock image sites usually go for "touristic" photo compositions of landmarks and/or artificially smiling models.
• Models are not real people. I hardly ever use images with faces from stock photography sites, they hardly ever look natural (with the exception of children). Search "team" on iStockphoto and you will see what I mean (here). Sometimes these images are even funny (the opposite of what you want them to be. Photographer takes model that usually does fashion shoots, puts on suit, puts on spectacles without lenses, and hey: we have a "business person pondering his vision as he looks towards the horizon"
• Leverage advanced search. Add the word "isolated" in an iStockPhoto search to get images on a white background. Sort iStockPhoto images by "most downloaded" instead of "best match"
• Crop. Consider that you can zoom into images and take just a small detail if you purchase a high enough resolution. The photographer's composition does not have to be yours.
• Avoid "cheesyness". Be careful with using renderings or illustrations, often cheesy. Make the conceptual graph yourself, use stock images only for the components. Ready-made stock photography conceptual images (i.e., a few dollar bills with an arrow going up in the background) do not look good. There is a good list of cliches (where is that accent) on the Slide:ology blog.
• Think of color. In iStockPhoto you can narrow down images by color range, especially important for large, page filling images. If no option, use a PowerPoint color overlay to take the color out the color all together and replace it with an overlay of one of the colors in your color scheme.
• Look at many, many, many images until you find something that catches your attention. A small thumb nail is enough (and actually better than the full size image) to check whether an image evokes some emotion in you.
• Less is more. Look for white space, or in fact, any empty space to add text if required.

Little known PowerPoint feature - format painter

The format painter in PowerPoint can be really useful. It transfers the exact formating of one object to another.

• Click an object with the desired format
• Click "format painter" (left in the home ribbon)
• Click the 2nd object
• Done!

Animoto - transform your PowerPoint presentation into a slow zooming video

Animoto is a sight that allows you to create a slow zooming animated video of any series of images. I tried it on my company's introduction presentation using the overture of Mozart's Figaro: I do not like the wild slide transitions, the pace of transition is too high, but the slow-zoom is highly appealing. I assume that in the professional edition you can control all these features. If not, then this tool is actually only useful for use with still images without text.

PowerPoint now required for MBA applications - a survival guide

The University of Chigaco is now requiring applicants for its MBA programme to produce a PowerPoint presentation of a maximum of 4 pages with complete creative freedom. Any subject, any style, what you want. More details here in a post on Manhattan Review.

First of all, a very good initiative I think.

• 4 blank pages of PowerPoint leave a lot more room for creative self-expression than the classic short essay
• Visual communication skills are very important to become a succesful executive, there is not better way to test them than to ask for a real-life example

Now, how would I address this challenge (having completed a regular MBA application more than a decade ago...)?

THE CONSTRAINTS

First, let's think about the constraints, and what it means for the sort of presentation you need to design:

4 pages maximum, it has to be short and to the point

The presentation will be printed and included in your file. This is a huge constraint.

• No video
• No animation (this a bad idea anyway)
• The color printer could be poor: avoid textured background (a bad idea anyway), avoid dark backgrounds (what if the black toner runs out), use pin sharp images, use contrasting colors
• Printed documents can carry more detail than projected slides (if they are printed out in full page), so you can insert more dense text on one of the slides if you want to
• You are not in the room. The slide needs to stand on its own

You can supply a Word document with explanations. Here is the big way out, but I would actually not use it. The text with details can be in your regular application.

People encourage you to be creative. No worries here whether the presentation approach might be too funky or unusual for the Board room, or that serious conference. You can go all the way.

NOW ON TO THE PRESENTATION ITSELF

The good advice that is out there on professional presentation design also apply for this presentation. Browse sites like this one, stock up on a few good books, etc. No bullet points, no cheesy graphics (clip art, cheesy pictures). No business buzzwords

Luckily there will never be a standard template for presentations like this. I can help you with brainstorming some ideas that you could try using my experience of having gone through an MBA programme (INSEAD) and my tme at McKinsey & Company, where my non-client work involved scanning CVs and interviewing of MBA candidates for consulting positions.

• A slide on something that really makes people remember you. People see thousands of CVs. Think of an exciting slide, maybe a very special and large picture of yourself, maybe one sentence in font 10 if you are bold, anything that creates the memory of "oh, you mean the guy on the foldable bike in front of the Mount Everest"?
• A slide with the career facts that can become the slide that is open on the table constantly when people are discussing you. An attractive way to present your CV alongside some timeline (here is mine). The fact that slides are printed helps, you can add more detail, but watch out to replicate your CV itself which people have already in your application form.

The other 2 slides should be highly creative and give the pitch about yourself. The degrees of freedom are without boundaries. Pick the aspect of yourself you want to come out and find the best and most original way to do it.

• "Travel pictures" from all the international locations you worked in
• A picture of the team that you led and was totally inspired by you
• An actual screenshot of the (maybe boring) Board presentation that showed the 75% increase in revenues you delivered
• A scan of a thank-you letter you received
• The 15 page Gantt chart of the project you managed shrunk to one A4
• Etc.

Good luck!

Godin on Tribes - a PowerPoint documentary

Seth Godin will be presenting about his latest book Tribes this morning in New York. The slides of the presentation are available on slideshare:

Seth Godin on Tribes

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: book tribes)

Why a PowerPoint documentary? This presentation uses a huge amount of slides (more than 200), mostly full-page images that are clicked through at a very high speed: the presenter only speaks a few sentences to each of them. The effect you get is similar to documentaries on for example the History Channel: the camera zooming slowly over still images with a voice over in the background. (Ken Burns is the master of the slow zoom, see a post on Presentation Zen) Not suited for slideshare. The notes are an integral part of this presentation. Because they are not very visible, this presentation is actually not that suited for publication on the Internet. The images are nice, but you do not get the message by clicking rapidly to the slideshare document. I would have included a black "subtitle" bar to provide background to the documentary. About Tribes. Seth is making the case that marketing is all about enabling a group of followers to interact with each other. More here.

UPDATE: a video of Seth's presentation can be watched on Mixergy.com.

"Made to stick" authors on avoiding presentation mistakes

Chip and Dean Heath, authors of the best selling book "Made to Stick" devoted this month's column in Fast Company magazine to How to avoid making a bad presentation.

It is an interesting read. Two key messages for me:

• Firstly: "before your audience will value the information you're giving, they've got to want it. Most presenters take that desire for granted. Great presentations are mysteries, not encyclopedia entries."

• Secondly: puting the use of stock images into perspective. They are definitely better than clip art, but spending hours to find that perfect image to support let's say "innovation" ("which one, the bunny coming out of the magician's hat or the smiley-face guy with a light bulb over his head") will not help you communicate the concept better.

Apologies for the many apostrophe an quotation mark errors in this post, too many HTML codes to put in.

Via Andy Nulman

Steve Jobs pitching his company (NeXT)

Two interesting videos in which Steve Jobs (then still busy with NeXT) uses a white board and a marker to explain the strategy of his company:

• who is the target customer?
• why do they pick us and not the competition?
• how are we going to reach them?

The informal presentation style is very similar to the one advocated in "The back of the napkin" by Dan Roam.

Video 2: Via Venture Hacks A summary of useful links with advice on how to pitch a startup to a VC here.

Critiquing a McKinsey exhibit - analysis charts are not presentation slides

PowerPoint slides that are used to analyze data and solve problems inside a team are not always the best exhibits to be used in presentations. To illustrate the point, I am using a chart out of a publicly available McKinsey document: the 2008 Chinese Consumer Report published by McKinsey's Insights China initiative. 

The report itself is formated very nicely with beautiful pictures, the content of the report looks very interesting. I am just focusing on the cosmetics of one chart as an example. (Click image for a larger picture)

• Overall, there is too much information on the slide, but given that this chart is used inside a long-hand document, that might not be too bad
• Because of the red background, the title does not stand out clearly
• The boxes around the chart are too heavy, to separate the 3 charts, it would be better to use a very light background shading
• The box on the right is narrower than the other two.
• Because there are so many bars in this slide, they become very narrow, and hence they almost stop helping the reader see the differences in size, maybe boxes with simple numbers work better
• The gradient fill of the bar does not add to the understanding the chart
• The legend in the top right looks slightly lost
• The text labels are too long: “the store makes me feel reliable/trustworthy” is appropriate for a consumer questionnaire, but can be shortened in the chart
• The text labels “dance”, they are not right aligned, some labels take 1 line, some 2 lines, some 3
• The middle graph has 8 bars, the other two 7, disturbing the visual calm of the slide

In short, a great chart for a team brainstorm, but not for external audiences.

More posts on McKinsey and management consulting presentations

I don't understand the U.S.-English habit of title case...

It is common in English-language publications to capitalize words in the title (the full detail on rules behind “title case” in this Wikipedia entry). Once (in the early days of printing), it might have been a good way to emphasize words. In today’s PowerPoint presentations I find that title case actually makes it harder to read the title of a slide.

I do not use it.

Chart concept - counting hands

I love these images of hands counting. They are a powerful way for quickly getting across 4 or 5 things: “here are our 4 distinctive features, let’s go into a bit more detail in each one of them”. Sites like iStockphoto list many, many of these (the image above was ripped from this site).

Google Q3 results - a shame that companies invest so little in these important presentations

Google released its Q3 2008 results yesterday. Besides the usual reports, a PDF was released to support the earnings conference call with investors (someone uploaded it to slideshare, see below).

Google Q3 2008 Earnings Slides

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: 2008 google)

Investor presentations are very important and can greatly influence the share price of a company. The remote conference call format makes it even more challenging to control the presentation delivery. It is a shame to see that even the world’s most resourceful companies like Google invest so little in these documents.

• Busy bullet point slides
• Busy data tables
• Busy data charts with redundant information

The presentation gives the impression that after the hard work to meet the publication deadline someone thought last minute to knock up some slides to accompany the conference call. There is clearly an opportunity to rais the bar here.