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.

PowerPoint supporting a standup comedian

I stumbled on this recent (June 2008) video of Tim Lee, a comedian who uses PowerPoint extensively.

This was the first time that I saw a “PowerPoint-based comedian”. It looks like he is actually only starting to use all possible creative opportunities. At the moment, there are just (poorly formated) bars with made up statistics. There must be more possibilities here for someone with the combined PowerPoint  (animations, images, colors, etc. etc.) and comedy talents. Unfortunately, I lack the latter... An archive of other PowerPoint comedy videos at Presentation Zen.

Correct use of apostrophes and quotation marks

Inspired by a Tweet by Garr Reynolds, I dug up the typography rules for apostrophes and quotation marks. The ' and " that everybody is using because they are conveniently located on a computer keyboard are in fact the characters for feet and inches.

• ‘ and ’ - the single quotation marks (the right one is the apostrophe), ASCII codes 145 and 146

• “ and ” - the double quoation marks, ASCII codes 147 and 148

Their use is different in some countries. In the UK, people use single quotation marks, in The Netherlands for example, people use low opening quotation marks. How do you enter them? There are a number of options:

• ALT+code (Windows only). Swith on your numeric keypad with NUMLOCK (laptop owners read your manual). Hold down the ALT key, now press "0" plus the ASCII code you need on the numeric keypad, the number keys on top of the regular keyboard will not work. For example, an apostrophe would be [ALT] [0146] [release ALT]

• HTML option 1, for example to display the apostrophe enter ’ (for more ASCII codes see above)

• HTML option 2, enter & followed by a specific character code, a full list can be found here. Single open: ‘ Single close: ’ (apostrophe) Double open: “ Double close: ”

• Microsoft Office (including PowerPoint), I use the insert symbol menu option, switch to ASCII decimal code and find the right symbols at position 145-148

Because of the complicated entry, I double check use of quotation marks only in final versions of presentation documents. In email, Twitter, (and even in this blog...),  I will continue to violate the rules and use my feet and inches characters... Sorry. Some other relevant links

• More info about quotation mark typography, plus the full set of codes for the Apple can be found here. 

• I am not getting into the subject of grammar, but if you are interested check Wikipedia

• An amusing set of pictures (including the embedded one) can be found in this blog that is devoted to the subject in its entirety

Merging PowerPoint presentations without mixing up formats

Merging different PowerPoint presentations usually creates format chaos. The slides that are inserted are automatically re-formated in the style of the mother presentation. Especially if you want to make a collage of different presentations with a completely different look and feel, this is a disaster. Simply "ctrl-c / ctrl-v" slides across does not work. One solution is to PDF both presentations, then merge them in Adobe Acrobat. But there is a solution inside PowerPoint as well.

Apple:

1. In the insert menu, select "slides from"
2. Select "other presentation"
3. Here is the trick: click "select slides to insert" rather than "select all slides"
4. Click insert, wait a few seconds
5. A window will open from which you can select slides, at the bottom you should click the box "keep design of original slides"

PC (PowerPoint 2007)

1. In the home ribbon, click "new slide"
2. Click "reuse slides"
3. Browse for the file to be inserted
4. Click the "keep source formating" box

UPDATE: hey, a solution for PowerPoint 2003 as well (thank you BusinessToolsBlog)!

UPDATE: PowerPoint Join seems to be an automated tool developed by Sobolsoft that links PowerPoint presentations together. I have not tried it though.

PowerPoint slides - the only way is up!

When designing a flow, always make sure that the direction of the eye is moving upwards to create a more positive feel of the slide. The horizontal orientation (left-right or right-left) is less important and depends in which part of the world you are living. I use flow charts often when I help startups pitch to a venture capital firm for funding. One of the final slides in the deck talks about milestones and future plans. Without revealing too much detail (in a 25 minute presentation the actual/precise/detailed content of the milestones is strangely enough less relevant, they can be discussed later), the chart should show upward momentum.

After "beyond bullet points", now "beyond stock images"?

I found this presentation today. Playing around with simple text and fonts on an almost empty screen can sometimes be incredibly powerful, to the extent that you can do without that "stunning" stock image. Watch those fancy fonts though that are not installed on everyone's computer. (I disagree with Seth Godin on this one).

Presenting with text

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

Zuiprezi - non-linear presentation tool

New "in the cloud" presentation development tools seem to be popping up all the time now. Today, I came across Zuiprezi which allows you create a "non-linear" presentation on a large virtual canvas in which you can navigate and zoom your way around. Read a review on CNET, and/or watch the video below. While I see the advantages of a dynamic presentation flow, I still think that in most presentation situations a tightly controlled story line works best, especially when time is scarce, for example in VC startup pitch presentations (25 minutes, that's it). When there is more time, non-linear presentations could work. Especially when a group of people needs to discuss, brainstorm and analyze a complex subject (for example a spaghetti-style workplan for a big engineering project). UPDATE: Another interesting application for this technology might be to visualize complex system dynamics analysis in business. At McKinsey I used to use it (it was called "Business Dynamics" there) to map complex interactions between multiple drivers. This analysis can be very insightful to spot recurring loops (and hence how to accelerate or stop them), but delivers very messy diagrams. See one here. Related postings on my blog: PPTplex, a Microsoft tool for zooming inside PowerPoint

Images that stick - this week's Economist cover

Update, a slight show with many Economist covers of the past years warning about the upcoming crisis:

The Economist Covers - The Financial Crisis Evolution

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: inflation evolution)

Book review - Made to Stick by Dan/Chip Heath

Made to stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (find it here, affiliate link) is recommended reading for everyone who delivers presentations: it analyzes why certain stories "stick" in people's mind, and why others disappear, almost independent of the content: it's they way that they are told that matters.

• Keep them simple without creating silly sound bites
• Add unexpected twists to keep people interested
• Be specific and avoid fluffy hollow statements (Dilbert mission generator style)
• Be credible to get people to believe your idea
• Add emotion to make people care
• Tell stories

The book is written as a set of stories that are analyzed following the above framework. Sometimes this categorization can feel a bit forced (since most stories combine multiple elements), but generally it works well. Framework or not, the stories inside the book are the real treasure. They are interesting and fun to read (many of them still stick in my head). Besides the big idea of the book there are countless interesting bits of knowledge hidden in the stories. Some examples:

• The brain stores stories in a "virtual 3D" space. Slightly absurd experiment: people read a sentence about a guy and a shirt slower when the shirt has just been taken off a few seconds ago. Your presentation structure and the structure used to absorb information is not the same
• Being analytical, logical, thinking of numbers switches off your emotional mood: the mood in which you are most receptive to store information. Think about that when ordering slides
• The curse of knowledge (actually this is a big idea in the book) prevents people from putting themselves in the shoes of an audience for which a concept that took you 3 years to understand might not sound as obvious as it seems to you
• Another example of the curse of knowledge: when someone taps a song with his fingers on a table, he/she hears the entire performance including vocals, instruments, etc. A bystander just hears an irregular beat of taps...
• 70% of learning can happen by just imagining, anticipating, thinking about the task ahead of you (scientifically proven): rehearse, rehearse, rehearse your presentation.
• Negative "don't", "avoid this", "don't fall in this trap"-type recommendations stick better than positive ones: people learn from mistakes. This goes a bit against my marketing theory in business school though.

This book shows again how important it is to decouple structures you use to solve/analyze a problem from the story you use to tell the solution. Scrap all your analysis, nuances, balanced insights you built up (sometimes over a long period of time) and start with a blank piece of paper to think about the best possible way to tell your message to your audience.