Deb Volberg Pagnotta, Founder of Interfacet.inc,
Communications consultant, professor, presenter, lawyer, storyteller

1. Choose a topic that relates to something or someone that you LOVE and that you LOVE talking about. If you don’t care about the subject, it’s much harder to get the audience to care. 

2. Make the topic (and speech) audience relevant upfront  – that is, let the audience know in your opening what their “takeway” will be. If it is a particular skill, zero in on HOW/WHEN the audience might be able to use that and why it will be incredibly useful! 

3. Use the “SUCCES” parameters suggested by Chip and Dan Heath in their great book “Made to Stick.” (That is NOT a typo!) Simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional story. Read chapter 1. It’s well worth it.

4. Don’t speak in generic terms: be specific, precise, and “gritty”. 

5. Make frequent eye contact around the audience. 

6. Do NOT use notes – you should know your topic back and forth. 

7. Vary your vocalics: that is, vary your speaking pace, volume, pitch and pausing. 

8. Give something of genuine value to the audience: that really will help them at some point. 

9. Be authentic. Don’t pretend to be somebody you are not. But tap into your own experiences, observations, and life.

You’re asking for a ‘crafty way to dodge a question’, but that really is one of the stupidest things a person can do.  Audiences can see right through it and will lose confidence in your qualification to be speaking to them and they will lose respect for you.  DON’T DO IT.

As the presenter, you are in control of the presentation and responsible for ensuring the presentation gets completed as planned and that the audience gets what they needed.  If the question is really getting outside of the objectives of the presentation, you should defer the question by saying you’ll talk to the individual after the presentation so as to not take up the time of the rest of the audience, because you know they don’t need that answer.

But if the question is germane to the topic and of interest to the rest of the audience the decision of what to do next comes down to do you know the answer or not.

If you don’t know the answer, say “I don’t know.”  Immediately follow that with “But I can find out for you.”  Write down the question.  At the end of the presentation, check back with the individual to ensure that the question you wrote down is what they wanted to know and that they still care (people often figure out by the end of the presentation that they really didn’t need to know the answer to the question they asked).

A presenter that tries to bull-shit their audience deserves to die a blistering death.  Don’t do it.  No matter how good you think you are at bull-shitting, the audience can tell.  Be honest.  Admitting you don’t know something can earn you big points with your audience.  They will acquire more trust in you because they will have learned you are honest with them.

This is a hard lesson for people to learn.  People hate saying “I don’t know.” They want to get around that in any way possible. They say things like “I’m not 100% sure.”  No.  You either know the answer or you don’t.  If you aren’t sure, you risk providing negative training by giving them bad information that you will then have to work hard to get them to unlearn.  In my old group, we used to have a foam ball we called the “BS Ball”.  We would throw that ball at people, during their dry-runs, when they began to BS.

In my environment, getting caught BSing can be devastating to your career. The astronauts are putting their lives and careers in our hands when we train them.  They have to have 100% confidence that we can be trusted.  Many years ago, I was teaching a crew member that was known for his sternness.  He asked me a question, I didn’t know the answer so I immediately said “I don’t know.”  We continued and he asked another question and again I said “I don’t know.”  He stood up.  For a brief moment I felt panic – that he was going to walk out of the room because he thought I was a moron that didn’t know my subject.  To the contrary, he leaned over the table and offered his hand.  He shook my hand and he said “Thank you.  You don’t know how many people are unwilling to say that to me.“

It takes a lot of work to build trust, but it can be dissolved in moments.  Don’t risk it.

  Mira Zaslove

I’ve given many presentations and some have been more successful than others. Even when it’s the same material. And very similar audiences. Something that I’ve learned: it’s easy to overlook one of the most crucial elements of giving presentations– make sure that your audience can easily focus on you and your slides. 

Don’t be in competition with your powerpoint for attention. When giving a presentation, audience engagement is critical. When you are talking, you want the attention on your message and not on the mechanics of the presentation.

10 things to keep in mind to give a good (PowerPoint) presentation:

1. Arrive early
Don’t even think about arriving late or cutting it close. Audiences will lose patience quickly if you waste valuable time at the beginning of the presentation fiddling around. If you are delivering the presentation in a new environment for your audience, arrive even earlier. Get comfortable and familiar with the space. It will help minimize distractions if you can easily answer commonly asked questions, like where the bathrooms and power outlets are. 

2. Check the set up
Make sure the room is set up so everyone in your audience can easily see you and the screen. If some chairs or tables need to be moved to make it easier for everyone to participate, do it. If anything is blocking access for people to see you, move it. When people are uncomfortable trying to see, it will negatively impact your presentation. I’ve seen key decision makers come late to meetings, and sit in the last seats open. It is awkward and disruptive if they ask other people in the front to switch with them, and negative for your message if they get frustrated and leave because they can’t hear or see whats going on. 

3. Test all technology before going live 
Make sure your computer is plugged in or fully charged. If you don’t need wifi during the presentation, shut it off. If wifi is necessary, connect to the network beforehand. Turn off all notifications, shutdown Skype and all IM services, and close any extraneous webpages. If you will be sharing your screen or desktop, make it clutter free. If using fancy technology, make sure you are comfortable with it, and it doesn’t take over. Don’t overuse the laser pointer. Simply put: eliminate any distractions that could interrupt or distract from your presentation. 

4. Mix it up
If your presentation is long and goes all day, or for a few days, consider breaking up the powerpoint to include video, a product demo, or a breakout session where people can talk. Play music before the presentation and during breaks to keep the energy level high. People generally have short attention spans, so jazz it up. I’ve noticed that most people’s attention begins to tap out around an hour of straight powerpoint. 

5. If another person is going to “drive” the slide-show, or if you will be using a remote, make sure to practice
It is distracting and hard to focus when the presenter and the slideshow are out of synch. It also breaks the flow of the presentation if the attention shifts from the audience to the driver / computer / remote to move the slideshow forward. I generally prefer using a remote. Just make sure you are comfortable with the controls and don’t accidentally go to the beginning or end of the presentation when you just want to move one slide forward. 

6. Maintain eye contact as much as possible
Try not to spend too much time looking at your computer, or the presentation screen. Look at your audience. As Mark Suster writes in a great blog post onQuick Practical, Tactical Tips for Presentations: “Your goal is to work the room, look people in the eyes, judge people’s responses to your presentation and engage.” It’s difficult to effectively communicate your message if you aren’t engaging with your audience. 

7. When standing: If you’re in a culture that reads left to right, stand to the left of the projection screen
The audience’s attention and eyes will instinctually go to the left and follow you. If you stand to the right, many people will be following the left side of the screen, and it will be harder for them to follow you. If you’re presenting in a culture that reads right to left, stand on the right side of the screen. When traveling, bring a remote so you can easily move around if the podium or docking station is in the wrong place.

8. When sitting: Don’t sit at the opposite end of the table from the presentation! Sit close to the screen
If you sit across the room from your screen, your audience will need to choose between looking at you and looking at the screen. They will spend a lot of unnecessary time whipping their head back and forth, and you won’t be able to naturally engage with them. 

9. When presenting with just your computer or deck: sit where it will be most natural for them to look
If your audience is right handed, it will be easier for them to follow your presentation if you sit to their right. Similarly, when giving the presentation to a left handed person, sit on their left. Left handed people will  naturally gravitate towards looking towards looking to their left.

10. Plan to end 5 minutes early
People are busy. Respect your audience’s time. Start the presentation promptly, and plan to end a bit early. Watch your pacing throughout the presentation and make sure you aren’t spending too much time on any one point. By giving yourself a buffer, you’ll avoid rushing towards the end. If you have a few minutes left, let the audience know you will stick around if they have any follow up questions or comments. Don’t run late. Even finishing 5 minutes late can inconvenience your audience and leave people feeling rushed and anxious — not the feelings you want the audience to feel leaving your presentation. Always end on a high note.

by Edmond Lau

A great presentation consists of two important parts: well-structured content that empowers the idea that you’re trying to convey and an eloquent style of delivery that keeps your audience’s attention on your content.  Both parts aim to facilitate the communication of your idea to an audience.  Poor structure makes it more difficult for your audience to follow along and extract the salient points, and poor delivery detracts from the content.

An effective and general paradigm for structuring content that’s applicable to any presentation, essay, research paper, funding pitch, job application presentation, resume, or tech talk comes from what MIT Professor Patrick Winston — an AI veteran with a lecture series on How to Speak — calls VSNC. [1]  Based on this structure, any compelling presentation or paper builds upon the following four cornerstones:

• a clearly defined vision statement,
• an enumeration of concrete steps toward achieving the vision,
• an articulation of salient news and results with clarifying details, and
• a summary of contributions.

Most presentations, surprisingly enough, can fit into this paradigm and become much more powerful when designed with it in mind; weak presentations usually omit one or more of these parts.

Offering a succinct and clear vision (preferably on its own slide if slides are used) early in the presentation establishes the thematic goal of the talk.  It defines the boundaries of what’s relevant in the ideas presented and provides the glue that ties various points together.  Succinctness and clarity in the vision ensure focus in the talk.  Overly detail-focused individuals, in particular, sometimes create presentations whose themes are only implicitly defined and whose points flail around haphazardly.

Once the high-level vision is established, enumerating the concrete steps for attaining that vision gives the audience a mental path to follow and understand what’s necessary to reach the goal.  The steps review progress already made and highlight what still needs to be done.  Most presenters tend to get this part right since it’s a straightforward summary of completed and future work.

With the path enumerated, sharing news and details about recent accomplishments provides an excellent opportunity to enrapture the audience.  Numbers, statistics, graphs, analogies, demos, and stories that showcase results often work well.  Engineers tend to overvalue abstraction and to inadvertently neglect to include the details, but the details and stories are often what make the talk compelling.

Wrapping up the talk should be a summary of contributions.  A common mistake is to end a well-organized presentation merely with a rehash of major points rather than crystallizing the unique contributions that the presenter or the presenter’s team actually accomplished.  The contributions may be completed work that moves a field, product, or company forward or they may simply the be the refinements of ideas that offer a completely new perspective.

To make the VSNC concepts of vision, steps, news, and contributions more concrete, let’s take a look at how they apply to a real-life presentation and how they help convey ideas more clearly.  Mac and technology fans look forward to Steve Jobs’s Apple keynote presentations, partly because they’re dying to know the next visionary Apple product and partly because Jobs’s presentations are extremely well-executed.  His commanding stage presence definitely helps, but a decomposition of his recent March 2nd keynote [2, 3] on the iPad 2 reveals that the VSNC paradigm provides a powerful framework for understanding how his presentations are typically organized.

Jobs starts his presentation by summarizing the vision for the iPad 2 in a single, crisp slide: “Our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.”

What were the concrete steps involved in building this magical and revolutionary device?  Jobs outlines the steps in these two slides, reviewing upgrades to faster dual-core processors and graphics while maintaining low power usage and the efforts to make the device even more lightweight and 33% thinner:

Having established the vision and the steps to getting there, Jobs pitches the new iPad 2 by going over salient news and results to get the audience excited.  He chooses to do this by showcasing demos on the iPad 2 of FaceTime, PhotoBooth, iMovie, and GarageBand:

At other keynote presentations where Jobs also reviews the momentum of existing products, Jobs will often augment the news portion by sharing and marveling at numbers and details on how many iPhones or iPads were sold in the past year.

Jobs concludes with a summary of new engineering, product, and pricing contributions to convince the audience that 2011 will be the year of the iPad 2.  Some of the points were previously covered in other slides; others like the statistic on 65,000 iPad apps reminds the audience that contributions made to the original iPad still apply to the iPad 2.

The application of the VSNC paradigm to Jobs’s keynotes illustrates that VSNC  is a surprisingly versatile and powerful framework for both crafting and critiquing the organizational structure of presentations.

Once the content is solid, the other foundation of a great presentation is delivery and style, for which here are a few useful pointers:

• Enunciate and speak slowly.  Unbridled enthusiasm for your work or your idea and nervousness to finish the presentation as fast as possible can easily lead to an overly quick delivery and slurred words.  If you feel that you’re speaking at a slow and comfortable pace, slow down further to about 50% of that pace.  Speaking slowly provides a variety of benefits beyond the obvious of ensuring that your audience can understand what you’re saying; it gives you more time to choose your next words, helps slow down the pace to keep you relaxed and in control, and provides more of an opportunity for you to watch the audience’s expressions and re-adjust your presentation strategy (for example, by rewording an explanation upon detection of blank faces) as necessary.
• Train yourself to avoid sprinkling your speech with “ums” and “likes,” and replace them instead with pauses.  Either have a friend count your “ums” or “likes” or record your own presentation and count them yourself later.  While initially uncomfortable, pauses actually sound more professional and help accentuate key points that you’re trying to communicate.  Colin Firth’s Oscar-winning performance and delivery in theThe King’s Speech exemplifies how a carefully enunciated and pause-filled speech can motivate and move an audience.
• Maintain eye contact with the audience.  In particular, pick a few friendly faces from the audience that appear to be reacting to your presentation.  Their nods of approval and understanding give positive feedback and bolster your confidence during the presentation, and any confused expressions act as an indicator that you might need to slow down and re-explain a possibly tricky point.
• Don’t read directly from your slides.  Time spent on reading slides is time not spent maintaining eye contact with the audience.  Moreover, reading long sentence-like bullet points on slides conveys a lack of preparation and  reduces the incentive for the audience to actually listen to you since they can just read the text faster themselves.  A better approach is to list key, succinct points on the slides and to connect them together with your own words.  This incentivizes you to better rehearse to have fluid transitions between points and forces the audience to pay attention in order to understand the presentation.
• Move deliberately in time with your points, so that transitions in your physical stage presence correspond to transitions in your presentation.  This helps to both reduce the amount of haphazard pacing while accentuating important transitions in your presentations.  If your presentation has three points, one simple way of doing this to walk in the shape of squished baseball diamond so that you walk to a new base as you transition to each point and then walk back to home plate as you conclude.
• If your presentation involves writing on a whiteboard, make sure to write with an open body that’s perpendicular to the board rather than facing the board.  Facing the board while you write occludes the text or diagrams and increases the lag between when you’re writing (and likely speaking) and when the audience can actually read what you wrote.
• If there is Q&A at the end of the presentation, always repeat the question, possibly rephrasing in your own words.  Repeating the question ensures both a) that the audience is able to hear the question, and b) that you’ve actually heard the question correctly and don’t waste time or look silly while answering an incorrect interpretation of the quesiton.

Skills in structuring effective presentations and delivering them clearly come with practice.  Keeping vision, steps, news, and contributions in mind for any talk or presentation will make it stronger, and dissecting strong presentations and critiquing weak ones to understand how the speaker handled or mishandled each cornerstone will make your own talks better.

———-

[1] http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.8…
[2] http://events.apple.com.edgesuit…
[3] http://www.geeksugar.com/Apple-i…

The number of people over 50 starting their own business is the highest it’s been. Some people take this route out of necessity, others to turn longstanding dreams into reality.

Whatever the reason for their creation, many of these new businesses are run from home.

The thought of working in solitude at home probably sounds like bliss to those used to the interruptions and annoyances of office life. There are certainly many benefits, but there are still distractions when you work from home.

What gets in the way of constant high productivity and focus? And what can you do about it?

Family and friends distraction

Judy Mansfield is a celebrant who runs her business, Cherish Ceremonies, from home in Warwickshire. She designs and conducts ceremonies for life’s key moments: weddings, vow renewals, baby namings and funerals.

She writes each from scratch. “I have to be in the zone, particularly for funerals,” she says, “as I collect stories from family and friends of the deceased and weave them all together in the eulogy.

“It’s distracting if my husband, who’s retired, comes in to talk.”

Sometimes she closes her study door and asks him not to disturb her until she opens it again.She chooses to ignore the phone, too.

“My 84 year-old mother sometimes rings for a chat. She doesn’t understand that, although I’m at home, I’m working, so I tell her I’ll ring her back later.

“Or I just don’t take calls, because if I do I lose concentration and it’s hard to get it back.”

Switch off social media and the internet

How did home workers manage before social media connected us with other people working in their own spare rooms all over the world?

It’s a great tool for avoiding isolation, but it can be a massive distraction from working, too.

Blogging and social media coach Andy Britnell of See A Man About a Blog gives his clients the following advice:

• Turn off notifications on your phone, and don’t automatically open Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms when you go online.
• Close your email inbox, too, so you’re not constantly distracted by messages popping up.
• Schedule social media for a specific time in the day and a reasonable length of time, such as 15 or 30 minutes, and be strict about closing down when the time is up.
• When doing research online, don’t keep going back and forth. Regard it as a separate job from your creative work and set it aside to do when your brain needs a change. Don’t get pulled into surfing that’s going beyond what you need to do.

Stop doing the housework

Working from home means you don’t get to close the door on an untidy house and forget about it until the evening.

Cleaning up before you start work can all too easily turn into procrastination. But it’s infuriating to emerge from your home office with a sense of satisfaction having completed a task, and head to the kitchen for the reward of coffee, only to realise the sink is full of washing-up.

Decide what you can live with, and what you can’t bear to leave undone. Some people might want to tidy the living room, others might hate a dirty bathroom. You might need to keep explaining to your partner that just because you’re at home during the day doesn’t mean you have all the time in the day to keep the place clean.

Having said that, one of the great pleasures of home working is being able to hang out a load of washing when the sun’s out and get it in again, dry and sweet-smelling, before the rain starts.

It’s a good reason to leave your desk for a screen break and your get moving with a relatively quick job that gives you some fresh air and a stretch.

Beware distractions out there, though: don’t look too closely at the weeds in the garden as you’re doing it.

Create good eating habits

In the run-up to the London Olympics, Boris Johnson didn’t help the Government campaign to cut congestion through home working by describing it as “basically sitting wondering whether to go down to the fridge to hack off that bit of cheese before checking your emails again”.

The proximity of the fridge and food cupboard can be dangerous in so many of the scenarios that crop up during the working day: getting stuck on a tricky project, gearing up for an awkward call, experiencing rejection.

All these can be eased with a cuppa – and maybe a piece of that leftover pie. And what better way to reward yourself for a job well done, or a new piece of work, than a celebratory coffee and biscuit, or two?

On the other hand, says business blogger and writer Louise McCarron of Business Buzz Magazine, distraction can result from not eating properly.

She says: “It’s easy to keep working and skip meals, thinking you’ll just have a biscuit of piece or toast later, and then losing concentration and productivity.

“Taking care of yourself is vital when you don’t have the peer support to keep you on track and you’re doing everything in the business yourself.”

It’s easier to create a good habit than stop a bad one, suggests Louise: “If you have a pattern of snacking on empty calories, start eating healthier food first before you give up chocolate. You’ll start to want that instead.”

If you’re starting to work from home for the first time you’ll find there are still distractions, just different ones from those you had in the office.

But don’t be too hard on yourself. They result from the fact that you’re now living and working in the same place, and not from any personal inadequacy.

There are many solutions for all the challenges of working from home, and you now have the freedom to find those that suit you best, not what your boss or colleagues choose. Have fun discovering a new way to work. Me, I’m off to make a coffee…

A slideshow has become the standard component of the majority of presentations around the world. Whether you’re in a business meeting or in a classroom, you probably have seen a slideshow presentation or you have made one or two yourself. When making those presentations you have probably used Microsoft’s PowerPoint. The popular slideshow presenter can be downloaded for free with Microsoft’s 365 trial offer for Windows or Macs. I will go over the necessary steps to access and download PowerPoint free trial.

Here is something unique you will learn by reading this article:

• You will find out that you can no longer download old versions of the application online.
• PowerPoint can NOT be downloaded as a single application.
• You will also learn a method to avoid adding/using your credit card when signing up for the trial promotion.

What is PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint is considered one of the most well-known programs that creates slideshow presentations. PowerPoint creates slides with written content, images, videos and graphics. The application is a visual aid tool that can be used to exhibit information in a visually pleasing way.

The definition above is a technical way of defining the software but most of us know it as the tool we use during class and work presentations. PowerPoint is an application from a suite of apps from what is now called Microsoft 365. You’re more likely going to remember the bundled applications called Microsoft Office which included Word, Excel, Outlook and of course, PowerPoint.

The well-known slide presentation program was created in the early 90’s by Dennis Austin and Thomas Rudkin. Initially, PowerPoint was first called “Presenter” and was originally designed for Macintosh computers. The name was later changed due to copyright issues and the software was bought out by Microsoft for $14 million dollars in 1987. A few years later, the presentation software was launched to the public at the same time Windows 3.0 was released.

Fast forward to 2015 and PowerPoint is still the top searched presenter program online. On top of that, according to Wikipedia the program is also installed on over a billion computers worldwide. That’s a lot of slides.

Why use it?

Users rely on PowerPoint to create a professional presentation. The easy-to-use tools and functions can be used to create visually appealing slides. Each slide can have different attachments of graphics, animations, and multimedia. There are multiple ways you can present your slides to a group of people. Traditionally, a PowerPoint presentation is shown on a video projector but now, it is common to be seen during webinars.

Besides the visual aid add-ons you can start off your presentation with unique templates making the slides stand out. There is no need to make a boring presentation for business meetings or class assignments. There a plenty of free templates you can download directly from Microsoft or from dedicated PowerPoint enthusiast websites like this one.

How much does it cost?

The PowerPoint application doesn’t come on its own but is part of the Office 365 suite. This suite from Microsoft comes at different price points based on various plans. You can no longer purchase the Office software without paying a yearly or monthly fee, unlike previous versions (2010, 2011, 2012). However, if you want to buy old versions of PowerPoint you can browse on Amazon or eBay. Many sellers list official product keys that can be purchased and redeemed online to download older versions of the suite.

There are different versions of MS Office catered towards personal use, school or business. Office 365 is also available on Macs, iPhones and iPads. This is also true for Android devices as well. So not only are they offered for all realms of work/school life but they also have mobile apps which sync up with other devices like your desktop.

The breakdown of each plan and key features can be reviewed in more detail at the Microsoft Store. Or, if you want to review Office for Mac you can find more information here: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/buy.

Trial Offer Details

The free PowerPoint trial offer is for a 30 day period. Once the trial ends you will be charged a fee based the plan you chose. If you are unsatisfied with the PowerPoint or anything you can cancel your subscription at any time. Make sure to cancel your subscription before the 30 day trial ends if you don’t want to be charged the monthly fee.

How to download PowerPoint free trial

PowerPoint is available online to download for free with their trial offer. To download the program you must sign up for Office 365 Home or Business trial. The offer will last for one month in which you will not only have full access to PowerPoint but also the full set of applications that come with it, such as: Microsoft Office, Skype and online versions of the suite.

The steps are the same regardless if you want to download PowerPoint for Windows or for Macs. Just make sure to select which operating system you want the free trial on.

Here are the necessary steps to take to download the program for free.

Requirements: Microsoft account (email) and a Credit Card or PayPal account.

1. Head over to the official Office 365 website. The page has a large amount of information on their applications. You can read in more detail about their services, applications and help section but if you want to jump into the trial offer then click on either the “Home” or “Business” button. In this case I will go through the process of downloading and installing the Home version.
2. Once you have clicked on Home you will land on the “Choose your office” page. Here you will see a breakdown of the different plans that are offered. You will have to select Home, Personal or Online. Both Home and Personal plans come with a monthly cost and a free trial offer. Select either the “Home” or “Personal” plan by clicking the button that reads “try it free”.
3. From this point you will be directed to the sign in page for your Microsoft account. Go ahead and login with your existing account or create one. This is a mandatory step and cannot be skipped.
4. Once you have logged in you will have to enter in your billing information. To continue with the process of downloading PowerPoint free trial you will have to enter in your credit card information. If you don’t have a credit card on hand you can also use PayPal to continue with the billing process. It’s also important to remember that your credit card or PayPal account will NOT be charged during the 30 day trial period.
5. Now that you have added your billing information you can continue to the installation page. Here you will download Microsoft Office 365.

Installing the software is straightforward and not much of a guidance is needed.

After you have downloaded and installed Office 365 you will have access to all the applications in the suite, including PowerPoint. You can now use the latest PowerPoint (2015) for a full month. If you are satisfied with the suite I would highly recommend that you continue the subscription.

Alternate programs

If you have read the guide above and thought it was too much of a tedious task to complete then you should know that there are other alternatives that are just as good. One of them is Google Docs. With Google Docs you can create the same documents such as spreadsheets, presentations, and written documents, all for free.

With Google Docs you won’t need to download any software or application because the applications are web-based. Simply log into your Google account and start creating. You can also access, edit and share your documents anywhere from both Macs and Windows.

Did I mention that you can also collaborate on documents in real-time? This is certainly a neat feature but the cherry on top is that they give out perks, like extra storage space when you purchase a Google product. The drawback is that the Presenter does not have the premium features that PowerPoint does and lacks in creative tools.

If you are looking for something that outshines PowerPoint then I would suggest you look into Prezi. More than 50 million people use it including 50% of big-brand companies. They claim it to be “the successor to the throne” when compared to PowerPoint. I haven’t done a thorough review on them but it’s worth to mention.

Want to just view a PowerPoint presentation?

If you are looking for a way to just view a PTT file then you won’t need to download a full version of PowerPoint. Your best option is to download a program called PowerPoint Viewer from Microsoft. This free program allows you to view PTT files, however, it is limited to just viewing. You will not be able to edit or make any changes to the presentation.

Any Questions?

If you have any trouble downloading PowerPoint on your Windows or Mac computer or if you have any inquires regarding the free trial please leave a comment below and I’ll try to help.

by Joanna Miller

It’s easier than you can think.
First of all if you are not perfect in PowerPoint presentations DO NOT EVEN TRY to present yourself by PowerPoint. :) 
If not, go to any PowerPoint templates sites to find an appropriate template which is perfect to describe your CV. 

For example, if you wanna be the snowplow operator find something like thisSnow Shovel PowerPoint Template

But not like this Curriculum Vitae PowerPoint Template or this Job Interview PowerPoint Template 
Try be as specific as possible.

Show all your achievements using multimedia options of PowerPoint: does your potential  employer is  interested in your song? Just insert media file with your perfect aria in a shower.

Does he need to get perfect decorator? Just show him a video with you in your inspirational pose.


Use all 100% of your potential and fantasy to represent the most valuable person on Earth: you! 

Have a nice day

by Srininvasan R

You never get a second chance, to make a first impression! The same rings true for presentations. As a leader, you have to deliver your messages with laser guided precision. So how do you ensure that you

You never get a second chance, to make a first impression! The same rings true for presentations. As a leader, you have to deliver your messages with laser guided precision. So how do you ensure that you ace that presentation? Well, for starters, you leave nothing to chance. But, that’s perhaps, easier said than done. Here are a few key pointers that could help you make that brilliant presentation.

Open with something completely unexpected

The first 30 seconds to one minute, are crucial in a presentation. That’s when your audience is sizing you up and you set expectations. If you are unable to capture the attention of the audience during that critical time, you have an uphill task of redeeming your presentation.

Here is how Steve Jobs, started at the 2005 Commencement Address at Stanford University:

“Truth be told, I never graduated from college, and this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today, I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it, no big deal—just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why’d I drop out? It started before I was born.”

Please see link to the video of the speech- http://vimeo.com/7976699

Create a strong story line and use pictures to tell your story

A picture is worth a thousand words.

The human brain has remarkable abilities to craft stories out of personal experiences and relate it to visual cues.

That’s why when you have a story to share, audiences can relate to it, instantly.

The picture here says it all. You don’t have to describe ‘Loyalty‘; the image does it for you.

Less is More

There is a term in the corporate world called- ‘Death by Slides’. It refers to a surfeit of slides that were unnecessary in the first place.

Nothing dampens a presentation, as much as unending slides.

When in doubt, keep your presentation shorter than you would, otherwise.

De-clutter your slides

Nothing kills a slide, as much as clutter. If you try and cram all that you can fit into it, you will lose the audience instantly. People use fonts as small as 10 or 11 on their slides.

Try projecting it. You will need to walk up to the screen and then use a magnifying glass to see what’s on the screen. Remember, you are not there to antagonize the audience! A font size of over 20 usually works, depending on the size of the room.

Engage your audience

Sharing information alone is not enough. You need to engage the audience. If you have people asking you questions, responding to what you say, your impact would be significantly higher than if they were sitting with deadpan expressions and not saying anything.

Ask questions, show pictures, engage the audience, in your own way.

Your objective is not to say your piece and exit. It is to achieve the purpose of making the presentation, in the first place.

Appeal to emotions

Emotions get our attention and audiences tend to retain emotionally charged content long after the presentation. Audiences seldom identify with a presentation devoid of emotional appeal. Find the right emotion to appeal to and make your pitch accordingly.

Don’t let the means become the end

No matter how slick your presentation slides are and how attractive you have made them, sometimes participants just won’t buy in.

So what do you do then? Change what you have to say on the spot to quickly address what key participants are looking for and minimize reliance on the slides.

Maintain eye contact

A great presentation is like a one on one conversation where each participant feels that the speaker is directly talking to him. And, the only way this can happen, is with continuous eye contact.

A good presentation is all about preparation and inspiration

As Thomas Edison once said, ‘Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration‘. In a presentation, inspiration gives you the perspective while preparation gives you the edge. But, no matter how good you are at presentations, there is no substitute for rigorous preparation and multiple rehearsals.

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Many of you would have made some brilliant presentations yourself. It would be interesting to know your experiences and what worked for you. Please feel free to share your thoughts.

Picture courtesy: Stanford University; Walter Isaacson

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Jill Robbins

Editor’s note: When teaching public speaking, Professor Charles Lebeau divides presentation into three aspects. The three aspects of a presentation are: the physical message, the visual message, and the story message. In this article, we will look at the visual and story messages.

English is the language of many international conferences.  Sometimes a speaker might use a kind of “World English” that audience members do not understand. This can be true even for listeners who are native speakers of English.

For this reason, Professor Charles Lebeau says the visual message is important. The visual message includes pictures, charts and other aids a speaker presents during the talk. A non-native speaker ofEnglish can understand a picture. It can help  carry the message when the presenter’s words are hard to understand.

“The visual message becomes a central part of the communication process because everyone can understand a graph; everyone can understand a flowchart; everyone can see the words on the slide.”

When you prepare a presentation, you might want to show how much you know about a subject. But does the audience care how much you know?

Listeners more likely want to understand the main point of your presentation.So, how do you organize your talk to get that point across? Professor LeBeausays this can depend on the culture of your audience.

American language expert Robert Kaplan studied different cultural thoughtpatterns in the mid 1960s. He helped English language teachers understand the differences between English rhetoric and that of Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and Russian.

English speakers prefer a ‘linear’ style, which has one main idea. The speaker supports that idea with details or arguments, and then closes the talk by restating the idea. In other cultures, however, speakers may bring in other ideas before returning to the main point.

Charles LeBeau says some of his students prepare a speech without thinking of the main idea.

“Sometimes the bigger problem is the point that they want to make is not clear. They are not thinking clearly about “What is the key point in my presentation? And how do I want to say that, where do I want to say it?”

For presentations in English, the best time to make that point is at the beginning. Speakers should make a plan to present their ideas in the order that is common in English rhetoric. When we write our ideas down without such a plan, they are not clear and our presentation will not be well organized.

“I think they prepare the presentation kind of as a stream of consciousness activity, then finally at the end of this process they figure out, oh, what do Iwant to say, what is the key point in this? And it ends up being at the end of the presentation.”

Professor LeBeau says he often sees the engineers he works with give a lot of technical information in their speeches. They want to tell everything they know. But, the audience may have trouble understanding which information isrelated to the speaker’s main point. We can tell the story with facts and numbers, if they help, and then repeat the point.

“In an English language presentation, what we try and do is make it more linear. And by that, I mean, it’s more of a story - we use data, and we use evidence, we use numbers, but only to help us tell the story more clearly.”

Preparing the story message helps speakers give a successful presentation.Professor LeBeau gives these five tips for academic presentations, such asthose given at professional conferences.

1. Understand the difference between a title and a topic. A topic is general, but a title is more specific. Make sure the title explains the benefit of your subject.

2. Provide an image for those who are not experts in your subject. Explain how your research relates to other fields.

3. Work on transitions (linking words or phrases) as you go from image toimage. These should make the connections between your ideas clear.Professor LeBeau says transitions serve as bridges to each new image.

4. Look at each image from the audience’s point of view. What questions might they have about each image? Prepare an extra image that would help explain the most difficult question you expect.

5. Rehearse your presentation with a timing device. At most conferences,there is a time limit. It is disrespectful to take more than your share of the time.Cut your presentation to fit the time you are permitted.

Professor LeBeau understands the difficulty many students of public speakingface.

“Learning a new culture for presentation is really really tough for many people, as it is with all language learning. Presentation, or course, is a part oflanguage learning. There’s culture in everything we do in English, as well as inpresentation.”

Using these tips for improving your presentations in English should help make the process easier. 

I’m Jill Robbins.