Free Powerpoint Design Template
There are few guaranteed public speaking tips, but here's one. Start your talk by announcing that (a) you hate PowerPoint (PPT) and (b) you're not going to use it today. I would take bets that this will generate applause and possibly cheers. Too bad the bookie's odds would be too low!
As usual, I find myself out of sync with the common wisdom. Why do I find that, for my purposes, PPT mostly works? Why do I think it's such a useful tool? I worry that some of our colleagues are swinging the pendulum in the direction of avoiding PPT. This would be a shame. On a very shallow level, I sometimes think that the well-educated communities in which we travel have a congenital distrust and hatred of the success exemplified by Microsoft and PowerPoint. It could also be that librarians and information professionals don't think they need the additional learning support that PPT provides because they have huge vocabularies; read very well, and listen intently; to the point of having fine comprehension and understanding on the first pass. Maybe not.
Indeed, the investigators of the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy identified PPT as one of the contributors to that disaster and as an indicator of problems in NASA's culture and communication environment. Wow. Can PPT be that evil? Here's a direct quote from the report (emphasis mine):
As information gets passed up an organization hierarchy, from people who do analysis to mid-level managers to high-level leadership, key explanations and supporting information is filtered out. In this context, it is easy to understand how a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that it addresses a life-threatening situation.
At many points during its investigation, the Board was surprised to receive similar presentation slides from NASA officials in place of technical reports. The Board views the endemic use of PowerPoint briefing slides instead of technical papers as an illustration of the problematic methods of technical communication at NASA.
Those who have seen the over-the-top articles about PowerPoint and NASA might be surprised that it's mentioned only five or six times in a 248-page report, and that the main point is not an indictment of PPT but the assertion that PPT should not be a replacement for more solid content.
As information professionals, we recognize that the responsibility for effective communication rests with the communicator, not the audience. This means we must understand how to communicate so that the listener can absorb the information and balance what needs to be learned and what needs to be discarded. This is a challenge for ordinary beings! Luckily we are equipped for this. We know that different information formats serve different purposes. We know that no one format is "right," and a combination of formats is usually the best tactic, for example, PPT presentations backed up by website copies; PPT handout pages with room to write; or formal reports distributed with details and back-up. Our users may best be served by an article or two on a topic rather than a long treatise. We might be able to locate a quickie website on a topic, but perhaps a detailed dissertation is called for. Even when we're searching Google, we often limit our results to websites, PDFs, or PPTs because they offer the right level of content. That's just common sense.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Of course, as the old saw goes, common sense ain't so common!
So rather than irrationally hating PPT, we should learn to use it well. As information professionals, here are just a few of the ways we use it:
* Presenting strategic plans
* Making speeches
* Database training
* Information literacy and searching development
* Project reports
Here are some tips for making the best use of this ubiquitous tool (you'll find loads more tips and cautions in the list of sites at the end of the column):
* Understand your audience's learning style. If they are visual learners, don't shy away from pictures. (Most people are visual learners--we text folks are the minority.)
* Write your first slides with very few words and bullet points-then aggressively attempt to remove half of them. If your talk complements and reinforces your slides--and vice versa--your presentation or training session will have better results.
* To reiterate--remember, the slides are meant to supplement and complement what you are saying or demonstrating. If you remember this you will not read your slides, which is the number one thing audiences hate. (Librarians rarely make presentations to an illiterate audience.) That said, audiences seldom complain that your font size is too big! Stand at the back of the room and take off your glasses--if you can still read the slides, they're fine.
* Learn the neat features of PPT. You must learn how to add visuals. It's easy to practice--open PPT and open your MSIE browser. In the browser, press CTL PrintScrn. Then, in PPT click on a blank slide and press CTL V (or right click--paste). Voila! You've just pasted a screenshot into PPT. Easy as pie. There are other ways, and there are few excuses not to include screenshots of visuals of search pages from your databases, websites, digital photos, etc. You can then easily pull in the graphics toolbar in PPT and crop and size your images to fit.
* Learn how to draw attention to what you want your audience to see. PPT has easy-to-use arrows, color, bars, boxes, and circles that help you draw attention to specific items. Not everyone sees what you see, so help them out.
* Use the spellcheck function. How surprising it is that folks who would never release a misspelled Word document or e-mail to their executives or colleagues will run a PPT slide set without spellchecking it! Don't you just hate it when a presentation is derailed by giggles over editing errors? Everyone in the audience, not just you, loses their train of thought.
* Last, people are sick of the standard, out-of-the-box, canned PPT backgrounds. If your organization has a corporate standard, you may want to use that, since the design is comfortable for your internal groups. You can also easily design your own template--it's fun and gets your creative juices flowing. There are many places where you can buy or acquire free PPT templates that are professionally done and are less likely to have that "Oh-no!-Not-Dad's-tie-again" feeling. Check out these two or search "PowerPoint Templates" (add "free" if you like) as a phrase in your favorite Web search engine:
Presenter's University: http://www.presentersuniversity.com/
The Microsoft Office site also offers tips and templates: http://office.microsoft.com/home/default.aspx
I have included a few good sites below that offer useful reading or resources. In addition, I highly recommend this article from Harvard Business School's free newsletter, Working Knowledge for Business Leaders:
"Crafting a Powerful Executive Summary," by John Clayton: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/pubitem.jhtml?id=3660&t=career_effectiveness
If you can craft your presentation so that your decisionmakers can understand it quickly and still provide detailed and professional back-up information, you will be well on the way to getting endorsement for your strategic ideas, the funding for those databases your users need, and the technology plan that will allow you to be enormously successful.
References
"The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint," by Edward Tufte: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint
Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report: http://www.caib.us/news/report/pdf/vol1/full/caib_report_volume1.pdf
"PowerPoint Is Evil: Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely," by Edward Tufte: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2_pr.html
Steven Bell's PowerPoint and Presentation Skills Resource Page: http://staff.philau.edu/bells/ppt.html
"Survey Shows How to Stop Annoying Audiences with Bad PowerPoint," by Dave Paradi: http://www.communicate usingtechnology.com/articles/pptsurvey_article.htm
This column contains the personal perspectives of Stephen Abram and does not necessarily represent the opinions or positions of Micromedia ProQuest or SLA. Products are not endorsed or recommended for your personal situation and are shown here as useful ideas or places to investigate or explore. Stephen would love to hear from you at sabram@micromedia.ca.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Special Libraries Association
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
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