Best from the Past: December

Today let me share with you some good posts from December 2009, 2010 and 2011.

How to cut short your presentation at the last minute?
You were alloted 30 minutes. Because the conference started late, your time has now been cut short to 15 minutes. What will you do? Panic. What else?

In December 2009 I wrote a post about this and gave three suggestions. One, do not panic. No one succeeded in life by panicking. Two, do not apologise to the audience and sound defensive. Do not say I had prepared for 30 minutes and now I cannot complete everything. The audience will only feel bad and pathetic about it. You might want to give it a passing mention but say that you will share the crux in 15 minutes and the audience can always connect with you after the presentation. Who is stopping you or them to continue the conversation? Third, skip some slides and focus on what is the crux. Do not increase your speed to cover more content. That is stupid. You might also want to cut the basic warm up content at the start.

Extra tip: When you are skipping slides it is better to hide them during slideshow. Do not show a slide and then say "I will not present this and move on." The audience feels they are missing something.

Click here to read the complete post.

Use special fonts in your presentations
If you want to stand out, it is advisable to use a new font in your presentation. Do not use something that's difficult to read. Choose your font carefully. When in doubt stick to Arial or Helvetica. No point wasting your time in search of a new font.

One good resource which I use most often is dafont.com. It has a brilliant collection of free to use fonts. You can click here to read the original post.

Make your own slides: Do not ask your subordinate
If you are a senior manager, you might be getting your slide deck made by your subordinates. That's a common practice and that's a very bad practice. I believe everyone should make his/her own slides.

When you make your slides, you get the meaning right. You know why you used an image. You know why the animation is in a particular order. You are more confident when you make your own slides. You also have a better grip on your time (when you present).

Read this important post here.

How to design a logo in PowerPoint?
This has been one of the most popular posts of my blog since it was first published in December 2009. In this post I have explained the process of making a simple logo in PowerPoint. Click here to read this interesting and innovative post.

I designed the logo of my blog also on PowerPoint.