In Nov 21's post I shared with you a tool called the Presentation Brief . This post shares an example of a filled Presentation Brief. For every presentation we follow (or ought to follow) a similar process. We need to gather enough information about the presentation before actually launching into deciding the content and making the slides. I have invented this tool to bring some method into the madness. It will help you get a proper picture of the presentation. This is how it works. As soon as you are asked to make a presentation, the first thing you should do is to fill the Presentation Brief. Download the Brief by clicking here . As promised I am presenting a sample of a filled Presentation Brief today. Sample Presentation Brief A sales manager of a real estate company is going to make a sales pitch to a group of prospective buyers. He plans to sell apartments to these people. I have filled this brief in first person (assuming I am the sales manager who is going to make the sales...

If you want to read a blog or a website regularly then RSS is a very useful tool for you. I will explain in brief what it means and how it works. If you know what RSS means and are already using it, you can skip this post. What is RSS? There are many ways you can read a blog or a news website. 1) You can visit it daily or weekly using your browser (Internet Explorer, Chrome or Mozilla). 2) You can subscribe to updates by email. So everytime I write a new post, it comes automatically to your inbox. 3) You can subscribe to RSS Feeds and read the posts on your computer. Everytime I write a post, your RSS reader will automatically download and store it for you. It will be marked as unread and you can read it at your own sweet time. The main benefit of using RSS is the ease of following all the blogs/sites you want to read at one place. How RSS works? You first need a Feed Reader . This is an application which aggregates feeds from all the websites/blogs you want to subscribe to. There are ...

A Presentation Brief is like an advertising brief. Before making every TV commercial the company tells their advertising agency what is the objective of the commercial, what message to convey and to whom. This brief guides the agency in making a commercial which serves the client well. Similarly a presentation brief will help you make a better presentation. All you need to do it this: 1. Download the PDF for free. Click here for direct download. 2. Before every presentation fill out the Presentation Brief. 3. Then start planning for the content and create the slides. Refer to the brief when you need direction. Spend around 20 to 30 minutes making the brief. Use it for every presentation you make. In the next two posts I will share why these questions are important. I will also share a sample Presentation Brief very soon. You can also download the PDF from slideshare. Presentation Brief View more documents from Vivek Singh .

Making slides for a presentation is often a long and tedious process. It might take you hours just to get the content in place and editing / re-editing slides might extend it even longer. But in reality you never have enough time. Your boss wants a presentation by tomorrow morning and he might tell you today evening. How do you make an excellent presentation within a small amount of time? This is the topic for today's post. Making presentations the way you make instant noodles To make a quick presentation, you need to know where do you mostly waste a lot of time. Making a presentation is a three step process. 1. Planning the content 2. Creating the slides (slide design), and 3. Delivering the presentation Most people waste time in creating slides. The reasons can be many: a) Skipping step 1 and directly starting to make slides. Then going back and forth all the time to get the flow right If you skip step 1 and try to create slides and plan parallely, you are in for trouble. Makin...

I was invited by P2W2 to give a talk on marketing basics yesterday at Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT). The audience, which was more than 100 in numbers, was majorly comprised of engineers who are running a start-up or wish to start on their own. The event was called 'Start-Up Saturday' . The presentation lasted for 45 minutes and was very well received by the audience. The audience was very active and raised a lot of questions. After the presentation, I was asked by the organizers and many members of the audience to share the slides with them. The slides were there just to aid me while talking and maintain the flow. Hence, they are not complete on their own. I have made minor changes to the original slides (before uploading it on slideshare ) so that it makes more sense when you see them in isolation. Enjoy the slides and raise any question you have by commenting on this post or emailing me directly. How Much Does A Butter Chicken Cost? View more presen...

Two weeks back I conducted a survey among prominent presentation bloggers (most of whom are on my blog roll). I asked them some questions. Questions you face everytime you make a presentation. What background colour should I use? Which font should I use? Should I use transitions and animations in my presentations? Here are the results. 1. Which background colour do you use most often? Even though blue is the most used background colour in the world, the clear choice between the expert's was 'white' . White is a nice colour for backgrounds and it allows you full freedom in designing your slides. Contrast this to black or other darker backgrounds and you will face issues in placing images and choosing font colours. With a white colour on the back, you have more options to play with. 2. What is your favourite font type? There was no unanimous answer here. Most liked fonts were (in order of their popularity): Arial, Verdana and Calibri. One thing was however unanimous. ...

"A good presenter is one who is good at PowerPoint (or Keynote)." What do you think about this quote? How true. Is it not? I mean, if only you knew the software better you could have made a better presentation. That's what is keeping you away from 'presentation stardom'. If only you got some free time and you could master PowerPoint. "Gosh I don't know those cool animation tricks and amazing transitions." And if I don't know then how can I impress my colleagues and especially my boss? Well, I disagree. I do not think there is any relation between you as a presenter and you as a PowerPoint user. They are just two different worlds. Get this feeling out of your mind that you need PowerPoint to make you a better presenter. It is a presentation myth. I am not saying shun PowerPoint. I am not saying that people who do not know PowerPoint are better presenters. I am just asking you to throw one thing out of your mind and hearts. "Just because I kn...

I attended a presentation two days back wherein an advertising agency was presenting some designs to its clients . Design which needed to be approved by the client. The major elements which were under scrutiny from their client were the shape and the colour scheme. The Problem The presenter could see that the design was not coming out as well on the screen. The projector was good but was not able to bring out the colours so well. For any normal business presentation it would have been fine. But this was a 'design presentation'. What should the presenter do in such a case? Will you let a projector ruin your hard work? The Solution Interestingly the presenter was seeing this problem but was not taking any action on it. The designs which were 'cool' on his Mac were looking pretty ordinary on the screen. Here are two possible solutions to this problem: 1. Carry hard copies - A good quality print will do a better job than a poor projection on the screen. Please note that it...

Hi friends. I am studying how people present in teams . Presenting in teams is very different from presenting solo and it comes with its own set of complexities. I am studying the dynamics and problems of presenting in teams and how we can solve them? To find out the problems and their possible solutions I need volunteers. If you have made presentations as part of a team I would like to interview you. To volunteer, drop me an email at vivek [at] allaboutpresentations [dot] com or leave a comment with your email id. As a token of appreciation, I will mention your name and your blog URL on the blog . Awaiting your participation.

The Problem I inserted a video (.mpg) in a slide. But it was not playing in slideshow mode. I had chosen the option of 'play on click'. And when I was clicking, it was displaying a white rectangle . The Solution I find it a bit weird. MS PowerPoint does not play a video if the file name is more than 24 characters long. These characters include text, numbers and spaces. As soon as I reduced the file size, the video started playing. I found this solution on Microsoft Office's website . Have you recently faced any problems playing a video in a presentation? Share it here. My problem was with MS Office, what about Keynote users? Share your problems and the solutions as well.

Hi friends. After an intense September where I wrote only on 14 Tips to Make Awesome Charts , October also came out as a power-packed month with a lot of detailed articles. I shared my personal journey into the world of presentations and how I get creatives ideas.. I skimmed through one of Dale Carnegie's books on public speaking and culled out what the books can teach presenters today. Another very popular post this month was 11 things to check just before you present. Having observed the mistakes I have made and others have made over the years, this useful checklist is going to help you not make 11 such mistakes. A must read. I also started a new feature called 'Best from Blogosphere' wherein I will share interesting and useful articles from other blogs/websites on presentations and public speaking once every fortnight. The 3 most read posts this month were: 11 things to check just before you present How to make award winning presentations? The 50% rule: Reduce excess ...