There is a designer within every presenter. There should be. The designer within helps you choose the right templates and design great layouts. It is the aesthetics auditor of our presentation; the one which ensures we do not churn out junk. For those of you who are more inclined towards design there is a good opportunity. West Bengal Trade Promotion Organisation (WBTPO) is inviting entries from people all over India to design the logo of MILAN MELA . Milan Mela is an exhibition center in Kolkata. You can win Rs. 100,000 ($2,245 approx.) if your logo is chosen by them. There is also a consolation prize of Rs. 50,000 for the runner up. This contest is only open for Indian citizens above the age of 18. Click here to know more. The last date for online submission is 11.59PM 25th of November, 2010 (IST). Every contestant is allowed only two submissions (in PDF format) and the size of the logo should be 400 x 400 pixels. I strongly recommend you to participate. You don't need to design...

Joey Asher is the president of Speechworks, a communication and selling skills coaching firm. He has come up with a new book '15 Minutes including Q & A' where he talks about how business presentations can become shorter. He makes a point that most business presentations are long and winding and what the world needs is a rifle-shot presentation. He has released a free e-book 'How to create a Seven-Minute Rifle-Shot Presentation' which has been excerpted from his book. In this e-book he describes how a 7 minute presentation can be structured. Here is a snapshot: 1. Start with what your audience cares about. Their problem. (The Hook) 2. How you plan to address the problem? 3. Talk about the key messages. (The Body). 4. Recap the key messages at the end. 5. Call to action. What should the audience do next? Click here to download the e-book (1.25 MB). It is a small e-book of 38 pages which is a quick read. Have a look.

On October 10th I made a presentation to an audience of 300. Instead of large screens I had to present on 5 LCD TVs (placed all over the hall). Because the screen size was smaller I increased the font size to 60 so people can see the slides. I wrote about it in my Oct 15th post . In response to it a reader & friend Manvendra commented on Facebook: "Very true. Been in such an awkward situation last month. Now I carry more than one copy of the same presentation, ready for small as well as larger screen sizes." Since I had visited the venue in advance I could manage to prepare accordingly (keep bigger font). What would we do if we went to an unknown place and found out that the screen size is much smaller? Our slides made with font size 30 are just not legible. H ow do we increase the font size of all the slides then and there? Or should we, as Manvendra says, carry two sets of the same presentation? Carrying two presentations might not be the best answer in my view. The so...

Nancy Duarte has just published her second book; Resonate. She is the CEO of Duarte Design, a design firm which specializes in presentations. Here is a short review of her book. Resonate is a verb which means to resound. To produce an emotional effect on someone. "This issue has resonated with voters more than any other." [Macmillan] Resonate is a book which tells us how to convert our message into a story and persuade our audiences. We are aware that stories are memorable and understandable. But how do we convert a sales pitch into a story? This book is Nancy's attempt in that direction. Premise: The objective of every presentation is to engage and persuade the audience. The ideology behind this book is that we need to become better story tellers in order to persuade our audience. Essence of the book: Here are a few things which Nancy talks about in her book. a. Understand the audience: In order to resonate, we need to adjust to the frequency of the audience instead ...

Slideshare is back with its annual global presentation contest. If you want to have fun, become famous and win exciting prizes this is your chance. Pick any topic you are passionate about (it can be about a trip, a hobby or about your work). Make a presentation about it (need not be very long). Be creative, design slides well and be interesting. I recommend you to consider participating. Here are other details you must know. 1. Laste date for submission of entries: November 8, 2010 11.59PM PST (Pacific Standard Time is 8 hours behind GMT. Hence it comes to November 8, 2010 10.29AM Indian Time) 2. You can submit upto 10 entries. 3. To enter you need to have a slideshare account and you have to fill in all the personal details. 4. Slideshare users vote for your presentation and that's how you get shortlisted. Then the judges evaluate your presentation on its creativity, visual look and effectiveness. 5. Your presentation needs to be clubbed under one of the categories; Business, Edu...

On Sunday I presented to an audience of 300+. It was a short presentation of 15 minutes. Had I not gone to the venue two days in advance I would have ruined it totally. The presentation was focused on sharing facts. There were parts where audience had to read what was on the slide and take decisions. The text HAD TO be legible for the last man in the audience. But this is pretty normal stuff. Every slide ought to be legible in all presentations. Why the fuss? The catch lies somewhere else. During such conferences you present on two large screens (with back projection). That's how it happens in India. But in my case instead of two large screens there were 4 Plasma TVs. These 42" TVs were placed all around the hall. If a 30 font size was good enough for the large screen, it would be invisible on a 42" Plasma. How did I figure it out? I visited the venue two days in advance and found out that there was no space for screens; we needed TVs. But I had not seen how the PPT look...

Dear all My last post was on Saturday when I was planning for an important presentation to be made on Sunday. I will share with you how it went. But before that, some news. On Sunday evening I met with a minor accident. Got bruises on various parts of the body. I am having slight pain but its getting better. Not going to office and managing stuff from home.

Every presentation requires time. We need to think about our key message that we want to convey, choose suitable content, plan out the flow, design the slides and rehearse for excellent delivery. This is theory. In real life, most of the times, we do not get enough time to prepare. Your boss/manager wants you to make a presentation tomorrow. He also might have figured it out just now. No one is at fault but your reputation is on stake. You have to make a presentation tomorrow at 10am and you have just today's evening. What do you do? Wake up all night and prepare? Work so late into the night that your eyes sore when you present and have butterflies in the stomach? I am facing a similar situation today. I figured out at 1pm that I have to make a presentation to 275 people tomorrow. My presentation is for 15 minutes and I have to talk at 10am. All I have is today evening (and night) to prepare. It is 5.45pm now and what do I have ready? NOTHING. I am going to plan it all out and deli...

Nancy Duarte is the CEO of Duarte Design (a design firm which focuses solely on presentations) and author of the popular book Slide:ology - The art and science of creating great presentations . Nancy has come out with her second book, Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences . The book was released on October 4. I caught up with her to find out more. Vivek: After the success of your book Slide:ology comes your next book Resonate. What is the central idea of the book? Nancy: Resonate reveals a way of creating presentation content that germinates from story structures and frameworks instead of a document mindset. Having worked on presentations for years, I began to study literature and cinema to determine how to incorporate tried-and-true story principles into presentations. Central themes of the book are that the audience is the hero (not the presenter) and that presentations can be interesting if you create enough contrast to keep the audience interested. Vivek: Is ...

If you make slides for others (as a professional designer or as a secretary/subordinate/colleague) this post is especially for you. A PowerPoint designer is a person who works on the slides and makes it look good. There are times when you get to edit the content but most of the times you just make the slides look great. Your boss gives you a raw PPT file and it is your job to jazz it up. Having worked on umpteen presentations as a PowerPoint designer (as a freelancer also) I have six tips to share with you. I have shared the tips on my recent article at www.24Point0.com . You can read the complete post by clicking here . Here is a small summary of the complete post. 1. Don't start by opening MS PowerPoint. Think about the bigger picture and then get into slide modification. 2. Customise and make every presentation unique. Do not treat every presentation as the same. Do one thing which is different in all presentations. 3. Keep your creativity alive. It is very easy to use the same ...