The presentation is by Doug Jeffries and has a title slide “Enhancing your presentation skills” and a final slide with the text “Everything you need to know…” Two enticing slides, and so I became viewer 664,385, and 664,386, and 664,387. The reason for the second and third visits was due to the lack of anything that I could take away from “everything that you need to know…”, other than keeping your pockets empty and not pointing your index finger at the audience.

Being kind to Doug, who is clearly a confident and slick presenter, I will put this disappointment down to an editor who took out the pearls of wisdom of the recording on how to overcome ‘Death by PowerPoint’, and focused only on retaining the content to entertain viewers, rather than educating them. So, for those who have seen the recording, let me be of some help! Doug touches upon some typical mistakes made in presentations and these fall into the categories of ‘soft skills’ and ‘hard skills’.

Of the ‘soft skills’, Doug touches upon the power of pauses, and I am an enthusiastic advocate of this as well. But, why are they so important? The best way to approach this is to remember that your audience cannot think at the same speed that you are speaking. Therefore, when you want your audience to think about, and remember, your key messages, you must pause, and let them mnemonically process your message through working memory into long term memory. And the technique to maximize the effectiveness of this is that of using rhetorical questions.

Of the ‘hard skills’, Doug has a slide, “Effective content” but again, there were no tips nor advice to counter the typical approach of a sales presentation focusing  on “We’re biggest company” and “We’re the best…” The better way to have effective content is to structure your message around the value that you will deliver to your client, that differentiates you from the competition, has the proof points to reduce risk, and is all about them and their company, not yours. And your language needs to change from “we” to “you”. You wouldn’t be at the table if they hadn’t already decided that you are a viable option!

Instead of a presentation that’s all about “we” (what I call show up, and throw up) to deliver a Killer Sales Presentation, it should be all about “you”. Focus on the client, and why they need to do business with you.

Watch the video below for a tutorial demonstrating how to customise the Illustrated Timeline slides to add your own images.

Download Illustrated Timeline Slides

Nick has been invited to present at the event after Alistair Campbell – former Director of Communications for ex-PM Tony Blair, and Charles Leadbeater – leading authority on innovation and strategy.

Stay Ahead – Pitch Better

Preparing to pitch takes time and costs money. Yet, many companies just don’t do a good enough job in how they prepare for pitch presentations.

Slides prepared the day before. Just one rehearsal, late at night. Too many speakers. Too many slides. Unanticipated questions. Vague understanding of competitors. No differentiation. The wrong differentiation. No value. The wrong value. Tedious slides, instantly forgotten.

In a competition run by m62 visualcommunications, the global leader in presentation effectiveness, the winner will receive a re-worked sales presentation and presentation skills training for six people.

All entrants will receive feedback on their presentations, so that those who submit a presentation will benefit from the knowledge of how to make their presentations more effective.

Competition Rules

1. To enter, entrants must submit a copy of a presentation for judging. The presentation that is deemed to be the most effective will be awarded with first place. Presentations will be judged on the basis of memorable message, engaging visuals, and impressive design.
2. The competition may be entered by a company or person who is a member of UKAPMP as at the date of the UKAPMP conference 2010.
3. The presentation must be one used by the company / person submitting it in a bid situation during 2010. It is allowable for the presentation to be modified to remove commercially sensitive information.
4. m62 will provide an NDA for each submitted entry if required by the company / person submitting the presentation.
5. The winner will receive a re-work up of their presentation using the m62 recall service and training for upto 6 delegates on one of m62′s Open62 courses during 2011.
6. A critique will be offered for each entry. This will take the form of a web meeting lasting approx 30 minutes.
7. There is no maximum slide number.
8. The deadline for entries is Friday 29th October 2010
9. The winner and runner up will be notified by 30th November 2010.
10. The prize is not transferable to another party.

How to Enter

Send your presentation by email to info@m62.net, including your full details, any supporting information required for an evaluation of your presentation, and stating if you require an NDA to be signed.

Watch the Formatting Templates PowerPoint 2007 tutorial:

Gapminder is a tool that allows the user to present a huge amount of world data visually, in moving, interactive graphs.

The software used is called Trendalyzer, and is owned by Google. Gapminder has a license to use the software in order to make data freely available to the public. The non-profit foundation works to advocate free access to public data, in order to foster innovation.

Google has also used the technology to produce Motion Chart, which can be used within Google Docs to visualise one’s own data and create moving graphs.

Gapminder has been made famous by its director Hans Rosling, who works to debunk myths about the developing world. Watch this video of a fantastic TED talk he gave using the tool to see him at work.

What does it do?

Gapminder takes a stream of data dependent on time, and presents it visually, in the form of moving graphs. The ‘selling’ point of this tool is the data it comes with – access to a staggering amount of worldwide data, from geographical disasters and national economy, to personal poverty and AIDS.

The data is displayed on a graph, with variables shown on the x-axis and y-axis, as well as by size and colour. The graph can compare multiple sets of data at one time, over a period of years. Sections of a graph can be zoomed in on, and the path of individual points can be followed, to emphasise specific data when needed. The Gapminder data can even be displayed over a map, so that statistical changes can be shown geographically.

Using the tool to display personal data is slightly more limited. This can be done by using Google Docs, but as the data is not pre-programmed, certain functionalities (such as the map feature) are not supported, and the process is considerably more complicated. Google also allows the user to visualise certain data from Google Analytics.

How easy is it to use?

Using the Gapminder charts with the publicly available data is easy. Select the qualities you want to investigate, or choose from a ready-made graph. All variables can be customised as wished. It’s all simple, easy, and clear – the data is easily managed in a system of menus. There’s even an introductory video by Hans Rosling himself to get you comfortable with the software.

The tool and global data can be used online, or downloaded and used without internet connection from your desktop.

The Trendalyzer software can also be used to present your own data, separately from Gapminder. However, this must be done via GoogleDocs, and so requires an internet connection. Using your own data can be quite complicated, as it requires organising your information in a certain way. Once a chart has been produced, you can then copy and paste an html code to publish your specific Motion Chart online, or view the chart within GoogleDocs itself. Motion Charts are also available in Google Analytics, to analyse trends in your site statistics.

Can it be used in presentations?

The recommendations suggest that if you want to present using the tool, you simply have the program open as well as PowerPoint, and flick between the two when appropriate.

Presenting directly from Gapminder desktop, or the Gapminder website, is simple. You can save the presentations you find useful/interesting – tailored to show the exact statistics you want them to – and keep them open in separate tabs, to flick between when you come to present.

However, the downloaded software cannot be used to add your own data. If you want to use your own data and present it, you must use the software live on the internet via Google Docs, or a webpage upon which you have published the chart.

Following this method does mean that in order to deliver a presentation using Gapminder or a Motion Chart, you’d have to use your own laptop, or be connected to the internet – allowing little room for technical error. These are not ideal requirements when presenting – you certainly don’t want more things that can go wrong!

Can you insert a chart into PowerPoint?

It is possible to include a Motion Chart, produced by either Gapminder or Google Docs, on a slide – with limitations, and with a great deal of effort.

The Motion Chart cannot simply be inserted into PowerPoint. Instead, the Motion Chart must be recorded as video, using screen capture software such as Community Clips. The resulting wmv file can then be inserted onto a slide.

This did not present any difficulties when done within PowerPoint 2003 or 2007. In these versions of PowerPoint, the video is saved into a particular folder, and then linked to from the PowerPoint slide.

However, the same file used would not embed in PowerPoint 2010. m62 is currently working on a solution, as embedding the video would completely change the way it could be used with PowerPoint. As PowerPoint 2010 users can edit videos, the Motion Chart could be manipulated to interact with other slide content. The user could use triggers and bookmarks to automatically pause the video; have animations playing alongside at specific points in the chart; and highlight important points on the slide.

Of course, there are certain workarounds in the earlier versions. The wmv file could be chopped within Windows Media Player, to segment the video into different sections of data. These different videos could be put on different slides, so that the video could be played in stages. This would enable the presenter to talk about specific time periods in regards to the data.

Gapminder has also produced an alternative for those interested in the world data. You can download PowerPoint presentations on the data provided from Gapminder.org, which come complete with animations and manuscript. These function as great examples of how to present visual data effectively.

How could it be useful in a presentation?

The possibilities for using the tool in presentations are clear. Animated graphs are far more engaging for audiences, and will demonstrate the data in a much more interesting, memorable way. The graphs themselves are easy and quick to create. Organising your own data may be difficult, but the graphs that can be produced are worth it.

Of course, there are limitations, and as the software utilises all data in a spreadsheet, it is only useful for showing trends. While you can zoom in on sections of a graph, the tool is probably not the best option for displaying specific points, and the software really only comes into its own when displaying changes in data over time. If you need to isolate specific data and emphasise certain points, creating an animated graph in PowerPoint would still be an option to consider.

Is it worth it?

The Trendalyzer software is fantastic. While presenting with one’s own data has limitations, the tool itself is truly amazing, and should inspire people and presenters everywhere to do more with their graphs, and present data in a truly engaging way.

The project that the Gapminder Foundation has begun aims to offer ordinary people access to this level of data, in an engaging way. Everyone should have a copy of Gapminder on their desktop, even if it’s only just to play around with the software and the huge wealth of data available.

Yet some things about business just don’t seem to have changed yet. Cold Calling is one of these.

Just as delivering a presentation that is company-focused and not audience-focused will leave presenters and audiences unsatisfied, a call with no relevance will leave both salespeople and prospects unsatisfied. Cold calling – that is, calling people you do not know and who are not expecting your call – often wastes time and money, producing fewer qualified leads, which ultimately are what result in a sale.

In Sales 2.0, the B2B buyer is in control. The buyer knows what she wants to buy, and she has heard enough sales pitches that she is beginning to distrust, or even dislike, them. Salespeople must better understand prospects’ needs, and engage with them in a more relevant and effective manner. Sales is now even more about listening to prospect’s needs and behaviours, and identifying who you can help, and how.

Rather than spending time trying to sell to the wrong people, salespeople should instead spend their time identifying who the right person to speak to would be, and what kind of needs the prospective company has. This means doing more than just pick up the phone. Yes, it’s about research, but it’s also about engaging with prospects and finding out what they want. Give them the option to find out more about you. How about sending them a link to a few slides online, via a hosting site such as myBrainshark? Or even use a platform such as LiveMeeting to deliver an interactive presentation, so you could talk about what is most relevant to them?

The key is to find the person you should talk to. Asking the right questions and doing the right research will save you time, effort, and money – and your prospects will appreciate it.

The email study was conducted by Aaron Ross.

1   Set objectives

There is no point in spending all that time and effort preparing for a presentation, if you have no idea what you want the end result to be. What do you want your audience to do at the end of the presentation? What do you want them to think? Why are you delivering this presentation?

The objectives may not be as straightforward as you think. The answer in a sales presentation is not always ‘to make a sale’. Depending on the stage of the cycle, the answer could be to persuade your audience that your product or service provides them with real value – and perhaps stressing that it delivers far better value than that of any competitors.

2.  Are you Selling or Telling?

Identify whether your ultimate aim is to sell, or to inform. Each aim should be approached differently, and uses different techniques to maximise effectiveness. Using a ‘selling’ presentation doesn’t have to mean actually making a sale – you could be persuading a financial backer to invest in your new product, for example. Determine which one it is that you’re focusing on, and use this as the basis for everything you prepare for your presentation.

Sometimes, a presentation is required to do both. This, however, can be extremely difficult for the presenter, both in delivery and in producing the message. In this case, the content should ideally be split into two presentations, to be delivered by two different people. Ultimately, presenters should just make sure that they are answering the ‘why’ question all the time, and tailoring their content to their goal.

3.  Audience’s objectives as well

Any presentation should be beneficial for both parties. Remember, your audience doesn’t have to listen to you. Understanding their problems and needs will help you identify how you can tailor your content so that both you and your audience feel satisfied.

Your audience should find your presentation useful, whether because they have signed a new business contract; received some really useful information; or whatever else you offer them. Your audience don’t care what you want; you should care about what they want.

4. Appropriate Media

Don’t necessarily assume you are going to use PowerPoint; and whatever you do, don’t start your presentation by opening the program and typing in your notes. Think about what message you are delivering and who you are delivering it to. Is slideware suitable? Visual aids and slideware may be impractical for a best man’s speech or a politician. Yet in a business presentation about finances, effective visual aids can really help to aid your audience’s understanding and engagement. Whatever your decision, ensure that everything you are doing will make your presentation more engaging and memorable for the audience. Visual aids should help your audience, and not hinder them.

5.  If Yes, What do want them to recall?

If you want your audience to remember your presentations, slideware could make a big difference. Studies have shown that when information is shown via dual channels, information absorption can be more than tripled. Using visual techniques at key points in your messaging can really aid your audience’s comprehension and recall of an argument.

So what do you want them to recall? Use diagrams, pictures and animations to stress these points, helping the audience to focus their attention on these, and to remember them. Slideware such as PowerPoint allows presenters to combine a variety of visual techniques, to ensure that visual aids have the biggest possible impact.

6.  Relevant content

Showing something interesting but irrelevant will engage some of your audience, but not all of them. Showing them something relevant and interesting will have your entire audience enthralled.

People like to talk about themselves, or listen to other people talk about themselves. They don’t care about you. They care about what you can offer them, or how you can entertain them, or about what they can get out of the presentation. Don’t talk about what you find interesting: talk about what they will find interesting! Relevant content is the key to keeping your audience’s attention, and to persuading them of your views.

7.  Get Interactive

How long do you have to get your main points across before your audience start to tune out? The human attention span isn’t quite what you think it is. The actual time varies from person to person, and is dependant on a range of factors, from age and gender to tiredness and room temperature. The average attention span for an adult audience is 20-25 minutes. The implications for presenters are serious, with many presentations being an hour long or more. If your audience tune out before you are a third of the way through your presentation, how much of your content are they going to be able to recall?

It is important therefore to take this into consideration when planning a presentation, and to ensure that you do not lose your audience halfway. If your presentation is going to be longer than 20 minutes, plan a soft break, which could be a puzzle; a question; or a brief group activity. The key thing is to get your audience thinking or acting. This ensures that your audience stay alert and engaged with your content, and gives them a chance to regroup their attention before listening to your next twenty minutes of presenting.

8.  Once written; Practise, Practise, Practise

Content vs. delivery: an age-old debate, akin to nature vs. nurture. Many presenters meet their downfall by fine-tuning their content, only to realise that they have no idea how to deliver it. Practising makes a huge difference to the quality of delivery. Make sure you know your presentation well, and deliver it the whole way through 2 or 3 times before a presentation. If you can’t express your powerful messages in an engaging and memorable way, what is the point of labouring over them?

9.  Solicit feedback

The best way to improve at presenting is to identify what you do well, and what you could do better. Taping yourself and watching it back, or asking friends for their opinions, frequently proves useful. Don’t, however, ask someone within your company, as they will rarely be entirely impartial.

But how do you really know what your audience thought of your presentation? Ask them. Anonymous questions will provide you with a wealth of useful information. Use these pointers to perfect your content and delivery for the next presentation.

10.  Follow up

Unfortunately, humans forget around 75% of what they have learnt within 24 hours of learning it. This has huge implications for any presenter – why spend all that time on a presentation, when most of it will be forgotten in a day? Don’t worry though – this statistic can be dramatically reduced if the information is reintroduced periodically. In presenter’s terms, this means follow up.

Of course, the follow up is the most obvious step after a sales presentation, but it can be beneficial in other situations too. If you have internal training, gather your employees for five minutes the following day to recap the main points from yesterday’s presentation. Do the same again a week later; a month later; even a year later. You will see a massive increase in audience recall.

The template has two slide designs, a main body and contrasting title slide. The template shows a big-rig in the bottom right-hand corner with the road stretching out before it.  The title design shows the wagon speeding through the night, while the main body slide has the truck racing through the day.

The template would be excellent for transport or logistics related presentations and will always help get your message delivered on time. Apply the template today and engage high gear – along with your audience.

Trucking PowerPoint 2003 Template

Trucking PowerPoint 2007 Template

Watch the Layering Objects PowerPoint 2007 tutorial to learn how to utilise this function.

Watch the Highlighting Objects PowerPoint Tutorial:

The template shows an underwater scene with a shark in the bottom left hand corner. The template contains a main body slide and contrasting title slide. With the template’s watery feel, it’ll help create the right splash to any presentation.

This one comes with a friendly wave across the (shark-infested) pond to our friends at Brainshark. We love creating great PowerPoint presentations, and they have a great platform for putting presentations online. Once you have made a visual presentation, put it on MyBrainshark, record narration, and show it to the world – animations-and-all.

Shark PowerPoint 2003 template

Shark PowerPoint 2007 template

The template contains a main body slide and contrasting title slide with icons of various tech in the bottom right hand corner. The template would give a cutting edge look to any presentation.

The PowerPoint template would be ideal for a presentation to the technology industry or consumer electronics sector. The template should help you present your new ideas to any audience and get your message across in an effective manner.

Consumer Electronics PowerPoint 2007 Template

Consumer Electronics PowerPoint 2003 Template

Watch this Spin Animations PowerPoint Tutorial:

The template has two designs, a main body slide and contrasting title slide. The template shows a modern glass fronted office building and the overall design gives a highly polished and professional look.

If you are in the property arena or presenting to it, this template will prove invaluable and will be sure to hold its value no matter what the market throws at you. If you are simply presenting about business, and want to show that you mean business, then our office PowerPoint template is just the right design for you.

Office PowerPoint Template 03

Using these techniques, presenters can create fast paced high impact presentations that run automatically. They can be sent directly to audiences to view in their own time, or be used as a demonstration or marketing tool, to cause someone to seek further details in a presenter-led presentation.

The new template contains two designs, a main body slide and a contrasting title slide.  The design is coloured in warm orange and brown tones with a silhouette of a farming scene framing the slide.

The farming template would work well in a number of situations from presenting to the food industry to individual farmers. The template will help you get your point across and deliver a winning pitch (fork).

Farming PowerPoint Template for PowerPoint 2003

Farming PowerPoint Template for PowerPoint 2007

There’s another way. Presentations don’t have to consist of six bullet points to a slide for thirty slides. Just because everybody else reads from their slides, it doesn’t mean that you have to. Delivering a presentation can be fun for the audience, and the presenter.

Be proactive about becoming a better presenter. Presentation skills are essential in today’s business world. Set out to become a better presenter by reading about effective presentations, watching and copying interesting presenters, and identifying and replacing bad habits. It will help your career, and it will help those who have to watch you present.

Begin with Objectives in Mind

Why are you delivering a presentation? If you are only presenting because it’s what usually happens, or if you could just as well send a Word document, then save everybody’s time and don’t present.

Start developing each presentation by setting clear objectives: What do you want your audience to do as a result of your presentation, and when by? What do you want your audience to think following your presentation? How will you measure whether your presentation has achieved its objectives?

Effective presentations are those that help the presenter achieve their objectives. Without objectives, what is a presentation for?

Put Essential Things First

In an effective presentation, the audience will quickly understand what the point of the presentation is, what any jargon means, and why the presenter is worth listening to.

If the audience aren’t sure why they should bother listening, or can’t follow what is being said, they will disengage. Instead, set out your credibility early, ensure you define your terms, and state benefits up-front.

In practical terms, this can mean delivering a presentation that seems somewhat back-to-front. Establish credibility, and then state your conclusions, before spending the rest of the presentation justifying your conclusions. For the audience this structure is far easier to follow.

Think “What’s in it for Them?”

Most presenters talk about themselves, the features of their products, and give details that few other people would care for.

Why should your audience listen? What will they learn? How might they benefit? An effective presentation is written for the audience, not the presenter. Effective presenters talk about their audience, the benefits their audience will receive, and edit ruthlessly to ensure detail that will be considered boring is excluded.

Seek First to Understand, then to Present

Don’t “show up and throw up” when delivering a sales presentation or seeking investment. Sure, if you are launching a product or delivering a conference keynote presentation you might want to launch straight into your presentation, but even then, find out as much as you can about your audience in advance.

If you manage to get a meeting with a  potential client or investor, do your homework. Utilise contacts, social media, and company websites to identify interests and “hot buttons”. Tailor your presentation to take advantage of your research.

Presentations should be part of a two-way dialogue. The best presenters are always looking to see how their audience responds, in order to identify objections, shape needs, and advance discussion.

Create Synergy

Interactive presentations are often more effective. Why? Because the audience is engaged, because the audience’s interests can be more directly addressed, and – quite frankly – because they stand out as a bit different. Interactive presentations involve the audience by:

Setting puzzles to get the audience thinking

Allowing the audience to set the agenda

Listening to what the audience has to say

Effective presentations often include elements of interactivity to benefit from the synergy produced by involving the audience.

Sharpen Presentation Skills

Effective presentations take hours to prepare. But presentations can’t deliver themselves. Effective presenters spend days practising. Become a great presenter doesn’t happen overnight. So, go on a presentation skills training course. Video yourself presenting. Ask for feedback. Organise coaching. But most important  of all, keep trying to become a more effective presenter.

So, here we have a summary of the best new features of PowerPoint 2010 in our opinion, with a brief explanation of how to use each function, and an example of how it could be used to make a presentation effective. With advanced new functionality, PowerPoint really is making it easier than ever to create presentations that are impressive, engaging and memorable.

Interface

Fully-bespoke ribbon

PowerPoint 2003 had the ability to ‘float’ various menus and embed them wholesale into the working space, as well as the ability to create a new toolbar and populate it with favourite commands. PowerPoint 2007 lost some of this flexibility in favour of neatness – grouping commands into ‘tabs’ in the ribbon and allowing the user to customise only the uppermost toolbar. PowerPoint 2010 has improved on both and made customising the workspace extremely flexible. You can now create, name and illustrate your own tabs from scratch, and populate them with whatever commands you wish. This allows the user to create a completely personalised interface with all the tools you commonly use.

Smart tabbing

Clicking on a photo, shape or chart automatically brings up a specialised ribbon tab dealing with that specific type of graphic. This means that all the specialised tools for editing a photograph are available to you instantly, without even having to look in the standard or customised menus – and then they disappear when you move off the photo to do something else. This makes everything much more accessible and tidy, making PowerPoint feel more and more like a sophisticated design tool.

New colour schemes

Maybe this is too shallow of us, but the new black colour scheme looks fantastic…

Drawing and Formatting

Alignment on-the-fly

A boon in the style of Flash design packages, smart guidelines automatically pick up the positioning of objects around the one you are drawing, resizing or moving. Move or draw a shape near to another shape and construction lines appear, helping you to snap the position of the new object to the original. This virtually eliminates the need to use the align tool to line up objects. A serious timesaver.

Autoshape formatting

All the fancy new object styles from 2007 are there, including glowing edges and soft focus effects, along with a neat new gradient tool that allows multiple stop-points when creating gradient colour washes. In a few clicks it’s now possible to create the kind of objects that previously demanded a fair bit of fine-tuning in Photoshop.

Bespoke shapes

The freeform/edit points tool was always useful for creating custom shapes, and it’s still here, but now there’s no need to painstakingly draw each outline. The new Shape Union, Shape Subtract, Shape Intersect and Shape Combine tools let you merge shapes together or use them as cookie-cutters, so you can create any shape you desire and format it to look like a real-life object. See our PowerPoint 2010: Shape Union and PowerPoint 2010: Shape Union Subtract tutorials for examples of these tools at work.

Instant screengrabbing

If you want to import screenshots of a webpage or other application, you can now do it within PowerPoint without having to ‘Print Screen’, paste, crop and resize. Simply open the application you want to screengrab, click Insert > Screenshot within PowerPoint 2010, and PowerPoint shows you a preview of the windows you have open. Click the one you want and you get a perfectly sized screenshot aligned to the slide and with the desktop edges already trimmed off.

Very neat indeed. Check out the tutorial here.

Video

Importing

PowerPoint 2010 can now cope with many more movie file formats. Previously, WMV was a dead cert; AVIs, ASFs and Quicktimes were a bit of a cross-your-fingers affair; and other formats were pretty much foreign to PowerPoint. Now you can safely insert all popular movie formats, including MP4, MPEG and Flash video – you can even paste in the link of a webpage that contains a clip, and PowerPoint will download it and insert it onto the slide. New video editing controls everything you may need to do to your clip without using any external software, and you can also have video controls on the slide, so that you can pause or track the clip as it’s playing in Slideshow mode.

Video formatting

Video used to automatically jump to the top layer of the slide and play in a flat panel. No more! You can apply the same 3D and rotation effects to a video clip as you can to an Autoshape, allowing you to skew, stretch and morph the video frame to your heart’s content. You can even have multiple clips playing at once on the same slide, with 3D settings applied to the frames so they are facing one another, with subtitles or other graphics appearing over the top of them. Very cool. If you fancy yourself as an artistic director, apply different colour tones and lighting treatments to give a dramatic effect.

Video Bookmarking

This impressive feature lets you place markers on the video to use as animation triggers. For example, if you have an interview clip, you can bookmark key points in the clip and link them to animations – when the interviewee mentions an outstanding member of staff, a headshot of the person flies out of the movie and onto the slide. Use this for adding illustration to a video narrative, or for creating rolling captions or subtitles. Click to see our PowerPoint 2010: Movie Editing tutorial.

Sharing

Web-based sharing

If you can’t present in person, there’s now no need to either set up a webconference; convert the presentation to a flash file and host it on a webpage; or send it out on a CD. Using your Windows Live credentials (any Hotmail account), you can log into the new Broadcast Service and play your presentation over a web browser. Alternatively, save the presentation to your virtual storage area on Windows Live and allow it to be downloaded by your colleagues, or for collaborative work, publish it to SharePoint to track changes made by others.

Create Video or CD

The much loved Pack and Go is included here, which automatically burns your presentation to a self-running CD and includes all your linked files and videos. And at long last, the ability to create a video from your presentation. Simply, just ‘Save As’ a wmv file, and PowerPoint converts your presentation to a video. Or for more specialised use, the backstage area gives you options to render out the video for HDTV, web or portable devices (sadly, not for the iPad, but we’re working on that).

The software features a variety of different design templates, a bank of example questions, and a simple interface that means that quizzes can be edited quickly and easily without requiring any familiarity with PowerPoint. In addition, the quiz will calculate a final score for the user, revealing this at the end of the quiz.

Usability

The software can be downloaded from the website (it costs $99), and there is a trial version available for free. Once installed, a toolbar appears within PowerPoint. From this toolbar, users can create entire quizzes – without doing any editing on the PowerPoint slide itself.

Usability is easy, as all functions are handled within the PowerQuizPoint menu, rather than on the slide itself. However, difficulties did arise when adding and removing questions within the quiz, as the changes interfered with the scoring system. This is particularly evident when different templates are used within one quiz. Users looking to make these changes may wish to edit the presentation as a whole, rather than to do so question by question.

Features

There are a range of pre-designed quiz templates that can be used to create a quiz. Some templates are simply abstract designs, but there are some more creative ones, including one based on a popular television program, and one based on a teacher’s chalkboard (complete with animated writing chalk!). The designs themselves are well executed, and the animations are smooth. Unfortunately, there is no option to personalise these templates, which means that it is impossible to adapt a template for a specific purpose, for example to tailor colours to match a specific brand.

Some modifications can be made on the slides themselves; text and font formats can be changed, whilst the user can insert new shapes, images, sounds and even video and flash to the slide. This could be useful in a learning environment, for example if a teacher wished to explain an answer via the use of video.

Other functionalities from within the quiz are offered. For example, the presenter can enable or disable the option to retry a question if incorrect, or to skip backwards and forwards between questions as wished. The software also comes with a selection of questions in the ‘question bank’, which the user can select from to create a quiz, or add to himself once more questions have been created.

Saving the Quiz

The resulting file can be used within PowerPoint as a slideshow with no difficulties, or it can be saved and run as a Flash file. Converting the file is done via the ‘Publish Quiz’ button on the toolbar within PowerPoint. This process is not without its difficulties. The conversion, as with most PowerPoint to Flash conversions, is slow, but it also froze several times when it was attempted. The website FAQs indicate that this is a common problem, and provide some solutions.

Once a file has been successfully converted, it can be run outside of PowerPoint; sent to other users; or published on a website. This extra feature will prove very useful for those wanting to broadcast a quiz on a blog post, or for teachers and lecturers wishing to share the quiz with students over the internet.

Conclusion

PowerQuizPoint Maker is a useful automated solution for creating quizzes within PowerPoint, particularly with the added functionality of being able to calculate score.

The software is easy to use, and with a few clicks the user can have a fully-functioning quiz. Some improvements could be made, such as fixing the conversion difficulties, or perhaps giving the user the option to remove answer pages from the quiz. It is also worth checking the answers for some of the questions provided in the question bank – an answer about the use of Joules claimed that the term referred to the recording of heat, and not energy!

This software could be particularly useful for teachers and lecturers, or training presentations within a corporate setting. It clearly promotes interaction in an audience, and tests audience knowledge and understanding. Examples of use could be at the start of a presentation to ensure audience members are engaged, or at the end of a presentation to test material learnt. Asking audiences questions will get them involved and paying attention to presentation content, and encouraging them to think about what they are listening to means that they are more likely to absorb it into long-term memory.