Ignite Sydney 2010 was a great success. The speeches were engaging, well delivered and highly visual – the crowd also played a great role  joining in and enjoying the night. We loved working with the presenters and host Stephen Lead and were very excited about the people we met and teamed up with.

So while we’re on this high we want to offer a 10% discount to anyone who mentions Ignite Sydney when they use one of our presentation services.

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The countdown is on for the much anticipated Ignite Sydney 4 event, being held here in Sydney at Oxford Art Factory on Tuesday 2nd March. This is part of the bigger ‘Global Ignite Week’ event where 40+ cities around the globe each host their own Ignite event at the same time.

We are big supporters of Ignite, as a showcase and celebration of a series of short presentations delivered by a range of speakers on ……… whatever!  The format: each presenter has 5 minutes to present 20 slides which are set on a 15 second automatic transitions on a topic of their choice. These simple yet effective parameters force speakers to consider their core message and wrap it up into a punchy, succinct and often entertaining pack – the way a lot of presentations should be!

We are now seeing large corporates adopt similar styles for their speakers at conferences and internal team days as way to encourage creativity, refine content and inject a bit of entertainment into what can be tediously long days.

Here’s some quick tips to help you create a short and snappy presentation:

•  Know  your audience – this will help you shape your presentation
•  Organise your key messages on paper before you even open PowerPoint
•  Choose powerful and relevant images that help the audience understand your message
•  Rehearse, rehearse and rehearse!  – if you know your content, the rest comes naturally

See you at Ignite!

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I recently heard this great analogy describing how your font should function as a ‘crystal goblet’ in your marketing/presentation material. In the sense that the font type should act like a transparent vessel that holds, shapes and organizes your information without being a feature in itself. In saying this, it is a well known fact that your font choice will subconsciously influence the tone and feel of the message you are tyring to convey.

In the last 50 years we have seen an explosion of san serif fonts in global communications, first popularized by the typeface Helvetica in the late 1950’s. Helvetica brought a new era of pert, friendly, rational and honest fonts. This explains why the so many of the ‘big boys’ in today’s corporate world have adopted this font into their brand identity.

When I did a little further investigation into this typography revolution, I came across a fascinating retrospective film-doco called ‘Helvetica’ that reviews its rise to fame last century.  Released in 2007, the film has continued to draw attention to a far wider audience than the ‘typographer’ that you think it would attract. 

Check out: www.helveticafilm.com – it will certainly make you think next time you select a font for your upcoming presentation.

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One of the most informative and captivating annual wrap-ups for me has to be from ‘Most Contagious Magazine’.

This year, they have included the most contagious ideas in everything from design to branded applications, from technology to real time media. 

One of my favourites is the MIT Media Lab application that featured at TED in February. Their SixthSense application combines a webcam, battery-powered projector and mirror in communication with a cell phone. This allows the wearer to use their hands to interact with information projected onto any surface – from a wall to a hand, newspaper or entire person. Removing the boundaries of where and how you can share information. Check it out here and download the free annual review.

 Merry Christmas from everyone at Presentation Studio and we look forward to sharing more with you in 2010.

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We have all had to sit through them and we sometimes wish we could be somewhere else, crossing things off our ever growing ‘to do’ lists. Nevertheless PowerPoint presentations are inextricably linked into everyday business life, so how can we make sure that our presentations connect with the audience from the go get?

Cliff Atkinson, author of ‘Beyond Bullet Points’ believes you can command attention within the first five slides and the first few minutes if done right.

When planning your presentation content he offers the following checklist for the first five slides:

1. Do they orient your audience to the setting of the presentation?
2. Do they interest them by acknowledging their role in the setting?
3. Are you engaging them emotionally by describing a challenge they face?
4. Are you motivating them by affirming what they want?
5. Do they focus your audience by offering a way to get from Point A to Point B (Call to Action)?

To help you structure your next presentation and create a story that will engage and motivate your audience download this free story template kindly provided by Cliff.

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A fantastic new LIVE tool for presentations has just been released:

Tweets in real-time, embedded directly within your presentation.

Use it for;

• A live audience voting device,
• A live text/comment tool or to receive audience feedback,
• Crowd meter – measuring the noise level in the room to determine an outcome on a choice.

All using mobile phones in the audience… no more expensive conference voting devices!

Our thoughts: SMS polling might still have the advatage but this is a cool interactive component and with the “Twitter” name could resound well with any audience.

It is in prototype stage, but you can check it out and download it from SAP here: http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/powerpoint-twitter-tools/

Enjoy

PS

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PowerPoint is celebrating 25 years of presentations – since 1984 when the first brief was developed for an overhead projection tool.

It is estimated that PowerPoint holds 95% of the presentation software market with over 500 million users worldwide.

Love it or hate it – we all have to sit through it… the average PowerPoint session runs for 250 minutes – so why make it painful!

Check out this article on the BBC News website – some top tips from Presentation Expert – Max Atkinson. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8207849.stm

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The new release is looking very cool. Check out the awesome features such as turning your presentation into a video and even burning a DVD!

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For great tips on presenting from one of the worlds elite centres of learning have a look at the following link from Massachusetts Institute of Technology…of all places!

http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/html/icb.topic58703/winston1.html

www.presentationstudio.com.au

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Is there a really a feel good side to PowerPoint I hear you cry? YES, there sure is… We love what we do and it gives us great satisfaction to assist groups that would otherwise struggle to get their messages out there. Don’t panic, this is not a sanctimonious lecture about “charity work”… simply the chance to share our thoughts on giving back to the community…

We are often approached to help not for profit businesses get their messages out there. So, it was a natural transition to introduce a formal “Pro-Bono Policy” offering a free or heavily discounted presentation design service to eligible registered charities. So far this year we’ve been able to help The Starlight Foundation, The Epsilon Research Fund and Cure for Life.

Through our work with The Epsilon Foundation, which raises funds for medical research into Alzheimer’s, we’ve been lucky enough to work with a highly inspirational man, Richard Buxton – the founder of the charity. His efforts to aid medical research have seen him circumnavigate Australia by both air and sea, following in the footsteps of Matthew Flinders voyage of discovery in 1801-1803. All this to create a coffee table book on Australia – the proceeds from which will be directed into Alzheimer’s research – an awesome achievement. We created a highly interactive presentation with both audio & video for the charity to launch and sell the book.

You can learn more about the individual charities and their goals here:

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