Posts Tagged ‘ Apple Keynote ’

The Dangers of PowerPoint

Over the last few days, there has been much comment of the slide that was featured in the New York Times newspaper regarding the slide that Gen. Stanley A McChrystal, leader of the American and NATO forces in Afghanistan was shown when took over the leadership in Afghanistan.

Screen shot 2010-04-29 at 08.31.36.png

Gen. McChrystal was heard to comment “when we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war”.

There are far too many problems with this slide to go in to here, but here is my take on the whole debate:

PowerPoint and Keynote are tools that can be used to enhance our presentations, and can both be useful in conveying our message in a stronger and more friendly manner than by words alone. However, over the years our presentation software has become the main focus of our presentation, and that is where we are going wrong. PowerPoint and Keynote were never developed to be the main focus of the presentation. They were developed to help the presenter.

The above slide is creating news now, but I have sat through hundreds of presentation with slides similar to this one. Presentations where the text was too small and there was far too much detail in the slides. This never enhances our message, this always confuses our message and our audience will just turn off.

RAF ops room.jpg

During the Battle of Britain in World War II, there was no PowerPoint or Keynote software, and so the British airforce used a table, with models for aircraft and a map to follow the war. This not only simplified a very complex battle, it also enabled the leaders of the war to fully understand what was happening in a clear and accurate way.

While today we may not have access to tables with maps and models, we do have access to white boards and flip charts. When we are faced with describing a very complex situation, the use of flip charts and white boards can make the explanation much easier for our audience. We must always remember, that when it comes to presenting, PowerPoint and Keynote are just one kind of tool from many different kinds. The key to a good presentation is simplicity, not detail.

There is a lot of comment on this article. For more insights and opinions please see:

Nancy Duarte of the Slide:ology blog

Guy Kawasaki on the Holy Kaw blog

2010
04/29
POSTED BY
Carl
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The problem with the “Apple Effect”

Recently I have noticed something good, which is leading to something not so good.

Steve Job’s has very publicly changed the way many people present. The days of bullet pointed, text filled slides are numbered. More and more presentations are now being done with images, video and simple, one line sentences. And this has been partly achieved by the Steve Jobs’ Keynote presentations.

But this now leading to another problem.

I have noticed an increasing number of presentations presented using the black to grey gradient background and the standard Gill Sans font. In fact, when I look around slideshare the number of presentations now done using the standard ‘Apple Keynote’ style is alarmingly large. It is true that this style is a great style. It has a pleasing hue, it does not hurt the eyes and it is simple.

But here is the problem. If you look around the presentation blogs, You Tube and other media resources, you will read countless criticisms on PowerPoint because of its “standard” setting. But what I am seeing is now the same thing happening with the “standard” Keynote slide. Everybody seems to choose the slide design above.

There is an an expression in English “too much of a good thing is a bad thing” and my fear is that is is beginning to happen with Keynote. Keynote is great. I do believe it is better than Powerpoint. But there is so much more to Keynote than the slide above.

Above is a screenshot of the slide design options in Keynote. There are many more than the “Gradient” and if we really want our presentations to stand out, then we need to start using the other design options to give our audiences variety and something different.

I know that most people using Apple products today, do so because they want to be different. The old Apple slogan “Think Different” really means something to these people, as it does me. But that is what Keynote users really need to remember to do. “Think Different”

I am not Steve Jobs, and you are not Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is a great presenter and we can learn from him. But we do not need to copy him. Copying him is not the way forward. Copying is not creative. To me creativity means taking an existing idea and making better by putting our own individuality on it.

It is time to continue the change from bullet pointed, text filled slides, it is time to be creative and it is time to move on from the “gradient” slide design and bring in your own individual creativity.

2010
03/21
POSTED BY
Carl
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Colour selecting in Apple Keynote

Sometimes, when we are designing our slides we need to select a colour that fits perfectly with the image we are using. In Keynote there is a great way to select colour from any image on your slide so that you can then use that colour for any text that you are writing or objects that you are creating.

This is a great way to save you time and it allows you to create some wonderful colour profiles for your slides.

Once you have selected the colours you like, you can drag the top colour bar down to the boxes below and create a simple colour sample pallet that not only works in Keynote, but also works in all Apple software products.

2010
02/19
POSTED BY
Carl
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Always take a backup file

Last week, a student of mine delivered a presentation in front of 600 people. My student is a Mac user, and therefore we had spent many hours preparing his slides in Apple’s Keynote. We had designed some really cool slide transitions to help demonstrate some points, we had also used a few videos as backdrops. When my student arrived at the venue (early, as I always teach) he discovered that for some reason his MacBook did not work properly with the projector being used at the venue.

Now in many cases, presenters do not think “what happens if something goes wrong?” I always make sure my students have a copy of their presentation saved on a USB drive in PowerPoint format (fortunately Keynote allows you to save your files as PowerPower). In this case my student was able to use his backup PowerPoint file to deliver his presentation.

And this brings me to the main point. Always, always and always prepare a backup file of your presentation. Even if you have prepared your file in PowerPoint, save a copy onto a USB drive. You never know what might go wrong with your computer. If you have prepared a Keynote file, save a copy of it as PowerPoint and so if you do have problems at venues with dated technology, or connectors, you can use someone else’s computer to deliver your presentation.

Another good practice is to save any unusual fonts that you might be using onto your USB drive. I gave a presentation last year, where I had to use someone else’s computer. Unfortunately, the computer I used did not have the same fonts that I had. I learned that I needed to make sure that I took copies of my fonts so that if I had to use another computer my presentation would not suffer.

So remember, backup, backup and backup.

2010
02/08
POSTED BY
Carl
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