Get them at "Hello"



Get them at "Hello":  2 Things You Need for a Winning Presentation

The movie Jerry Maguire cemented the notion that ‘less is more’ in any communication medium. Remember the magic line “...you had me at hello”?

Delivering a presentation is no different, and no one (especially me) wants to lose their audience after introductory greetings.

Still with me?  Dear Reader?

YOU NEED A GREAT STORY
The j2 team delivered an important business presentation on event management recently. It went well. But it took a lot of preparation!

Going back to basics, we heeded the advice of organisational storytelling experts, Yamini Naidu and Gabrielle Dolan of one thousand & one. Realistic and refreshing, Naidu and Dolan’s e-book “Eliminate Death by PowerPoint”is exactly the wake-up call you need if you’re regularly delivering presentations. Download it right now!

No hesitation, my hand’s up. I’m guilty of crimes-against-audiences from past content-heavy presentations. Great tips from “Eliminate Death by PowerPoint” can help anyone get their content right, and herein lies the first essential presentation success factor —telling a great story.

The second most critical thing is your choice of slide-show software, and the j2 jury is out after discovering Prezi.

PREZI V POWERPOINT: OPINIONS ANYONE?
For the unintiated, Prezi differs from PowerPoint in that rather than layers of individual slide ‘pages’ the entire presentation is on one large ‘canvass’ through which you can journey your audience in a dynamic sequence of zooming and rotation.

An article about Prezi by Jon Russell for The Next Web reported that the online presentation tool has a following of at least 20 million users, having doubled from 10 million Prezi users in the 10 months from May 2012.

While ‘everyone’ seems to be getting on board the Prezi bus, does it have really have enough to make it the first choice of presentation mediums for the average punter?

Questions like this are explored in a PowerPoint / Prezi road-testby Bright Futura contributor Sabrina Ahmed, who offers helpful advice on the pros and cons of each.


WHAT DO YOU THINK?
At j2 ideas & events, we turn ideas into reality. Every day we share our creative direction concepts with others. We have to translate ideas for clients in a way that shows that our inspirations can be delivered in a practical way within an event context.

It’s critical that we embrace new technologies and trends in every aspect of our events management business but ONLY if they’re effective.

Same thing applies to delivering presentations. It’s essential that you choose presentation software suited to each different audience.

We used Prezi for our most recent presentation. It was easy enough to learn but I’m certain like any tool we’re not harnessing all of its power.

Have you made a permanent switch to Prezi or do both the linear slide-based PowerPoint and dynamic zooming of Prezi have their place depending on audience and content?

Your opinions invited. What are your experiences with PowerPoint V Prezi?

Carolynne x 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Event Industry Predictions for 2014

Image
First cab off our 2014 event management blog rank is a prediction: we’re forecasting challenging times for the special events industry in the coming year. Despite encouraging figures released in November 2013 by research company IBISWorld suggesting that the event promotion and management services industry will be up 1.1% for the 2013/2014 Financial Year [1] , I’m predicting that event managers will need to continue to work hard to rationalise their professional value to clients and to remain competitive in the marketplace. Many Australian event companies are struggling to compete with ongoing issues that plague our event industry at present, such as: > Competitive offshore destination packages, which are luring businesses to international locations for events, meetings and team building experiences; and > Increasing charges across the industry such as food, wages, Superannuation, electricity, entertainment, rubbish removal and accommodation. These challenges, featured in an arti...
Read more

Stirring Emotions Through Lighting Design

Image
What is it about a simple glowing light that makes us feel so happy? I asked Google. It seems I wasn’t alone in my curiosity. A few forums and research papers later, I’ve now confirmed this: humans are indeed drawn to and comforted by light. Inadvertently, I’ve also discovered the world of color psychology. From years of event production experience, we know that colour has a huge impact on event atmosphere. In the article “ Color or Color (The Psychology of Color) ” author Walter Graff says “Color has an incredible effect on your mood, your perception, and your likes and dislikes.” Colour alone, however, is little without effective lighting—something of a specialist science and art. International Association of Lighting Designers contributor, Stefan Graf says that “it is controlling this difficult, transitory medium that gives the lighting ‘artist’ the ability to create hierarchies, dynamics and mood.” MOOD LIGHTING AT EVENTS – AFFECTING HOW PEOPLE FEEL The IALD suggests good lightin...
Read more

Brushing Up On Presenting: 5 Key Tips

Image
Tips for presenting to a captive audience make for topical matter in event management blogs. Having organised hundreds of functions over the years I know why!  Having also been an attendee to a few corporate events recently, I’m reminded that some really simple things can make the difference between flawless and a flop. Not everyone can be as accomplished a presenter as 2014 Oscars host, Ellen DeGeneres. That said, a few back-to-basic presenter tips, along with a couple of clever things we’ve seen in recent times, are sure to get your audiences raving about your presentation techniques and your event planning. 1. Text. Clear. Large. Make any text in presentations large enough to be easily read, even by the old folk in the room. Choose a sans-serif font; something stylish, crisp and clear. Just last week Event Manager Blog contributor, Kelvin Newman clued us into the widely available font “Blue Highway” - something that can be read from a distance. If this font’s good enough to be ...
Read more