Solutions

Nov 22 2008   11:22AM GMT

IBM White Paper: The Value of Training and the High Cost of Doing Nothing

Posted by: William Peterson
IBM, Training, CIO, IT professional, Enterprise, Learning, Review, Business, community, Solutions, Business presentations, White Paper, Businss Training

Never doubt that IBM’s training is the best business training I’ve ever seen. Recently, IBM published an interesting white paper called “The Value of Training” by consultant David Leaser. It notes that, a company will lose 10 to 30% of its capabilities per year. By year three, an organization has retained only 41% of it original capabilities, dwindling to 24% by year six. Right, that’s the point: it costs more than a better training, if we still do nothing.

When most companies are facing the terrible financial crisis, they cut the budget. Less business trip, less internal expenses, but significantly the staff training should not be ignored.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Nov 22 2008   11:00AM GMT

Office’s Running Hour: Sketching Out Your PowerPoint Presentations in Ten Minutes

Posted by: William Peterson
IT professional, Office, Technology, PowerPoint, Keynote, Business, PowerPoint 2007, Tips, Solutions, Tutorials, Business presentations, presentation

Well, every Friday I’ll attend some weekly meetings in the company. I think most office people get the same as me. Have you ever found yourself decompressing in true leisure one minute and scrambling to meet any deadline the next? So I teach people to survive with making conference presentations effortlessly.

VideoJug’s “How to Write A PowerPoint Presentation In 5 Minutes” is a great tutorial for most staffs. However, there’s kinda funny elements in it. And I think an real enough briefing-like PowerPoint presentation could be made perfectly in 10 minutes. Besides these tips in that video, I have something else to recommend:

1. To make excellent presentation with professional-looking slides, you need some good PowerPoint template resources on your pocket. See one of my previous post about this here.

2. Getting used to these intuitive features in PowerPoint 2007 will make your creation better and faster. Just learn something like SmartArt, shortcuts, etc. Quick Tips for PowerPoint 2007 on my previous post | PowerPoint 2007 - Get up to speed from Microsoft

3. Attach more. When you’re too busy to summary something in the slides, why not just attach and show the original files within your presentation? Check out some previous posts from me about “attaching documents or objects“, “recording narrations“, “Adding YouTube video clips“, or “embedding real-time Web pages“.

Assuming you’ve got the 10-minute-presentation talent, you got enough breathing space in office, aren’t you?

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Oct 11 2008   9:43AM GMT

Take All Business Documents on E-Paper, Why Not?

Posted by: William Peterson
Sony, Amazon, Technology, Kindle, Review, Solutions, Plastic Logic, LIBRIé, epaper, e-paper, e-ink, Amazon Kindle

Recently I’m really interested in reading New York Times via Amazon.com’s Kindle. It makes me feel good with another reading experience. I also think kinda e-paper or e-ink technologies would change the future of our reading. It likes presentations in mobile devices on my view. As an environmentalist, I really recommend the paperless business with these e-paper technologies.

Actually Kindle is not so-called good enough as I know, but it’s the latest one over the market. In Japan, Sony introduces another nice gadget LIBRIé EBR-1000EP with better design and usability. And just last month, the company Plastic Logic from Cambridge University unveiled its new-blood digital reader with a balance between size and convenience (http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/09/plastic-logics.html). This one is really impressive. Whatever for the business or not, I guess the new era of paperless world is coming.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Oct 1 2008   10:29AM GMT

Adobe Flash on iPhone/iPod Touch, Another Advancement for Mobile Business

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, iPhone, Apple, Mobile, RIA, Rich Media, Web 2.0, Technology, Learning, Adobe, Flash, Review, Business, Corporate, Online Apps, Flash Video, Solutions, iPod Touch

Since Adobe Flash Lite in Windows Mobile platform smartphone is greatly common, and a lot of people benefit from mobile Flash applications with interactive rich media such as Mobile Learning, why the popular Apple iPhone still can’t support kinda Flash plugin for Safari or standalone Flash container for the hottest Flash streaming such as YouTube?

Yesterday Adobe at Flash on the Beach 08 Conference (FOTB) said the company is actively developing a port of its Flash animation plugin for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but Apple’s mobile operation system is a “closed platform” and so is out of Adobe’s control. Adobe indicated that it will not use Flash Lite but a better approach to faster iPhone processor and graphics chip.

Apple definitely will approve the great deal I think. And finally we get what we expect of familiar Flash-based interactive applications on mobile devices as exact two-win. I promise, the enhancement of Flash will extended iPhone as the mobile business center. Certainly Adobe Flash for iPhone/iPod Touch will optimize the experiences on Web.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Sep 9 2008   7:06AM GMT

Build Web Presentations with Presenter’s Video

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, IT professional, Rich Media, PowerPoint, Flash, Review, Business, Webcam, Solutions, Web Presentation, Business presentations

Are you suffering the high cost and continual repetition of live presentations?
“As a president, I always join many meetings and trade shows to present our products or corporation. There is no problem with the live presentation. But I’m stuck when I want to sharing the meeting with others after it. Because I need present the same presentation again and again even spend additional high costs on driving or flying. The boring continual repetition makes me crazy. Is there any way to take my live presentation to the web? – Mr. Cooper”

PowerPoint is still the most popular tool for presentations now. It could integrate images, movies, narrations, animations to make the presentation animated and interactive. But the PowerPoint file is big and hard to share on the web, hard to integrate with the presenter’s video and narration to live up the presentation.

How to distribute the live presentations to web to reduce the cost?
As everybody knows that, web presentation is a big cost and time saving solution. If we could run the presentation with the presenter’s video and narration online, it will be perfect. The difficulty of the web presentation is hard to integrate the presenter’s video and narration along with the PowerPoint presentation content. Is there any way to fix this problem?

A brand new service gives you an easy-to-use way to integrate the presenter’s video with PowerPoint slideshows, sharing the results online. This simple tool makes it a piece of cake to run the presenter’s video content side-by-side with PowerPoint presentations. So the audience could get the presentation running alongside with presenter’s video and narration in action, likes that the presenter stands by them. This really has the power to bring online presentations to life.

There are many tools such as Wondershare PPT2Flash Professional and services like Omnisio, Zentation to integrate the video along with the PowerPoint slideshows. Here is the comparability of the two ways.

PPT2Flash Professional converts the PowerPoint presentations to Flash with presenter’s video and narration in one click. It works as a PowerPoint add-in. Presenter could easily distribute the Flash presentations to their website or training center for sharing. The Flash format is safer and smaller for web distribution.

Omnisio and Zentation are simple online applications for the synchronization and sharing of the Slideshare-hosted PowerPoint decks and Google Video-hosted content. You could upload your video to Youtube and then upload the PowerPoint presentation to Slideshare, use Omnisio and Zentation to synchronization them together. They will generate one webpage for you. You could share the content with others on this webpage.

In a nutshell, for inner continual presentations, PPT2Flash Professional seems a better solution; for external one time presentation, Omnisio and Zentation are better solutions.

 

 

By William Peterson, Partnered with Sabrina F.

Aug 30 2008   12:25AM GMT

Kick Off the Keynote: Brief Launch, Rich Presentation

Posted by: William Peterson
IT professional, Technology, PowerPoint, Learning, Keynote, Business, community, PowerPoint 2007, Tips, Solutions, Web Presentation, Business presentations

Okay that a lot of my friends ever complained that their audience were so unprofessional when they addressed something logical and theoretical. The fact is, your presentation is so good, without the best approach to audience’s logic.

Like Mark Twain said, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” If we’re not the presentation expert, or need presentations to keep walking, we might ignore the true feelings from potential audience when planning the keynote. long or short is not the important elements in the planning. When the part with complicated theory comes, just enrich the experiences, such as playing relaxing background music, or throwing out the key sentences like thundering.

Your presentation can be as long as it should be, but it can not be poorly developed without brief launching and rich contents. The starting part couldn’t be tedious, as well as the main contents couldn’t be too simple without your professional insight. There’s no requirement to make everyone a presentation expert, so that’s why I usually recommend such improvements on PowerPoint 2007 to level up our efficiency at work.

We don’t blame the logic of audience, because everyone can master presentations like a pro.

My Past Posts about PowerPoint 2007:
Quick Tips to Enhance Your Presentation in PowerPoint 2007
The Presentation Outlook: Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 Review with Recommendations

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Aug 21 2008   2:47PM GMT

Experience the Office Enhancements Directly from the Labs, Not Bill’s Shows Any More

Posted by: William Peterson
Google, YouTube, IT professional, Office, SharePoint, Technology, PowerPoint, Microsoft, Review, Business, PowerPoint 2007, Office 14, Solutions, Business presentations

Like all Gfans can reach Google’s technology playground at Google Labs, we the guys who’re usually working on Microsoft’s Office suites have the opportunity to explore the productivity horizon as well. Microsoft^® Office Labs is such the community directly from its technical labs for the fans to try, experience, and discuss.

Here I recommend two great artworks from the so-called labs.

pptPlex
http://www.officelabs.com/projects/pptPlex
An amazing PowerPoint 2007 add-on. It makes your PowerPoint 2007 presentations showing on an Interactive Canvas. You and all audience will be really inspired by the new thinking of presentation performance in PowerPoint 2007. You may check a video guide at YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvsdRFRBxhA.

Search Commands
http://www.officelabs.com/projects/searchcommands
Totally handy tools for Office users. Search Commands helps you find commands, options, wizards, and galleries in Microsoft Office 2007 Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Just type what you’re looking for in your own words and click the command you need.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Aug 17 2008   6:24AM GMT

Not Bad to Live, Easy to Show Your Web Pages Real-Time in PowerPoint Presentations

Posted by: William Peterson
ActiveX, Web, IT professional, Technology, PowerPoint, Business, PowerPoint 2007, Tips, Live, Solutions, Business presentations

Yes, I think we’ll prefer this way of living Web pages real-time in PowerPoint presentations, not pause the slide show and open the Web pages in Internet Explorer. I’ve introduced the step-by-step guide to use ActiveX control to do the live Web page in PowerPoint slides (refer to my previous post Make Your Live Homepage in PowerPoint Slides. Now I just find the right PowerPoint add-in to simplify that complicated PowerPoint macro way from one of these nice PowerPoint MVPs (what’s MVP? refer to the post Know Those PowerPoint MVPs to Help Yourself). And the VBA tool is totally free for everyone, and compatible with PowerPoint 2007 and PowerPoint 97-2003. That’s maybe why a 5 stars editor’s rating in PC Magazine (refer to LiveWeb review by PC Magazine).

LiveWeb - insert and view web pages real-time. - by Shyam Pillai

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Aug 13 2008   12:50PM GMT

Stick to Omnisio: Imagining the Next Generation YouTube Presentation Service

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, Google, IT professional, Rich Media, Technology, Google Docs, Business, Flash Video, Solutions, Web Presentation, Business presentations

There’s nothing exciting for presenters after the events that YouTube video embedded in Google Presentation service (refer to my previous post YouTube Video in Google Presentation, As Expected ). Perhaps we can imagine the future from the collaboration of YouTube and Omnisio. The better interactive features (such as Video Annotations) will enahce the experience and free the creation. But how about the next generation service we can do presentations in YouTube like what we know in Omnisio?

We believe that Google will not ignore the best part in Omnisio to add the presentation slides with online video synchronized (refer to my previous post Perfect Presentation Online - Your SlideShare PowerPoint Slides with YouTube Video Narration Together on Omnisio ). So the empowerment of collaborative online video could that better video presentation collaboration experience for users. Maybe the presentation service by next generation YouTube will be integrated with Google Presentation, and boost the multimedia enhancement of next generation Webcasting.

William Peterson
Presentation Verteran

Jul 23 2008   8:25AM GMT

Web Presentation Doesn’t Work Effectively As You Want, Dose It?

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, Technology, Review, Business, Tips, Solutions, Tutorials, Business presentations

Whatever how people called it, Web presentation, online presentation or Webcasting; whatever who made it, Zoho, Adobe or Google, Web presentation tools and technologies have deeply integrated into all businessmen’s IT lives. The old Mini-Guide by Robin Good’s has generally presented the fact a year ago. The new technology defeated the traditional presentation which held in a conference room, and has been favored by most businessmen nowadays. However, presenting from a distance has too many uncertain factors. I am not meant to dampen the usefulness of Web presentation as the trend and future, but people really need to keep some ideas in mind when taking it, and make it work effectively.

1. The Internet will limit what you can do.
Web presentation is based on the Internet, and definitely would be limited by the Internet. That means, some rich media contents, such as embedded high resolution graphics or video clips will be loaded slowly or unsuccessfully because of bandwidth limitations or browser incompatibilities. As a result, participants may be annoyed with these issues. There’s no such solution except you must consider these potentials when making presentations.

2. Your audience is multitasking.
You’ve done a great job when presenting, but your audience might not know you’re a such good presenter. Because people can do other activities while you’re presenting - such as checking e-mails, reading news or cracking snacks. You can not send a warning or forbid them to do so. Making the audience far far away focused on the Web presentation is based on how you think over the audiences would do while presenting.

3. Graphics need more explanation.
Certainly the Web presentations need more graphics than traditional ways as words can’t be the attractive contents when the presenter is not really “presenting” in front of. But graphics also mixed up other contents when the presenter can not point on the exact position on screen. Adding explanatory arrows and callout text could make it clear what you are referring. Graphics are good components in slides, but don’t abuse your freedom.

Knowing these points just makes you presenting smart next time. And you can explore more tips like those above through standing in other’s shoes. If you can meet the needs of the participants wherever they may be, your Web presentation can double the efficiency as you want, doesn’t it?

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Reference:
Presenting from a Distance: Webcasting Tips, By Dave Paradi
http://www.presentations.com/msg/content_display/sales/e3i78e076c5490e1313478b4b3ec6950ed3