J-Cuts in Powerpoint presentations

I wouldn't claim to be a great presenter, or even a good one, but here's a tip I thought of the other day.

For a better explanation of a "J-Cut" go to this article, but make sure you come back here OK?

Now you know how it applies to films, here's how it applies to presentations. Sometimes when I'm doing presentations I don't know what comes on the next slide, so I flick to it, get my brain around it and then start talking. It doesn't look good though. What is better is to have a printout of the slides, or know what is coming next. Then you can start talking about the next slide, and while you are talking, flip to it. I think its better practise anyway as the aim of the presentation is for people to listen to you. If the Powerpoint could work by itself, why are you needed? So make sure that when you change topic then you are talking, getting their attention, and when you are ready the image on the screen changes to illustrate what you are saying.

Of course you need to be able to control the slides. If you are in a situation where someone else is doing the transitions, as happens in our church they need to be pretty clued up on what you're saying so that they know when to switch.

tags: powerpoint
presentations

Death by powerpoint

I did a presentation last week, and keen to avoid "Death by Powerpoint" I replaced half of the bullet points in the presentation by pictures, with the odd word or two. I ran out of time to do the second half, but at least I didn't read each slide verbatim.

After I'd done it I found I shouldn't have started at the beginning.

tags: powerpoint
presentations

Blogger highlighted on Wycliffe International site

I came across the blogger David Ringer a while ago. I found out the other day that he gets a writeup on the Wycliffe International site.

tags: wycliffe

Web conference

Last week I was at a conference for web people from around the Wycliffe world, both techies and the communications people, responsible for the content of the websites.

Represented there were Wycliffe Asia Pacific who I mentioned previously, as well as the people who cover Wycliffe work in the Americas and Europe. It was a useful meeting, particularly to get those two different groups of people together. The techies discussed standards - what CMS shall we suggest people use, what database, what webserver etc. The communications people discussed ways of sharing expertise out. The techie people have ongoing work to do as we didn't decide everything in the meeting, so I'm looking forward to see how that will work out.

tags: Wycliffe

Monsoon - Wycliffe Asia Pacific

My colleagues at Wycliffe Asia Pacific who support various Wycliffe organisation in the Asia Pacific area had a brochure designed by an outside organisation to try and get people to work for them. The Wycliffe Asia Pacific Communications department are calling themselves Monsoon Communications. The organisation that did it put the brochure on the web, though Monsoon didn't know about it. It's all free publicity though.

So if you're a Christian design professional in the Asia Pacific area then why not get in touch with them?

Update: They have their own website: Monsoon.

tags: Wycliffe