Walking a fine line

Amen to all comments so far, and here's one it took me too long to learn, but i don't think anyone else has figured out....

if you're going to be presenting to a large group in a large room... where the back row is more than maybe 20-30 feet from the screen, go to the room, sit in the back row, and hold up your hands to frame the screen at an arm's length.  email me at plusaf@plusaf.com if that doesn't make sense to you.  i'll elaborate individually.

the point is:  from 20 feet away or 50 or whatever, to the eye of the viewer, the screen, at an arm's length, looks like a rectangle that may be as little as 3" by 4" !!!!!

how can you tell if your slide will be legible?  easy:  sitting at your comfortable desk, designing your powerpoint presentation, position the screen at arm's-length from your face.  then zoom the image so that it's just 3" by 4", or whatever size you determined before in the actual room, on the pc screen in front of you. !!!

if you have trouble reading the fine print, or the fonts look all squishy when you look at it that way, that's how it will look to your audience!   this technique works for all presentations.   force the size of the slide to be as small as it will look to your "worst-case seating" viewer, and adjust fonts, sizing, and number of words on the slide accordingly.

anything less is cruel and inhuman punishment, and you should be convicted under the Geneva Conventions...

:)

alan falk
Raleigh, NC. 
after about 35 years or so of presenting.

A few other pointers:

1. Don't use the default "Times" font. It's designed for readability, not legibility, and the latter is what you need when you're sitting in the back of the big room. Use Arial or Tahoma. Arial has true italics but Tahoma is bolder. Use what fits the need.

2. In a bright room use a light-colored background with black or blue type, in a dark room use a dark blue background with white or yellow type. Avoid green type---it doesn't have much contrast. And a purplish-red looks better than a plain red if you must use red for emphasis. Don't overuse CAPITALS, "words" in "quotes" or italics.

3. If you have more than two levels of bullets/sub-bullets you need to re-think your material. Try moving your first bullet up to the headline, make your headline a section head, etc. And if you must have a two-line headline try reducing one in size to subordinate it. Suggest 28pt. type over 36pt type.

4. Use the default slide layouts and text boxes. As stated in the main article, 6 lines of type MAX per slide, not including headline. If it won't fit, make it two slides...believe me, it's better than a slide filled with small type. Listen for the audience groan if you put one of those onscreen. Put the tiny type in the script... or in the handouts. You can also hide those slides and bring them out during Q&A, if needed.

5. The best use for animation is to build a complicated graphic --like a network diagram-- in stages. Don't decorate a presentation with animation.

6. I tell my clients, "No clip art or clip photos, period." If you want funny, tell a joke. If you need a photograph of a specific inventory item, facility, or person, fine. But a picture of a generic computer on a slide about computers is redundant and insults the audience's intelligence. And unless you have an illustrator on staff, your clipart styles won't match and your slides will look thrown-together. Also, you don't want to get in copyright trouble by lifting content off the web without regard to ownership. Keep your slides plain and simple. YOU should be the most dynamic thing in the room.

7. If you've repeated a headline more than twice, promote it to a section head. If you repeat an introductory phrase twice,  promote it to a higher-level bullet. Or remove it... it's probably unnecessary.

8. Have a neutral party look over your presentation and listen to your speech. You'll be surprised at what they'll find. Thanks for listening and may all your presentations be short, sweet and to the point!

--David (Graphics team lead in an IT services firm)

When I was a college student, I worked for the IT department in the computer labs. As a student employee, I was allowed to sit in on the professional staff training sessions held in the labs. The best piece of advice I ever picked up about Power Point was to create the slides on a plain white background with no transitions or animation. When the entire slide show is finished, then you go back and add backgrounds and, if necessary, animation and transitions.  That way the majority of your time is spent creating the meat of your presentation and not on the cutesy stuff that most people get carried away with.

I recently saw a PowerPoint slide regarding a local animal shelter benefit.

One slide, and it was for a printed handout.

Can anyone say MS Publisher?

For a while I have been feeling like we might be approaching the "irrational exuberance" of the late 1990's again. The one consolation has been that this time around, most of the new web sites and businesses appearing on the scene have carefully considered and developed business plans. And then I saw thise-mail sent to a friend:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear ----------:

I thought you may be interested to learn about an
innovative new website called ?The Casual Courier? (www.casualcourier.com). The company
has developed an original new way to deliver packages by matching people with
items to send with everyday travelers who are willing to be couriers. The
website recently went live and is already generating excellent feedback from
users around the world.

If you?d like to set up interview with company founders,
please be in touch.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm still waiting to discover the joke here, as I feel it really must be a joke.... Right? Anyone out there that can confirm that this is a joke?

If I see any "casualcourier" labeled packages on my next flight I will think twice about boarding the flight. Does the phrase "if anyone unknown to you asks you to carry a package for them..." mean anything to this business?

TCC (that's The Casual Courier" in case you were wondering) addresses this in their FAQ section:

"How do I know if the contents of
the package are prohibited or illegal?

TCC suggests that
couriers thoroughly examine the package contents before accepting it for
delivery. For a list of
permitted/prohibited items please visit TSA?s official website"

Well, I'm at a loss. Would a business want their casual courier inspecting the item they absolutely, positively have to rush ship? Given the impact on terrorism on travel and shipping, would this business likely fly under the regulatory radar as if it found success? Wouldn't that more intense scrutiny eliminate much of the cost savings? Am I to trust that an untrained Casual Courier examined the item thoroughly enough to really determine the safety and legality of the item? I could go on.

Is this the beginning of the end people?

I'm really happy to point TechRepublic members to the beta version our new Software directory.  It contains roughly 50,000 software files - mostly trialware and freeware.  Software for business and personal use can be found within the directory and we hope it becomes a regular source of research and diversion for TechRepublic members.  Some areas of potential interest include:

Windows management tools

Games for Windows

Windows components and libraries

Software for Mobile Devices of all flavors

Database software

We're excited to have this at this point but we realize there are still many things to be addressed.  Any feedback you have to offer, please share it with us here and I hope you find something you like!  Thanks in advance.  

I agree in general with Tony and apotheon. In specific terms Tony's comment that "the level of complexity was engineered into the system to enhance the business", is accurate. But the example of the Debian distribution with a total code line count similar to Windows when you add in all the optional packages along with the kernel shows is that Microsoft's major mistake was not the integration of specific functionality like IE into Windows but adding functionality to the code in a monolithic way.

Since the Windows code is proprietary, there could have been no good reason from a design standpoint not to build the software in a modular way. Internet Explorer could have been built as a module that was plugged into the Windows kernel that didn't allow for the enduser to remove it. My understanding (and I've never worked at MS and don't claim to be a Windows expert) is that in the case of IE specifically, MS built it into the core/kernel/whatever so they could claim that IE was an important part of the OS rather than just another program they were giving away to kill the competition. Now that business decision is coming back to bite them in the butt in the form of extreme difficulty in improving the security of the Windows OS. I don't know if MS's architects decided that since they were going to integrate IE they might as well throw everything else into the kernel as well, but that is what it seems like.