On using computers for preparing presentations

On using computers for preparing presentations

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): Recently, I spent an entire afternoon attending a series of presentations of computer products at the Horizon Hotel, Ancol, Jakarta. I guess I was very lucky to be there, as there were a lot of exciting new products to see and there was so much new information to learn. Interestingly, I also observed a couple of things some of the presenters did that annoyed me as I sat there watching.

Definitely there are rules governing what one should or should not do when giving a presentation. Knowing that the ability to give a good presentation could give me a comparative advantage, I embarked on an investigation of the literature and I very briefly explored four popular business presentation programs today: CorelSHOW! 5.0, Lotus Freelance Graphics 2.1, Microsoft PowerPoint 4.0, and Harvard Graphics 3.0. You can see all four of them in the accompanying illustration.

Of course, there are other very good business presentation programs that do the same job -- in some cases in much better ways. These include WP Presentation, Aldus Persuasion, Micrografx Charisma and Gold Disk Astound. I reviewed WP Presentation more than one year ago, and its latest upgrade version is now part of PerfectOffice bundle from WP/Novell Application Department.

The programs

Each of the four programs I looked at can help you create on- screen or transparency-based presentations with striking impact. However, they differ from each other in terms of ease of use and the level of assistance that you can get from them.

The first of the four, CorelSHOW!, is part of the CorelDRAW! 5.0 bundle. As we all know, Corel's strength lies in drawing and image manipulation, but business presentation is not part of its forte. Thus, it's not surprising that this particular program is the least powerful and least useful in the group.

The only feature we can take advantage of is perhaps that this program has the direct OLE 2.0 link facility with other members of the CorelDRAW! family. So, you can easily place objects created in CorelDRAW! or CorelPHOTO-PAINT!, or animated objects from CorelMOVE! in your slides, and you can still manipulate them in their native environment.

Freelance Graphics 2.1 is part of Lotus SmartSuite 3.0 bundle. It is very capable and relatively easy to use. Of course, importing from 1-2-3 or Ami Pro is as easy as 1, 2, 3 itself. Once the leader of presentation programs, Freelance Graphics has had many of its features adopted by other programs -- in most cases with even better implementation. The trouble is, Freelance programmers seem to have stopped innovating, and therefore its age shows.

Microsoft included PowerPoint 4.0 in its Office 4.2 and 4.3 bundles. PowerPoint does CorelSHOW! and Freelance Graphics one better with its extensive advice on preparing and organizing your presentation. If you need to exchange files with a Mac, your clear choice is PowerPoint. You can view PowerPoint for Windows' file in PowerPoint for Mac, and vice versa.

PowerPoint helps you organize your outline, depending on what your presentation objective is. So, for instance, if you're suggesting a strategy that your company should follow in order to gain a larger market share, PowerPoint's AutoContent Wizard suggests that your outline should include discussions of the objective, the present situation, the desired outcome, potential strategies, their advantages, their disadvantages and your recommendations. All of this may sound simple, but when you only have two hours before the sales meeting to prepare your presentation, you will appreciate the help that AutoContent Wizard offers.

However, as I looked at their features sets, I found the stand-alone Harvard Graphics to be the most powerful and useful of all. One of the strongest features of this program, as you may recall from my review of its earlier version, is the capability to share a presentation among 64 users across a network. That's by no means a small feat, and none of the others offer this capability without the help of a special environment such as Lotus Notes.

Three other features make Harvard Graphics my favorite. First, there is the accompanying Harvard F/X, a program that lets you create drawings or add special effects. Second, there is a very useful set of design tips -- some of which I will share with you shortly. Third, the included examples have been thoughtfully and carefully created based on common business themes, and you can use them directly for your own presentation. There are sample presentations for market planning, brainstorming, company profiles, etc. These samples are as useful as PowerPoint's AutoContent Wizard. All I ever could wish is that SPC, the maker of Harvard Graphics, had included more of these samples.

None of these four can handle multimedia very well, so you might need to look somewhere else, such as Asymmetric Compel, if you wish to go a step further in your presentation and add multimedia elements to it.

Slide preparation

The first rule is the most obvious: Start with an outline. Obvious as this is, many presenters still go through this stage too quickly. By the way, if you're using Microsoft Office, you can use Winword's outline to create the topics and subtopics of your presentation. When the outline is more or less complete, you can click on the Present-it! button on the toolbar, and PowerPoint will be loaded for you. If you work with Lotus SmartSuite, you can also take advantage of Ami Pro's Outline mode and then call up Freelance Graphics. If you're using Harvard Graphics, you will have to use its powerful Outliner.

The second rule, limit the number of slides that you're going to present. In my experience, using a small number of slides is more powerful than using a lot of them. Remember that the slides are actually supposed to provide only cues so that you will always know what you have to talk about and won't miss important points. Using only a few slides means that you will have to memorize what you have to say. However, some presenters make the fatal mistake of putting everything on the slides and reading everything to the audience. If you do this, it won't take very long before your listeners tune you out.

The next rule is that you should avoid using too many words in each screen. You should not use all capitals, as these are much more difficult to read that you might realize. Font size is also crucial. In general, you should use fonts of 18 points or larger. Smaller fonts would not be legible to most of your audience.

If you're using an overhead projector, never use a dark background. It will be disastrous! The same is still the case if you're using a display panel placed on top of an OHP. Always use light colors as the background and dark colors for the text. Many presenters, in their effort to make a difference, have mistakenly chosen dark colors for the slide background. It just makes their presentations unattractive. Just remember that what looks pretty on the display monitor may look ugly on the OHP.

And, as is the case for all of your other documents, don't forget to check the spelling. Although your audience may not make a big deal of spelling errors, you might feel embarrassed, if you noticed them during your presentation, and this could disturb your concentration.

The next step is practice and rehearse. PowerPoint has a facility that allows you to rehearse so that you will know the approximate time of your entire presentation. You would find it under View, and select Rehearse New Timing.

Finally, if you're doing an on-screen presentation, it's a good idea to add a blank, black slide at the end. That gives you the image of a majestic retreat!

At the show

One of the speakers that afternoon spoke too fast. That was unfortunate, he was talking in English and the majority of the audience did not know much English.

The first rule on stage is that you should never hurry. Keep your pace. Remember that if you're too fast, your audience cannot follow you. If you're too slow, your audience will quickly doze off. Either way, you won't succeed in getting your message across.

If you're giving your presentation in English, try to use some popular Indonesian phrases once in a while. You also could freshen up the mood with some local dialects, if you wished. In my own experience, mixing two or three Javanese phrases into a presentation in the English language would go a long way.

Finally, one of the presenters that afternoon turned his back toward the audience almost all of the time. He did this as he read or pointed at the text on the screen. That's a no-no. If you need to point at something on the screen, come as close as you can to the screen and point sideways, with most of your body still facing your audience.