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.