What good are ingenious ideas or a grand vision if you can’t convey their fabulousness to your audience? Take some pointers from these leaders. The following individuals were profiled in the book 10 Simple Secrets of the World’s Greatest Business Communicators, by Carmine Gallo.
BusinessWeek’s on-line slide show features contemporary business execs considered among the top speakers in Corporate America. These men and women have leveraged their powerful communications skills to build such companies as General Electric, Starbucks, and Apple.
Posted by Peter Durand at 12:50 PM .
Click here to comment »
New Scientist : Device warns you if you’re boring or irritating
“It will alert its autistic user if the person they are talking to starts showing signs of getting bored or annoyed.” There’s got to be a way to build one of these into a podium. Or make one that can scan a conference room table.
(tags: emotions powerpoint presentations psychology science technology tools)
Posted by Lee Potts at 6:51 PM .
Click here to comment »
Microsoft video introducing Office 2007 UI
Much more informative than the static screen shots that I’ve seen.
(tags: office powerpoint)
Posted by Lee Potts at 6:51 PM .
Click here to comment »
Please take a few minutes to complete this important survey sponsored by Infocomm International and its Presentation Council:
Would you like to know…
- What types of organizations do Presentation Professionals work in?
- What areas of expertise and background do Presentation Professionals have?
- Do you outsource your content development/delivery/overall communication
strategy/technology/visual/graphic development, or do you do it in-house? How often does your organization contract with outside production firms for presentation development?
- What types of challenges do Presentation Professionals experience today, and how concerned are they about these challenges?
Find out by participating in InfoComm International’s Presentations Professional Survey. This online survey should only take you about 10 minutes to complete.
To thank you for your participation, you will receive the results of this survey by e-mail, once compiled. You will also get three Microsoft PowerPoint templates, one Corel Presentations master, and one Apple Keynote theme, all free of charge. In addition, you will have a chance to win one of five $50 Amazon gift certificates.
Posted by Lee Potts at 10:00 AM .
Click here to comment »
Occasionally, when you are designing a presentation or a web site, you need to get some ideas for likely visuals that could work with your color scheme. You could trawl through the photo libraries, looking for that particular combination of subject matter and hue, or you could use a neat little utility like Jim Bumgardner’s Colr Pickr.
Colr Pickr lets you select a color from a generated color wheel, adjust its brightness if you wish, and then goes off and selects photographic images of subjects that match the selected hue. It finds those photographs from a variety of Flickr group pools such as Color Fields, Macro, Flowers, etc, and returns a selection of them around the color wheel. Clicking the same colour again returns a new set, until it runs out of possible candidates.
This is a fun little tool to play with, but remember that just because it lets you find photographs it does not automatically mean that you can use them freely. All photos on Flickr are subject to copyright restrictions placed upon them by their owners. Sometimes these may be Creative Commons licences that allow you to use them in some ways, sometimes they are quite restrictive - always check before use.
Posted by Roy Hammans at 2:06 PM .
1 Comment »
One in an occasional series of posts about presentation pros who are up to something.
I first met and interviewed Eric and Liz Glaser in the mid ‘90s when I was editor of Multimedia Producer magazine and they were pioneering the use of interactive CD-ROMs for sales and marketing applications. In 1998, they created a nifty CD-ROM that allowed the owners of Domino’s Pizza stores to mix and match food products to create menu specials and related profit analysis. I was struck by how easy and functional the program was and recall actually having fun building my own pizza menus. I got to wondering what Eric and Liz have been up to lately. I recently reconnected with them at their company, Compass Creative in Roswell, GA.
Both Eric and Liz come from ad agency backgrounds and, even though they’ve been in the presentation space for more than a decade, their agency roots still show in their approach to creating presentations for marketing and sales departments in large corporations. Their presentation work is artistically sound, to be sure, but the key to their business approach is hardcore sales functionality. In other words, they unambiguously help clients make money.
By 2000, the ubiquity of PowerPoint was eroding the demand for high-end CD-ROM presentations. The writing was on the digital wall, recalls Eric. “We knew we had to move away from just presentation. The days of the $80,000 contract to create a brochure on a CD were gone.” Eric and Liz sat down with their clients and asked them what they needed to improve their sales processes. “We wanted to find out where it hurt? What was the need?” says Eric.
They realized that all of their clients were standardized on Microsoft Office and by this time those companies were building their own reports, presentations, sell sheets, mini-catalogs and other sales products. But Office, bless its monopolistic heart, is not smart enough to know a user’s unique needs or how to automate and customize task-specific processes. Eric and Liz realized that Office is a multipurpose vehicle in a world that demands custom transport.
Monster Garage Meets Presentations
When their customers began clamoring for an easier ride on the sometimes bumpy and slow road between raw sales materials and customer-ready visuals, Eric and Liz stuck their heads under the hood of Office and rigged the PowerPoint engine to generate on-the-fly, customized sales reports, presentations and catalogs. The result is a series of modified, street-legal apps that scream like a nitrous-injected Honda CRX running a strait LS/VTEC block and a Turbonetics T-66 with .81 AR @26psi. Sweet!
Glaser’s new spin-off company, DXT Systems, now specializes in performance-enhancing middleware solutions for companies that want their salespeople and managers to be able to trick out their own sales sheets, screen presentations and print catalogs at dragstrip speeds and without a Class 3 license. Eric calls the system DXT to signify it as a dynamic extension of Office functionality…and to make it sound cool.
Current DXT clients include a DXT.Presentation Builder for Eastman Kodak, a similar system for a worldwide soft drink manufacturer that doesn’t like its name used by its vendors, a do-it-yourself DXT.Catalog/Sell Sheet Builder for MeadWestvaco and a DXT.Sales Report Builder for Solutia, a spinoff of Monsanto.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Robert L. Lindstrom at 5:29 PM .
1 Comment »
A solution for a small office without a drawer for your supplies, or a great travel item for those who carry a full sized keyboard, check this Keyboard Organizer out! Just $24.00.
“A fully functioning white keyboard with built in organizer. Works with PCs…. 4 top honors of three international trade shows. The newest honors at the 2005 CES show in January, innovations honoree and G4techTV honoree. And now PC Magazine editors choice!
Shipping is generally $7.00 for one and $9.00 for two, shipped from LA or NJ generally within 2 business days and arrives within 4-7 business days. This model is PS2. Not compatible with Apple computers.”
KEYBOARD ORGANIZER white PS2 $24.95 MKO-B01-W-PS2$24.95
I subscribe to an online magazine called Real Simple which listed this Keyboard Organizer as one of it’s top ten organizing tips. Visit their site for more time and money saving ideas.
Posted by Mary Waldera at 12:31 PM .
Click here to comment »
Photoshop Tutorials Blog: Free Stock Photos
Includes almost 75 resources plus more in the comments section.
(tags: art design free images photo photography photos stock tools)
Color Palette Generator
Generate a color palette based on an image.
(tags: color free tools)
Posted by Lee Potts at 6:51 PM .
1 Comment »
I would like to congratulate the Visual Being team on the occasion of the blog’s first birthday.
On March 9th of last year, we opened the proceedings with the post “Who’s Going?“, which also kicked off VB’s coverage of InfoComm. That was followed a few days later by “Visual Being?“, which described where the name came from and mapped out the territory we hoped to cover.
Although I wasn’t able to find a specific reference, it seems to be a given that a vast majority of new blogs don’t last more than a few months. Over the past year, VB has published 202 posts and our readers have posted 201 comments. I would like to thank both the contributors and our readers (especially those who have enriched our efforts with their comments and suggestions). We could not have reached this milestone with out your energy, your efforts and your generosity.
Posted by Lee Potts at 9:32 AM .
Click here to comment »
A few months ago D’San released The Laptop SoundPort. 
If you need to get PC audio to a sound system this is the way to go. I’ve been using it for a while and I have replaced my Whirlwind PCDI with the SoundPort as my primary unit. It’s a fraction of the size and weight of most direct boxes I’ve seen and it works perfectly. The ground lift feature is the main reason I use direct boxes and the SoundPort adds a volume control. And audio techs like it when all they have to do is run a regular balanced mic (XLR) cable for computer audio . Retail price on D’San’s website is $75 USD. I think The Laptop SoundPort is a worthy investment for presenters and show technicians.
Posted by Todd Dunn, CTS at 5:14 PM .
2 Comments »
from sax3d.com gmbh
The developers and engineers of the sax3d.com GmbH – have developed a new projection surface HOPS. ®- 3D works on the image-hologram principal. The image is only viewable when the light of the projector stray into a certain/specific projection angle. Incoming stray light from other angles doesn’t interfere the image quality. This assures that image contents which are projected onto “NewView with HOPS. ® - 3D” don’t be affected by day- or incoming sunlight.
link
Posted by Tom Bunzel at 1:30 PM .
Click here to comment »
Do your own due diligence, but this seems pretty cool.
PRWEB) March 7, 2006 — Addlogix introduces EchoView, a Wireless Video Adapter that adds convenience and ease-of-use to presentations using a video projector. EchoView, the newest innovation in wireless technology, offers a total solution to transform a user’s executive conference room from a wired cluster to a wireless, professional setup. No more getting tangled up with bulky projector cables the next time a presentation has to be made.
This adapter revolutionizes how projectors and video displays are used for applications such as PowerPoint presentations. All that is required is a wireless-enabled PC to make all presentations seem effortless and professional.
EchoView is a compact device that connects to a projector or video display’s VGA or DVI port and enables a computer to send video to the projector or video display wirelessly without any cable. The adapter is IEEE 802.11 b/g compliant and allows the user to place the computer and video projector anywhere in the room without being constrained by the cable length from the computer to the projector. EchoView delivers high-resolution and clarity with fast image updates. The transmission of data is smooth and jitter-free with virtually no delay or distortion.
link
Posted by Tom Bunzel at 3:30 PM .
2 Comments »
I discovered a great free product on Maelstrom Solutions website called Vortex Password Manager.
“How many different passwords and usernames do you need to remember? Many of us try and use the same select few for most of our daily lives, but often sites have such different login requirements that we need to deviate from our favorite password or username choices. Rather than writing them down on a piece of paper and storing them under your keyboard, we have created a nice little application that is simple to use and keeps your data protected from others. “
I’ve downloaded it… goodbye to trying to remember and hide my passwords!
Posted by Mary Waldera at 11:38 AM .
1 Comment »
I’ve been a regular reader of Dave Shea’s mezzoblue.com, ever since I discovered him a year or so back through his ground-breaking ‘Zen Garden‘ work in the field of CSS .
This week he posts a well-considered article called ‘Speaking? Tips‘, about the lessons he’s learned through having to give numerous presentations on his work. The reader comments offer some added value as well.
Posted by Roy Hammans at 6:57 PM .
Click here to comment »
