To: All News and Wire Services
For Immediate Release:
Professor PowerPoint™ Loses Tenure
By Tom Bunzel
As an active member of the Visual Being web log, the Presentations Council of InfoComm International and the presentations community at large, I need to inform you all of a change in my circumstances necessitated by my recent correspondence with Microsoft’s law firm, Katten Muchin Rosenman.
I was contacted by a member of that firm a short while ago and informed that my use of the phrase “Professor PowerPoint™” was an improper use of its trademark and among other matters, potentially created confusion as to my relationship with Microsoft.
As many of you know, I have spent a fair amount of time and effort writing articles and books, educating users and in many ways promoting the use of PowerPoint™ in creating and enhancing presentations. However, when I explained these circumstances in some detail, I was informed that while Microsoft certainly appreciated my endeavors, my continued use of the trademarked name PowerPoint™ in my business and web site was inappropriate.
After consulting Microsoft’s web site pertaining to the proper use of its trademarks, I realized that there was no way I could continue as Professor PowerPoint™ without violating the clearly set forth canon of: “Do Not Use Microsoft Names or Trademarks as Part of Your Name”. There was very little wiggle room in that sentence.
To my relief the attorney added that Microsoft was not taking an aggressive posture in this issue. Since I had no great interest in retaining a law firm with the names of three partners on its letterhead, I appreciate that position immensely and sincerely.
So it is with some regret that this week I am publicly and irrevocably renouncing my position as Professor PowerPoint™, and now also admit that I got most of my diplomas through self study. (My B.A. in English from Tufts University is, alas, legitimate).
Obviously I had hoped to complete my career as a fully tenured Professor PowerPoint™ basking in the glory of a position in an albeit virtual and wholly nonexistent campus, but that is not to be. As of today the ProfessorPowerPoint™ web site is no more, and I have assumed a new position…
Henceforth my web site will be www.professorppt.com, and I hope that those of you who have linked to me in the past or referenced me in your own work will make the necessary adjustment.
The title of this web site has now been changed to “The Presentation Professor” (even though I shall remain, in reality, a humble untenured teaching assistant).
Let me make it perfectly clear that this entirely new web site has no relationship with either Presenters University or Presentations Magazine (even though I am an intermittent Contributing Editor at Presentations). Let me state for the record that I am also in no way connected to the “Ask the Professor” professor at Presenters University, the Video Professor on national television, nor any other real or virtual institution of higher education in the presentations industry. If in fact there are any other professors, real or virtual, teaching in the presentations community, I simply ask, can we all just get along?
It is indeed with a sad and heavy heart that I leave this entirely nonexistent campus, and set forth in search of new vistas in the presentations (and not just PowerPoint™) universe. I hope you will not forsake me for my past transgressions and continue to count me as a valued colleague as I carve out what I hope will be a new area of specialization and expertise beyond PowerPoint™ and into the virtually infinite realm of communicating more effectively using technology. (Oops, not to be confused with David Paradi’s http://www.communicateusingtechnology.com).
I will post my new office hours shortly but drop in any time. With fondest memories of a great ride, I remain sincerely,
Tom Bunzel
The Presentation Professor
Posted by Tom Bunzel at 4:10 PM .
5 Comments »
After delivering a web conference for the Presentations Council a few weeks ago, I wrote up my experience with some tips on do’s and don’ts for my InformIT web site. For anyone contemplating following in my steps, this might be a useful read.
Posted by Tom Bunzel at 3:18 PM .
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Our own Professor PowerPoint (Tom Bunzel) has written a great summary of his InfoComm experience.
Read it here
Posted by Robert Befus at 6:43 PM .
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Some memebers of the Presentation Council hosted a major Super Tuesday event this year. The attendees were extremely happy with the day’s content and the presenters and the ICIA seemed equally happy with the attendance figures.
The event had 4 parts:
Technology presented by Bob Befus (a Visual Being contributor)
Design presented by Nancy Duarte
Coaching presented by Fred Barnes
Consulting presented by Jim Endicott
Bob started off by discussing the role technology can play in helping presentation professionals to move up the value chain. He also took care to remind us that although technology is great for extending our capabilities, isn’t always the answer (Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible. (Frank Moore Colby, 1865-1925)). He then went on to outline the technologies that presentation professionals need to be paying attention to. These included web conferencing, Flash, PowerPoint alternatives, eXtended events, and mobility. These all boiled down to three key communication trends:
Bob was followed by Nancy Duarte who gave a great nuts and bolts workshop on graphic design considerations particular to presentations. She covered templates, branding, aesthetics and motion (although that doesn’t really convey depth of the material). There were a number of really wonderful examples of work her firm did for major corporations. We were all pretty amazed at quality of the graphics they somehow coaxed out of PowerPoint’s drawing tools. Quotes from her talk:
It’s a palette, NOT a painting.
Without contrast, you’re dead.
A projector makes your audience color deficient.
There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept. (Ansel Adams.)
I’ll conclude this tomorrow (I hope) with Fred Barnes’ and Jim Endicott’s presentations.
Posted by Lee Potts at 10:26 PM .
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Frank Moore Colby (1865 - 1925) quoted by Bob Befus in his Super Tuesday presentation:
Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible.
Nice to know somethings never change.
Posted by Lee Potts at 3:44 PM .
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It is hard to believe that InfoComm ‘05 is here and gone. It seems like just yesterday that many of us in the Presentations Council were brainstorming about SuperTuesday and the possibility of building a presentation presence on the InfoComm show floor. We have accomplished so much in the last few years! I want to just briefly thank the SuperTuesday presenters, Nancy Duarte, Fred Barnes and Jim Endicott. You all did a spectacular job and it was so much fun working with you on this project. Robert Short, Andrew Quan and Mary Waldera all helped with member coordination and activities…. and our own inimitable Todd Dunn once again led Council members on a show floor tour. Lee Potts has been the backbone of this blog and promoted it heavily in Las Vegas, and Rick Altman was crucial in making our first stab at a presentation technology pavilion a reality… Thanks so much to all of you. This Council is truly an unusual group. It was really great seeing you all last week in Vegas!!
Already the ideas for future Council projects are flying. We will be setting up both a steering committee and a Council-wide phone conference for the end of this month.
Posted by Robert Befus at 11:10 AM .
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Having returned from a thoroughly enjoyable four days of InfoComm, thought I would share an undercurrent of one of the seminars that I delivered. It was entitled “Avoiding Obnoxious Bullet Slides,” and it was a typical be-loud-and-flamboyant-from-the-show-floor type of seminar, lest nobody will stop and pay attention. But I might have hit upon the basis for an interesting article or discussion when I introduced four statements and then brazenly referred to them as “universal axioms of PowerPoint usage.” They go as follows:
1. If something moves on screen, members of the audience have no choice but to look at it. It is virtually impossible for you, sitting in the audience, to not look at the screen if something moves, flashes, pops, spins, or even just appears there.
2. In the history of PowerPoint usage, no contract has ever been lost, sale not made, or job not offered because a slide used wipes and fades for animation. They are the quintessential chicken soup.
3. If you create bullets that are complete sentences, it is almost impossible for you, the presenter, to not read them word for word.
4. When you do this, you sound like a complete idiot.
They were designed to be not altogether connected, but upon reflection, I think I can connect the dots and make a pretty good case for these serving as fundamental pieces of advice. I will try to do that very thing in Presentations magazine later in the year…
Rick A.
Posted by Rick Altman at 2:16 PM .
3 Comments »
“Marilyn” was kind enough to model some of our promotional material during the opening reception.
Posted by Lee Potts at 11:30 PM .
2 Comments »
Got into Las Vegas around Noon today and am all checked in at the Hilton. I flew down from Seattle after speaking at another meeting and I’m having trouble thinking of two cities with more disparate vibes. I’ll tell you one thing though, Las Vegas’ McCarran Airport does an extremely good job of getting you off the plane, out the door and to the casino of your choice quickly and efficiently. I was in the Hilton lobby in less time than it took me to get my luggage at Sea-Tac.
Not much on the schedule for today. I’m going to try to check in at the conference later this afternoon. Then the presentation council folks are meeting at the Hilton lobby bar around 6:00 for a little pre-conference reunion. Feel free to stop by if you like, we’ll be easy to find. Just look for the loudest, most….
Well, you get the picture.
Tomorrow is, of course, Super Tuesday. That’s followed by the manufacturer’s industry forum, the open reception and the awards banquet. Busy day. Wednesday’s pretty busy too but I’ll do my best to post some of what’s going on sometime. I think it will largely depend on how well wired the convention center is.
Please don’t forget to make use of the online bulletin board we set up just for InfoComm. We’re hoping everyone will find it useful as clearinghouse for information about the conference.
Posted by Lee Potts at 6:22 PM .
3 Comments »
With just a little more than two weeks until the conference opens, we would like to announce the availability the Visual Being Online Bulletin Board for Presentation Professionals at InfoComm.
This bulletin board is meant to enhance your InfoComm experience, both before you leave and once you are on site, by helping you:
- make the most effective use of your limited time, prepared with information about activities that are of interest to presentation professionals.
-
make connections with other attendees who share your professional interests and concerns.
- stay informed of breaking news and important announcements.
One of the things that makes InfoComm valuable and important is the sheer scale of opportunities, activities and learning experiences it offers. Even conference veterans can find themselves feeling overwhelmed there. We sincerely hope that the bulletin board makes it all more manageable by helping you to connect with and feel part of a vibrant, active presentation professionals community.
Posted by Lee Potts at 8:23 AM .
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A comment by Bob Befus at the conclusion of the recent Webinar got me into Podcasts (he mentioned the term and I was unfamiliar with them).
When I first researched the topic I figured “big deal” (which is common for me) — anyone can convert an audio file to an MP3 and call it a podcast. But no, that’s not quite right.
It turns out that just like newsreaders proliferated a while back, podcast readers are widespread and allow users to subscribe to feeds from true RSS podcasts, thereby bypasssing email (spam filters) and reaching listeners who opt in to their content.
I thought about this from a presenter’s perspective and figured that if I were to do a conference I would use MediaSite or a similar tool to archive the full conference as Bob has often suggested and done with the Webinars.
But then I would try to entice my participants (or those who could not attend) to point their podcast readers to a feed from my broadcast to be able to transfer the audio portion (in MP3 or WMA format) to their portable devices to be able to listen to it at their leisure - while driving, exercising or goofing off.
I looked into podcast readers for Windows and found BlogMatrix on CNET and downloaded the client. Within an hour I had subscribed to podcasts and recorded my own.
Then I thought, how would I get my content out of PowerPoint? I intend to write this up for my InformIT column in time for InfoComm but briefly if you enable narration under Slide Show, you can link your narration files to a local folder and they are saved in WAV format.
Subsequently you can import them into a tool like BlogMatrix Sparks 2.0 which will convert them to MP3 (and even allow you to mix and edit them) and post them on an RSS feed site (BlogMatrix currently offers this service for free for a month so check it out - I own no stock in the co… yet).
The other scenario I tried for longer presentations was to use Camtasia Studio 2.0 to capture the entire powerpoint slide show as an AVI file. In the Camtasia Editor, it’s easy to save just the audio (WAV) file, and again use the BlogMatrix tool to podcast it.
I think this is an interesting scenario for those who might want to podcast their powerpoint and thereby offer their clients the most cutting edge media output options.
I would be glad to share this process with you and what else has come out from it at InfoComm.
Posted by Tom Bunzel at 2:59 PM .
2 Comments »
I just heard from the ICIA that Photodex has decided to exhibit at InfoComm as a platinum sponsor of the new Presentation Technology Pavilion. The Presentations Council has been working hard to enhance the experience and value of this conference for those of us working in presentation media. This year, the addition of both the SuperTuesday session for Pres Pros and the Presentation Pavilion are two big steps towards that goal.
We reviewed Photodex’s ProShow Gold in one of the Council’s Webinar programs last year. In my company, we have used ProShow Gold as a simple but effective way to quickly compile and present “coffee breakers” at live events (candids shot during the event and presented to music during the breaks). While this could be done in other software as well including PPT, ProShow is quick, easy and has very nice transition effects. It also has a nice feature that takes the total number of images you have imported and calculates out the transition time needed so that the images extend to the end of the music you have selected. This saves a bit of time when working in a pressure environment.
I have also used it quite a bit personally for family presentations. ProShow Gold only works with still images. I often have wished that it could handle video clips as well.
Posted by Robert Befus at 9:01 AM .
2 Comments »
Hi All,
I just cancelled my Hilton reservation and reserved the Villa Roma Motel — 220 Convention Ctr Drive.
It’s two blocks from the LACC and I got a rate of $34 per night plus tax. I am sure it’s not as plush as the Hilton but the walk is probably no further to the show floor (or to the Hilton for that matter).
I got this rate on Expedia if anyone else wants to save some money to gamble with. I think it may be the same property I stayed in for COMDEX a few years ago, before it got condemned(!) I take it that it has been resurrected and remodeled. There’s even a pool and free parking.
The pix look okay and since I have no one to impress, I figure it’s a suite deal (sic).
Posted by Tom Bunzel at 12:28 PM .
1 Comment »
At today’s quarterly Webinar, the ICIA Presentations Council previewed their InfoComm 2005 Super Tuesday program for presentation professionals. It looks like it going to be an extremely useful set of sessions covering technology, design, coaching and business strategy.
Please don’t take my word for it. You can see for yourself as they have been kind enough to provide a link to an archived version of the webinar for Visual Being readers. Although the webinars themselves are open to the general public, access to the full archives is one of the benefits of membership in the Council.
Posted by Lee Potts at 8:31 PM .
1 Comment »
