For those who have admired Xcelsius but have been afraid to learn it or unwilling to buy it, now you can download the new FREE light version that comes with lots of tutorials.

Posted by Tom Bunzel at 2:16 PM .

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Serious Magic, creators of Ovation, the popular PowerPoint enhancement software, has been acquired by Adobe. Adobe seems to be primarily interested in their video-related products. In the press release, Ovation isn’t even mentioned until the boilerplate verbiage at the end. They also say they will continue to sell the Serious Magic product line. However, as we’ve all seen in the past with acquisitions of this sort, there’s a big difference between selling and supporting/developing.

Posted by Lee Potts at 8:11 AM .

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My new business book about PowerPoint is now available to read online.  “Solving the PowerPoint Predicament:  Using Digital Media for Effective Communication” is not a book specifically about PowerPoint, but the use of the program with third party tools to convey a message for business, academia or religious content.  You can also buy the book on Amazon.

Posted by Tom Bunzel at 1:00 PM .

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I’ve struggled with the dual-screen (multiple) monitor feature in Windows for the past year.  After a coworker showed me this feature on a job I was working, I was anxious to learn how to do it because it looked so cool!  Well I found out that it wasn’t such an easy task…  Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Mary Waldera at 9:40 AM .

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Tradeshows are like Halloween without the costumes. You go from one booth to another and people give you treats (candy, t-shirts, key rings) to make you like them.

At the VNU Training Fall Conference and Expo last week in Long Beach, CA, I came away with a lousy box of mints, a blinking lapel pin and a couple of rubber earth balls. No matter, I was more interested in seeing which business presentation vendors were exhibiting at the event. What I found was a sparsely attended regional show dominated by e-learning vendors, most of them offering enterprise-level software and services. Only a six-pack of companies were clear crossovers to business presentation: Articulate, PointeCast, Serious Magic, SMART Technologies, TechSmith and Turning Technologies. As close as presentation and training are in spirit and practice, the two worlds are still mostly segregated. Why do you suppose that is?

Still it was worth the trip. I ran across a few products that might be of interest to the blog goblins who haunt Visual Being. See what you think.

One is ReadyGo. The company offers a Web Course Builder that boasts ease of use. But its real attraction is price. Most similar products run in the thousands of dollars. This one retails for less than $500. The thinking behind the product is that people who are not e-learning specialists can now create courses without a high cost of entry or a steep learning curve. Courseware for the masses. I suppose this means that soon everyone will publish their own online school. “I got my degree at the University of Fred.”

Qwizdom is an audience response system that focuses on the training market, but is fully applicable to business presentation. It competes with ARS products such as Turning Point and Fleetwood. The two keypad styles have digital readouts that give them extra flexibility for audience interaction. Unlike Turning Point, which works as a PowerPoint plug-in, Quizdom Interact software is a stand-alone application that imports PowerPoint slides and other media types.

The last product, which you should look at just for laughs, is called FastTrack, from Apixel in Australia. The company sells a training course package (Metamorphosis) that uses a “smart” search engine to quickly parse Word documents into training modules, complete with layouts and auto-selected artwork. For reasons the sales rep could not explain, the company took the same software engine and packaged it for presentations. FastTrack divides paragraphs in a Word doc into individual slides then searches its built-in stock photo database for images that correspond to the words on the page. Sound nutty? See for yourself. There is very little info on the site, but you can download the trial version and user guide. (Beware: If you are doing a presentation about “boxers,” the system might paste in a dog, or a factory worker, or an athlete, or a pair of men’s underwear. Talk about trick or treat.)

Posted by Robert L. Lindstrom at 6:06 PM .

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I just read a fascinating article I think has far-reaching implications for presentation professionals. It’s put out by Educause, a large educational organization. The article name is “Is It Age or IT”.

The article’s intent is to summarize numerous studies about how technology is changing the way we learn and communicate. Findings particularly relevant to presenters…

Technology-savy people:

1) are becoming fluent visual communicators–they expect visuals to be a normal part of their communication and learning experience

2) crave interactivity, both with instructors and with peers–and they become bored easily without it

3) have attention spans that can jump quickly between multiple simultaneous tasks

4) operate seamlessly between physical and virtual reality–a virtual experience can be just as meaningful and influential as an actual physical event

5) prefer discovery over being told–in other words they want to learn by doing rather than listening to a lecture

The implications for presenters are obvious: if we keep designing and delivering linear, bullet-ridden, text-based slide shows, we are completely missing the mark with what a growing number of audience members are experiencing in their daily lives. If we want to persuade and otherwise reach into their minds, we better start making our presentations more meaningfully visual, interactive, and hands-on.

Posted by Robert Lane at 9:37 PM .

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I have been following Bob Befus’s great hunt for the ever elusive “Presentation Facts” and am most impressed with his passion in this area. Here is a bold proposal for all you presentation professionals out there. Let’s take Bob’s interests to the next level. Rather than simply analyzing past research (apparently precious little such research exists), I suggest we actually plan and implement a series of peer-reviewed studies focused on important presentation-related issues.

I am about half-way through my degree in Educational Technology at the University of Arizona. In lieu of a thesis, I have permission to conduct a formal research project centered on a subject of my choosing. Would any of you like to assist me in designing a presentation-based study?

There are so many questions needing answers. We can’t possibly address them all in one study. So I think developing an outline of the most pressing questions will be a first step. Perhaps we can lay the groundwork for an initial study and several follow-up studies. My particular fascination is with interactive visual communication.

In terms of timing, starting in January I begin an independent study devoted entirely to literature review. During that time I also will begin exploring funding sources. An actual project is probably about a year away. Now, however, is the time for planning. Interested? Email me at research@aspirecommunications.com

Posted by Robert Lane at 11:45 AM .

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Last year about this time I was dabbling on the Web, searching for video related to brain functioning, when I stumbled across fascinating research called Brain Computer Interface. Unfortunately I can’t now locate the site I studied back then (although there is downloadable video at TCTS Lab—requires divx codex), but the idea was to have computers interpret brainwaves. The goal of this particular project was to help paraplegics gain functional movement. The subjects imagined movement in their mind (such as picking up a glass) and a computer interpreted those thoughts and guided robotic devices attached to subjects’ arms. I was struck at the time by how such experiments are further blurring the concept of “objective” reality and what little we know about the potential power of our thoughts.

I then started wondering how thoughts (and view of reality) influence the effectiveness of our digital communications. To what extent do an audience member’s concepts, perceptions, and assumptions dictate what he or she takes away from a live presentation? Apparently such psychological components are enormously important. As presenters, the visuals we use can have impact beyond their obvious intent, especially in the context of interactive presentation.

For example, I have a slide in my Presentation Network containing logos for all the companies or institutions I’ve worked with. I use it as a switchboard to showcase projects during training workshops. Sometimes after using this switchboard a couple of times, I quiz the trainees. I ask, “who made the assumption I’ve worked with all of the entities shown here?” Almost invariably, all hands go up. I could have put any (or as many) logos on that slide as I wanted to and my audience would automatically assume all represented legitimate projects.

More and more I’m discovering intriguing visual tricks and optical illusions we can use to our advantage as speakers, even while using PowerPoint. In a workshop last week, in fact, I’ll admit I had a delightful time playing with attendees’ minds. Doing so was necessary to show how a savvy presenter can employ an understanding of the human mind to great advantage.

I encourage all presenters and presentation professionals to join me in exploring the psychological implications of live presentation. As far as I can tell, far too little research or experimentation has been done in this arena. The power of thought is only beginning to be tapped.

Posted by Robert Lane at 9:07 AM .

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The July 21 post by Robert Befus citing the “1986 UM/3M Study” and his July 14 post regarding the “1981 3M/Wharton Study” clearly point up the dearth of research on the impact of visuals in the persuasion process. Those studies are decades old and were done well before computer-based presentations became commonplace. Even the 1996 update of the UM/3M study is antique by today’s standards. Yet these are still about the best we have of this type of empirical research.

But maybe it is not the volume, timeliness or even the quality of research that is lacking. Maybe what the industry needs is a new approach to understanding the power and impact of media in presentations. Maybe what we need is a more enlightened and contemporary methodology, a fresh look at what we need to know.

As the situation stands, presentation pros must use their instincts and training to determine when the goulash of media elements in a presentation works and when it doesn’t. Often, the presentation pro never sees the final presentation. Typically, only feeble attempts are made to collect information after the fact about audience reaction or effectiveness, with little attention given to media specifics. In most cases it is impossible to determine which individual elements—visuals, sounds, graphics, message, environment, presenter skills—were effective and which were not, much less how the elements worked as an ensemble to influence the audience.

In our search for understanding the impact of media in presentations, are we looking in the right cupboards? Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Robert L. Lindstrom at 3:13 PM .

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