Every year it’s a pleasure and to take a look at the presentations submitted to SlideShare for their annual competition and vote for my favorites. Here are the winners for this year, announced on December 10th.
First Place: Smoke – The Convenient Truth
created by Empowered Presentations from Hawaii using Apple Keynote
This presentation reminds me of the presentation that won a couple of years ago, titled “Shift Happens” . It’s a format that works very well for presentation that are posted on websites and are self-presenting. I particularly like the alternating black and white background, the clever choice of images to show statistics in a powerful way, and the clean large font.
Second Place: You Suck at PowerPoint
created by GlobalGossip from Canada
I agree with all the suggestions in this presentation but I would be very careful in choosing fonts that are not standard on most personal computers. Though they make look nice, they may not travel well. Make sure you embed them in the presentation and check how they look on the target pc. If you are interested in more font ideas from presentation, take a look at this post from Pierre Morsa who shows 10 classic fonts for presentations.
Third Place: Social Media for Business
created by Presentation Advisors from the USA
Another excellent presentation, take a look at slide 30 to see an alternative way of designing a bullet list: no bullets and right alignment.
Technical emergencies for a presenter using a pc come in all shapes and sizes. Most presenters like to travel with their notebook computer and connect it to the projector in the meeting room, conference center or classroom.
But what if your computer fails or breaks?
Most presenters also carry a USB flash drive (also called pen drives or USB sticks) with a backup copy of the presentation. An excellent idea. This of course assumes there will be another pc available (with the same operating system as yours) that can be connected to the projection system.
Should you feel safe with a backup copy of your slides on a USB stick?
I have found that this is not always sufficient.
Carrying your PowerPoint presentation on a memory stick may not be enough to recreate the presentation “system” that you have on your laptop. Your laptop is configured to correctly show videos of different types (Windows Media, Quicktime, …) , play DVDs, and has a copy of your presentation software that is aligned with your presentation. Someone else’s pc may not be configured to play the QuickTime videos you want to show, or the DVDs, or may not have PowerPoint installed. Classrooms frequently have old notebook pc’s connected to the projection system, with older operating systems that may not have the features you have on your pc.
But… have you ever considered that the pc you might be using for the emergency may not have administrative rights, and therefore it will not allow software installation? What happens then? Will you find a technical support person in time to change access rights to the pc and allow you to do this? Probably not, if it’s an emergency situation. I have seen this happen, so you need to be prepared.
I have recently coached a customer who needed to prepare PowerPoint presentations and who also wished to travel only with a USB flash drive, but be ready for all kinds of emergencies. The solution I developed for him consisted in customizing his USB drive with portable programs. Here are two useful programs that run from your flash drive:
VLC is a well-known media player that comes in a portable version.It supports various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, XviD, WMV, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
PowerPoint Viewer
Microsoft offers free PowerPoint viewers for versions 2003, 2007 and 2010. The 2010 Microsft PowerPoint Viewer can also view presentations created with previous versions. Unfortunately though the viewer cannot be installed to a portable drive. It must be installed to a target pc and requires around 270MB of hard disk space. There is a work-around for this, if you have a version of PowerPoint on your pc (which you should, if it’s your presentation software): use the “Package to CD” command. The resulting installation also has the advantage of taking much, much less space (approximately 6 MB).
There are many other programs that can be run from flash drives. PortableApps.com is an open and free platform with many programs designed to be installed on USB memory sticks or other portable memory devices. It even has a menu system to make them easily accessible. It’s worth taking a look! A program to unzip files, an antivirus program and a personalized browser could also come in handy.
If you have other tips or know of alternative portable software that can be used to survive presentation emergencies, for both Mac or Windows platforms, add a comment below.
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