Choosing a Presentation Remote Control

If you deliver electronic presentations using PowerPoint or other programs, you can manually move forward to the next slide with the keyboard or the mouse. One way, however, to deliver more effective presentations that improve your connection to your audience is to add a remote control to your presentation tools. What features should you look for when selecting a remote control?

Remote Features

Many projectors come standard with a remote but features vary and may not always be easy to use. A better choice is to buy your own personal presentation remote control. When evaluating a remote, look for these features and decide what is important to you:

• Ergonomic and easily fits in your hand. Keep in mind that you might be using the remote for an hour or an entire day. Plus, a smaller remote will usually have fewer and more accessible buttons, fits in your pocket, and is great for travel.
• Simple to use. In most cases, a smaller, ergonomic remote is easy to use but test it before buying. One of my friends loves her small remote which is only about the size of a matchbook. The tradeoff is she needs to press 2 buttons together to make the screen go black, a feature that does not always work. I was reminded of the importance of an easy to use remote recently when I watched an excellent presenter pull out a huge remote that looked a price scanner gun from Home Depot. As he fumbled with a large panel of buttons, the remote dropped to the floor and broke open with batteries flying across the stage.
• Transmit distance. Remotes operate with three different technologies: RF (wireless radio frequency), IR (infrared), and Bluetooth. A huge drawback with IR remotes is that you need to point the mouse directly at the receiver for it to work. Bluetooth remotes use the latest technology but currently have a maximum range of about 30' while many RF remotes have a range of 50 to 100 feet. With some remotes, you can have your back to the laptop and move to the middle of an audience. What do you need for your presentations?
• Built-in mouse. Some presenters will sacrifice a bit in size to get a built-in mouse, usually a small button like you see on some laptops. The Logitech Cordless Presenter, for example, combines a full-size mouse and remote with a 30' range and is priced under $200. Other remotes have a track ball or a touch pad. I prefer a separate wireless mouse that I use for portions of my presentations. I find a built-in mouse to be too awkward but it might be great for your purposes.
• Visible laser pointer. If you would like a built-in laser pointer, make sure to test it for visibility and practice moving it slowly. Some of the pointers have such a small laser dot that it does not show well on screen. Would an animation be a better way to highlight parts of a slide or a process?

When evaluating features, it is still not that common to find a wide range of remotes at your local computer store or office supply outlet, and so, your best option is to find someone who has a remote and try it out. My favorite is the RemotePoint Navigator from Interlink Electronics which is easy to use, fits comfortably in my hand, and gives me up to 50' of movement from my laptop. Another top model by the same company is the RemotePoint Presenter, with up to 100' of movement, a mouse button, and 32 MB of storage for your presentation; it is priced at about $150. The Phaser Mouse from IOGear is a budget-minded model for as little as $60.

There are many other models and brands to consider. Personally, I do not like remotes loaded with tons of features that you might not need; these remotes are typically bigger or more complicated to use. Remember, you should be using a remote so that you do not call attention to the technology and your audience can focus on your content.

Practicing with a Remote Control

After you buy a remote, practice with it before you use it. Do not just try it at your desk, you need to also setup your laptop and remote and actually run through your presentation. The first time I did this, the screen kept going black or I would accidentally advance to the next slide. The problem wasn't with the remote. The problem was that I was holding my presentation handout in the same hand and accidentally hitting a remote button through the handout. An easy adjustment but not obvious if my only rehearsal was in my office. I personally like to choreograph my slide actions into my presentation notes to avoiding looking back at the projection screen to check my location. Or, setup your laptop in the meeting room so you can glance at the screen and still keep the connection with your audience.

Practicing with your remote should be a built-in part of your presentation rehearsal to avoid distracting your audience and accomplishing the goal of communicating your message.

Bonus Tips: Always bring extra batteries; many speakers change out batteries for every presentation. To protect your investment, label the remote or put several business cards in the carrying case in the event that your remote is misplaced.

© Dawn Bjork Buzbee Dawn Bjork Buzbee is The Software Pro® and a certified Microsoft Office Expert and Microsoft Office Specialist Master Instructor. Dawn shares smart and easy ways to effectively use software and technology through her work as a speaker, trainer, and consultant. Discover more tips, tricks, tools, and techniques at http://www.SoftwarePro.com

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Public Speaking Without PowerPoint - Three Ways to Engage Audiences Without the Screen

If you have seen many speeches in your professional life, you have probably seen a boring PowerPoint presentation. It contains of a great host of slides that form a bullet-pointed outline of the entire presentation. The speech consists of little more than reading the bullet points. If you were in a darkened room, a nap might have overtaken you.

If you have given many presentations, you may be a perpetrator of such boredom. Challenge your self and give your audience a break. Next time you present, leave the projector at the office and try one of these techniques to engage your audience.

ENGAGE THEIR IMAGINATIONS WITH WORD PICTURES

Long before visual aids became common, speakers, storytellers and authors used words to trigger the imagination. The faux Martian invasion staged by Orson Wells through radio broadcasts caused a panic. People are very capable of conjuring up compelling images from their own mind; you can use this as a speaker.

Creating a word picture is not difficult. Start by imagining for yourself what you want your audience to see. Make the image as vivid as possible with colors, motions, sounds, scents and textures. Next, put it in words. Write down what you imagine including as many senses as you can.

You will probably need to revise your word picture to keep it short enough. Organize it, pare it down and tighten it up. It only needs to be detailed enough to evoke the imaginations of your audience; they will do the rest.

ENGAGE THEIR EYES WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

Before there was PowerPoint, speakers used photographic slides, chalkboard, white boards, flip-pads and fingers in the dust to provide visual aids for their presentations. These tools can be just as misused, too. The interminable travel slide show is cliché. So is the droning lecture accompanied by squeaking chalk.

Hand illustration has the advantage of being slower than clicking through electronic slides. You have to be selective about what you write or draw on your board. Write or draw selected words or images to reinforce the most important points of your presentation and show how they related. Focus on creating visual aids; if you are just producing an outline of your presentation, you could have used PowerPoint.

We are attracted to motion and color. Your use of hand illustrations can bring this into your presentation, adding interest and drawing additional attention from your audience at critical moments.

ENGAGE THEIR BODIES WITH MOTION

An important part of learning is doing. Look for ways you can get your audience to do something, even if the task is more illustrative than practical. It provides you with one more pathway to their mind.

Motion may also be a way to reengage an audience that is tired. People can only sit still for so long. If they have been sitting in a dim room for a while, they may welcome the chance to get up and stretch.

Activities can be difficult in large groups. You can get much of the benefit by drawing a few audience members up to perform the activity. This supplies a visual aid and stirs up the sympathy of the audience who will feel for their fellow who were unlucky enough to be picked or foolhardy enough to volunteer.

Be careful that your activities are not embarrassing or injurious to those participating. You want your audience to feel good about what they have done.

Preparing a presentation using these techniques can take more time and effort than typing your outline onto electronic slides. However, if your audience is not attentive to your presentation, it is a waste of effort. Think of the extra effort to use one of these techniques as an investment in your audience and the effectiveness of your message. Challenge yourself try your next presentation without PowerPoint and use these techniques to connect with your audience.

Keenan Patterson is a manager at Infra Consulting LC in Jefferson City, Missouri. In addition to consulting and he provides training to nonprofit and association boards, governing boards of municipalities and special purpose districts, and regulatory commissions, and speaks to diverse audiences.

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How to Organize a PowerPoint Sales Presentation - 7 Easy Steps For a Perfect Pitch

Like any good performance, a presentation must have a beginning, a middle and an end. Plus, it must be easy to hear, so your audience "gets it" and responds positively. Let's be clear; you present to sell.

To deliver a winning sales presentation you must:

* differentiate yourself from your competitors 

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PowerPoint Tip - Create a Video Effect

You think of most presentations as being made up of slides, and most presentations look like that. But you can create a presentation that looks like it's all one slide. You do this by making the end of one slide (after animation) the same as the beginning of the next slide (before animation). It can be a black background, for a fade to black effect, or an image that covers the entire slide.

The technique is time consuming, because you need to get the timing just right, but it's not difficult, and it's a lot cheaper than making a video. It's excellent for sales presentations.

The key is animation and timing. In essence, you create a presentation that could be on one slide, but you use several slides for ease of animation. Then you add timing to the slides to move the presentation to the end automatically. Usually, you add narration as well.

You can use many techniques; here are the steps to create a fairly simple video-effect presentation:

1. Decide on a story line and photos to illustrate the story. The story I used is a plane trip from Iowa to California and I took the photos from the plane. In my case, the photos drove the story, but you could start with a story (let's say, about your company), and then find visuals to match.

2. Write a script and decided which photos would match with each section. Then divided the script into about 4 or 5 slides. This would work for a presentation lasts a few minutes. Add more slides for a longer presentation.

3. Attach a mic to your computer and open a sound recording program. I used Audacity, a free audio recording and editing program. I highly recommend it; it's used by many professionals. It's also easy to use. If you download it, be sure to also read the instructions for, and download, the LAME MP3 encoder, which lets you save files in MP3 format.

4. Record and save a separate MP3 file for each slide.

5. In PowerPoint, insert the appropriate MP3 file for each slide, by choosing Insert> Movies and Sounds> Sound from File. (In PowerPoint 2007, Insert tab> Media Clips group> Sound drop-down list> Sound from File.) Choose the Automatically choice when you see this dialog box. The sound will start to play as soon as the slide appears. Drag the sound icon just off the slide.

6. In Windows Explorer, right-click the MP3 file, and choose Properties. In the Properties dialog box, click the Details tab to find the length of the sound.

7. Once you know the length of your sound file, decide at which point you want your images to appear. You can double-click the sound on the slide, listen to it with a stopwatch, and find out the timing for each word that you want to introduce a new image.

8. Open the Custom Animation task pane by choosing Slide Show> Custom Animation (Animations tab> Custom Animation in PowerPoint 2007). You'll see the sound there. If you add other animations, the sound will stop as soon as they start, so click the sound's down arrow in the Custom Animation task pane, and choose Effect Options. In the Stop Playing section, choose After Current Slide, so that the sound will continue throughout the other animations on the slide.

9. If you want the first slide to fade to black as it goes to the next slide, right-click the slide and choose Format Background. Choose a solid fill background of black and repeat for the second slide. If you want instead to use an image, format the background of the 2 slides with the same image, or insert the image on the 2 slides and send it to the back of the order. (Right-click, and choose Order> Send to Back, or just Send to Back.)

10. Insert the images that you want to use for that slide. Move them (stagger them) so you can select them individually. Click the first one. Generally, you want it to take up the entire slide, but it doesn't have to; resize it if desired. Choose Add Effect> Entrance, and add an effect. Change its Start option to With Previous. For a slight delay instead, choose After Previous, click the item's down arrow in the task pane, choose Timing, and set a delay.

11. If you want this image to disappear before the next one enter, choose Add Effect> Exit and choose an effect. Set the Start to After Previous and set the delay equal to the time when you want the next image to enter.

12. Select the second image and add an entrance animation. If you want it to enter while the previous image is exiting, set the Start to With Previous. Otherwise, set it to After Previous and set the delay according to the times you worked out in your script. You want it to enter when a specific word is being spoken. You may have to try the result and make adjustments.

13. Continue until you've animated your images, exiting them at the end, so you see the background color or image.

14. Set the timing for the slides. Choose Slide Show> Slide Transition (in 2007, Animations Tab> Transitions to This Slide group). In the Advance Slide section, check the Automatically After check box and enter the number of seconds, which should be equal to the length of the sound. Again, you may want to adjust the timing slightly after viewing the result. Do this for all the slides.

Ellen Finkelstein, is the best-selling author of How to Do Everything with PowerPoint 2007 (and previous editions for PowerPoint 2002 and PowerPoint 2003) Her award-winning Web site features loads of free tips on PowerPoint, the monthly PowerPoint Tips Newsletter, and the PowerPoint Tips Blog - http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com

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5 Ways to Develop Presentation Skills

Here are 5 Ways that will help you develop your skills of presentation.

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How Do You Reach Everyone in the Room?

Presentations or speeches can be a wonderful experience for the person talking at the front of the audience and for the audience as wee. This is a technique usually used to get information to people and also to entertain people in some circumstances. There are many ways to do this such as Powerpoint, hand outs, or using writing on boards which are the visual aspects of presentations. But let's face it, most of the time it is talking and the audience listening to many words.

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The Two-Hour Sales Presentation Vs. A Seven-Minute Attention Span

The average decision-maker has an attention span of just a little over seven minutes. I’m convinced that adult attention spans have been carefully programmed by network television, by the seven to eight minute time segments of entertainment, wedged between commercial breaks. On the other hand, the average sales presentation in the United States runs from one and a half to two hours in length. As a sales manager, you should easily figure out what’s wrong with this picture.

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Presentation Planning - 5 Easy Ways to Streamline the Process

Practicing for presentations can waste more of your key personnel time then almost any other business activity. The possible exception being useless meetings! To maximize your planning efforts just follow these 5 easy steps. You will find that you can streamline the process and make Presentation Practice much more productive.

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Better Presentation Skills - Don't Care Too Much About What Happens!

Caring about your audience and how you do as a speaker is a good thing. If you don't care about what you do, how well you do it, or what the audience takes away from it then you are just apathetic and probably shouldn't be speaking to this group.

However, caring too much can be just as bad as not caring enough. By caring too much you actually reduce your ability to perform well. It sounds ironic, but the more importance you put on succeeding, the less likely you are to succeed.

Caring too much is the number one reason people feel nervous before they speak. There are many reasons you can care too much: you are afraid of being embarrassed, the speech is important to your career so you want to do well, you think the audience is hostile, etc.

Allowing these nerves in makes it very hard for you to perform your best. It is hard to speak naturally when you are freaking out!

This happened to me in my early speaker days, during one of my first "big" speeches. I walked in to the event with my speech prepared. However, before my speech I spoke with several of the attendees. I found out that the year before that had a world champion boxer as their speaker. Here I was, this young guy going to do this little comedy speech, when they were used to speakers who had been on the world stage! "There is no way they are going to like my stuff," I thought.

On top of that, I started discovering that a lot of these people were very successful. Way more successful than me. Also, this was my first "big" speech and I wanted to do really well so I could get referrals and follow up business. I was counting on it.

I got up to speak, but it was too late. I cared too much, and psyched myself out. The speech was ok (they didn't ask for their money back or anything) but I got zero referrals or follow up. Nada. Zilch.

I realized afterward that the problem was that I put too much importance on what the audience would think. I wanted to do a great job and give great value to the audience, but I realized that all I could do was worry about doing my best, and if they didn't like it, too bad.

Now, whenever I start to get nervous about a speaking engagement, or anything else for that matter, I remind myself to do my best and not care so much about what the audience thinks. When I do this, my nerves immediately calm and I am able to perform much better. I encourage you to try this before your next presentation.

To read about six more mistakes speakers make, and to watch a free 20 minute video on how to be authentic and natural as a speaker, and to download a one-hour MP3 on how to be a better speaker, check out http://www.avishparashar.com/speakingschool/ Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Avish_Parashar

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Public Speaking - Five Awful Ways to Open a Speech

The opening of a speech is one of its two most important parts. There are many great ways to begin, and for each great beginning, there is an equally awful opening.

Here are five awful ways to begin a speech:

• "Hi there, I'm happy to be here..." Please! This is the most bland, boring, badly overused speech opening. By the time you reach the word "here", half of your audience is already asleep. The other half is looking at their watches, wondering "When is this going to be over?" Don't waffle: just start!
• "I'm very nervous right now..." Who cares? Why do you think it's so important for us to know that you haven't prepared, you haven't practiced, and you aren't ready? The audience does not need to know how you feel. When you announce that you aren't at your best, you are automatically setting expectations that you will be bad. It doesn't matter how well you perform. If you do the best speech of your life, they will leave while thinking to themselves: "I wonder how much better it would have been if he/she had been feeling good."
• "Did you hear the one about..." Oh boy! Whenever people start their speech with a joke, it's usually sign that they are just following "public speaking rules." These "rules" allegedly state that you must start a speech with a joke. The problem is that jokes are rarely related to the topic at hand. They are only there to make people laugh. Nothing wrong with getting people to laugh, as long as it doesn't seem forced. Otherwise, after the laughter, people will wonder: "What was the point of that joke?"
• "Here is a story you all know..." Ugh! The starfish story, anything from Chicken Soup for... any story you received over the Internet, all have the same basic issue: many people have heard it already. Stay away from stories that everyone has told, unless you bring a twist to it. For example, I once heard the story of the tortoise and the hare which contained, not one, not two, but three different endings to the story. Now, that's a twist!
• "The great philosopher A. Nonymous once said..." This is another one of those public speaking "rules": start with a quote. Avoid this, once again, because it sets up your audience with the wrong expectations. The expectation is the following: this is going to be another boring speech filled with information we already know. Use quotes, just not at the beginning of your speech.

The two most important parts of a speech are the introduction and the conclusion. The introduction sets the tone for your speech, while the conclusion determines how the audience will feel when they leave. Don't set yourself up for failure from the start: drop these awful openings from your repertoire.

Laurent Duperval helps professionals become influential communicators. He publishes the "Bring Out The Speaker In You" electronic newsletter, which aims to help readers improve their public speaking and communication skills. You can reach him at http://www.duperval.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Laurent_Duperval

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Motivation Presentation - It Wasn't Only the Egyptians Who Built Pyramids!

When giving a motivation presentation, audience analysis is essential. You must think of your presentation from your audience's viewpoint. Chances are your audience has been asked to attend your presentation (they have not come along voluntarily) and many well be thinking: "What's in it for me?"

Don't take that personally. When giving a motivational presentation, that "What's in it for me?" question should be your call to action. For your presentation to succeed, that is the question you need to answer. A motivational presentation should be structured in a way that takes your audience from where they are now to where you would like them to be. You first must engage your audience's attention at their current level, and then demonstrate through your presentation how you can fulfill their natural desire to move up to the next level of motivation. Depending on the goals of your presentation and the intended audience, whether a sales force, production personnel or a football team, you must give them a reason to listen to your presentation. A reason that relates to, and builds on, their own experience.

Way back in 1954, American psychologist Abraham Maslow developed the idea of a hierarchy pyramid of human needs. That hierarchy pyramid has been the foundation of motivation presentations ever since. He demonstrated that there are five basic levels of needs that all people have in common: basic, safety, social, self-esteem and achievement. These can be visualized in a pyramid-type structure with the basic level at the base, up to achievement at the apex.

In the business environment for example, Maslow's hierarchy from the basic level upward is:

• Basic needs, which can be met through, attractive salary, holiday entitlement, etc.
• Safety needs, met by safe working conditions, good pension, health cover.
• Social needs, such as company fitness and sports club, planned social events such as office parties (my favorite!)
• Self-esteem needs, by prestigious job titles, sales-person-of-the-year award, etc.
• Achievement needs, through promotions, interesting job assignments, and so on.

Maslow suggested that people can only be motivated to move up to the next needs-level when they have satisfactorily met the main requirements of their current level. In other words, you are unlikely to have much success in your motivating presentation in telling you audience they have been selected to work on a prodigious new project (self esteem) if their pressing concern is their cut in bonuses (basic).

Interestingly, Maslow found that that when the lower-order needs have been fulfilled, the desire to reach the higher-order needs (self-esteem and achievement) dramatically increase in strength. The ideal motivating presentation should therefore focus more on the higher-order needs. Needs that excite people to develop their talents to the best of their abilities and enable them to finding greater meaning in their work.

A Certified Technical Trainer, Ian has over 10 years experience in the coaching, training and development of personnel in the hi-tech sector. For more presentation tips, ideas and resources, visit http://www.presentation-power-tips.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ian_W_Hay

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