Thursday, July 3, 2008

VizThink Webinar: Creating Powerful Presentations with Nancy Duarte

How many of you out there create presentations for yourself or others? Can I see a show of hands? If you're not raising your hand then please stay tuned for the next blog post. Or if I've peaked your interest please read on.

A reoccurring theme in this blog is the "Death by Powerpoint" syndrome and the challenges that are faced in meeting rooms all over the world. How do we create an engaging presentations to get our messages across? The easy way out is to open Powerpoint and start typing using the basic black and white template. But that method doesn't take into account any design elements, visual theory or storytelling, you're only writing the presentation. It's a one dimensional approach that ultimately bores your audience. There's been so many humorous videos like the one from the other day that illustrate the pain that audiences must endure sitting through poorly crafted presentations.

But there's hope in the form of design experts who share their tips, tricks and best practices on creating better presentations. This is a recording of a recent webinar hosted by VizThink featuring, Nancy Duarte, principal of Duarte Design the firm that was created Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth presentation, who discusses how to create powerful presentations. If you don't have much time to watch it from the start I suggest you jump sections #4 and #5.

Creating Powerful Presentations



















Hint: Use the Full Screen Button to see this video in greater detail.

They used GoToMeeting as their webinar platform which is now cross platform on Mac and PC. Robin Good just posted a review of the new version here. There's also some helpful information in teh comments about how they captured and deployed the webinar recording.

Suggested reading:
Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery
By Garr Reynolds

Read an excerpt Make Presentations That People Will Remember

Nancy Duarte recommended this slideshow by jbrenman:
Shift Happens




Related blog posts: