Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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I've known Rick Altman for a number of years, first I was an author who updated his wife's excellent PowerPoint Guide for PeachPit Press, then I was a speaker at the PowerPoint LIVE show, and now I'm also proud to call him a friend.

Very few people have the passion for presenting that Rick has; he is a dynamic speaker and expert in his field and also has a Corel Conference. I suspect this passion is what prompted the title of this book because Rick cannot keep still if he sees a PowerPoint presentation or slide he doesn't like.

Fortunately for the reader, so much of Rick's passion and more important his hands on experience with the program comes through in the text.

Inevitably there are some surface similarities to my own book — "Solving the PowerPoint Predicament: Using Digital Media for Effective Communication", but particularly if you are serious presenter, you can certainly profit from both perspectives.

(You can preview and purchase "Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Suck — And how you can make them better" at http://www.betterppt.com.)

Like me, Rick laments the bane of PowerPoint, which is that typical presenters live in the editor (and don't practice presenting or coach the presenter enough) and devote a short time to the crafting of both the presentation and the delivery.

He calls this the "15-minute syndrome" and I concur wholeheartedly.

What is really good about this book is that Rick shares so much of his nuts and bolts experience on how to craft a better show.

As with my own book, this is not geared to novices. Those with a passion for PowerPoint, however, will benefit greatly from Rick's explanation and examples of some of the more significant aspects of design, backgrounds, and masters — along with some really useful tricks and tips that make the implementation both easier and more effective.

Like me, Rick has been inspired and benefited from some of the animation masters of PowerPoint; we've covered a few in this column and this book takes advantage of Rick's familiarity with these techniques and his own experience with them — and he has taken them to new levels which he covers extensively.

There are two aspects to Rick's book that I find particularly helpful. First it's edgy, opinionated (like Rick) so it's fun to read, which sets it apart from tech books in general.

More in terms of practicality, Rick takes you through so many specific examples with thought processes to justify various decisions so that the actual techniques covered make sense.

The other interesting aspect of the book is the absence of a CD, and the inclusion of a complementary web site.

The problem with book CDs is that they are as static as the pages themselves; but with the betterppt.com web site, Rick can maintain timely updates if that is appropriate.

As it is now, though, the reader is advised to keep a broadband connection open while going through the material; that way he or she can instantly download the sample presentations and deconstruct them.

Here in Chapter 12 on Animation Rick is describing a nice fade effect over a series of bullets (albeit nicely crafted bullets), to accentuate each part of the story a step at a time.

Opening the Custom Animation task pane for the file (here in PowerPoint 2007 but it works all the way back to 2002/XP, you can see the various elements, including transparent rectangles, that combine to build the concept.

Fig1297

It's very easy to access any of the referenced files directly from the web site, and actually you don't really even need broadband.

What I happen to like about Rick's style is that he is very opinionated. For example, he takes issue with what he calls a "downgrade" in PowerPoint 2007, in terms of its customizability.

Rick is big on changing the interface of PowerPoint to streamline your work. What this also tells you about the book, and the author, is that he has done quite a lot of this and it shows.

Virtually every chapter in the book is based on concrete examples and experiences in crafting presentations. Besides animation, another area in which Rick excels is the use of photographs and their combination with music and animation to be extremely evocative and powerful.

While Rick's examples are of a more personal nature, the same techniques can also apply in a corporate presentation. Particularly when you take into account the hot button issues that make a presentation successful, as covered in other updates about crafting a story and references to Jim Endicott, of Distinction Services who is an expert in this field, evocative images can go a long way to convincing an audience of your position.

For example, a visual collage of success stories, perhaps in the medical environment, could help promote drug efficacy or different treatment regimens far more effectively than a set of bullet slides.

Not surprisingly, Endicott wrote the Foreword for this book; we're all members of the Presentation Councils of InfoComm.

Rick covers a lot of territory in this book, from the soft skills required to present effectively to the nuts and bolts techniques in PowerPoint that can complement these skills.

PowerPoint "experts" will surely learn a lot, and they will probably like (as I do) Rick's sprinkling of editorial content and opinions throughout the examples.

It's almost as good as seeing him present at PowerPoint LIVE, but here you can go at your own pace and work with the web examples. Finally, your PowerPoint presentations, hopefully, will no longer suck.

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