Summer 2019 event at DAVYTOPIOL

Give him one day…

…and you’ll come away with an entirely different perspective on how to craft and deliver an excellent presentation

Organizations are starting to get it: effective presentation content cannot be taken for granted. They can’t send someone out to represent them with an hour of PowerPoint training. The bar is much higher now, so it’s your turn—it is more vital and urgent than ever that you hone your skills.

Sign up for Rick Altman’s one-day workshop and never look at a presentation project the same way again. Whether you are the presentation designer, the content manager, the PowerPoint user, the presenter, or (most likely) some combination of all four, these seminars will open your eyes to entirely new strategies and techniques to help you do your job better, faster, and with more satisfaction. Join us and you will find:

• Practical and relevant advice for day-to-day slide creators
• Cutting-edge PowerPoint techniques to maximize productivity
• Clear, lucid advice on slide design for those who are not professional designers
• Strategies and tactics for crafting better messages and for speaking before audiences.

Complete information about this workshop is all below. Give him a day. He’ll give you back a whole lot more.

Any industry, any position

Training, sales, administrative, human resources, education, leadership, middle management, executive — if you are creating presentation content, you can probably be doing it better, and we will provide insight into the three main tenets of presentation crafting:

Message & Design: Most people handle messaging backward: they focus on their own virtues without showing regard for the audience’s interests and concerns. And few who come to presentation do so from a background in the arts. Yet we are asked to design presentations, often on a daily basis.

PowerPoint Technique: Truly advanced PowerPoint users are few and far between, but not because the program is exceptionally difficult; just the opposite. The software is so easy to start using, not many go below the surface to learn the program’s finer points. You will get to do that this spring.

Delivery: You do not have to have been born to speak in public in order to become better at it. There are tangible skills and physical behaviors you can employ to help you become more comfortable before an audience.

Should you attend?

This one-day workshop is for those who owe their professional livelihoods to the designing, building, and/or delivery of presentation material. These seminars are for you if…

• You struggle with devising the best way to define your message
• You suspect there is a more efficient way to design your slide decks
• You are uncertain how to balance your message with the data you need to provide
• The mechanics of driving PowerPoint frustrate you and its finer points elude you
• The specter of delivering a presentation sets you on edge
• If you are in any of these categories, you will find enormous value in joining us around the Bay this spring. This all-day workshop is your unique opportunity to become extraordinary in your presentation work.

These seminars are conducted presentation-style — meticulously prepared and professionally paced so users of all levels can follow.

Patrons are welcome to bring their notebook computers to follow along, as well as recording devices for personal and non-commercial use. Furthermore, we encourage you to send your files to us ahead of time so that we might include them in our curriculum as a makeover or a point of discussion. That type of work is normally billed in the low four figures, but it would be done as part of this workshop at no extra charge.

Workshop Agenda and Topics

Morning

1. The Pain: Why does PowerPoint suffer from such a bad reputation? Why are people so annoyed by it? You might think it’s because the program is so difficult to use, but in fact, it’s just the opposite. Identifying the areas where we misuse the software and the technology is the first step toward a cure.
2. Survival Skills for the Non-Designer: How can you create good work with ridiculous deadlines, last-minute changes, crazed bosses, impossible requirements, and oh yes, no background in design? In this hour, we’ll show you.
3. Global Controls: Most content creators have passing familiarity with layouts and use of templates, but they barf over the obscurity of it all. This session focuses on just what you need to know and not everything that makes you gag.

Lunch

Afternoon

5. Animation without Embarrassment: When you think of animation, do you think of flying bullets and spiraling headlines? Most people do…sigh. In fact, one of your best opportunities to shine as a content creator and presenter is through smart use of animation and in this hour, we’ll explore exactly what that means.
6. Intelligent Presentations: Most of us create our presentations the way we live our lives: we go from point A to B and to C. That doesn’t really work in the real world and fortunately, there is a collection of under-utilized PowerPoint features that address this. This hour is all about the art and the science of crafting more interactive and flexible presentations.
7. Stand and Deliver: You do not have to be a natural to be a good public speaker and you don’t have to be a speaker at all to take these tips back home with you and help everyone in your organization who does speak before an audience.

Blended into each of these sessions is generous Q&A time. And whenever possible, we will create examples from work submitted by workshop attendees. You will be out by 4:00p.

To take away

Here is what you will take away and be able to implement right away:

• The simple principles of slide design that all content creators can adopt, even if they have no background in the arts.
• The incredible power of motion and animation and the important responsibility it holds for the presenter.
• How to use PowerPoint’s tools to best define, distinguish, and highlight the important points that presenters need to make.
• The power of templates and layouts and the clean and simple ways that you can leverage them.
• Why so many well-intentioned presenters do not connect with their audience and what they can do to solve this.
• How the conventional way that many companies tell their story in a presentation might be the exact wrong way to do it.
• The commands and the program shortcuts that truly do save time and effort, and the ones that are just a waste.
• The specific tactics and behaviors that all presenters can employ, even if they have no natural affinity for speaking in public.

How to resist the eye candy and silly toys that are responsible for Death by PowerPoint millions of times each day.