Advanced PowerPoint
Advanced PowerPoint |
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Richard H. Wiggins, III, MD has reported no financial interest, arrangement or affiliation with a commercial organization that may have a direct or indirect influence in the subject matter of this presentation.
Objectives
Introduction
Now that you have a basic understanding of Microsoft PowerPoint, these are some more advanced features to help your make you talk stand out, but not too much. In this article, we will be covering some of the more advanced aspects of the newest version of PowerPoint, version 10, or PowerPoint 2002 that is included with Microsoft Office XP, which can be used as part of the Office Suite or all by its lonesome. Similar features are present in PowerPoint that are part of Office 10 for Macintosh. Then we will cover some presentational issues, issues for your slides in general, and some tips for you when making presentations yourself.
Contents
PowerPoint Advanced Skills:
Extra PowerPoint Tips:
Custom Animations
There are many different types of custom animations that can be applied to any object in any PowerPoint slide. It is easy to create objects flying in all over the screen with custom animations, with moving objects, sound effects, video clips, etc. For text objects, you can apply animations just to individual paragraphs, or individual words, or even letter-by-letter. You can also choose if the animation happens by itself, or if it waits for you to click.
There are four kinds of animation: Entrance, Emphasis, Exit, and Motion Path. The Entrance effect describes how the object actually enters the slide. There are 52 different Entrance effects, such as Blinds, Checkerboard, Dissolve In, Fly etc. The Emphasis effect draws the audience's attention to an area. Examples of Emphasis effects are Change Font, Change Font Size, Change Font Color, Grow/Shrink, and Spin. There are 31 different Emphasis effects. The Exit effect is the opposite of the Entrance effect, or how the object is going to leave the slide. There are 52 different Exit effects, similar to Entrance effects. The last effect is the Motion Path, which allows you to choose from 64 predefined paths, such as Up, Down, Right, and Left. The user can also create a custom Motion Path. The Motion Path can also begin off the slide (similar to the Entrance effect) or end off the slide (similar to the Exit effect), or even both, so that the object starts off the slide, appears, and leaves the slide.
A user can create more than one animation for a particular object. These effects also have a speed setting, so you can choose if the effect occurs slowly or quickly for each individual change. Some of these effects, such as Spinner have further settings to affect other aspects of the animation.
To add an effect to an object, first open the Custom Animation palette by clicking on “Slide Show”, then “Custom Animation”.
Select the item you want to animate, click on the "Add Effect" button, and select the type of animation you want.
When you select an animation, a list of effects will appear, and you can choose the type of effect you want with that animation. In Normal View, the number next to the object will signify the animation number in order, but will not be seen in the Slide Show View. You can click and drag on individual animations in the window to change their order of occurrence in the slide. You can then select the Direction and Speed options for the animation from the same window, and preview your animation by clicking "Play" at the bottom of the window if you want to test it out first.
You can tweak the effect further by clicking on the little down arrow to the right of the effect. This will open another window with further effects, such as audio and color change options.
Usually the speaker just wants to draw the audience's attention to one area such as a line of text to emphasize a particular point in the talk. A popular way to focus the audience's attention is to start with a blank slide, and bring in each bulleted text point one at a time. Another way is to have all the text grayed out and then change the color of each bulleted item one at a time. It is easiest to control the animations if you cause them to occur on a mouse click, but you can also create timing for your animations. This may be helpful if you are reading text for a presentation, and do not want to be distracted from the script, but this takes more planning and practice for the talk. If there are multiple animations on a single slide, you can choose the animations to occur "after previous" or "with previous". You can also add a delay in the animation timing, or even have the effect "rewind" when it is done to return to its original position and appearance.
Dealing with Images
There are many types of images. For a full discussion on image file formats, look for the article in this syllabus, or search on PubMed. There was a great Radiographics article in 1998: Image file formats: past, present, and future. Radiographics 2001 May-Jun;21(3):789-98. Most people use Clip Art images, copy something from the Internet, scan in an image, or insert an image from a digital camera. There are two basic types of images, bitmap and vector, which have some differences that you might want to be aware of. A bitmap image is essentially made up of little dots, like looking at your TV set really close. These are the type of images usually found on web sites, with funny names, such as GIF, JPEG, and PNG. Most photographs and radiographic images are bitmap images. The dots that make up the image are pixels, or picture elements. The attributes of the image include the spatial resolution, or the number of dots in an inch, and the contrast resolution, or the amount of color information attributed to each pixel. A quick simple reminder: most monitors display at 72 dots per inch, or dpi, and most photographic images are much higher spatial resolution, such as 300 dpi, so you might want to consider this when choosing your image resolution for different purposes. The bitmap image file format types supported by PowerPoint include JPG, GIF, BMP, PCD, PCT, PCX, PNG, TGA, and TIF.
The other type of image is the vector image. These images are different from bitmap images because they are described by equations that define the elements of the image, not by dots. As you can imagine, it is easier to describe the characteristics of a line with equations (starting point, ending point, width, and color) than to define the elements in a landscape photograph, so vector images are usually reserved for line diagrams and text layout applications, while bitmap images are better suited for photographic type images. PowerPoint supports these vector type image file formats: CDR, CGM, DRW, DXF, EMF, EPS, WMF, and WPG.
Using Clip Art
PowerPoint comes with thousands of images and motion clips objects in a Clip Art Organizer that shows you thumbnail versions of the object. Again, if you are going to a national meeting, go easy on the sound effects, even if only you will hear them at the podium. Just click on "Insert", then "Picture", then "Clip Art".
PowerPoint will open a window beside your slide with all the objects you can easily insert from the Clip Art Organizer. You can search for a keyword, such as "medicine" to see all the images in the Organizer that may be related to that topic.
Then you can just click on the object that you want to insert, and drag it where you want it to be in the slide.
You can keep clicking on any object to add several copies of one, or add many different objects to a slide. You can then edit the clipart image any way you want after it has been added. As you can see on the image above, there are eight white dots outlining the image, similar to the eight squares that surround text boxes. You can click and drag on these boxes to change the size of the image. Clicking and dragging on the corner boxes will change the size of the object while maintaining the proportions, and clicking and dragging on the side boxes will change the proportions. If you are working with a radiologic image, you probably want to always resize with the corner dots. There is also a green dot on top of the eight white dots above the image; clicking and dragging on this dot will rotate the image.
If you want the center of the image to remain in the same position while resizing, hold down the "Ctrl" key on the keyboard while you click and drag on the white dot.
You can change the outside border or other characteristics of an image by formatting the picture. Click on "Format", and then "Picture" (or just double click on the object) and the Picture Format window will open.
You can easily change the size of the image, add a shadow, crop it to a o specific size, or add different kinds of borders with various thicknesses, colors, and dashed components here.
You can also take Clip Art objects and Ungroup the individual components to edit the image elements individually.
This allows a nice transition into a discussion on grouping objects.
You can select multiple objects and create a group with them, so that any changes you make to one of them will affect them all. This is helpful if you want to add another section to a slide with multiple objects you have placed on it already, so that you want to take everything that is there and make it all smaller. You can click and drag to select certain objects, and then right mouse click on one of the objects and go down in the pop-up window to "Grouping", and then to "Group".
You can then click on one of those white dots and manipulate all of the objects at the same time. If you want to manipulate one of them without the other after this, you can right mouse click again, and "Ungroup" the objects, to adjust them individually.
The 3-D option is a powerful tool in PowerPoint. 3-D effects can be applied to many types of objects. For example, you can create an AutoShape such as a rectangle, which was covered in the Basic PowerPoint article, and then click on the 3-D button on the Drawing Toolbar to make it 3-D!
You can then click on the "3-D Settings" button at the bottom of this pop-up window to bring up the 3-D Toolbar, and change things like the orientation of the object, how tall it is, and even the color and lighting effects on the object! Cool!
Obviously this is another feature that you just have to play with to really understand all the features, so click away; and remember, you can always click on "Ctrl-Z"!
Using Organization Charts and Diagrams
Some people really like making diagrams and organizational charts. I guess you should always have at least one such person around… And fortunately for all of us, Microsoft is ready to help you out with that, too! You can click on "Ctrl-M" to make a new slide and then click on the Slide Layout with the little organization chart on it to get ready for that kind of slide.
When you double click on the placeholder, it will bring up another window asking you what kind of chart or diagram you want to make.
You can pick one of these diagrams to get started, so the chart will bring you to a simple beginning that you can start to edit, and you are ready to go!
So you can just click in the box you want to change and start typing away to make your chart.
Eventually, you are going to realize that you want to move boxes around, or add more boxes, since the scheme will not be quite right for whatever you are doing. Fortunately, this is also pretty easy, since you can just click on one particular box and drag it to where you want it to be. If you want one particular box to be under another in the scheme, you can just drag that box on top of the one you want it to be under in the diagram, and PowerPoint will position it there for you.
To add a box, you can just click on the box that you want to the new box to be under or next to, and then click on the little Organization Chart pop-up window where it says "Insert Shape" on the little down arrow to the right, and choose the relationship of the new box to the one you selected.
You can just keep adding shapes, and dragging boxes around to make the chart look the way you want. Remember that you can just double click on one of the boxes to change its formatting characteristics, like color, or outline border.
And if you make too many boxes you can just click on the box you want to get rid of, and then click on "Delete" on the keyboard to remove it. PowerPoint will automatically change the size of the box, if you want to add more text then the box size originally.
And if that isn't fancy enough for you, you can click on the button all the way to the right in the Organization Chart toolbar, to automatically change the format of all the boxes.
The other diagram options work similarly, and you can change the layout between these options, if you change your mind after you start, between the Cycle Diagram, Radial Diagram, Pyramid Diagram, Venn Diagram, and Target Diagram.
One of the more confusing things in PowerPoint is the option for inserting charts. This takes a little time and patience in the earlier versions, so don't think about it if you don't have those two things and are running PowerPoint 97. The PowerPoint 2002 version is much easier, so it is ok to delve in now. There are several neat options like making bar charts, pie charts, radar charts, column charts, and even doughnut charts. The charts are actually being created in a separate program running through PowerPoint, called Microsoft Graph. This is the same chart creating functions in Excel, so if you are good at Excel, you will have no problem with the charting in PowerPoint. You can start making a new chart in PowerPoint, or insert a chart that you already have into a slide. I will warn you that inserting charts can be a little tricky; since the size of the chart usually does not fit easily into the space you want it to on the slide layout.
So, to get started, you can hit "Ctrl-M" again to make a new slide and then click on the chart layout at the bottom right layout window.
Then you can just double click on the placeholder to bring up the basic chart layout.
You will notice that the layout of PowerPoint changes when you go to the chart data, which is because Microsoft Graph just took over the whole program. Then you can start changing the basic chart data in the little lower window with the numbers you want to add, and PowerPoint will automatically adjust the chart for your data.
If you want to change the type of the chart, you can then right mouse click on the chart itself, and choose the "Chart Type" option in the pop-up window.
Here you will find many different options for your chart, and you can also choose the formatting of the colors, etc, through the right mouse pop-up window, for those of you that like 3-D pie.
The slide transition is the method that PowerPoint will use for changing from one slide to the next. The default method is just to have one slide instantly cut to the next slide. Some people consider this a little boring, and want to add more effects to make the talk more interesting. There are 58 different effects you can add for the slide transition option, and these can be modified as to their speed, and any audio options you might want to add. Some of the options are Blinds Horizontal, Blinds Vertical, Box In, Box Out, and Checkerboard Across. You can get to these options by clicking on "Slide Show" and then "Slide Transition" from the File menu bar.
If you have the AutoPreview radio box checked at the bottom, PowerPoint will show you what each transition will look like, and you have the options of applying the transition to all slides, or to choose Random Slide Transitions, so even you won't know what is going to happen next during your talk! You can also choose if you want the program to wait for you to click to go to the next slide, or if you just want Microsoft to ignore your needs, and go on without you at a certain time. But don't kid yourself - Microsoft will eventually ignore you no matter what you do in your PowerPoint file.
Using Hyperlinks and Online PowerPoint Files
One of the big pushes from Microsoft has been integration with the Internet, and PowerPoint 2002 continues along those lines. You can now actually access Internet files from Web sites through Microsoft Office programs, without a Web Browser. Office 97 had this capacity, but not many people noticed. Therefore, if you know the address of a PowerPoint file on the Internet, you can have PowerPoint open it.
Click on "File" and "Open" (or just click on the little picture of the opening folder at the top left of your screen, under the word "File", or even more simple, just click "Ctrl-O" on your keyboard) and PowerPoint will open a new window that you can type the URL (or Internet address) of the file; like this one:
http://www.uuhsc.utah.edu/rad/talks/Advanced%20PowerPoint%202002_files /frame.htm
PowerPoint will then make a connection itself, without a Web browser, to find the file, and will actually open the talk from the Internet in your PowerPoint window, just as if you were working on it!
You will notice that the title bar says [Read-Only] after the title of the slide, since you can't make changes to an online talk and change the files that are on the server this way, but you can save it to your own hard drive! You can also easily create a Hyperlink inside of a PowerPoint talk that will automatically open the default web browser on the desktop system you are using, and go to a site. For example, if I wanted to add the ASNR logo to this talk, and make a link to that site, I can open a Web browser, and go to the ASNR site:
Then right mouse on the logo, and go down in the pop-up window to "Copy".
Then you can switch back to PowerPoint, and right mouse click on the slide you want the link to be on, and go down in the pop-up window to "Paste".
And the logo will show up in the slide. It is that easy to take other people's stuff and use it for your own twisted purposes, YEAH! Then you can right mouse click on the logo and go down in the pop-up window to "Hyperlink".
This will bring up another confusing window, where you can choose the link you want the object to send the viewer of the Slide Show to.
To easily make a link to the ASNR web site, you can then just type in the URL in the address field. You could also go back to the Web browser looking at that page, and click once in the URL window to highlight it, and then click on "Ctrl-C" on your keyboard to copy it to the clipboard, and then go back to the PowerPoint window, and PowerPoint will automatically type it in for you! PowerPoint, like many modern programs is always paying attention to what is on the clipboard, and guessing if you might want to use it in certain fields. Now the logo that you put in the slide is linked to the ASNR web site, and if you are in Slide Show View, and you click on the logo, a Web browser will open up and go to that page.
The Action Buttons are found with the AutoShapes option in the Drawing toolbar. These are essentially objects that can be associated with a function, like moving forward or backward a slide in the talk, or jumping to another section of a talk, activate a hyperlink (link to a web site), run a macro, play a sound, or even opening another program, in addition to PowerPoint. These are similar to the old Macintosh Hyperlinks. Some of these buttons already have assigned functions that can be changed. You can create an Action Button by simply clicking on the AutoShape button in the Drawing toolbar, and then "Action Button", and then choosing the shape of the button that you want.
Then you can just double click on the button to change its characteristics, like color, and click and drag the white dots to change its size, and the small yellow diamond to change the size of the arrowhead without changing the size of the button.
If you want to change or assign a function to the button, you can right mouse click on the button, and then go down in the pop-up window to "Action Settings".
This will bring up a window you can use to change the basic function of the button, or to assign your own function, such as opening another program, and setting the function to occur when you click on the button, or when the mouse cursor passes over the button.
Hyperlinks and Action Buttons are just that simple.
One increasingly popular thing to do is to put PowerPoint talks on the Internet. This sounds difficult, but again PowerPoint makes it amazingly easy. Once you have a PowerPoint talk put together, all you have to do is save the talk as a web page, and PowerPoint does all the translation stuff for you! Just click on "File", and then "Save As", and change the file type to "Web Page".
PowerPoint will then save 2 items to that location. One is the Web version of the talk, and the other is a folder with all the supporting information. So in this case, the folder contains these files:
All you have to do then is give the files to your Web master, and indicate where to place the files and you can have your own talk on the Internet! Yep, it's just that easy. As an example, you can look at this talk:
http://www.uuhsc.utah.edu/rad/talks/Advanced%20PowerPoint%202002_files /frame.htm
Well, that is a quick introduction to some of the most important advanced PowerPoint 2002 features. The next sections are my own tips for you and for your slides, read them at your own risk, I can't promise anything, but maybe you can stop yourself from making one of the mistakes I have over the last couple of decades…..
Save Frequently
This may seem like a no-brainer, but over the past 20 years or so, I can't even imagine the number of times this has either killed or saved my projects. One of the most important features of Microsoft Office products is the ability to set an AutoSave function. I CANNOT recommend this enough. Some people have told me that this slows down their system, but it has saved me many times, like last week when I would have lost 2-3 hours of work on a paper when the power went out if I didn't have it set. You should stop whatever you are doing right now and be sure this is turned on. In Word or PowerPoint, Click on "Tools" and then "Options".
This will bring up the window, and then click on the "Save" tab, Then be sure that the radio box next to "Save AutoRecovery" is checked, and I recommend decreasing the time to 5 minutes or less.
Believe me, this is a priceless feature. But don't completely rely on this, go ahead and save often, it is worth it. Just click on "Ctrl-S" when you are thinking about what you are going to write next. It won't take that much time. Also, check to see where you are saving something. Often people tell me they saved something, but now they can't find it. If this happens, just click on "File" and then on "Save As" in the program. The computer should default to the last folder saved into, so that is where your file probably is now that you already saved. Wherever "that" is, I can't tell you.
Undo
Another outstanding feature of the Office products is Undo. The ability to go back after you mess something up is amazing. What is even better, is the multiple undo abilities of these products. If you realize 10 steps later that you messed up something a while ago, you can just keep hitting "Ctrl-Z" on your keyboard, and go right back to where you started. Another priceless feature. Don't forget that it is there, and use it often, I know I do.
Grid and Guides
The Grid and Guides function can be very helpful for placing several objects on a single slide, or when you want to be sure something is in the center of a slide. You can turn them on by clicking on "View", and then "Grid and Guides".
This will bring up another window with options of how you may want to use them.
I like to keep the "Snap objects to grid" checked, as well as display the drawing guides. The grid is just too much, with little lines all over the place. If you are putting four images on one slide, the snap to place function is helpful to get them all in a symmetric position, and the guidelines are helpful to be certain what you are putting on the slide is in the position you want. One example is when I am just putting one big radiologic image on a slide; I can use the guidelines to know the picture is in the center of the image.
Consistent Slide Color, Background, and Design
Another neat thing is with all these options you might be tempted to ignore the slide master and have each slide be a different color and/or background, etc. Try to resist this temptation. This is amazingly distracting to an audience. It might seem cute at first, but after a couple minutes or so of a talk, that is all they will pay attention to. The Changing Slide Design in so annoying, I am not even going to tell you how to do it. Just don't even think about it. Stop it, I'm serious. For consistency, have a title on each slide; this seems basic, but you would be surprised… Always use a conservative sans serif font, like Arial, Helvetica, as some serif fonts like Times New Roman may project a little blurry on low resolution projectors, and don't even think about using fancy fonts like Old English. And if you even think about using a different font for every slide, I will track you down…
Keep It Together
Microsoft PowerPoint isn't always smart enough to keep track of special effects files. If you insert a video clip into a slide, and then move the PowerPoint file away from the computer with the video file, without moving the video file with it, PowerPoint will be lost. The video won't play and you look silly at the podium, looking at the error message for the first time with your audience. If you insert a video or audio file into a PowerPoint slide, this is NOT the same as inserting an image. PowerPoint actually just creates a pointer to the associated file, and you MUST keep that relationship the same in the file system. PowerPoint 2002 is a little smarter than earlier versions, since you can insert a video clip, and then move the PowerPoint talk file independent of the video, and PowerPoint will still remember where the video was. The easiest way to do this is make a folder with the talk and all associated video and audio clips you want to insert into it, and then move the PowerPoint file and all the other clips together in the folder. Copy them all to a CD if you are going to a big meeting, or just move them together if you are giving a talk from your laptop. This also goes back to practicing beforehand; since you don't want strange things to happen during your talk (at least I don't like it when it happens to me). This is also a warning for people who like to walk into a conference room with their talk on their own laptop to be transferred to the conference A/V system or those of you who like to make "last minute" changes to their talks right before giving them. Yes, you know who you are…
KISS
Keeping it simple is a basic but important reminder. Try to minimize the distractions from the subject of the talk. Don't let all the special effects distract from your big important points you want to get across. There are lots of options and neat features in PowerPoint, but you should only be using about 25% of them. Pick a Slide Design and use it for everything, it will also make adding slides from other talks to new ones easier, just like with real slides. Try to use the same Slide Master settings for all your talks. Another tip is to never put the most interesting area in the outer ½ inch of the slide. It is best if you never put anything in the outer ½ inch. Often there are varied settings for the projector and computer systems at conferences, and you may not know if the system you will be using somewhere else is XGA, VGA, SVGA, or some other acronym you don't know or care about. Be safe; keep the most important stuff in the middle of the slide. It is distracting if your bottom line of text is always cut off, or the one great important finding of the case is off the edge of the screen during your talk. Some people believe that when given a bunch of new information, an audience will not remember more than five key points; so listing those on the last slide may emphasize your big points. Use statements instead of complete sentences, and minimize punctuation.
Copyright Issues
As you can see using the Internet, it is amazingly easy to take something from a web site and use it in your talk. In theory, it is ok, and legal, to "borrow" images without permission as long as it is strictly for academic purposes, but DO NOT try to publish or sell these images. That is just asking for trouble. Try to avoid this, especially for radiologic images, unless you talk to the owner of the image. It turns out that people don't like seeing their favorite case of "X" shown spontaneously in someone else's talk at national meetings. The same principle applies to audio and video files. Lots of audio, video and images are copyrighted. And whatever you do, don't take credit for someone else's stuff. If you do borrow an image, be sure to cite the source in plain sight on the slide.
Live Internet Presentations
Try not to rely on the Internet during your talk, unless that is the whole object of the talk. Network connections are still a little unreliable, especially when it isn't your own shop. Things that work well in your office may not do so well on the other side of the continent.
Minimize Animations
I will jump to the chase here and let you know that I am conservative. Very conservative. While it is easy to add animations all over the place with PowerPoint slides, I highly recommend you don't. Many people think that all the various random slide transitions and multiple custom animations help keep the audiences attention and "wow" them with your fancy slides. I am not one of those people. I am in the group who believes that your slides should be like a central A/C system in your house (in an ideal world) and just work all the time without ever having any problems, so that you almost don't notice it. By the way, you are supposed to change those filters once a month.
So my thinking is that with your slides, the subject matter and the great images of your cases should impress the audience, not having every slide and every object set up with random transitions and animations. I have previously run the computer systems for entirely digital conferences, and can warn you that while you might think all those transitions might look really neat, they can be so much as to disrupt your own talk. I have seen speakers get confused with their own slides because they didn't know what was going to happen next, and sometimes were not looking at the slide when they clicked, and forgot which animation had occurred since the last click. So while I personally think that custom animations aren't something to highly recommend to the new PowerPoint user, they are interesting and fun to play with, but I would recommend minimizing their use when you go to big meetings. Let's just go ahead now and say I told you so…
Charts and graphs are great for visualizing information, but don't over do it. Keep the information in charts and graphs simple, not too much data here. And don't try to cram more than 2 charts or graphs onto a single slide.
Be Nice to Your ITS Groupies
You may need your ITS people in the future, especially if you are interested in putting a digital teaching file collection on the Internet or your Intranet. You may also want to post your PowerPoint talk to the Internet one day. Unless you are planning on learning networking issues and XML coding, chances are you will need some help, and ITS people remember things for a long time. Enough said.
Check Your Slides in a Well-Lighted Room
Your slides may have looked great when you were putting them together in your dark office, but when you get to the lecture room and find lots of ambient light, you may not think anything about it. That is, until you start your talk. This is a bad time to find out your slides are all projecting too dark, and no one can see the subtle findings you are describing. This is a bad time to start randomly asking the audience if anyone can turn down the lights. The best thing to do is to create your talk in a room with the overhead lights on, that way you can be more certain the images will project well in different lighting settings. This is especially important for radiologic images. It was a bigger problem with real slides, but I still listen to people apologizing repeatedly for their image quality at big meetings.
Maximum of Seven Lines per Slide
You may find yourself in a situation where you want to put several points on one slide, and just kind of keep going with the bulleted text lines. Try to avoid putting more than seven lines of titles and bulleted text on a single slide. PowerPoint will automatically re-size the font of the text you are writing, so that it will fit, but it will get pretty small after a while, so try to limit the lines you use per slide. If you find you go over, just click on "Edit" and "Duplicate", to make another copy of the slide and delete the bottom lines from the first, and the top lines from the second. Try not to cram words on a single line by decreasing text size. Try to have less than 8 words per line of text. It is generally a good idea to write shortened phrases rather than verbatim sentences as bullet points on your slides so that they don't become visually crowded.
Maximum of Three Bullet Levels per Slide
Same concept here, the text font size will get pretty small if you keep intending, especially if you are in the habit from real slides of having text always on the left side and the image on the right. PowerPoint will let you do four levels of bulleted text, but don't, ok?
Minimum of 24-Point Font
The size of the Font may look perfectly good to you sitting right in front of the monitor while you are putting the talk together, but some lecture halls are long and not wide, forcing people to sit far away for your popular talks. Try not to go below a 24-point Font size for all of your text, even the indented bulleted lines. After all, you want the poor guys sitting in the back of the room that have to leave half-way through your talk for something really important to be able to read all the text, don't you? When in doubt, get up, read your slides from 12 feet away off your monitor, and see how they look then.
Consistent Grammar
Try to use a consistent grammar and define the acronyms the first time you use them. In addition, try no to use them too much, unless you have to, in fact, try to avoid acronyms and jargon as much as possible. When you say the IAC is above the ICA and medial to the EAC, you want to be sure they know that you are talking about the head and neck and not the CIA. There always seems to be someone in the audience who doesn't know that IAC is internal auditory canal, and not Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, International Action Center, International Aerobatics Club, International Agricultural Center, or the Immunization Action Coalition. Moreover, there is a spell checker in PowerPoint, so tyr adn spel write. Talks with lots of misspellings cause the audience to question data. If you are giving a talk and see something you misspelled, don't stop and point it out to the audience, and don't apologize, and for goodness sakes, don't hit Esc during your talk and correct it in front of the audience.
Simple Background
Try to use a basic background scheme, without too many distracting items. There are many options for background settings, and you can make a custom setting, with gradations of colors, but try to pick a basic one and use it for all the slides, without changing the background on each slide, that is just too distracting. It is good to use a nice combination of text and images, but try not do overdo either one.
Reasonable Colors
Always use a light text on a dark background. People often think that their colors and background will look better if they match, such as a dark purple text on a light purple background. It's not like your clothes, don't do it. Try to always use a warm light color of text, like yellow, on a cool dark background, like dark blue; don't use red, it can be hard to read on many background colors. Remember that in theory up to 10% of the audience may be colorblind, so try to avoid reds and greens. Try not to use all capital letters. SOME PEOPLE WILL THINK YOU ARE YELLING AT THEM! I find that yellow and white text project best in large dark conference rooms. Don't use a white background ever. That is amazingly distracting in a dark room. Don't use dark text on a light background (or light on light, or dark on dark). If you are scanning in a line diagram from a book or similar black object on a white background, open the image in Photoshop or another image editing program before hand and invert the colors, so that it is white objects on a black background. Four out of 5 Radiologists recommend that.
Remember the Big Picture
There is a simple saying for making talks: Tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, and then tell them what you told them. This is a simple and easy to remember rule for putting talks together. You can think of this as organizing your talk so that there is an introduction, then a body section, and then a conclusion. Try to always start with an introduction slide that lists the major sections of the talk (if there is more than one), and try to use headers on the slides that lets the audience know when you are one a certain subject. It is also helpful with complicated subjects to use the opening introduction slide over and over with separate sections highlighted or otherwise marked, so that they audience knows you are going on to a different section. That is helpful if they suddenly need to close their eyes because some dust or something gets in them and roll their neck around because they are stiff from sitting in one place for so long, so when they open their eyes again they will know where you are in the talk. And if they are still resting their eyes when your talk is over and they are shutting down the conference room, it is considered nice to let them know, in case they are concentrating really hard on their eyes…
KISS
Keep it simple always applies to your talks themselves. Try to focus on the subject matter at hand and not get distracted by tangents that might distract from the most important portions of your talk. If you are putting together a talk, be sure that you understand the material as well as possible. There is always a chance that the person moderating your session wrote the definitive paper on that subject. If there are questions after your talk, try to repeat the question for the group. This also gives you a chance to think of an answer! Nice distraction technique most residents seem to learn early. And tell the truth when you answer, chances are if someone is interested enough to ask, she/he may know the answer, or wrote the book on it.
Practice, Practice, Practice
Try to practice your talk beforehand, and avoid last minute changes, unless absolutely necessary. Practice is especially important if you have many animations in your slides, or have anything set on Random, like animations or slide transitions, which I recommend you do not use. There are many ways to communicate besides your slides, think about nonverbal things you may do: gestures, posture, body motion (some lecturers are pacers), and facial expressions, as well as aural clues: general tone of your voice, and changes in pitch and/or volume during your talk. If you are someone prone to fidgeting, try to be aware of your motions, especially arm motions, waving your arms about widely can be funny to an audience, when you don't want it to be. So try to stand up straight, face the audience, and speak clearly, don't mumble. It is best to vary your volume, but don't yell at them. Try not to read a script from notes if you don't have to, this often looks like you are not prepared, or are giving someone else's talk, that you don't really know anything about. Try to position yourself so that you are not tempted to completely turn your back to the audience, especially if you are used to reading your slides, and looking solely at slide, instead of the audience. Try not to read slides unless you have to, try to look at the bulleted line of text and talk about it, the audience can read the slide by themselves, probably. Smile, even if you have to fake it.
It is best to find out how long your scheduled talk is beforehand (just the didactic talk, not the talk and question and answer time), and try to make your talk about 80% of that length. In theory, each slide should get at least 10 seconds devoted to it, and none more than 100 seconds, if you like to time yourself. If you can't gauge time, or don't own a watch, guess 30 seconds for each slide. So if you have 6 minutes, make your talk 5 minutes long. If you have an hour, make your talk about 50 minutes long, and try to stick with it. A little red blinking light in front of you on the podium can be amazingly distracting to you and the audience, and moderators don't like to have to push you away from the podium before you are done so they can keep their session on time. Well, most of them don't like to do that…
Don't Panic
Try to prepare the best you can, and you will be fine with the talk. If possible, before going to national meetings, try the talk out on people in your department, and ask for feedback (after you are done). As long as you can take the criticism, it will be worth it. Try to cut down on the "Um's" and "Ahh's" as much as possible if you like those. I you do get nervous talking in front of groups of people, there are a few things to try. One good one is practicing the talk beforehand with a friend, and having that friend in the front row at your talk. Then you can just focus on their face, instead of all those strangers who are all smarter than you… Winston Churchill tried to imagine people in their underwear to remind himself that they are all just normal people like himself, not to be naughty. Practice helps to stay calm and showing up early to scope out the room helps. Most speakers feel nervous before talks, even people who do it all the time, so don't think you're special. Nervousness can be good, to add energy to your talk, just try to direct it into enthusiasm, instead of becoming hypovolemic and passing out.
Have a Backup
Don't go to a big meeting with a single copy of your talk. Bring 2 CDs with the talk, or a CD and a Zip disk, or something else, like a USB drive. It is bad when you go to give your talk to the A/V people before your talk, and they can't read your disk. And try to find out if they are a Macintosh only group, or not. If you bring a Macintosh formatted disk to a Windows only world, you may find yourself re-doing your talk at the last minute. If you are going to give the talk on your own laptop, be sure you bring your recharger cable and a spare battery, if you have one. It is distracting during talks if a warning sign comes up saying the battery level is critically low, and then your laptop goes into hibernation mode. I find that trying to describe the cases in your great talk isn't quite as good as actually showing them to the audience. Turn off the power manager, and the screen saver. Don't plan to use the mouse as a pointer, it's too tricky, and you will often advance to the next slide before you are ready.
Know Your Audience
Try to gauge the level of information to the audience. For example, I have some lectures that I give to fellows, residents, and medical students. I often just gloss over issues on some slides if I am talking to medical students, that I will go into detail on with Fellows. Also giving a talk to ENT surgeons is different from the same talk with Radiologists, so try to gauge your talk towards areas you think the audience will be interested in, instead of boring Radiologists with the differences between a radical, modified radical, extended and selective neck dissection. So don't make fun of the surgeons, when you are talking to the surgeons, save that for the radiologists. Don't tell the audience about problems with making your talk, or apologize for image quality or anything else, they probably didn't notice. If you make any jokes, make sure it is the most benign thing you can imagine. Someone always seems to be offended by off-hand remarks, no matter how benign they may seem to you.
Check Out the Room
Try to get to the room before your talk and scope it out. It isn't your home turf, but if you are the kind of person who gets nervous before talks, it will make you feel better if you get there before hand and check it out. Go up between other sessions and stand at the podium, and check out the laser pointer and slide advance units, and be sure you know how they work and are comfortably with them. Usually there is an A/V person, or two, around in the room between the talks that will be happy to show that he knows more than you do. And get to the conference room early, well before the start time of your lecture.
Laser Pointer Etiquette
Try to just use the laser pointer to point at the interesting thing you want to emphasize, instead of pointing at the audience, ceiling, or wherever else the thing might be pointing at when you forget to take your finger off the button. Try to look at where you want to point, then point at it, then turn it off before you move away. Making big circles over some general area is often not helpful to the audience, and making a laser underline by going back and forth over a line of text usually doesn't help them read it. If you are the nervous and shaky type, rest your hand holding the pointer on the podium, so it is steady. If there is no podium, or you can't do that, hold the pointer with both hands, and/or press it against your chest/abdomen (that might help with the butterflies too!). And if you don't have a laser pointer, get one. They are worth it, and sometimes help you to focus on the important aspects of the slides. Wireless mice and laser pointers are great tools. You can get radiofrequency devices relatively cheaply now. I bring my own to conferences, and usually at least one person asks me about them.
Microphones
Microphones are great, use them, too. If there is one on the podium only, try to keep your mouth about 6-12 inches from it, and point it towards you. Be careful when you turn your head to look at the slides, you may move away from the audience and microphone, and they won't be able to hear you, but you will never notice, till they start yelling at you, that is. If you are in the habit of looking at your slides instead of the audience (good for nervous people), try to position yourself to the side of the podium, so that you can look at the slides and still have the microphone directly in front of you. If they hand you a little clip-on microphone, be sure you understand the on/off switch, you may not want your little conversations before the talk to be broadcasted, and after your talk, take it off. It may not be funny to you if you go into the bathroom after your talk still wearing the microphone when it is turned on. Also if you are at a conference where they are handing out lanyards with your big name tag on it, or you are wearing some kind of chain necklace, be sure they are positioned so that they do not rub against the microphone, making rubbing noises throughout your talk. For people wearing ties, that is a great place to clip it on, about 6 inches from your mouth, pointing up towards your mouth.
Well, that is my advice; you can take it or leave it. It's your call.
Richard H. Wiggins, III, M.D.
Copyright © 2004 American Society of Neuroradiology, www.asnr.org