Resource/Misc

A new episode of The Presentation Podcast releases today! We have a great conversation about accessibility, and using PowerPoint for accessible presentations. One definition of accessibility is “…making information, activities, and/or environments sensible, meaningful, and usable for as many people as possible.”. For us in the presentation world, accessibility is a consideration for slide design. And slide design can address accessibility categories of contrast, font size, captioning, screen reader setup, alt text, and much more. But the real question is, are there tools within PowerPoint to enable presentation designers to make a presentation accessible? This episode of The Presentation Podcast we are joined by Stephy Hogan a great conversation about presentation design with accessibility considerations.

Listen here!

The 2nd annual Present to Succeed conference was April 7-8, 2022. This fully online conference’s tagline is, “a lineup of world-class speakers you can’t find anywhere else.” This episode we have coordinated the global time zones and have a great conversation with Boris Hristov about the Present to Succeed conference.

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What’s it like to design presentations on the Mac? Longtime Mac users Jole Simmons and Mike Parkinson join Nolan for a conversation about the good, the bad, and the ugly on using PowerPoint and Keynote and Google Slides on a Mac. What are the disadvantages and what are the advantages to Windows? Is the animation timeline really that important? Is it more expensive or less? And how does Keynote stack up next to PowerPoint?

Listen here.

This episode has a backstory. As projects continue to spin up with wonderful client requests, internally at TLC Creative Services, we have been revisiting our rate sheet, project timelines and project terms. The Presentation Podcast’s focus on the business of presentation design is a great resource, that I found myself (Troy Chollar) using. This episode we revisit a conversation Sandy, Nolan and myself had back in 2017 were we discuss presentation project Deposits, Terms and Rates. Virtually every part of the conversation is relevant today, so much so that it is worth bringing back to the surface episode 28 and hopefully encouraging you to evaluate your project options and assuring things are advantageous for both sides of the project; the designer and recipient. Enjoy.

Listen to the conversation here.

Troy, Nolan and Sandy enjoy a fun time talking about PowerPoint templates on this episode of The Presentation Podcast. Listen here.

Working on a Teams based presentation, PowerPoint (the full desktop app) became “stuck” when opening the presentation. Rather than restart the computer and clear whatever was caught in memory I opted to restart PowerPoint in safe mode. Safe mode is opening an application without add-ins, web-based features and other things that are often the cause of PowerPoint crashing.

On a Windows computer, open the search bar and enter “powerpnt /safe” (yes, PowerPoint is spelled wrong, and note the space). Click the top search result.

PowerPoint opens in a bland colorless UI. Note the file name has “Safe Mode” next to it, indicating this is a very limited feature option for PowerPoint. Limitations include:

• No QAT
• No add-ins (installed or web-based)
• The ribbon is the default layout, no customizations are loaded
• Features like auto-correct are not available
• The Recent files and pinned files are not available

No guarantees using Safe Mode will solve issues, but if you need it, it is an option. Also, same process works for Word, Excel, Outlook.

Troy @ TLC

Welcome to the 2022 Microsoft MVP Summit! This year the Summit is once again a virtual event leveraging Microsoft Teams for all sessions. As has become tradition, a group of PowerPoint MVPs have gathered for this episode to talk PowerPoint, Microsoft, and fun – join us!

Listen here.

Next week, April 7-8, 2022 is the Present to Succeed conference! Listed as the “biggest online presentation skills conference.” It has a great line up of presenters and a great price – plus all sessions are available for on-demand replay (to registered attendees) for 30 days with the Standard access price, and lifetime for the higher access options.

2022 will be my second time being a part of the presenting team! This year my talk is in the “Presentation Tools” category and titled “9 Powerful Business Presenter PowerPoint Template Tips”.

Get details and register at the conference website.

TIP: the conference agenda is listed in CET time zone – Central European Time. For me, in California, that means the live sessions are 12:00am – 9:00am (making me happy about the on-demand replay!)

Troy @ TLC

Presentation design work is often developing a PowerPoint template as a standalone project or developing a PowerPoint template that is then used for the presentation design phase. On this episode, Troy & Lori, the co-founders of TLC Creative Services, Inc. chat about PowerPoint template design projects they have each recently completed.

LISTEN HERE.

New podcast episode released today. “Before the Mic” is a new book in the presentation space. It focuses on the presentation message and structure – everything that needs to happen before the presenter is ‘before the microphone’ and presenting. This episode Troy, Sandy and Nolan talk with Glenn Gibson, author of “Beyond the Mic” for a very fun, very informative  conversation!

Listen here.