Stu Downes

Increasingly I find myself spending more and more time in PowerPoint.  To articulate ideas and gather input the first thing I turn to is PowerPoint.  PowerPoint is as important to me to articulate ideas in the workplace than any other office tool.  I’m a firm believer in the beyond bullet points ethos and work hard to make my slides visually compelling and my presentations flow and tell the story [although I must add that I never followed the beyond bullet points methodology to the letter as its too constraining for me].

What I found recently was a wonderful site called Speaking PowerPoint where Bruce Gabrielle tries to overcome the problem of poor slides and presentations, and shares some great tips and tricks to make presentations more visually compelling.  I’ve picked up enough tips to want to buy his book.  Here’s one, enjoy and hat tip to Bruce:

 

I was interested to see this video which I read about on the OfficeLabs blog, the video shows the use of a 3D camera to control and advance a PowerPoint presentation using hand gestures.  The PowerPoint had been developed using the pptFlex plugin:

What was more interesting about this what all the way through I was thinking Johnny Lee.  Then at the end “kapow” there it was he now holds a position with Microsoft Research in addition to his academic position.

Anyone got a spare Wii controller?  You can do it with a Wii using the instructions here.