Making Great Presentations - Tips and Lessons from the Best

Presentations have become a way of life for many today, and though the primary intent is to help get your message to the audience as easily and smoothly (ooh, the dreaded 'death-by-powerpoint' is anyone's nightmare!), there's a lot more to it, than putting together slides with bullet lists.

It's a subject apparently examined by many to understand and identify what works and what doesn't. While the content is important, there are other key aspects that one needs to bear in mind, to leave that lasting impression!

Here's a great presentation by HubSpot on how some of the best presenters do (or did) it - it's definitely worth a look at. Also, included are some useful links to resources that'll come handy. So, pass this one on.

[We apologize - there seems to be something wrong with the embed here - please use the link below. We think this may be a temporary issue - and will resolve itself. Thanks for understanding]

What Would Steve Do? 10 Lessons from the World's Most Captivating Presenters from HubSpot

How to Choose the Best Colors for Your Presentations
blog.slideshare.net/2014/03/17/how-to-use-colors-in-presentations/

Serif vs. Sans: What’s Right for Your Presentation?
http://blog.slideshare.net/2014/03/10/serif-vs-sans-whats-right-for-your-presentation/

4 Design Tactics to Take Your Deck From Good to Great
http://blog.slideshare.net/2013/10/28/4-design-tactics-to-take-your-deck-from-good-to-great/

[Color Tools] ColorScheme Designer:
http://colorschemedesigner.com/

[Color Tools] Kuler:
https://kuler.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/

[Top of the Mind] Suggestions to LinkedIn (or Google+, or facebook or ...)

This is just a top-of-the-mind thought...

Social Networks like LinkedIn, Google+ and facebook continue to be heavily used the world over today, if one were to go by the sheer volume of users claimed. And, while the tech world is awash with innovations every day due to the emergence of social media, cloud and the almost ubiquitous mobile, it can be a challenge for the companies themselves to innovate and get users to engage more with these channels. While the growth for these social channels happened rapidly in the initial stages, it's obviously not that easy to maintain the same kind of growth rate. (Well, there are only 7 billion humans on the planet today, so how many more can really be added...).

While each of these companies have been creative and innovative thus far, there is also a key fact of the information age: the explosion of the information that's flowing through the world at any given moment. And, while all these channels have each got their means to stream it into the user's timeline, so that this can be 'liked' or '+1'-ed or

shared with your friends and who-knows-all, it's clearly a problem in itself. There's (if you're like me) a ton of things you may find interesting, and it's practically impossible to see and read/review/examine each such article or post. Now, because of the transient nature of this streamed information through these media, every refresh of the screen, shows you something new. And, with 10s or 100s of posts streaming through per minute (oh, or is it per second in some cases?!), it's practically a lost battle even before you begin to tackle this deluge. And, it's lose-lose for everyone here, you see.

So, based on this, here are some suggestions, if you may to these media, to help make this a better experience. (Each can go about it the way they want to):
a. 'Save for Later': We have the 'Like' or 'Share' or '+1' option, but often, I wouldn't want to click any of these unless i've had a chance to read through that link that my friend posted or watched the exciting TED video in my stream. It would be oh-so-nice to be able to save this for later - right there, and when I login the next time, I can effectively "catch up" with what I want, rather then be flooded with 20 new seemingly interesting links or posts. (Hmm, now that leads to a possibility of 'queueing this stream of information flowing onto my page or wall and allowing me to decide the rate at which this comes through: that's a thought too).

b. [LinkedIn] My Shelf +Affiliation: Now, this one's probably something for LinkedIn, since facebook already has something close to it (though not quite).
Wouldn't it be nice to be able to put together a bookshelf (ala Shefari) on your profile for people to see what you have read, would like to, etc.

In the case of books, since you can now have more visual impact with including the book cover, wouldn't it be awesome, if the bookcover now included a "Buy now" which also automatically included an affiliate-kind means, so if someone bought the book you listed via your shelf, you'd get paid (a well, teeny) amount of the sale? Users would like it, and so would booksellers, I'd think! But, it's the long tail, and someone could get rich!

Well, there's more - it need not just be about books, it could be a "my shelf" - with interesting stuff one would like to add into their profile like blogs, links, music, mobile apps...

Like I said, this is just top-of-the-head: if someone thinks this is likely to be a good idea, feel free to go for it. As with anything, there will be pros and cons. Do post your comments on this post, if you want to.

Note: While i've titled this for LinkedIn, I don't have a bias towards it in a particular way at all. It's just that this struck me while I was using LinkedIn the other day!