In other words, this is the absolute worst time to ask for new features.

In other words, only a fool would publish his wish list now.

So right on cue…here we go…

1. Total Overhaul of the Handout Master

One of the leading causes of Death by PowerPoint is users loading up their slides with too much text. One of the primary reasons for that is because they intend to use those slides for projection as well as printout. And the reason for that is because they have no good alternative. PowerPoint users need a way to produce dedicated handouts, separate from their visuals, and miniature replicas of the slides do not qualify. Let me reiterate: Printing slides as handouts is a bad idea!

The Handout engine is so deficient, my workaround for clients is to poach the Notes page. You can use the Notes master to add visual branding, headers, footers, logos, photos, optional slide thumbnails, and a multitude of text. It’s really quite well-suited for printing handouts…too bad you have to give up your speaker notes to do it.

PowerPoint needs something like the Notes page, dedicated to the design and creation of leave-behind materials and handouts. It should be called the Handout master, and the pathetic thing that currently bears that name should be rolled into the Print engine where it belongs.

It’s almost scary to think how much better our community’s slides would be if people had a viable alternative to creating one set of slides for both visual projection and printouts.

2. Styles Brought to Animation

How is it that Microsoft Word has styles for text and Excel has styles for cell content but PowerPoint has no global styles for arguably the most important output that it produces — the motion of elements across the slide? I appreciate that the Format Painter tool has migrated to the Animation engine, but picking up the attributes of one element and copying them to another is not good enough. We need to be able to define a group of animation attributes, save them, recall them, and apply them.

Imagine how much more productive we would be if we could create styles called, say, Two-Second Fade After Previous, and Wipe Right On Click, or Grow 200% and Move 200 Pixels Left (which we would call Pan and Zoom, which would otherwise be on my wish list). And imagine how powerful it would be if you needed to adjust animation settings across several dozen elements and all you had to do was modify the style that controls them.

My graphic drawing program has been doing that since 1995; it’s time that PowerPoint did it, too.

While the developers are working on that, I sure would appreciate being able to Tab through the settings in the Animation task pane. Presently, it is a mouse-centric activity. Together, these two shortcomings create needless tedium and excessive mouse-clicking, resulting in measurable loss of productivity and increased risk of repetitive-stress injury.

Oh, and while they are under the hood, when I ask for an animation to be one second in duration, and I then decide it should be a fade instead of a wipe, I would really appreciate the software not changing the duration to its arbitrary default of a half-second without consulting me.

3. Table Animation

Before we leave the subject of animation, how come I can animate charts and graphs but not tables? I think it’s terrific that I do not need to break apart a chart in order to animate its series values and categories. That’s way cool! How come something so much simpler — text that is placed in rows and columns — does not have the same privilege? Why must I convert the table to a metafile and then methodically ungroup just to sequence its entrance?

This contributes directly to Death by PowerPoint– tabular data is too complicated to show all at once and audiences check out when we presenters do it. But the solution is so punitive, most people surrender to it. My clients laugh at me when I show them the almost-juvenile workaround of creating solid objects in front of the rows and columns and applying exits to them. I don’t blame them.

4. More Precise Motion Paths

Okay, one more on Animation. We really, really, really need to be able to designate motion paths by screen coordinates instead of by a blunt mouse push of a low-resolution arrow. Really.

5. Rethink Object Alignment

At the Presentation Summit, we regularly preach the importance of precision alignment of objects for corporate slides. And then we need to award an advanced degree to those who learn how to do it. I acknowledge that the recent addition of on-screen guides is helpful, but they cannot compensate for brain-dead alignment.

Here is an example. Let’s say that you have three elements that need to be lined up:

A headline here

A rule here

A text box here

You need to left-align the three of them so they start where the headline is positioned, but if you select these three elements and use the Align Left command, they will all line up with the rule. Why? Because that is the left-most element and you asked for a left alignment. That’s brain dead! To accommodate this, you must first move the rule to its right so that the headline is the left-most element and then try again. That’s brain dead!

And don’t even get me started on how the software decides how to align three centered objects. Which one is more in the center than the others??

Microsoft cures PowerPoint of all of this brain-deadness by allowing the user to determine the anchor during the selection process. Here’s a simple rule: the object that you select last is the one to which the others are aligned. If you are marquee-selecting, the anchor is the one at the top of the stacking order. There…problem solved.

6. Evolve Bookmarks

I love the Bookmark feature introduced in PowerPoint 2010 — it opens up entirely new creative pathways for those who import audio and video clips. Now it’s time for them to mature in two important ways: we need to be able to rename them and we need to be able to adjust their position.

7. Redesign How One Slide Deck Plays From Within Another

I would love to shout to the whole world about the value and the power of calling one slide show from within another one. I’m not just talking about creating a hyperlink, which is a perfectly fine feature but requires that I get to the mouse and click on an object. I am talking about how I can be 20 feet away from the computer, advance once with my wireless remote, and suddenly be showing slides from a different deck. When the secondary slides finish, I return right to where I was in the primary deck.

Did you know that you can do that within PowerPoint? Probably not, because it requires an undocumented and antiquated Windows function that probably only the baby boomers among our readers remember as Object Linking & Embedding. Using OLE, you can embed an external slide deck onto a slide and designate that it be shown as part of the animation sequence of that slide. This capability has been literally transformative to the way I produce my presentation skills workshops. I’ll happily share with you upon request all of this geeky-tweeky stuff and why I love placing one slide deck inside of another. As soon as I stop shaking in my boots in mortal fear that Microsoft will remove OLE functionality from the program.

I’m sure there is a better and more accessible way to offer this capability than from 22-year-old technology that Microsoft conceded was a failed initiative over a decade ago.

8. Allow Marquee Zooming with the Mouse

Please!!

9. Scrub the Notes page

I don’t share slides very often in a conventional presentation setting (see my rant earlier about creating handouts), but I often do in my PowerPoint workshops, when I want students to be able to open, dissect, and reverse-engineer a technique that I have shown them. But they don’t need to see all of my speaker notes just like they don’t need to read my diary. I want a native, no-plug-in-required, method of eliminating all of my notes. What…you can already do that? With the Document Inspector from File | Check for Issues?

Oh. Well, one out of nine is a start…

Pleasanton lost one of its most popular business and community leaders on Friday, Jan 20, when Roy Dronkers surrendered to clinical depression and took his life. We now strive to look past how he died in order to celebrate how he lived. Here are my thoughts from our friendship.

It will be easy for me to remember Roy Dronkers in the way that he deserves. He and I shared many passions, and our common love for tennis stands as one of the more profound statement of Roy’s character. There we were on court one afternoon, as he struggled to find his groundstroking rhythm.

Enjoying one of his many passions

“You know,” I said, “if you rotate your grip just about a quarter-inch, you’ll be able to hit with more force and more accuracy.”

Roy lived for hidden treasures and little nuggets of information that he could run with, so he wasted not a moment in trying it. Well, you would have thought that he had been transported to Centre Court Wimbledon, as he took delight in sweeping up the back of the ball and smashing forehand after forehand. I have never seen a grown man as giddy as he that afternoon. All from a quarter-inch turn on the racket handle.

It will be easy for me to remember Roy. He simply couldn’t get enough of people. I remember being invited to spend an afternoon on a yacht he rented. I can remember neither the occasion nor the purpose, but I recall vividly thinking how impossible it should have been to fit that number of people onto one boat.

I remember when he rented out a movie theater for the holidays. I can’t remember what we watched, but my vision is indelible of Roy shaking the hand of every person who entered.

And then there was the awards ceremony for a society that he personally established. Again, I have long since forgotten what the society stood for, but I remember Roy, microphone in hand, thanking everyone for attending.

With son Jeffrey

Roy embodies that wonderful quote from Maya Angelou: “I might not remember what you said, but I will never forget how you made me feel.”

It will be easy for me to remember Roy, thanks to our quarterly lunches, which would always leave me dizzy. How can anyone ask 10 questions in 30 seconds…about how Microsoft Outlook handles blind CC? His zeal for self-renewal was boundless…

…let me show you my new smartphone

…what do you think of this idea for a marketing support group

and yes, let me tell you about my new real estate agency.

He had the attention span of a five-year-old, and I would tell him so often. In response, he would invariably flash that grin that was about twice the size of yours or mine (which seemed normal because his head was about twice the size too).

Something magical would happen at those lunches. With his world going a mile a minute, with 50 things happening around him, with most of our lunches having to survive two or three reschedules before taking place, there was magic when we sat down at the table.

He could make time stop.

For that hour, I was the only person that mattered to him. I had his complete attention. I became the most prominent person in his orbit.

That is an extraordinary gift. That is a gift that I will remember for the rest of my time here on Earth. Time on Earth that Roy has helped me realize can be quite precious.

To an audience, there are few things more powerful than a presenter who offers a true apology. Showing that level of humanity, sincerity, and vulnerability is difficult to do and proves endearing on many levels. So let’s talk about what qualifies as a sincere-sounding apology.

If you include “I’m sorry” in a sentence, there is no guarantee that it will be interpreted as an apology, and in fact, the exact opposite effect is in play. Take these examples:

“I’m sorry that you feel this way…”

“I’m sorry that you took offense…”

“If my advice upsets you, well, I’m sorry…”

These are unfortunate word choices that could backfire. In the first case, you are not taking responsibility for making the person feel that way; you’re only expressing dismay that he or she does. In the second example, you are allowing for the suggestion that the person is wrong to have taken offense, and the third example sounds downright defensive. All three of these statements could make a situation worse, not better.

Being sorry is really a mediocre commodity. It could be thrown into dozens of phrases, in which it loses all resemblance to contrition. One of my standard lines when discussing people’s expectation of PowerPoint is: “Sorry, but it doesn’t work that way.” This phrase does not get me into trouble because nobody interprets it as an actual apology. The “well sorrrrree” remark is universally interpreted as sarcasm. And that’s precisely the point: being “sorry” is really not worth much.

It is far more difficult to misuse the words “I apologize” or “forgive me” and therefore they carry more weight.

“I apologize for making you feel that way.”

“I apologize for any offense taken.”

“Please forgive me for that upsetting advice.”

What a difference! These sentences acknowledge accountability — they show you know that your actions or words made something bad happen. They deal with real pain and real awareness. They are more genuine and more impactful.

To strengthen my argument here, I look to a portion of my audience for whom this advice is implausible. I have clients who work for city governments, planning commissions, public utilities, and in political arenas. For many of them, the public apology could be politicized and used against them. This is why you often hear the watered-down phrase of “regret.”

“We regret the actions that caused the local grocery to close down.”

“We regret that 50 people lost their jobs.”

If you regret something, it could mean little more than that you wish it hadn’t happened (definition: to feel sad, repentant, or disappointed over). Don’t use language like that unless you are blatantly dancing around an apology. The fact that issuing an apology could get politicians into trouble is exactly why I want you to use it when warranted. It is real, it is raw, it is powerful.

The next time you have to offer up a mea culpa, don’t just be sorry. Apologize!

As a professional observer of the craft, I admit to feeling a bit cheated. But not because I will never be able to witness him in action again; I feel cheated because I will not be able to watch him realize his potential. Indeed, I believe Steve Jobs was only half as good as he could have been and I believe he was about to find that other half.

Why was Jobs such a great speaker? It’s a bit easier to answer that if you start with the end result: he compelled audiences to feel the weight of his message. He made people around him feel better about themselves, and he inspired others to look beyond their own perspective. He did all this with an impossible-to-imagine ease of accomplishment that defies explanation. This made him fascinating beyond proportion.

What I find equally fascinating about the man is the qualities of great public speaking that he did not exhibit. If you were to add up all of the reasons why he was effective, compile lists of his qualities, there would be one that is conspicuously absent:

Himself.

He gave very little of himself. As wonderful as they were, his product announcements and state-of-the-technology addresses were consistently devoid of personal glimpses. It is clear that he worked very hard at them, that he practiced diligently, that he mastered the craft, and that he dedicated untold effort to this mastery. But you would not come away from them with any heightened sense of knowing better the man. He almost never made his speeches personal; he almost never let you in.

Those who knew or studied Jobs would attest to his being intensely private. Most of us learned more about his personal life in the five days since his passing than in the previous three decades. His having been an orphan, his having fathered a child prior to his marriage to Laurene Powell, his having dated Joan Baez. While these personal factoids were not closely guarded, neither were they well known. With few exceptions, Steve himself offered none of them. I always wondered how amazing it would have been if he had.

I chalked it up to the crafted facade of the CEO of arguably the most enigmatic corporation in the world. I really wanted to believe that it was calculated, that the Jobs mystique would make product launches, and the products themselves, all the more tantalizing. And as a result, a part of me actually looked forward to his resignation. As is so often the case, once people are out of the game, they tend to let a bit more of their hair down. They open up more, they share more, they are more honest with and about themselves. I was so looking forward to Jobs’ first public appearance post-resignation. I had it in mind that it would be a true coming out, that he would make it more about himself.

Were that to have happened, I believe his speeches would have become even more powerful. Is that even possible? That’s the scary thing — I think Steve Jobs could have been twice as effective as he was. Imagine all of the personal stories he could have shared about his time with Apple, about those heady early days, about creating all of that insane greatness. All of the things that he never allowed in his product demos and MacWorld keynotes.

It is the exception that proves the rule: watch this under-the-radar speech he gave for 2005 Commencement from Stanford University. It is more formal than his keynotes, as he stands behind a podium and reads from a script. But focus on the substance — listen to how he weaves his personal stories into his message. And imagine if he had done that at MacWorld all those years.

It’s almost scary to imagine how impactful his speeches could have been. And I feel cheated that we will never know.

YIN: Julie Terberg returns for her incredible makeover sessions, creating something wonderful from something…less than wonderful.
YANG: Sandra Johnson shows how to create complex shapes in PowerPoint, creating something from nothing.

YIN: Connie Malamed returns to discuss the significance and impact of visual communication.
YANG: Nick Morgan makes his debut to expose the hidden communication, the so-called “second conversation.”

YIN: Wayne Michael wants to talk to you about freshman orientation.
YANG: Nigel Holmes wants to talk to you about hot dogs and helium balloons.

YIN: Olivia Mitchell flies in from New Zealand to show you how to create a presentation in one hour.
YANG: Ric Bretschneider wants to show you how to give a presentation in six minutes and 40 seconds.

YIN: Ric will also go until nearly midnight in his traditional Guru session Monday night.
YANG: Garr Reynolds will start his keynote address right about then, from his home in Osaka Japan.

YIN: Troy Chollar will show you how to design for wide screens and large impacts.
YANG: Dave Paradi will show you how to reduce your environmental footprint.

YIN: You’ll learn amazing amounts all day long.
YANG: We’ll go out for amazing evenings in downtown Austin, including a fully-hosted private reception on the ultra-happening Sixth Street Tuesday night.

All of the components that have made our conference famous will be in place: The ever-accommodating Help Center, for free, drop-in technical support; the flexible scheduling that allows you to pick and choose seminars as you go; the delicious meals; and perhaps above all, the friendly and intimate atmosphere that we create for the presentation community, facilitating true relationship-building and bonding — unmatched at any other business conference you will attend.

We have about 30 seats left and we would enjoy nothing more than to see you reserve one of them.

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Now in its ninth season, the Presentation Summit has offered seminars and workshops on such far-reaching topics as software automation, simultaneous projection on multiple screens, presenting in non-native languages, and dealing with unfriendly audiences. Since its inception in 2003, however, no seminar topic has been more popular than the traditional makeover — where a member of the conference design team reviews and redesigns slide decks.

This year, there are three distinct before-and-after sessions: a template makeover and two design makeovers, all from work submitted by conference attendees.

“People love makeovers of all kinds,” notes Julie Terberg, who has starred in enough makeover sessions as to earn the unofficial title of Makeover Maven. “Turn on the TV and you’ll see an endless variety: home makeovers, room makeovers, garden makeovers, personal style makeovers, fitness and lifestyle makeovers. You usually can relate to something in the ‘before’ situations and so you want to see what the experts do with their transformation.

“The same applies with presentation design. How would another designer treat this concept? How will he or she transform the graphics or images? What can I learn to make my own work that much better?”

Conference attendees have several reasons to enjoy these sessions. As Julie notes, everyone can relate to the struggles and issues that are typically represented in the “before” slides and they love being inspired by the metamorphosis. Further, if your slides are chosen for one of these makeover sessions, you will be able to return home with the “after” slides, compliments of the designer. That translates into a takeaway that would typically cost a client several thousand dollars.

This is not to say that there is no reward for the designer, who can measure the return in warm-and-fuzzies. “I love when patrons say how much they learned from the makeovers,” says Terberg. “It warms my heart to hear from them about how they applied the ideas to their own work.”

You can view a snippet of one of Terberg’s makeovers at the conference’s [intlink id="1800" type="page"]video vault[/intlink].

Conference host Rick Altman also stages a makeover session, but he will be the first to tell you that he is not in Julie’s league. “I am not a professional designer,” he says, “and ironically, that is what makes it work. I focus on creating clean and consistent business design and I’m pretty good evaluating message and story. I’m not going to inspire anyone with my design brilliance as Julie does, but I can infuse confidence in people. My hope is that people come away from my sessions saying, ‘I see what he did, why he did it, and I could do it too.’”

Conference patrons pay nothing extra to have their work accepted for a makeover, and with three sessions on tap this year, late registrants can still get in on the action.

The Presentation Summit runs September 18-21 in Austin TX. You can read more about makeover sessions and  see the entire schedule, at http://www.PresentationSummit.com/schedule. Seating at the conference is limited to 200 patrons.

You might think that an opening keynote address for a presentation conference would discuss technology, or PowerPoint, or slide design, or how to speak more effectively.

You wouldn’t normally expect it to focus on how to win an eating contest.

Patrons of the Presentation Summit have come to expect the unexpected, and after his 2010 debut, Nigel Holmes has become famous for providing it. Last year, the former art director for Time magazine squeezed out an entire tube of toothpaste along the stage and later dressed up in a caveman suit.

This year, it will be eating hot dogs. And studying shadows. And, allegedly, helium, and the inhaling thereof.

Last year’s keynote might prove a tough act to follow and Holmes is quick to note that integrating physical performance into a presentation can’t be just about shock and awe. “When thinking about ‘performance,’ never do it just for theatrical effect,” he says. “There must always be a point. When dealing with statistics, the possibilities are endless. It’s a great way to depart from yet another bar chart.” Indeed, last year’s toothpaste caper was in lieu of a conventional chart to show personal hygiene statistics.

“While this kind of presentation is not for everyone, you’d be surprised at what you can pull off, if you relax and try. Presenters are too often tethered to the podium, but it really pays for the audience to become part of your presentation. They will remember being part of it for a long time.”

And the risks of eating hot dogs, sucking in helium, or donning a caveman suit? Holmes is more concerned about being gratuitous than in having something go wrong on stage. “Do not worry if things don’t go according to plan. Mistakes are a perfect introduction to talk about why it went wrong, so I see mistakes as opportunities. It also makes people understand that you are just another human, like them. So to fail slightly and then recover is good, in a funny way.”

Mistakes and all, the Presentation Summit runs September 18-21 in Austin TX. You can read more about Nigel Holmes’ keynote address, and see the entire schedule, at http://www.PresentationSummit.com/schedule. Seating at the conference is limited to 200 patrons.

We’re good with either hypothesis — just as long as we get to discover new talent. This year’s find comes to us from the state of Michigan: Meet Tany Nagy, our 2011 winner. Her clean and crisp work blends modern slide design with Texas authenticity.

Our contest is not an easy assignment. To win, your design needs to be professional, attractive, speak well of both your and our sensibilities, yet above all, must wear well and remain understated. It will be the backdrop across four days and over 50 sessions — it can’t be too loud. Furthermore, in many cases, its purpose is to tee up the work of our own designers and stay in the background as their work is showcased. Lots of potential cross purposes there!

Tany Nagy, Design Contest winner

“I approached my entry from a research standpoint,” explains Tany. “Never having been to Texas or to the conference, I invested a good part in gathering information, typography, images that I felt lent themselves to being strong foundational design elements. Textures, rich deep earthly colors, branding, seals/crests, weathered materials, rough edges, patterns — I felt ‘sensory’ elements would capture the spirit of the conference and of Austin.

“For the conference identity, I incorporated the triangle [in the Summit logo], a silhouette of the state of Texas, and a star as a symbolic reference to Texas. Designing with the elements I choose was wonderful, as working with them during the design process opened my eyes to different techniques and styles. I love learning new things and challenging myself as a designer, and this opportunity combined those things together for me perfectly!”

Tany was born and raised in Detroit, MI and now resides in Waterford Township, MI. She graduated from Lawrence Technological University and earned degrees in Architecture and Digital Imaging. For over 10 years, Tany developed her core skills as a designer and visual communicator before, in 2009, launching Pulse Design Studio (http://www.pulsearchdesign.com).

For her creativity and effort, Tany receives VIP access to the conference, Sep 18-21, with the $1,095 fee waived in its entirety.

For this post, however, I am more interested in their shared experiences than their disparate ones. Across all four cities, I have found some common threads among the few hundred people that I have encountered. Here are a few of those common threads…

1. What’s a designer?

Very few people come to the presentation industry from a background in the arts, and yet they are asked to design presentations practically on a daily basis. What does that mean for them? Really, this gets down to the core question of what the word “design” actually means. Most people use that word in an aesthetic sense — they might say “that is a well-designed slide,” when they mean “that slide is pretty.”

But that’s not what design means. The word design is meant to refer to how something is built; how it functions; what its structure is. Decoration is a different thing altogether. I’m as guilty as others in using lazy language around this word, so I try to differentiate between presentation design and slide design — the former implying the more accurate meaning of the word and the latter referring to how a slide looks.

2. You’re better than you think!

Irrespective of what the word means, most people attending our workshops believe they have no design skills. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that they have never been given a chance to find out. Most slides today afford no opportunity to think like a designer — with six or seven fully-formed sentences on a slide consuming every last pixel of open space, who could possibly think like a slide designer? Once the message is refined and the verbiage honed and distilled, then (perhaps for the first time), content creators get a chance to see if they have any instincts for creating attractive slides. I speak to this point in my Three-Word Challenge video.

3. Version 2003 is still with us

Most users I have encountered are using version 2007 and a few are at version 2010. But those who spent time first with version 2003 are still using it…even if they’re not. One of the biggest changes between those two versions is the handling of slide masters and layouts — there is a sea change of new capability and function that began with version 2007. In the last two months, I have seen hundreds of sample decks in which people are using version 2007 but stuck in version 2003 mentality. They create far more slide masters than they need to (instead of creating layouts under one master) and confine themselves to the two traditional title and content placeholders (instead of creating as many as they might need). They spent so much time with version 2003, they think as if they are still there.

When version 2007 users have their eyes opened to the true power of layouts and placeholders, it is a head-exploding experience for them.

4. Animation is an abandoned concept

So many people have had ridiculous animation foisted upon them when in the audience, they have developed an aversion to it. In fact, I have heard from many that their corporate standard is literally to forbid its use. What a shame! When used properly, animation can spell the difference between a presenter just delivering information and being able to fully convey the weight of a message; it can mean the difference between audience members merely hearing a message and truly appreciate its impact. This from the tool that also brings us boomerangs, spirals, and other childish effects that are at the core of Death by PowerPoint. How ironic.

5. PowerPoint is terrible at defaults

When I am in front of a room of several dozen people and I have hand to mouse actively working the software, it becomes more apparent than at any other time how inflexible certain parts of the software are. When I am working in private, I am more able to overlook some of these deficiencies; in a large room with 50 people looking over my virtual shoulder, PowerPoint’s issues become more evident.

Let’s return to Animation for just one of many examples. My most-often used animation is a one-second fade set to occur after the previous element is finished. That is simple to accomplish, but there is a world of difference between a function being easy and being accessible. Look what I have to do to perform that command:

1. Use the Add Animation command to choose Fade. If that command is not visible, I must first change ribbons so that it is.

2. Change On Click (the permanent default) to After Previous.

3. Change the speed from .5 (the permanent default) to 1.

This wouldn’t be so painful if I could at least Tab through those controls, but I cannot. In fact, if the Animation ribbon or task pane is not present, I have to spend one more click just to get there. And don’t tell me that I can use the Animation Painter to clone from one object to another; while fine for copying a complex animation, it is not the answer for quickly applying preferred settings. Practically every other software program that I use offers changeable defaults and custom styles; why not PowerPoint? It is almost scary to think how much less tedious my activity would be if I could simply tell the software that I want my starting point for an animation to be a one-second fade. To say nothing for how much richer the experience would be if I could create a set of styles to anticipate my common requests.

Even Word does this. Sigh.

6. People believe they should never look at the screen

I am amazed at the degree to which presenters have taken the advice about how to regard the screen that is behind them. I know that Toastmasters cautions against turning your back to the audience; I wonder if that advice has become twisted and distorted over the years. In any event, I find that many people would rather ignore the screen altogether than refer to it. And yet, when an accomplished presenter can use the screen in a natural fashion and treat it like the simple visual aid that it is, audiences respond very well to that. They do not respond as well to the screen becoming the primary component of a presentation and they do not respond well to a presenter pretending like it’s not even there. This takes practice to integrate the screen into an organic and natural-feeling conversation, and it is effort well spent.

I have four more cities to visit: Chicago (Apr 26), Newark (May 9), Baltimore (May 10), and San Jose (May 17). I am sure I will have more observations to share after that, because the one thing I can always count on when I give these workshops is that I learn something new about the software and how it is used and regarded by the community.