Robert Lane, a digital communications consultant, trainer, writer, and professional speaker, based in Tucson, Arizona, found a solution for this problem in one of those Eureka moments we all have too seldom.
Oh My Gosh!
Five minutes into her presentation, the speaker realized something was very wrong. For several days she had been traveling from region to region in rural England addressing groups of teachers, describing her latest research.
All of the teachers in her audiences were supposed to be at the primary school-level and her PowerPoint presentation addressed their needs precisely.
Unfortunately on this day, a scheduling glitch had occurred. Seated before her were no less than 50 secondary school teachers—and that meant her presentation, and virtually the entire full-day seminar about to be delivered, was irrelevant to them!
Flash back to the previous year. The same speaker was preparing a keynote speech at a world conference in Beijing and I had just finished creating her presentation.
It was the most state-of-the-art, fabulous, incredible and unequaled PowerPoint presentation the world had ever known—or at least I thought so. Then an event occurred I will never forget.
A Chinese man approached the podium. His session was unheralded and relatively unnoticed. I likewise paid little attention until something caught my eye and soon riveted my attention.
To my shock, his slideshow contained features mine didn’t. He could randomly navigate within the show, select content on demand, interact with the audience, and end exactly when he wanted to—all while using PowerPoint.
What a radical concept, a presentation with flexibility! Why hadn’t I thought it? After nursing my bruised ego for a moment, I realized this man had just opened my eyes to an entirely new world.
Lane came away from that Beijing conference with an idea: develop templates and techniques anyone can use to create flexible, relational presentations that fit any audience, anywhere, anytime.
The Relational Slide Show
Lane's approach involves creating a navigation slide (he calls it a "switchboard") that works somewhat like a Web home page. Coming immediately after the opening slide of a presentation, the navigation slide links the speaker to secondary navigation slides, from which they begin the chosen presentation.
A switchboard may lead to a primary show, a series of slides in linear order. It may also lead to what Lane calls "inter-show" or "intra-show" navigation that follows a path through slides taken from a variety of primary shows or from slide groups designed to coordinate with primary shows.
Watch the Flash demonstration on Lane's ASpire Communications web site. He also offers a free booklet A Guide to Relational Presentation or postal mail to:
Aspire Communications
902 N 4th Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85705, USA
Attn: Julie
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