Choose Your Presentation Tools Carefully

These days, there are more ways to communicate a message than there have ever been – in the history of civilization. That's not an overstatement, it's an inescapable fact, one with which executives, educators, meeting planners, presenters and professionals of every stripe must grapple every day, whether they want to or not. After all, there was a time not so long ago when choosing the best way to inform, persuade or educate employees, prospects or customers was no more complicated than selecting from a modest appetizer menu: although some discernment was necessary, the options were hardly paralyzing. If you were holding a critical meeting, delivering a sales pitch or launching a training initiative, you'd gather the troops in a central locale for presentations by executives or instructors toting flip charts, transparencies or 35mm slides – or send a battalion of presenters into the field. If the objective was to communicate without forcing people to come to you, or you to go to them, you might select from a handy but hardly overwhelming number of choices that included videotape, CD-ROM or a workbook. But like the restaurant regular who arrives one day to find that his single-page menu has mushroomed into a constellation of new and beguiling food choices, today's presenters find themselves with far more options for interfacing with audiences, whether it be face to face or across time zones.

Zielinski, Dave. Presentations (2002). Articles>Presentations>Online

Building Your Slides Online

Some Web entrepreneurs have made strides by developing Web-based tools for creating slides. The four that this TechTip highlights have a number of things in common.

Nesbitt, Scott. Tech-Tips (2009). Articles>Presentations>Online