Technology Business

Companies and individuals use powerpoint presentations for a variety of purposes, one of the most common being sales presentations and other pitches. But one of the common denominators to the great range of slide shows given is the comparative mediocrity of their Powerpoint design. It is, sadly, all too normal to sit through a set of slides that brings little or nothing (or, in the worst cases, even less) to a talk which may itself be tedious enough as it is.

One of Powerpoint’s greatest strengths is also its chief weakness. If it was difficult to use then we would think about it differently. When we need software designing, an interactive website creating – even copy written, often – we employ a professional to do it. But Powerpoint design is different. Like written copy, it is something that untrained and inexperienced people can do. Sometimes, they will do it well. Unfortunately, though, in the majority of cases the results will be amateurish. When they are deployed in the context of a key or high-stakes sales presentation, the effect is predictably disastrous: they simply do not work.

Sales pitches need to engage their audiences. They need to convince and to wow. People need to come away from them impressed, but not just by showy graphics. They need to have a clear idea of the product or service you are promoting, and of why it can do the job better than any of the competition. The more simply and clearly you can communicate this, the better.

This is why there are companies out there dedicated to creating effective Powerpoint slide shows – as well as the spoken presentations they should complement. And it is complement, rather than duplicate or, in the worst cases, being a redundant extra. The Powerpoint and spoken word should work together, rather than one propping the other up. You can communicate detail on a slide that you cannot via a verbal presentation; equally, there are things that you cannot represent well on a slide.

Really convincing powerpoint presentations are hard to create. Powerpoint design is difficult to do really well, though anyone can do it badly. If your sales presentations are lacking in that ‘wow’ factor, that will soon show up in your bottom line. On the other hand, if you employ the right consultants or pay for the training to enable you to do it yourself, you should quickly find you realise a return on investment for your time and money.

Visit http://www.eyefulpresentations.co.uk/ for more…

The uses of video conferencing in the business world are well documented, as the need for many people to communicate frequently with colleagues around the world grows increasingly in our modern day ‘global village’.  telepresence video conferencing is so well developed that we can fairly accurately create the experience of a face to face conference with participants from Texas, Adelaide and Dublin all able to take part from the comfort of their own offices.  It seems interesting, though, that audio visual conferencing seems to be struggling to take hold of the mobile communications market.  Although Skype is very popular for those who want to communicate with friends and relatives abroad, there seems to be very little demand for mobile telephones which allow us to see the person we are talking to.

In its early days, video phone technology was very expensive, costing users about 90 dollars a month.  These days, however, modern technology has reduced the costs to almost zero.  Webcams and highly advanced smart phones mean that cost is no longer a factor in discouraging people from using video conferencing. In its early days, many people expected that videotelephony would become ubiquitous, but it is still used fairly infrequently.

This may in part be because videophone calling tends to be a poor substitute for real face to face conversation.  The conversation tends to be focussed around a video screen and a small camera, and participants tend to look at the screen rather than the camera, which prevents them from having direct eye-to-eye contact with each other.  Some have put forward the theory that videotelephony may be less popular than expected because people actually prefer less direct communication. Texting, instant messaging and email are significantly more popular than video calling, which suggests that written conversations which can be handled at one’s convenience is, for most people, preferable to recreating the experience of face-to-face conversations.  Similarly, some people regard video cameras as an intrusion.  ‘Why does my friend need to see what I am doing?’ ‘I don’t want to feel I have to look nice for a phone call,’ and ‘I don’t feel comfortable being watched’ are all common responses when people are asked about this kind of technology.

It does seem intriguing that video conferencing has proved so popular and widely used in business, but most of us are reluctant to embrace it on a day to day basis. Perhaps telepresence video conferencing exerts too much pressure on us to be fully involved in a conversation, when secretly we quite like to be able to do the gardening or cook dinner while chatting to our friends and family.  Audio visual conferencing does seem to be here to stay, though.  Perhaps we had better just get used to it.

Please visit http://www.edgevision.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.edgevision.co.uk/

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