Comments on: Keynote Animations

By: Chris Marshall

Chris Marshall — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:49:40 +0000

That’s a good site. I funny how now there are whole sites dedicated to presentation skills whereas when I was a lad you were lucky to get a photocopied manual!

By: Dunks

Dunks — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:00:45 +0000

Thats very useful Chris, thanks for that. I have heard of a 10-20-30 rule. 10 Slides, 20-30minutes. The main site I'm trawling through at present is: Garr Reynolds site. He also has an interesting article on his blog comparing Bill Gates & Steve Jobs!!

By: Chris Marshall

Chris Marshall — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 10:21:47 +0000

Is the 5 +/- 2 ‘rule’ still around?

Never less than 3 points, never more than 7, and 5 is the optimal that a brain will process at any one time.

By: Dunks

Dunks — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 07:17:50 +0000

Agree with that – currently trying to get 17/18 year olds to produce ‘business like’ and ‘professional’ looking presentations as part of their A-Level course. What I see is awful default Powerpoint themes, inconsistent use of too may ‘effects’ and too much information on a slide.

I use the KISS principle with them and have started using the link to Merlin’s blog and a couple of the links he cites as exemplars.

Starting to see progress in their work but boy is it an uphill struggle!!

By: Chris Marshall

Chris Marshall — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 13:46:53 +0000

Merlin has some pretty good tips. I used to teach sales people how to present, and I would certainly have found Keynote interesting then!

One thing I always found and was continually preaching about was to KISS. I find that people get carried away and add far too many cool things and forget about the content, and end up distracting the audience from the core message.

By: Dunks

Dunks — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 07:39:16 +0000

Hmm, mixed feelings on this one. Some of the stuff looks really good - mainly the images. However I would possibly spend time on sites like Stock Exchange looking for creative commons images rather than pay out. I do a lot of presentations teaching and tend to find the students/staff are 'wowed' enough by the keynote animations/transitions as they are stuck with powerpoint xp at present and there is just no comparison. On the subject of presentations, I found some interesting info on Merlin Mann's 43 Folders regarding presentations - in particular some of the links he cites. His post is here

By: Chris Marshall

Chris Marshall — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:06:07 +0000

Agree 100%.

By: Mac Sokulski

Mac Sokulski — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 19:26:34 +0000

These look really well done. I can see how they could really spice up the usually boring presentations. I can’t see myself using them, as I don’t do presentations, and I can’t remember if I ever opened keynote. On the other hand I always found static presentations boring and uninformative. So I can see how these would make things a lot better.