About me

Ellen FinkelsteinMy goal is to help you succeed when you present by giving you knowledge. I'm passionate about turning Death by PowerPoint into Life by PowerPoint. You'll find free tips, techniques, articles, and tutorials here. At the E-store find books and courses to aid you in becoming a great presenter. On my About page, learn more about consulting, workshops, training, webinars, and coaching on presentation skills and PowerPoint.

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My Social Media Pages

  • Government slides are the hardest to make visual, but I did a few today. It IS possible! 3 days ago
  • What's a good resource for info on inexpensive lighting for webcam videos & videocasts? Both lights themselves and how to set them up? 3 days ago
  • Tip for sales presentations-find out what's really bothering the decision maker. It may not be what you expect. 3 days ago
  • Just posted link: 89% of employers want colleges to place more emphasis on oral & written communication. http://bit.ly/brCUt6 6 days ago
  • Just posted update to an old tip: Creating JPEG & PNG files from AutoCAD dwgs. Many ideas from contributors! http://budurl.com/hjsb 6 days ago
  • #oscars It looked like they were doing it in Las Vegas 1 week ago
  • Register for free mini-course in presenting: From Death by PowerPoint to Life by PowerPoint http://bit.ly/589yGb 1 week ago

Featured in Alltop

Featured in Alltop

Speaking Pro Central

Speaking Pro Central

Should you say “thank you” at the end of a presentation?

There’s a great discussion going on at The Official Toastmasters International Members Group on LinkedIn. Because you can’t access the group unless you join, I thought I’d summarize the opinions and see what you think. Here’s the question the sparked the discussion:

“In my home [Toastmaster] club, it has been generally accepted that the speaker does [...]

Improve your slide design by trying layout variations

In my “Create an Outstanding Presentation” workshops and self-study course, I teach four layouts that always look good. I taught them again recently in a presentation skills class for college students.

I find that many presenters who create their own slides struggle with slide design. Not being artists, their efforts are clunky. They usually know this, [...]

Write up of training webinar on presenting interactively

Thanks to Vikas Joshi for his write up of my training webinar on presenting interactively. His blog, The World of Interactivity, offers ideas for making Web sites, presentations, and applications more interactive. For example, he has ideas on how to make your site sticky, so that visitors become engaged.

Present interactively: Your audience expects it!

My training webinar, “Present interactively—Your audience expects it!” was well received and you can now purchase the recording. In fact, the Training Manager of a state teacher’s union hired me to give this webinar, slightly customized, for employees. That too was well received.  Learn more about what I covered during the webinar and what participants [...]

Put Twitter inside PowerPoint

SAP has created a tool that displays tweets inside PowerPoint, with lots of variations and customization options. It’s a way to interact with the back channel while you’re presenting in a very cool way. For example, you can enter a search term and current tweets using that term will appear on the slide. Or show [...]

New video on Campaign Against Death by PowerPoint

I created a short video explaining the Campaign Against Death by PowerPoint. Let me know what you think!

Create a quiz in PowerPoint:demo of Technique #7 from my e-book

Learn more about 101 Advanced Techniques Every PowerPoint User Should Know.

New ebook! 101 Advanced Techniques Every PowerPoint User Should Know

101 Advanced Techniques Every PowerPoint User Should Know

After more than a year of work, I’ve finally finished a new ebook, 101 Advanced Techniques that Every PowerPoint User Should Know, that puts together so much of the advanced PowerPoint techniques I’ve learned and used. Many I’ve collected from my website, but about 10% are new, [...]

Top takeaways from the PowerPoint Live conference

The first part of this post is here.

Cliff Atkinson’s keynote empowered us to be evangelists for better presentations: better results, a better story, better graphics (in that order). He gave suggestions for presentation professionals who need to convince presenters to improve their presentations:

Improve the core template
Provide before and after examples
Educate
See the story beneath the bullet [...]

Results of survey: What resources would help you improve your presentation skills?

Thanks to all of you (about 100 people) who answered the survey!

1) What version of PowerPoint are you using?

2000 or earlier
4.3%

2002/2003
40.2%

2007
55.4%

2001,x,2004 (Mac)
0%

2008 (Mac)
0%

2) Which books would help you most with presentations?

Advanced PowerPoint techniques
53.4%

Effective presentation skills
34.1%

Design principles for non-designers
54.5%

Other suggestions:

Presenting boring information in an exciting way
Design principles
Idea starters for unique presentations/templates
Tips & tricks
Flash, animation applications, interactive [...]